Yijia's Blog

1. I really like the sense of satisfaction when I successfully solve a hard problem on my own and it is also why I continued studying math. 2. It is also the hard problems that I cannot solve that frustrates me a lot, especially when after when I spend a long time working on them. 3. My role model is the math teacher from my Grade. 3 math class. She is caring for all students in her class no matter how they do on the subject. She also takes her own time to help the students with any personal or academic problems. 4. I would avoid teachers who only provide the students with formula and concepts without a clear explanation and who only cares about the students with high achievement in the subject area.

The first point that stopped me was when the author talks about how majority math teachers teach instrumental math instead of relational math. I came from both Chinese and Canadian education system, and I noticed that they both had heavy course load and lots of curriculum content. Teachers only have one class for each topic, so it is hard for teachers to explain the reasons behind all concepts. However, BC’s new curriculum now allow teachers more freedom on what to teach, so that teachers no longer have to cover a certain amount of material and can dig into some topics with their students through inquiry-based learning (which is more time-consuming). Second, the part stating that teachers choose instrumental math because of other subjects which require some skills. I found this as a really important factor, since students are not like mathematicians who can focus on just math, they need to learn several subjects at the same time. Teachers must prepare them the necessary skills