Functions & Graphs • Leah Shilling • Fall 2017
The class of Functions and Graphs was challenging at times, but I often enjoyed working out the algorithms and formulas and translating them into various situations. While I enjoyed it, many of my peers struggled with the way our professor taught the course, so much time was spent outside of the classroom, in which I would often lead mini tutoring sessions. This was a way that allowed them to learn the information and allowed me to reinforce it by looking through different perspectives. Reflecting back on these study sessions, I can also see how I used my developing teaching skills to communicate this information, having to adapt the information I knew in order to meet the way others wanted to view the information. This was also done in class, as many exercises were encouraged to be done with the people sitting beside us. Dr. Shilling was a fan of group and partner work in order to foster learning, which seemed to benefit my peers and myself sometimes. We were assigned one official group project, in which we used exponential functions in relation to car prices. This required some relearning for my group, and provided a challenge of applying formulas into our own lives. While I do not necessarily forsee myself plugging the price of future cars into an exponential equation, I did enjoy the challenge.