Summary and Synthesize

Over the past month, I have really come to understand what I need to do in order to teach math effectively. First of all, it can be said the the majority of us in this class (not all, but a lot) came into this class with strong dislike of math. I myself have always disliked math and struggled with many concepts. What this class has taught me thus far is that students can NOT continue to come out of math instruction feeling this way. We as educators need to adapt to the new methods of math instruction that we are being taught and implement them into our classrooms even if we are planning on teaching lower grades. The traditional mathmatics approaches that we have been taught are not effective and we (myself included) are all the perfect example of this. I now understand why I struggle with some math concepts, because I was just given a concept and I memorized how to do it (or at least that's what I want to think). I enjoy learning new ways to teach different concepts, and have taught myself to keep an open mind with learning new techniques. I have finally come to terms with the idea that teaching math traditionally is not going to work. I will be cheating my students. The things we have learned about fractions has really helped me with the idea of not teaching traditionally. I honestly can say that I have never thought about fractions this way, and I hope that I will continue to see ways to teach students the right way.