Goal 5 – Functions and Graphs [MATH 121]
Functions and Graphs was a class that helped me meet not only my General Education Goal 5 but also one of the course requirements for my Liberal Studies – Elementary Education major.
I did a great deal of reflecting on this course from the first day of the class all the way through until weeks after the class ended. I was frustrated with the course at first because I felt the material was far too easy for me. The first lesson we covered was something that I had mastered in eighth grade. I was bored and constantly struggled to hold my eyes open.
I knew I needed to adopt a different outlook on this course if I expected myself to make it through the semester without falling asleep during any classes. I decided to take a step back and analyze the class from an educator’s perspective rather than from a bored, unchallenged student’s perspective. Once I did, I gained a new appreciation for the class as well as the course material and it quickly became one of my favorite classes I have ever taken.
The best part about my Functions and Graphs class was that my professor, Dr. Tom Wears, often did his own research and pulled real world data to teach his lessons rather than making up data. One thing that has always frustrated me about math is that I can never do anything useful with the answers I get on homework, quizzes, and tests. I get the answer, the answer constitutes what grade I receive, and that’s about it. I don’t learn anything about the world or solve any problems with the answers I get. This was not the case in Dr. Wears’s class. Together we were able to uncover real-world information, such as how much money we could earn in interest if we invest a certain sum into an account with a predetermined interest rate, and what the value of beginning to invest early is.
One of my favorite parts of Dr. Wears’s teaching method is that he teaches math as if it were a story. He might start out a lesson with a story about how the mathematician came up with the formula we were going to be using that day, or he might decide to “prove” the formula we were going to be using. One of the examples I like best is when he visually represented what “completing the square” means by drawing a square and completing it, using the components of the equation one would use to do that type of problem.
I loved having the opportunity to learn how to think about math in a logical way rather than just memorizing the steps to do a certain problem. As you can see from my final paper below, my project partner and I learned so much that we were able to play around with different figures to see how beneficial investing money in accounts with high interest rates from an early age can be.
