Henry DeJong Human Calculator Before any schooling I had an interest in math.

As a child I would add up the prices of gasoline from the backseat of my parents car, when we stopped at gas stations. I asked my parents for help. My dad taught me step by step on paper how to square numbers. With their help I learned how to square different numbers. I didnt have the desire to be smart; math was it something I was interested in. I believe since at that age I was better at math than expected, it was exciting for me to have a skill and talent. In first grade, I experienced being taught math for the first time. I did well for my age, and the teaching assistant noticed. She had me multiple single digit numbers together and then double digit. She was impressed by how well I did. But, when it came to multiplying the triple digit numbers, I tried and I tried but I couldnt do it. I was ashamed and felt terrible that I couldnt multiply the numbers. I knew before I couldnt multiple triple digit numbers, and I still cant well. However, I was hoping that the answer would somehow come to me. From this experience I learned literacy wasnt something you could conjure up on your own. Literacy takes time, practice, and patience to acquire. Later in elementary school we would be given word problems for learning math. All students were required to write out in detail how they got their result. I would always do it in my head, maybe out of stubbornness, and then later write the steps on paper. I wanted to prove to myself I could do it in my head and not have to write out the problems step by step.

Math became a point of pride for me when I was in school. After recess students would have to line up by class to get back in class. We would have to wait a while. Students organized and dismissed class, and often they would be dismissed by whichever class had a student that could answer a mental math problem fastest. I would answer them fastest often, and when it was cold people would cheer because I got it right and they could go back inside. Other kids called me the human calculator after doing the math, which was both embarrassing for me, and a point of pride. In middle school I had a much different experience with math. My school separated the math classes into three sections. I was put in the accelerated section. The math being taught was basic algebra. There were kids in the class and in the school from two other elementary schools. I remember I felt unprepared for the class; many of the kids seemed to know the math off hand, where I had never been taught it. I felt disadvantaged. Many students knew the skills we were learning before they were taught. While in my experience in elementary school it was a levelplaying feel, this felt the opposite. The math for once didnt seem to rely on common sense, or thinking, but rather memorizing formulas. I didnt enjoy math as much, because it just felt like I was memorizing rather than working my head. For the first time I had to stay after class for extra help. Even though it was me and a few other people out of the class of 20, I still felt embarrassed to be there. The teacher would keep going over formulas or problems. The teacher was not as deliberate as most were in my prior experience, and therefore skipped many steps and left me

confused. I would often continue to not understand and would not perform so well on tests. Throughout middle school I stayed in the upper class. However, by the last year I had become one of the worse students in the class. I would often mess up equations, or completely miss points. I did not enjoy the math classes anymore at all. I was afraid to make mistakes in the class, and I felt like I was just attempting to jam information in my head, I didnt feel like I was improving my math literacy. My view of the literacy changed, as it became a challenge and a source of frustration in my life, rather than something I benefited from. In high school I was recommend for and placed into the normal math class. The class was easy for me. Much of the stuff I had learned, and the environment seemed relaxed, rather than fast paced. I didnt feel challenged, but I enjoyed the class, and actually felt I learned more. I enjoyed the more laid back atmosphere, and not having to stress about the tests. Without constant stress and the slow class pace each bit of the material was covered well and I feel that allowed to me to know the material better. I learned that pacing myself and taking my time was very important to my learning. It was discouraging for me however, and left me bitter; that what once had felt like a strength for me had become something that I was considered average at. The following year I was not in a math class. I took a break from learning math in and outside the classroom. With the break I associated math less with stress and work, and the break reignited my interest in math. I purchased a book named Secrets of Mental Math. I quickly read the book and practiced all tricks and

methods. I would sometimes practice for hours each day, trying to practice the new shortcut for mental math. The mental math book was about one hundred pages but contained many different skills and tricks. Through eight odd and seemingly irrelevant steps of multiplication, division, and so forth I could tell someone which day of the week they were born if they told me their birth date. Learning the mental math wasnt something wasnt frustrating to me as studying was, it was a relaxing experience. This shift in my literacy changed what I thought math was, and what it could do for me. Practicing mental math gave me familiar feelings, the same feelings I had prior to middle school. Without taking any math classes I was once again interested in math. I learned how to tell someone which day of the week they were born on when they told me their birth date. I enjoyed math again and it was something I was proud of. The next year and the following year I was back in math courses. The classes I took were not particularly challenging. I mostly found them boring and it once again killed my interest in learning math on my own. The larger my interest in math, the more I wanted to know and improve on the literacy. OO While I was getting better at math, I did not realize it, I just felt I was getting more problems out of the way as I learned the math. I cared more about the grades than learning. I believe positive grades reinforced my desire to learn more. Negatives grades would have me discouraged and want to learn less. When receiving negative grades the grades told me that I wasnt skilled at math, and made me not want to bother to learn it. Currently I am taking a precalculus class in college. I took precalcalus and some of calculus in high school. I could have taking any class according to the placement

exam, but I didnt want to push myself, and I feared I didnt learn precalculus well enough from high school. I am still concerned with the grades, as my overall GPA is important for getting a job outs of college. On top of this, understanding the math is important to me and confusion from math is rather frustrating. I hope that my interest in math will pick up following my education, and I will once again begin to try to learn and teach myself new math skills. My major is computer science, I hope that learning programming and different programming languages will bring excitement to me learning math tricks did to myself before. I would like to better my math skills in the future, but mostly I want to enjoy learning it again. ` I consider myself literate in math for a few reasons. For one, I have the ability to add, multiply, subtract, and divide with ease. These skills are the basics for being literate in math. On top of this, I have additional math skills acquired from math classes from algebra through calculus. However, I would consider someone who has the basic skills in math to be considered literate. One does not need to know variables and powers in my opinion to be literate, I think only the essentials are necessary to meet the requirements for the term, literate. I plan on improving my literacy by furthering my education of math through college. To obtain the Bachelor of Science degree in computer science I must go about to Calculus II in math. On top of this I plan on practicing basic math skills in my free time to improve my literacy.

Math literacy is important to me as a person. Math is a skill I grew up with from an early age, and even enjoyed. I think the major two academic literacies that people develop are math literacy and an English literacy. Most people spend the vast majority of their time developing an English literacy, while I think the math literacy is equally important. English may help you express your ideas and thoughts, while a math literacy will help you plan and build. I think in recent years I have ignored my math literacy and I would not feel that my education was whole if I did not pursue further improving my math literacy.