In my Junior year, I took a History of Math class. With an enthusiastic teacher, I learned about mathematicians who developed original mathematical ideas and their difficulties. Believe it or not, at times, mathematicians were banished from areas due to their mathematical beliefs. The intensity that was involved in the beginnings of mathematics forced me to appreciate math in a brand new light. Due to this class, I began to see math as more than words and symbols on paper. Quite literally, it showed the blood, sweat, and tears that were involved with the basic concepts that I and others take for granted today.

I am interested in bringing this type historical value into my mathematics classroom. I feel that the students will benefit from seeing evidence of the struggles that went into the algorithms in their textbooks. Hopefully they will discover a new interest in mathematics after being able to appreciate its origins. Not every story is an epic one, yet they all involve interesting twists and turns. I think that middle school is an appropriate time for us to bring these situations to light, yet I am willing to conduct my research in high school.

Unfortunately, this topic might not have struck the interest of others. Therefore, I am worried about being able to find enough articles or other forms of literature in order to complete my research. Thus, I am open to other research topics but if possible I would like to work in this area. Help is desired where available.

My perceptions of content literacy and the adolescent reader are as follows: I believe that educators are not granting the proper "tools" to their students. The tools they have granted them are very cut and dry and do not spur new interest into content topics. Thus, students remain disengaged and will not attempt literacy trials on their own. Students will continue to pursue a strict bare minimum as long as the tools afforded to them inspire them to do so. I believe as teachers, we should inact a new beahvior towards content literacy and grant our students the proper tools to support their own original discoveries. This can include using technology, finding different texts (other than the norm), or allowing for debate over a specific topic. Each of these efforts will allow for students to spur new interest and contribute at higher levels involving content literacy.

My content is mathematics, thus my experiences involving content literacy are lacking in originality. In the normal mathematics classroom, a teacher would give me a textbook and would assign readings in order to properly understand the vocabulary. That was the main goal of the literacy in a mathematics classroom. As long as the student could memorize the vocabulary to ace the quiz, he was deemed as exceptional.

My initial observations of effective reading in mathematics are discouraging yet fill with hope all the same. I intend to employ the methods I will learn in my Masters program in order to develop a method of effective reading in my classroom. I understand now that the memorization of mathematical vocabulary will not inspire upcoming mathematicians. Thus, I believe it will be my job to find effective literacy techniques to inspire not only the mathematical minds in my classroom, but everyone else as well. I will become inspired to do so by the discouragement I have felt through my previous math classes and the hope I have for my future math classes.

This is my first post...facebook first and now a blog what is the world coming to??