Experiences from the Past Two Weeks

While everyone else was out on their short two week practicum, I spent my time writing a 10 page literature review for EDCP 550 - Math Education: Origins and Issues.  My literature review was based on the trend of math anxiety - what are its causes and how can the high school class teacher help students to deal with their anxiety in a positive way.  A lot of the reading that I had to do for the paper made me think of my students from the past two years.  The last two years I spent at a private Christian school teaching students in the applied stream of mathematics.  So they already come into my room with a negative opinion about their abilities as math students.  By building relationships with my kids I was able to, I think, help they get past some of their fears and worries.  I know that when I told them I would not be returning for September of this year they were less than impressed.  I got the comment "Miss L.  I'm going to fail Applied 30 if you are not here to help me!"  This tells me that the student knows that I was and am on their side, more interested in helping them succeed than simply getting them through.  Even this semester I have heard from a few of them asking how I am doing in class and telling me that I need to come back to them.  I definitely believe that the relationship you build with the students in your class can and does go a long way in helping students deal with some of their anxiety.  I can only hope to continue to build similar relationships with my future students and create an environment where math anxiety is lessened.

Another lesson from the past two weeks is the importance of making connections with colleagues.  As we were a small school the high school staff was very close.  Thus when they found out I was planning on doing my diploma program I had the grade 12 English and socials teacher offer to be my editor for any papers that I would have to do.  Too often at larger schools we can get locked into our department and not necessarily make connections with others.  My connection with the English 12 teacher allowed me to email her my 10 page paper and be confident that the editing would be done by someone who may not necessarily understand math, but is awesome with the written word.