Summary and Synthesis

First, I have very poor feelings towards math in general. To only further my negativity, I felt unprepared as a future educator upon completion of Math Concepts I and II (my overall understanding and knowledge gained from those classes would probably be expressed in negative numbers so to speak). So, coming into this class, I expected a wrap-up/review of Math Concepts I and II. Although, that wrap-up is NOT what I have found. I have found that as future math educators, we are learning ways to teach math in which we, ourselves, have never been taught. The term "rote" has come up in many class discussions. I believe that for the majority of us, this has been the way we were taught. We were to memorize information and then, we would later forget it. This does not go to say that all of us were taught this way, but I do feel that a large amount of us feel this way. Upon stating this, I do recognize that it is our job as future educators to teach our students math in new and exciting ways. My only question--this corresponds to a blog written by Lauren (Questions and Answers) in which she wondered about the ability to "bust out of the traditional way of learning"--is how do we actually do it? Lauren said what is on my mind too...This is truly something that I am struggling with. I know we need to be better teachers not only for ourselves, but for our students.
I do believe that improvement does begin with classes like this where we begin by breaking down standards and understanding each part. From here we can begin to understand what we need to teach. Next, the activities that we have participated in and out of class has challenged us to think in different ways and to improve upon our own knowledge of various concepts.
Overall, I find this course and the material challenging. I look forward to the continual discovery of the various ways to teach mathematics.