The Most Memorable Challenge In My Educational Career

“I know math doesn’t come easy for you,” she told me. “But I want you to retake that test and study even harder because if you think you can do it, then you can.” I sighed and agreed and gave her a hug. After dinner, I studied for hours and hours upon end. I really knew my math by the end of it! I can do it I can do it I can do it… I told myself.

When I was a child, I wasn’t very proficient in math. It wasn’t until junior high, that I was finally getting the hang of doing all these math problems every day. A factor that helped me achieve good grades was my dedication

In the other hand, I was failing math because unlike all the other students, I am not the fastest learner. I would always get confused with the structure and format of the question. For instance, fractions, decimals, and word problems would confuse me . I wasn’t very good with solving any of that so I knew I had to start attending tutoring. I had very good help from the students at Loma Linda University. They taught me an easier way to solve any problem, and that caused my test scores to increase. I can pass that class with no problem now. That

Going to college to receive a higher education could be one of the biggest obstacles of your life. If it is not the biggest obstacle than it’s certainly the most important. Frank Bruni’s opening question is more appealing to the transition from HighSchool to College. In HighSchool we were all taught to think a certain way when completing any task that dealt with learning. We were taught to remember and understand any work that was taught to students. Even when teachers gave test, they were only testing your ability to remember the material given. High school teachers’ number one objective was for students to remember what is said to pass the exam. However, in college these thinking skills are not acceptable. So approaching Frank Bruni’s opening question “‘What’s the most transformative educational experience you’ve had?’” I had to approach this question with higher thinking or else it would be a High School placement essay. I responded by of course using a little remembering and understanding because I have to understand the words in the question and remember the meaning of them. However, I mostly used theoretical ideas, some logic, understood the value of the question, and finally I combined all of my approaches to see how it would positively increase my diversity in college knowledge.

My first failure discouraged me to the point where, I felt like I would never reach an advanced math level again. The lack of self-confidence that resulted from my sub-par math scores soon began to negatively affect some of my other classes. I quickly realized that the trend had to stop. I worked diligently to achieve what, at the time, seemed unattainable. My change in the outlook of my repeated failures helped me to finally succeed. Throughout the course of the last two years, I have grown more self-aware in my study habits. I push myself even harder when I think I have done the best I can.

Matthew Misiura is a math teacher at Susquehanna Community High School. Mr. Misiura explains that he always pushes for “content mastery” in his math classes. However, Mr. Misiura’s teachings are more than an average algebra and precalculus class. Mr. Misiura pushes for students to learn about the real world. He pushes for students to always work to their full potential. In a year in his classroom, I not only learned precalculus and trigonometry, but I learned how to view situations from a different perspective. Some students, when given back a test in which they failed, would cry, act childish, or simply complain. Mr. Misiura was able to reinforce the belief that the only way to learn is to make mistakes. He often stated that, if you already

As I walk into the school, I take a deep breath repeating the words “I can do this, I’ve done it before.” Laying my paper down to the table, the woman gives me the okay to head up to room 222. Walking up the stairs I could feel my heartbeat pound harder and harder, as if I had an elephant pounding on my chest. Realizing this was my last chance to take this test before I started applying to colleges, made my stress level rise uncontrollably.

Learning multiplication is all repetition, something I had never learned the value in yet. By never studying my multiplication tables, I starved myself of acceleration in mathematics. I became severely far behind my peers in the understanding of the subject at hand and the coursework to follow. My discussion with 8-year-old Taylor would ensure that I knew just how essential math would be. Not only would tackling this problem help me excel in school and real life, it would have taught me the value of learning how to learn. Learning how to learn isn't necessarily comprehending the material, but the process in which one learns, ex. outlines, flashcards. Though now I am able to recognize how paramount learning these skills was to a child, my

A time I struggled in my life was when I had to learn long division. It happened while I was in the fourth grade; I just couldn’t catch on and was quickly becoming frustrated. Math had always been one of my weakest subjects. Then one Sunday afternoon, my mom made me sit down and helped me learn it.

The clock ticked by quietly, as my 6th grade teacher Mr. Parson rapidly went around the classroom to pass out the math tests. Sweat was dripping off my face and I could not stop fidgeting with my fingers. Mr. Parson smiled as he came to give me my math test. I smiled at him nervously. I slowly looked at my test score and grinned. Thankfully, I received an A on the test. (#15) Sometimes I was a little lazy and wasn’t really successful as a 6th grader. Other times, I was always working hard and earned good grades. Because of my friends, teacher, and older sisters, I was able to find success in 6th grade.

Before the summer, we had been given the option to take a regular or advanced math class. The first day of school in this advanced math class, we had been given a pretest to assess our prior knowledge of material we should have learned the year before. Although we knew most of the material, I, as well as the other students who had been my class the year before, had been baffled by some of the things were were supposed to have been taught. Nearly all the knowledge we had was what we had learned through RenMath. My new teacher, exasperated, asked how on Earth we all made it into the advanced math class. One student, a friend of mine, pointed to me and said, “She taught us.” I’ll never forget how in that moment, I realized I had been a leader to my classmates, helping them to succeed and achieve more than they would have

After thought, I remembered my poor fifth grade math performance and thought about why I did better in the years after. I falsely concluded that I became more hardworking and proceeded to apply that solution to my present problem. I attended as many after-school study sessions as I could, and did every question in the book. On a few occasions I even found more online resources that could help me evaluate my knowledge and increase it. The culmination of my efforts succeeded, even though they were based on a false assumption. I had grown as a

If someone were to ask me what my most transformative education experience was, I would ponder for a moment. Then I would think back to freshman year in high school when I had a math teacher named Mr. Fernandez. This man would change my whole perspective on education and would pave my success in future class in high school.

When I was in the second grade, all of the students at my elementary school were given a special test one day in class. We were told that it was not for a grade, but that it was to help the school know more about us. None of us really understood what the test was, or what the school would use it for, and it is certain that no one in my class that day understood the implications of what those results would mean for us the rest of our lives.

Frédérique Autin, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Poitiers in Poitiers, France under the supervision of his psychology professor, Jean-Claude Croizet, PhD, divided sixth-grade students into three groups with two of the groups being given an impossibly hard anagram to try and solve (611). After failing to solve the anagram, one group of the students was told that learning is difficult and failure is common, while the second group was simply asked how they tried to solve the problem (611). All three groups of students then took a test to measure their cognitive ability for storing and processing information, or working memory (611-612). Researchers found that the students who were told that learning is difficult scored higher on the working memory test than the other two groups (612). Dr. Autin stated that “By being obsessed with success, students are afraid to fail, so they are reluctant to take difficult steps to master new material” (qtd. American Psychological Association). He concluded that acknowledging difficulty as part of the learning process may prevent the feelings of incompetence that disrupts learning (qtd. American Psychological Association). When children aren’t given opportunities to make mistakes, fall-down, or struggle and then try again, they have less self-confidence, tend to be more fearful of failure and less willing to try new things.