My Educational Philosphy

As a math educator, I consistently have the opportunity to work with students who consider themselves incapable of success. This is the foundation of my philosophy and passion for teaching mathematics.

My Educational philosophy is that with the right support and proper learning environment every student is more than capable of mathematic excellence. With pieces of growth mindset philosophy from Dr. Dweck and Maslow’s theories on settings for a successful learning experience, my philosophy is founded on belief in every student. Establishing the correct math classroom atmosphere can be half the battle in reaching struggling students. I will work to ensure the students that the school year is a learning process and that performance in past years or poor performance on graded work should not defeat them.

My philosophy beyond the success of my students is that math has become too rigged, and that students are only prepared to use algorithm based solving skills when solving math problems. Students too frequently know exactly how to solve problems with the same 3 step solving process they used for all the practice problems, but as soon as there is a hitch in the process students quickly become frustrated. I will incorporate questions that require a deeper level of thinking, language that makes theorems more understandable, and problems which need to be carefully assessed. In doing so, my students will be prepared for questions that are unfamiliar yet fundamentally easy, and be able to truly use the mathematics that they have learned, and not just a problem solving algorithm.

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