My Experience Of Math And Education

You never truly know how much someone means to you until they are gone. All of the hot summer days spent at her house, the home cooked meals for lunch, the daily routine of watching game shows on GSN, the hours and hours of playing monopoly, and working the concession stand at Evans Park for the summer are now just cherished memories that I have with my grandma.

As we pulled up to the massive elementary school building, I begged my mom to let me stay home from school, just once. As usual, she said no. Realizing my attempt to get out of school was futile, I shouldered my backpack, swung open the door, and trudged over to the front door. I would rather be anywhere else than here. For the majority of my life, I attended public schools. It wasn’t rare for me to fail a test or even a whole class. It was because of these failures that I would get even more demotivated and threw away the idea of working hard or completing quality work altogether.

Ever since I was little, starting in first or second grade, I was classified as something other than average. A “special” teacher came and took me from my classes once a week, along with some other kids, and here we learned different lessons than we did in normal class. They called this the “gifted” class. These lessons always seemed to be harder than the normal ones, but I liked the challenge. Normal class was always boring to me. Up until middle school, those gifted lessons were the only challenges I had ever faced academically, and even then they weren't much of a challenge. I entered middle school with a sense that I knew everything the teachers would tell me, that I was smarter than everyone else, just because

This semester, I was a teacher assistant for Dr. Finley’s psychology 101 course. The experience to TA has been a really valuable, and rewarding experience. I’ve definitely gotten the chance to develop skills in the professional context. The variety of tasks and the workload pace was very enjoyable for me. The opportunity of being a TA at times proved to be challenging but I find ways to successfully manage some of these adversities. Overall, there’s a plethora of things that I can take away, and I plan to utilize some of these tactics into my future goals and career aspirations.

Diving into past memories is something I am never found of. There is a lot of pain hidden behind some of my past experiences, but also a lot of triumph. It is always interesting to force yourself to retrieve some of those hidden memories. Sometimes the things you remember can be very surprising. Things that seemed long forgotten, can abruptly come back in a flash. The farthest memory I can recall about my own literacy experience is when I began first grade. At this stage, I remember feeling very confused about the whole purpose of going to school. I felt as if I was the only one not being able to keep up with the other children. I didn’t know what was cool, how to make friends, or even know how to play board games like “Candyland.” I was just not exposed to certain things that the other children in my class were aware of prior to beginning first grade. Most of all, I did not like learning. I liked doing things

Everyone has a special talent when it comes to school. Some people are good at sports, some people excel in math and some people like myself are good at English. As a Freshman in high school, I had no interest in how essays are written or how poets compose their rhymes. Them I entered Honors English and my view changed drastically. I was engaged and eager to know how a writer could write a novel so well, that you got lost in a book. I wanted to know more. Being as interested as I was, I wanted to know how I could do this.Now entering my Freshman year as a college student, I still feel the same way. I want to constantly learn more and improve. This is how my education influenced my course choice.

Last summer my family and I visited my grandma in Missouri. I rarely saw her due to the fact I moved around a lot with my family being in the military.

Being smart is wrong, Loving to read makes you strange, and school is pointless. Those were all things I thought until the sixth grade. I was a book junkie who felt alone in her family. I felt locked away in my own mind until a teacher and an author came along and gave me a key to let me be free to be who I am.

My early education shaped my motivations and philosophy in both negative and positive ways. At a young age, I became motivated to read and learn as much as possible. I regularly outperformed all of my peers in school and became focused on showing everyone that I was superior to them. Consequently, I continued to perform better and became convinced that I was smarter than my classmates and friends. Despite being given chances to excel in elementary school; in fifth, sixth, and seventh grade I was not sufficiently challenged and was disappointed that my time in school felt wasted. This was particularly frustrating because I had contemplated skipping sixth grade, but was discouraged to do so. Halfway through seventh grade I had the opportunity to challenge myself again. This time it did not influence my motivation or work habits; instead, I learned self-humility and had my personal philosophy reshaped.

I’ve always known I was relatively good at school. It was either that, or the constant yelling of my Mom, “ You are so smart,” every time I did anything that took a tiny bit of skill. School wasn’t too fun, but I knew it was important. It wasn’t too hard either, all you had to was appear and do your best, which made it super easy. This meant that I didn’t have to try too hard, and because of that I never did, with the exception of writing, I wasn’t very good at writing during the time.

Growing up, I attended two elementary schools: Leo R. Croce Elementary and Livermore Valley Charter School. Both schools emphasized the foundations of education, especially the essential subjects like Mathematics and the English-language arts. For example, at Leo R. Elementary School, math was integrated into everyday activities like creating necklaces, marking calendars, and playing outdoors. By gifting medals to students who earned a specific amount of points, Livermore Valley Charter School really stressed Accelerated Reading tests. These tasks motivated me to excel in both Mathematics and English-language arts, being I encountered them on a daily basis. Due to this, I am now very confident in both subjects, especially in Mathematics. This skill will allow for me to

Truth be told, the only thing I’ve ever excelled in is academics. From a young age I was obsessed with knowledge and read anything I could get my hands on. My parents were delighted with the simple math I had picked up through educational television and encouraged me to do addition and subtraction with single digit numbers in front of extended family members at Thanksgiving. I was read Harry Potter as a bedtime story and fell in love with not only that world, but all worlds I found that words could create.

On the weekends as a child, I used to go to my mom’s parents, so my grandparents, continuously. We would all pack in the van, all of the kids would be so excited to get and the car and go see our grandparents. Other times our Aunt Jeanne would come over and take us there. On our way there, we would always stop at 7 Eleven and get a Slurpee and some snacks. At the time, our favorite snack to get was Flaming Hot Cheetos, then we were on our way to our grandmas. When we were in the driveway we booked it in the house and kicked our shoes off. We were overjoyed to be with our grandma and grandpa. We loved to be around everyone in the family.

In junior High School, things started to turn around for me. Although I was still placed in lower level classes, I developed a love for learning. In the years to come from Junior High to High School, I had a strong urge to make up for lost time. One class I started to excel in was the one I used to have the most trouble with, Mathematics. It seemed as though the once boring and complex equations now seemed meaningful and simple. As I progressed into 8th grade, I was able to advance to normal classes. I felt that the hard work I put in was finally paying of. At this point, I felt that I could handle a higher level. At the end of 8th grade, I took the necessary procedures and tests to try and get into honor - level courses in 9th grade. After taking a summer course of Algebra 1 and several tests I was able to succeed and take the classes. The experience was great. I felt that I was finally going the right direction

Some of the many memories I carry with me every day of my grandmother are the holidays when we used to get together. I remember Thanksgiving and Easter most of all. On Thanksgiving the entire family would come together for dinner and then we would all stay at her house for the night. I remember this so well because we would wake up the next morning to the smell of breakfast and all the ladies would be gone shopping to the "After Thanksgiving Sale".