Connecting School and Home Experiences
As I have posted before, I have had many experiences at home with mathematics. My father gave mathematics problems to solve in the summers, he bought me fun mathematics books, and he would constantly ask me riddles. I have always loved riddles and figuring things out. A lot of the riddles he would ask involved mathematics. I also loved to bake cookies at eat cookie dough with my mother. She would ask me to do fractions during the baking process. I need one third of a half of a cup. How much is that? I also loved playing games growing up. I enjoyed playing cards. My dad and mom would ask me probability questions while playing games like go fish. If I have 2 queens in my hand, how many queens are left in the deck. What are the odds of picking a queen, etc. I also played a lot of Yahtzee which has a lot of applicable mathematics. My dad taught me chess which helped me think logically and analytically. My childhood was filled with experiences with mathematics. What's more is these experiences were fun and were apart of my everyday. My parents helped point out how much mathematics plays a role in the world. They did not need to go way out of their way to help me love mathematics. They used what they had, and I am grateful for that.
I hope that I can instill a love (or at least a like) for mathematics in my future students. I hope I can help them have meaningful experiences with mathematics in the world outside of my classroom. A lot of times, students do not see a need for what they are learning within the classroom. However, by helping students see how heavily the world we live in relies on mathematics, by helping them experience mathematics outside of school, I believe the students will have a better chance at enjoying mathematics.
I think the following video sums up a lot of what I mentioned. The teachers make little remote control helicopters and use them to help the students understand trigonometry.
I think that everything you posted has perfect relevance to what we talked about today. In a way, math has always been a part of your identity because it was tied with your fond memories and social relationships. But there are some students for whom math has no obvious connection to their families or identities--some students whose parents are "math-phobic," for instance. I think it would be great if you found ways to bridge their own family experiences--whether those are farming or sewing or playing video games--to mathematics so that they can experience the same kind of congruence (between their identities and math) that you did. Thanks for your posting!
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