The maths input with Tara Harper put things into perspective.

For me, maths in school was black or white. You either understood the work and had a great teacher who knew what they were doing and helped you to not only get the right answer but to understand how to get the right answer or you had no idea what was going on and you had a teacher who would get angry at you for correcting his mistakes.

In reflection, those amazing teachers were amazing because they helped you to UNDERSTAND maths rather than just pass the tests. My favourite maths teacher was also at the same time, the strictest teacher in the school. This helped because you wanted to impress her, you wanted to get the answer right and make her know you knew how you got there.

On the other hand, the teacher who gave me the worst maths experience was also the least experienced in maths. He had gone from teaching Nat4 life-skills to Higher Maths with no support or help. In a situation like this, the reason that it was a bad maths experience was that the teacher was inexperienced.  Reflecting on that, I aim to be experienced in any subject and aspect that my pupils will be learning so I can be able to challenge them to help them develop their knowledge.

In the maths input today, Tara brought up the fact that Maths is a language. Which made no sense, to begin with, however as she explained it, it made perfect sense. Maths is the only universal language in the world which every mathematician can communicate with each other with, no matter what country they are from or what language they don’t speak. This made me think that maths is even more important than I’d initially thought because, with a sound understanding of maths, children can communicate with the entire world.