In the beginning of Freshman year, we were introduced to the concept, "growth mindset". It essentially means knowing that you can learn and improve at anything as long as you put in effort. Every year in math, we would be reintroduced to growth mindset in order to make sure that we were building off of a good foundation as we started to dive into subjects that may seem difficult. This year, our first math project was to pick any skill you wanted to improve on in life, math, or whatever you choose, and to document your two weeks of practice.
My skill of choice was surfing! I chose this because, as a person who often gets stuck in their head, I thought it would be refreshing to try something physical. I knew that I had always enjoyed spending time in the ocean and boogie boarding as a kid, so I figured I'd have a lot of fun trying the real thing. Honestly, I only got up onto my feet a few times. The point, however, was clear to me. It wasn't about making fast progress, it was about making progress. It was about challenging yourself to try something out of your comfort zone because you knew that trying your best would only help you to improve. This always is a great thing to remember during math class because sometimes you will get a problem that you think you're not smart enough for, as I thought for a long time that I was not athletic enough for surfing, but this shouldn't hold you back. If you never try, you have no chance of improving.
By practicing growth mindset, I also began to enjoy problems that were less straightforward and allowed me to be creative. It used to scare me when looking at a problem like the King Arthur problem. In this problem, "King Arthur has a large amount of knights, each night a different number. He had a game he would like to play with them to figure out which knight would have to chase the next dragon, etc. The game would start at chair one. The king would tell person one that they were "in" and the next that they were out. He would continue this pattern around and around the table until there was only one knight left, the winner. Our task was to find out a way to determine who would win just by knowing how many knights there were to start with." I loved this problem because it allowed me to explore the interactions between the size of the group and who the winner was. In the end, my answer was 2(x-2^[[log2X]])+1. Using my base math skills, I was able to figure out a complex function without having even been introduced to these concepts beforehand.
I struggled a lot with logarithms this year. It was very difficult for me to come up with visual representations to understand what I was looking at. Why was it that when we divided logarithms, we did subtraction? Why was it that when we had exponents, we multiplied? I especially struggled because when the problems started getting more difficult, I didn't feel like I had a solid grasp on the base concepts to even begin to tackle things like compound interest. I implemented growth mindset by going to after school tutoring. Even though I was struggling, I knew that if I had someone sit down with me one on one and explain why some of these log rules worked, I would be able to make progress. By the end of the year, I got through logarithm practice problems with ease and saw the results on my final.
I would say that this love for math is a direct result of how I have been trained to value growth mindset throughout my career as a high tech student, but this year, we started shifting a bit away from problems like the King Arthur problem and more toward units like logarithms. I struggled with this at first and definitely came into the year with poor studying skills. I wasn't used to this new form of teaching where we would get lectures and lots of packets with practice problems. However, like I mentioned before, I adapted by continuing to push my belief that I can learn how to thrive under these new classroom conditions by going to tutoring and training myself to use my time during class to concentrate on what I was struggling with. The last part came later. I definitely spent a lot of free work time doing little work the first semester, but when the work got more challenging, I knew I needed to change my habits.
Next year, I will be taking calculus. I'm really excited for this because I found that when I overcame challenges in math class this year, I felt a hundred times more proud of myself and prepared for college than in the past. I'm excited to be in a class where I am with students who are similarly motivated in the subject. It's not that I don't love being with a mixed class, it definitely has its benefits when it comes to team work, deepening your understanding, etc. but I know that calculus will push me to think and work harder than my math classes in the past. Next year, I will be starting a study group with friends where we will meet weekly to practice what we learned in class and discuss anything we are having challenges with. I will also make sure to utilize youtube videos, khan academy, and the textbook we will be using in order to make sure I have a solid understanding of everything we learn.
Honors
Honors this year was cool! I enjoyed the extra challenge, but I wish that there had been more of it. All of the times that we got extra problems really pushed me to think and I liked working on them with my friends. Sadly, this didn't happen very often and for the most part the class felt like normal math. The honors project was fun, but it was hard for me to find a project that I felt made me utilize my skills. On my honors project, I embroidered functions and explained them. I spent hours on the embroidering because I messed up a lot and was not used to sewing through such thick material. I learned that I am a person who needs more time and revision when it comes to art based products. I think it turned out pretty, I just wish I would have realized before hand that this was a project that would use my artistic abilities and not my math abilities. Next year, I would improve honors by having more challenging material for students. I especially would say not just to add work on top of normal class work, but to have it in replacement of the other work. I spent a lot of time this year going through the motions of solving problems that were really easy just so that I could get to the honors work when I much rather would have devoted all of my time to learning the new material. Also, and it was on me partially, but the honors project felt like it was much more about decorating the halls than actually furthering our knowledge of math. Overall I think it was a good year for my study habits and I did learn a lot in certain units, but I am definitely excited to take calculus next year.