Math And Religion

Introduction Multiple factors influence the individuals that we are today. Life choices do not happen from one day to another. It takes time and encouragement to decide the direction we want to lead our life too. The way we think and feel about anything in general always has a reason behind it. In this paper, I will be discussing what factors influenced my beliefs and attitude towards mathematics.

Implementation of Mathematics in Education Since math is one of the core subjects in school, we have been exposed to numbers since our first years in elementary. We began by identifying numbers, and as time went by we elaborated on prior knowledge. I recall that when I was in elementary, around second grade to be exact, I was great at doing mental

Unfortunately for me, that didn’t work, I liked to manipulate the numbers and finding multiple approaches to a single problem. To prevent further conflict my mother had to change me with another teacher. This was probably the best thing that could have ever happened because by the time second grade was over the new teacher had introduced concepts that the third graders were learning. Unfortunately, I moved to Houston and the language barrier made a great impact in my education. The cultural change discouraged me from doing what I loved the most. It was difficult to express my understandings and discover new things when I had never been exposed to the English language. The students would make fun of me because I did not even know how to count. I remember I worked twice as hard as every other student

A couple of these activities were involved in content areas such as science, history, English, or heath class. For instance, every year I joined the science fair for my science class or presentations that resulted from inquiries based on eating disorders for my health class. Although I did conduct some self-directed teaching I never fully experience project-based learning. Especially in my math courses, the implementation of activities or projects were minimum. A typical classroom usually involved the teacher speaking at the front of the class while the students were taking notes. We never had the choice to discover things that were of our interest. The teachers would constantly remind us that our goal was to obtain great test scores. Not even once did the teachers say that our class goal was to reach our maximal potential in geometry or algebra. Now I understand that it is not fully the teacher's fault that project-based learning is not implemented in the classrooms in the classrooms. Based on observations, I have noticed that some of the teachers are not well trained to conduct PBL lessons. This is as some teachers are from older generations and decided to maintain the same way of teaching over the years. Another thing that contributes to not having many PBL classrooms is the fact that sometimes the poor districts can’t afford it. The