Letters from former students

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From an admirer

Dear Mrs. Chow,

I'm writing to let you know that I thought of you the other day when I was in the art gallery.  I saw a painting that contained  Fibonacci's spiral and I thought of your math class when we studied the spiral and the application of mathematics across many disciplines (art, music, nature, etc).  You were able to  take a topic that could be potentially confusing and irrelevant and make it tangible and relevant to me today.  I appreciate the energy you spent to make sure that we understood the relevance of each topic.

Thanks for all of your thoughtful lessons and teaching us the relevance of mathematics.

Sincerely,

John A. Appreciative
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From a detractor

Dear Mrs. Chow,

Do you remember me?  10 years ago, you were my math teacher for grade 10 math.  I was thinking of you as I was in the grocery store checkout and was remembering your discussion of geometry.  I was so frustrated in your class - I had so many ideas about math and so many questions and yet you were unable to answer my questions and find more advanced work for me.  I was bored and unsatisfied in the class and I wish I had been able to get more out of the class.  For the sake of your students, I hope your math skills have developed over the past 10 years.

Sincerely,

John D. Disgruntled


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What I hope for/worry about as I embark on my teaching career

In writing this, I realize that what I hope for is that students will see the underlying relevance of math across the many subjects and be able to use math without feeling inhibited or self conscious.   What I worry about is not having enough knowledge to robustly present the material and applications and to serve the needs of the students.

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