Student teaching is both challenging and fun. My cooperating teacher at the high school is so wonderful to work with and I will be very sad when the time comes to leave her. I've learned so much through this experience already. In reference to my previous post, I am in the process of filling out the application for a nearby High School. God is so good and He has given me a sweet peace about this decision. May His will be done and His name be glorified!
On Tuesday of this week, I taught a lesson on the applications of matrices. I was so excited about this lesson because it gave me an opportunity to connect mathematics to the real world and even more specifically to professions that my students may be interested in. One of the applications of matrices is in cryptography. I showed students how to "encode" their initials into a matrix and then we "decoded" them as a class. I then had them "decode" a secret message that I gave them in the form of a matrices. This sounded like a really cool activity to me and I was excited about the students going through it! However, many of my students were uninterested or didn't see "the point." This was disappointing, but in the very last class where I taught this lesson, one student looked up and said "Hey, this is kind of fun!" I wanted to hug him right there. Even if the other students didn't care or were uninterested, I reached this one student. I'm quickly learning that "you win some and you lose some."
That's great! As a non math loving person, let me encourage you by saying that even though I still didn't like math, the teachers and professors who loved what they did and taught with the understanding that we wouldn't all love it like them were so much more enjoyable! Keep at it girl!!
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