Hello, my name is Joanne and I have math amnesia. Severe math amnesia. My mother says I was always good in math when I was young. I assume I was average, never the top of the class or never struggled and for that reason it really doesn't stand out in my mind. The fact that it was 20-25 years ago really doesn't help either. When having a discussion in our class a few things people said did spark a memory for me here and there. I do now remember using the peg boards, and I remember playing with a lot of the manipulatives but mostly at recess time and not so many memories of actual math class. I remember tracing my numbers to learn to form them correctly and having number charts etc. around the classroom, but that is about as much as I can remember. Almost everything before junior high mathematics is a blur. From that point on my memories are very specific to really good or bed experiences in math and more specifically to certain math teachers. This was also the time in school when we began having different teachers for different subjects instead of just our classroom teacher who taught every subject, so that may also have played somewhat of a role in me being able to separate math class in my memories from other classes.
I began high school taking advanced mathematics, however by 11th grade I began struggling more and more in mathematics. I eventually switched to regular academic math. My success in a math course was greatly affected by the teacher. I had one math teacher who was amazing, very passionate about math and about teaching and he went out of his way to make sure he reached each and every one of us. I also had teachers who would stand at the blackboard and just teach a lesson and hand us a worksheet afterwards, their lack of enthusiasm and the fact they it appeared as though they didn't really care about our success, was greatly reflected in the class grades. Many of my classmates who in 11th grade had the teacher who was very passionate about learning did fairly well in math. By the end of 12th grade many of those people, now in the class with the teacher who did not seem to have the same passion, positive attitude or connection for teaching math, were failing. A large number of those students had to repeat grade 12 math.
In University I have taken math 1050 and 1051. I enjoyed 1051 very much but struggled a little with 1050. I failed 1050 once when I first came to university, another time I dropped it, until finally I found a professor that made it all make sense for me and I did very well in the course. I did not take any additional math courses or electives.
Other than keeping a budget for my household, and in my spare time doing logic and Sudoku puzzles, I don't feel that I engage in mathematics very much in my day to day life. I don't consider myself to be strong in mathematics at all, however I do feel that I know enough to be able to teach primary elementary aged students and hopefully instill in them a love and passion for mathematics that I had lost over the years.
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