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[edit] Personal Statement

Describe briefly your reasons for wanting to teach giving the relevance of your previous education and experience, including teaching, visits to schools and other work with young people.

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[edit] Statement

During my time here in Bath I have been able to see the subject from different perspectives. The first side is how maths can be applied to real problems in many different ways and from this I have understood the importance of learning maths which I did not understand while I was at school. Secondly, from looking at maths from a purely theoretical and logical viewpoint. This second viewpoint has been of much more interest to me and inspired me to read into metaphysics and philosophy. When I am a teacher, this would be an interest that I would like to share in extracurricular time. Although maths is generally considered a boring subject by most pupils, there are teachers in existence who can highly captivate even the most bored students, no matter the ability or age. So this gives hope to any new maths teacher that it is possible, if enough thought, effort and dedication goes into it.

My first attempt at private tutoring was with a very low ability year 9 student. The first session was hard for both of us, but after I taught her methods for multiplication and division, she practiced these and became much more confident. At the end of my time with her she said things like “division isn’t really that hard”, which really made me smile. Also my younger brother and I have lots of little maths sessions that make him feel good when he answers quicker than most of his peers.

At the moment I am completing an optional module called communicating maths. Part of this involved running a master class for year 8 students. I was pleasantly surprised at the very engaged and active response of the students and also an observing teacher complimented me saying that I should seriously consider teaching, to which I replied, “I already am”.

Last year I completed the Student Associates Scheme at the Grange School in Bristol. This was an eye opener to what being a maths teacher is actually like. I was able to ask teachers many questions and this reinforced my desire to teach. I found a recurring problem with pupil's understanding of fractions and their manipulation, throughout the age and ability groups. I realised that the teaching method used was dependent on pupil's memory rather than their understanding, therefore, the method failed for harder problems as the pupils did not understand how the method works. I raised this at a departmental meeting and it was well received even though it was only backed up with a few observation lessons. This did show to me the power of lesson observation. From this short placement, I had an excellent report from the head of maths and also they wished for me to return when undertaking my PGCE.

I am also very interested in non-teaching parts of working as a teacher, for instance outdoor extracurricular activities are something that I would love to run or take part in. Recently I have been helping out my previous teacher who runs the Ten Tors Challenge with my previous secondary school.

School is almost like a second home, sometimes the first or only home for children as they spend many hours there out of the week. It helps form the basis of outcomes of a generation, which is arguably the largest effect to human society across the globe. Therefore to be given the chance to have an input on this effect entails a large responsibility. On the whole, I would say that I am very enthusiastic and positive about mathematics and I would love to share some of my knowledge that I was taught at secondary school and beyond.

[edit] Work Experience

Give details of relevant work experience with dates, including any periods spent abroad and present occupation, if any.

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Things to include:

1. SAS
   1. Identification of possible teaching flaw
   2. Report on me, invited back for PGCE if I wanted
2. Tutoring
3. Ten Tors helper
4. Uni/School Presentation
   1. Diana Inspirational Award
5. Presentations at uni
6. Communicating Maths module
7. Tutoring in summer
8. Maths Perspectives
   1. Logical Principles + examples
   2. Direct applications + examples

1. Teaching persepctives
2. During SAS, saw many different maths teaching styles
   1. power of observation
   2. [read logs]
   3. [compare bad/good]
   4. would be looking to teach in [bad] school

Obviously there still is a lot to learn that mainly comes through experience

Have heard good and bad perspectives from teachers however I feel that although the challenges are high, this fact would make the positive times much more worthwhile

Although many teachers [claim to be under stress], this would possibly reinforce their learning about themselves and children and hence improve their ability to be an inspirational teacher in the long run

When you are within an experience, you can not begin to understand the effect that it has on you as a person

[look on net for other personal statements, look at previous teach first statement]

importance on not just teaching material, but also forming a bond with children, this can then build up respect, however you still need a balance between

1. "authoratative" so that hcildren don't take advantage but also
2. "rational" one to one communicative level

School is almost like a second home, sometimes the first or only home, as pupils spend many hours there, it forms the basis of the outcomes of a generation, which is arguably the largest effect to human society across the globe

Often find my mind drift off into thinking about lessons and responding to certain situations to increase [my chances] at becoming a good teacher

I feel as I can relate to children very well, when my parents friends come with their children, I often find my self separated from the adults, playing with the children

I have ideas on how to reinforce and tweak current teaching methods in a way that would captivate children into maths more than the currently low national level

Although maths is generally considered a boring subject, there are teachers who can [captivate/inspire] even the most bored students, no matter the ability or age. So this gives hope to any new maths teacher that it is possible, if enough thought, effort and dedication goes into it

I was pleasantly surprised after completing a masterclass with a group of year 8's in swindon at the very engaged and active response of the students. Also an observing teacher complimented me saying that I should seriously consider teaching, to which I replied, I already am

During my SAS placement, I found a recurring problem with pupil/'s understanding of fractions and their manipulation, right across the age groups also. I then identified a possible reason for it during a year 7 lesson on the introduction to fraction manipulation. The method used (which I also found other teachers using) was dependent on pupil's memory rather than their understanding, therefore, the method failed for harder problems. This may have been a contributing factor to their excellent SATS results. I raised this at a departmental meeting and it was well received, however obviously it was only backed up with a few of my observation lessons rather than their years of experience, therefore I don't feel it would have had a huge effect.

I have heard from PGCE students that the course is very hard and time consuming to which I normally respond with good. If it is hard, then it shows that more is being learnt than if it was easy