Throughout my whole school career, I never had a strong relationship with mathematics. I went through school, moving up and down different maths sets and being taught by a number of different teachers who all caused me to have different attitudes towards the subject. Over the years, my dislike towards the subject steadily increased until it became my least favourite subject! As a result, I would be lying to say I wasn’t a little anxious about the introductory mathematics inputs that we had last week. However, I feel they helped change my attitude towards maths as well as building up my confidence in teaching it later on.
My experience with maths was what triggered my dislike towards the subject. One of the main influencing factors was my teacher, who took me for my standard grades and highers. Unfortuently, I did not find him particularly inspiring. In fact, he told me on a regular basis that I had little chance of succeeding in the subject. This combined with the fact I didn’t particularly enjoy maths meant that I found it difficult to motivate myself and I adopted the attitude of ” I can’t do it” which wasn’t necessarily true! It also didn’t help that my brother was the “maths genius” of the family. Compared to him, I felt inferior and didn’t see the point in even trying to compete with him as it was obvious who would get the better grades!
However, I plan to take my experience and use it to improve my own teaching! Firstly, I now understand how important it is to motivate your children and excite them about maths, even if you don’t feel that way about the subject. I remember in my maths lesson that I was always too nervous to put my hand up or ask for help as I was scared I would feel embarrassed about asking a “stupid question”. So I know how important it is as a teacher, to be friendly and approachable so that the children will not be scared to ask me for help. But most importantly, I know that I need to keep my attitude towards maths positive in order to teach it to my best capability and provide lessons that stimulate the children, hopefully encouraging them to enjoy maths as well.
