Math we "Love it" or "Hate it"

     

          With the start of my new summer classes, all of my family and friends have been asking which classes am  I taking. I tell them the name of the three classes which I’m taking and as soon I say, “Math for Elementary Teachers” I would either get one of these responses “Oh, I hate math. Good luck.” or “If you need help with the math class let me know. I love math.”  Well, when it comes to math, I find that people either “love it” or “hate it”. Why do we never hear someone say, “Math it's okay”?

     The people who tend to say, “I love math” it seems to come easy and natural to them with little effort. People who say, “I hate math” it seems like math is a struggle and does not come naturally to them.  When I look at my own feelings about math, I find that I’m on the fence about “loving it” or “hating it”. I found that it all depends on what I’m learning which side of the fence I’m on. This week in class I found myself saying “I love math and I hate math”.

      As I worked on the problems for this week’s math assignments I found that I really had a good understanding of the basic set concepts. I believe that this has to do with a prior math class that I took. In that math class it was the first time that I can remember being introduced to the basic set concept. The teacher I had for this class would take his time teaching the concept, he had many visuals, and he made sure that everyone had a good understanding before moving on. Another thing that the teacher did was put the basic set concepts into real world experience for the class.  Real world experiences make understanding math a lot easier for me. When it comes to basic set concepts, “I loved math” because I had prior knowledge to understand the concept before doing the assignment and test.   

     Well, I might have been saying, “I loved math” that day but as I worked through the assignments later in the week I found myself say, “I hate math”.  I only hate it because I don’t understand it and have had no prior knowledge of the concept. The concept that I’m struggling with is expressing numerals with different bases. I have watched the video for the section that was posted, I used “help me solve” and “view an example” on Math Lab and still do not understand it. Hopefully someday I can find something that will help me understand expressing numerals with different bases.

    I see why people either “love it” or “hate it” and why no one says, “Math is okay” because it all depends on what we are learning at the time.