As teachers of mathematics, we have more responsibilities than just teaching mathematical content. Teaching mathematics involves teaching skills, abstract thinking, and determination, among many other things. Despite the recent emphasis on standardized testing, we are not teaching the mathematical content simply for assessments. Through learning mathematical content, students learn valuable skills that they can apply to their lives forever, no matter the path they choose.
Every student is unique. It is critical to know each student’s individual strengths, weaknesses, interests, and dislikes. This allows us to plan accordingly and adapt our lessons to fit the needs of our students through the use of differentiated instruction. By recognizing our students’ interests, they are more likely to be motivated.
Motivating students is not always an easy task, especially in mathematics. One way to motivate students is to give them problems they may experience in their own lives. Another way to motivate our students is to compare mathematics to various other academic disciplines that may interest students more. In mathematics class, we explain and reason like in English class, we interpret and analyze graphs and data like historians, we form hypothesis like scientists, and we have our own language like any foreign language class. If students can make connections between the mathematical content to their interests and other subjects that may interest them more, they will be even more motivated to learn mathematics.
Either collaboratively or individually, students can solve even the most challenging problem. Collaboration is very important regarding learning mathematics. By working collaboratively students will keep each other motivated, determined, and thinking. In mathematics, there are many ways to solve a single problem. Through collaboration, students share their many different thoughts and ideas on how to approach and solve a problem. This is something that students will do in their everyday lives in the real world. When solving mathematical problems, students must think critically, abstractly, and/or analytically, have patience and perseverance, be organized, and apply problem solving skills. We must model these things to our students. The use of modeling allows students to see the teacher think critically, abstractly, and/or analytically to solve problems. We may make mistakes during our lessons. When this happens, students can see that we are all not perfect, make mistakes, and must work vigilantly to correct and learn from our mistakes. If students are willing to take risks and make mistakes, they will be successful.