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My memory of math starts with counting. I have forgotten how I got to know the concept of numbers, but I still remember how I practiced counting by 1s chorally with my dad on different scenes, such as counting the stairs from the 1st floor to our apartment floor, counting the number of yellow flowers along the hiking trail, or count out 100 beans for mom to make soup. Counting was a fun game for me at that time.  With a lot of practice, I became more fluent and need fewer prompts.

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Preschooler-addition and subtraction cookies 

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Preschooler-addition and subtraction cookies 

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Before I went to kindergarten, my grandparents, who were teachers, took care of me in the daytime. They decided to teach me some math to get me prepared for school, as they believed early bird gets the worm. To get my attention and interest, my grandma showed me cookies to demonstrate addition. She also made a bunch of flashcards for me to practice the basic facts. The cookies were the best manipulatives and incentives for me. Once I got all right I could eat the cookies. According to my grandma, I was not a quick learner because I did not memorize the math facts fast, and I always forgot some learned facts the next day.

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Thanks to my grandparents, I had a great time in math class from K-3, since I was familiar with the concepts. However, the teacher mentioned to my parents that my accuracy and fluency were not at the top level of the class.  Therefore, I got extra homework from my parents. Every night I was asked to write an A3-sized worksheet with many columns of math problems, and it was timed. My parents checked each one and monitored my time and accuracy. I could not get rid of this boring drill until I can complete the whole worksheet with at least 90% accuracy and within 8 minutes. It was a really bitter memory.

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It was very popular in China that parents sent kids to after-school classes or weekend classes for extracurricular math learning.  It is called Math Olympiad, and there are several math competitions every year. I attended one of those math classes every weekend and also during summer breaks. The teacher there taught really difficult and abstract math problems to prepare students for the math competitions, which are similar to AMC. I did not feel math was hard at school, but I gradually became struggled with math olympiad learning. I have not won any prize in those math competitions,  although I spent a lot of time practicing the questions. I started to lose confidence in math and my family and I believed that  I was not smart enough for math.

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I gave up Math Olympiad when I went to middle school. At middle school, I had a homeroom teacher who was also our math teacher for 3 years. I did not like him because he was too strict and taught math in a boring way. He always started the math class with a concept introduction; then he showed some problems and led the whole group to solve them step by step; later he showed more questions for individual work and called several students to the front to work on the whiteboard; finally, he analyzed the questions and gave the homework. What's more, there are too many formulas to memorize, because there are not any formulas provided in the test in China. I was on average in math but it is a non-preferred subject.

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I had a really nice math teacher in high school, who made me feel better about math. However, the content became really challenging for me. I barely survived algebra problems but was totally lost in solid geometry. No matter how hard I tried, I could not construct the spacial image in my mind as others did, not mention to determine angles or prove. It was a nightmare in math tests.

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In college, I did not have any math courses. After graduation, I became an ESL teacher in China. I did not learn or practice math at all for the 9 years.

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Chinese Immersion teacher- 2nd grade math

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Chinese Immersion teacher- 2nd grade math

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In 2019, I went to Salt Lake City and became a Chinese teacher in a dual language immersion elementary school. I was assigned to teach second grade. I need to teach common core math in Chinese. As a new teacher, without any math teaching training before, I did not teach well. My students were very confused in math class and the test reports showed that too. To make a change, I attended some training and observed other teachers. It was my first time knowing how to use a number line, a hundred chart,  and bar models.  There are a lot of differences between my math learning experience and my students' learning needs.

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I am very excited to learn about math teaching here. I am looking forward to learning new pedagogy, new strategies, and skills. I want my students to enjoy math more than I did.