Math!!! It is the subject that I love the most (suprisingly) since I was really young. Why? I simply love the feeling of satisfaction after solving math problems. However, reading the technicality of teaching Math... the principles, content and process standards and others, I am honestly not used to it. Teaching Math is not as simple as I thought it is... I am really glad that I had awesome Math teachers since I was very young.
Reading the about the principles and standards of teaching Mathematics, it really helps me to understand how all the principles indirectly help students to learn Mathematics with understanding. I am glad that I had teachers who were able to provide high quality mathematics education throughout my school life. I was thought with understandings and learn to relate from one topic with another and reason out why I solve the problem in a certain way and learn different strategies to solve the Mathematics problem. "Teachers' actions are what encourage students to think, question, solve problems, and discuss their ideas, strategies, and solutions" (NCTM, 2000, p. 18) I am able to relate it a lot based on my experience being in the Math class when I was still in secondary school in particular. Despite being in a private school, my teachers gave their best to maximise the students' learning by giving the best that they could.
In becoming an effective teacher of Mathematics, I never knew that there are actually lots of characteristics that I need to look into, to ensure the quality of my teaching. The characteristics listed in the book are:
- Knowledge of Mathematics - I personally feel that this is important as I always believe that a confident teacher makes confident students.
- Persistence - I guess I have to agree that persistence is one of the most important characteristic in becoming a Maths teacher. As students need to be persistent in understanding and solving Maths, teachers should also potray persistence in his/her teaching as well.
- Positive Attitude - To succeed, being positive has always been important.
- Readiness for Change - Being a teacher does not mean that we stop learning. In fact, teachers need to at times unlearn and relearn mathematical concepts, developing a more comprehensive understandings of the mathematical topics.
- Reflective Disposition - The best teachers never finish learning all that they need to know, they never exhaust the number of new mental connections that they make, and as a result, they never see teaching as stale or stagnant (Walle, Karp & Bay-Williams, 2010)
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