#maths teacher

It seems to be an interesting subject but I had teachers that were so bad at teaching and so good at shaming and traumatizing that it blocked me and made me avoid maths like the plague, I do want to start over with maths and try again while making it a good experience this time, I need advice. Pls help. (anonymous cause embarrassed to admit I can barely get around with the basic 4 operations and begin getting lost when it goes into fractions, decimals, porcentages etc, and as a college student I should know advanced stuff like factoration and complex expressions by now)

I am incredibly blessed with the fact that I love maths, and had great teachers. I don’t really know how to get good at maths because by the time I was actually conscious about liking maths, I was already pretty good at it. I never had that thing of having to be better, because I’ve always just been good at it, and the things that I didn’t know I enjoyed learning so I just learnt them.

The problem with having to relearn something is that you FEEL like you’re better than you are. I stopped learning Japanese for a few months, and when I come back to it, I’ll have to go over basic kanji again, my brain tells me that I know it, but I don’t. I need to go over the basics, but before I learnt the basics with the spark of learning pushing me through. Now I’ve got to essentially revise something I forgot. It sucks.

What I’d recommend, is by jumping into the deep end. There are lots of maths videos on YouTube, and they’re really interesting, but you won’t understand anything. But that’s fine, because the things you don’t understand, you can watch videos about those. And the parts of those you don’t understand you can research into that. It may not be the most efficient way to learn, but eventually you will. Trial by fire and all that, and it might be more fun because you’re looking at stuff that interests you! You’ll find that the simple stuff actually has rather complex and interesting explanations, which I find really cool.

If you want to relearn quickly, then you just have to study. It sucks, but that’s just how it is. I don’t know what elementary school is, I assume it’s 11-14, and high school probably means gcse, which is 15-16.

Some basic tips:

Think of the operators as logically as possible. When you see 5x15, literally think of 15 added together 5 times. Think of 6/20 as 6 lots of 1/20 (which itself is 0.05. Maybe even think of it as 1/2 times 1/10.) basically just think of the operators as simply as possible until you’re able to think of them as their own thing. Then you can start introducing indices, square roots, etc.

Don’t be afraid of using a calculator (learning how to use a calculator effectively will massively boost your mathematical literacy).

write everything down (don’t rely on your mental maths. If you literally have to do every single equation on a piece of paper (assuming calculators aren’t allowed), do it. Never trust your mental maths until you’re certain that you’ve got good mental maths. Seriously, 90% of mistakes come from trying to make a shortcut in your head and messing up. Many people, my self included in the past, see writing down your working out as a sign of weakness, it isn’t.

Try to avoid the divisor symbol as much as possible, it isn’t actually an operator, it’s shorthand for fractions (the dots are placeholders for the things in front and behind). Honestly, you should prioritise getting comfortable with fractions. They’re really useful, especially in algebra.

If you get good at algebra, you’ll be good at almost everything maths can throw at you. Being able to rearrange equations is a skill that you will literally never not use. It also helps you with regular number equations because you can think of the numbers as variables. It sounds weird or as if you’re complicating it, but it can help.

(A/B)*C=(A*C)/B. It’s surprising how useful it is, and how often I’ll forget about it lmao

Look into geometry! Everything you do in maths can and has been described with shapes. And for some people that can help them visualise it! If shapes help you with maths, look into shapes! Geometry!

Factorisation is essentially just the reverse of multiplication. (2*5*7)=70, therefore the prime factors of 70 are 2,5, and 7. The same applies to algebra. Just think of what could be multiplied together to make x^2+3x+2. And hey, there’s a really handy formula for finding out the factors of quadratics that I highly recommend memorising if you think you’ll need it!