Growing up I had a lot of mixed feelings in school about math. I had teachers who were very good at teaching math and some who were not. My grade 3 and 4 years of school I had a teacher who taught math in a way that was stressful but effective during the time. When learning our time tables she would make us do “tests” where a video would tell us “this x this” and we would have about 10 seconds to write the answer down. Not only did you not get to see the question but if you were to write anything but the answer on the test you would get the question wrong. It was to help us improve our mental math but was extremely stressful for me. In grade 8 my teacher left half way through the year because she had a baby. She was very good at teaching us math and in the 4 month we had her we learned 3 or 4 units of math. When we got our new teacher she was great but had little experience teaching multiple subjects. We were taught about lots of things but in the almost 6 months we had her as a teacher, we learned maybe one unit of math. For me, I never liked math and struggled with it for most of my schooling. I think a big part of that was from the stress that I got from my teachers. It got to a point that I stopped feeling bad about not doing good in math because I thought I would never be good at math and what was the point, even though I still tried my best in the class. It wasn’t until my University Math 101 class did I actually start to enjoy math.
Personally, I don’t remember seeing any oppression and/or discrimination in my math classes directly. My school was already pretty diverse and never seemed to be a problem. I think the thing that was a problem was there were teachers that just thought because a student wasn't doing well in the class they just assumed that they didn't care or weren't trying, not because they didn't understand. These students who struggled with understanding just got, in a way, left behind because the teachers thought they weren’t trying. Math is a course that many students are taught that there is only one right way to do it. Even if you get the right answer but don’t do the “correct” steps it is still considered wrong. That is something that is really hard for students to work with because everyone learns in a different way. There isn’t one correct way of teaching that fits every student's understanding and needs, but in math apparently there is. As seen in Gale’s lecture and Poirier’s article, Inuit mathematics challenged many Eurocentric ideas about the purpose of mathematics and the way in which we learn it. Some of these things are:
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For me, my upbringing especially in school shaped how I “read the world”. I learned lots from my family and the people around me what is right and wrong and that anyone can be who they want to be. I learned to be careful about social media and people around me on the streets. I went to school here in Regina but live outside of the city. I have always viewed things a little differently than others. Throughout my time in school, we read a lot of books that were white, westernized with little about diversity. When we got older and started picking our own books we had the option to expand our readings and pick books that were different but from what I remember our schools library did not have that much diversity in the books that we had. It wasn't until I hit high school that the books we read in English class were diverse. Most were true stories or based off of real life events. Lucky for me I happened to get two great teachers in high school that made us read diverse books and allowed us to pick a book in which we wanted to read. Some of the books I read were, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and Running for my life by Lopez Lomong. These teachers really expanded my understanding of literature and different experiences in the world. I don't think teachers really realize they are creating these lenses in which their students will carry them.
In Chimamanda Adichie’s ted talk she speaks about “single stories”. Single stories were present in my own schooling. Most were about the typical westernized family and how they live the perfect, happy, privileged life. Being that young I never really thought about this as I was considered part of this westernized family idea. It wasn't until taking all of my education classes did I realize the lack of anti-bias books that were in our school system. Since being in the education program I have been able to learn and explore all different kinds of anti-bias books which I will use in my classroom. It was not until I found myself in the older grades of elementary were we actually learning about other things and exploring Canada’s diversity. What I lacked in elementary school I definitely learned and explored in high school. Throughout my K-12 schooling experience, I never recognized education as citizenship education. I went to both elementary and high school here in Regina and each school worked very hard on being an inclusive, caring school. The most I remember from my elementary schooling was recycling and volunteering our time a couple of times a year to spend at the folks home across the street from our elementary school. We would play games, chat and dance with them and would visit them on holidays when their families weren't able to. We were taught that as a younger generation it was important and that it would make them feel happy and uplifting. Our school also did canned food drives and clothing drives once a year. One other thing I do remember was that in elementary school every year we would always have fundraisers to help raise money to build schools in other places of the world or to make school supplies packages to send to kids who could not afford the tools needed for school.
After reading this article there are three types of citizenship, theses being personally responsible, participatory, and justice oriented citizen. I believe all of these play a major role in the development of a child (in some way) within the schooling system. It is one of the ways education tries to shape students into a specific model which will benefit and fit into society and societies needs. Throughout my schooling I definitely had more of a personally responsible citizen take away from the education I received than the other two areas. Especially throughout my elementary years we were always told that being an active part of society and volunteering or donating to other less fortunate was something you should do. That it was important to extend an open arm, learn from the experience and that those things would greatly help shape who we would become. Being that personally responsible citizen who was honest, kind and humble was something to strive for. To follow all the laws, staying out of debit and not to litter are all things that are taught as common sense. Being a personally responsible citizen is taught not so much as you are giving back and being apart of the community (while they play a major role) but as something that is a part of societies common sense and that everyone should do and know, which is not always being idealistic. Schools want the students to be very inclusive and to have participatory, and or justice oriented citizens as they take the most action and really impact what they are doing. A lot of schools produce many personally responsible citizens just because they never had the chance to participate in other ways like other students did or they just don't wish too. Either way becoming one of these 3 types of citizens depends on the type of schooling and the type of person the student is and what they take away from their experiences. |
Whats on this page?Here I will write my responses and thoughts to readings, texts, articles, conversations and more throughout my time in ECS 210. Archives
March 2020
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