Autobiography Essay

Brief Autobiography In the summer of 1998 my family fled the newly created independent country of Croatia (Former-Yugoslavia) to the United States. My parents came here in hopes of finding a better life as the economy was still recovering from Croatia’s war of independence. We first settled in Amarillo, Texas for a few months. We traveled around the states for a year or so looking for other refugees. After some searching my parents decided to move to Connecticut as it offered the best incentives for refugees. Listening to stories about this time of my life has given me a chance to appreciate the help we received from various government programs that settled us, clothed us, fed us, and helped us become independent American citizens. Now I want to give back and the best way I know to do this is by teaching the future generations of Americans.

I remember how mathematics was incredibly difficult for me and because of this I can relate to the struggles students have with math. For a teacher to be successful they need to create relevance for the students. I understand how to relate the various topics of mathematics to topics of the world, which for most students is difficult to do, For example, I remember at the CREC School I was observing at, there was a student of Bosnian decent who was having trouble understanding how to read a map of the United States. So I showed her a map of Bosnia with the same map key, and we discerned what everything meant (where the capital was, where the ocean was, major port cities were, etc…). She caught on quickly as she already had an understanding of Bosnia and it quickly transferred over to the map of the thirteen colonies. This skill is easily transferrable to mathematics by using relevant, real-world examples of concepts learned by