General Overview

I think the biggest thing I learned over the course of the class is how important texts are in the classroom.  I have always love math and thought it was interesting so I didn't need more texts to interest me or help me understand.  However, I see the need for them because the majority of students do not feel the same way as I do.  All of the other classes I had to take were pretty boring to me, but they probably wouldn't have been if I had texts that were high interest to really grasp my attention.  I plan to use every object from my text set to help students and I'm excited to look at the other text sets from my classmates and see what treasures they found.  I like the idea of using those math raps to help students understand because it puts math jargon into their own lingo.  I also like the idea of having them create a video themselves and turn these videos into a digital literacy assignment where they have to format it correctly and run it through a movie maker and finally post it on youtube.  I think students will really connect and like this assignment.  I really enjoyed this class and had fun coming up with lesson plans that I would actually use.  Most of the other education classes hasn't showed truly showed me how to create a lesson plan that applies to both math and the concept we are learning in that class, but this class did.  Thanks for a great semester!

Choice

Reading has always been difficult for me in a school setting.  It doesn't mean that I can't read well or that I don't understand what is being said.  It has more to do with the fact that most every time I have had to read something in school, I didn't enjoy it.  Being forced to read something is not my cup of tea.  I'd read however much my teacher wanted me to read as long as I got to choose the book.  I don't like that most teachers tell you that you have to read this certain book and usually we have to write up a reflection at the end stating what we liked about the book.  My response frequently consisted of not liking the book at all.  I would have had better experiences with reading in school if I was given the choice of what to read.  I like to read, but on my time and my genre.  I hope to give my future students the choice to read whatever they would like from my discipline.  It could be hard to make the students interested enough to want to read a book about math, but then again, if the student is choosing the book to read, it could change the students perception of both reading and math in general.

Typical Texts

The typical texts in math are really only textbooks, especially when it comes to high school. I don't remember using anything other than a textbook for math until I got to college and took some classes up here. The only thing that one of my teachers did that was remotely close to using another text was a song she taught us to remember the equation on how to find x's roots in a quadratic equation. To this day, I still remember that time in class and have never forgotten the song. I plan to use the song to teach my future students. I really liked that experience because it was fun and it put some variety in the day compared to every other day where we would come in, sit down, take notes, and work on homework with the remaining class time. It was a day where everyone was smiling and having fun which isn't a common occurance in math classes! I would say that once I got to Calculus 2 here at the university is when I wasn't able to really understand the text. Math is hard enough to learn from a text, but even harder when your teacher doesn't explain things well. As a teacher, I hope to make every day enjoyable, make the students smile or laugh. If not from the subject matter, then at least from my personality. I hope to show the students that you don't have to be boring to like math! Ordinary, spunky, fun people can enjoy math. I would like to be able to find many texts that would help them in their learning experience to help clear concepts up. Maybe with these other texts, they may think math is more enjoyable and not the worst thing in their lives!

The Power of Art

I wouldn't consider myself a writer in any way. Words don't come to me. Instead I paint my thoughts, words, actions, and emotions. I can express myself more clearly through a painting than words would ever describe. Color is a big part of my life. It's in the clothes I wear, used to be in my make-up, it's in my hair, my personality, my room, and my family. So it probably isn't surprising that I use a lot of bright colors in my paintings. I have one of a sunset, a teary eye, candles fading into the darkness/distance, two pointillism paintings, and several of flowers. My style of painting isn't necessarily sophisticated. They definitely show immaturity in the style of painting, but each gets the point across, at least I feel they do! I have taken a few art classes but none of them really hit the spot for me. I need freedom to paint. Even when the teacher assigns a project that is up to us, it is hard to come up with an idea that the teacher would like. In other words I end up painting to the teachers style and not my own. Another hard thing about art classes is that sometimes I will go a couple months without a good enough idea to paint. These classes end up rushing my thoughts and I feel like the painting isn't any good to show people yet. I find it a lot easier to paint on my terms when my thoughts come on their own. The creativity is definitely more prominent in my paintings when there is freedom.

Introduction

My name is Tyrani Bevell, although I spell my name as Tyrnee as to make the pronunciaton easier for others.  I love to play basketball, paint, sing, color my hair crazy colors, and hang out with my family.  An interesting fact about myself is that my left eye is two colors; the top half is brown and the bottom half is green.  I love math and find it something that is solid.  Math is math and always will be.  I have always been good at it and understand it well.  I believe literacy is understanding on any level.  You don't have to understand 100% of the topic to understand it enough.  Literacy definitely relates to math when it comes to graphs, equations, and understanding why we are doing the process we are doing and what we are trying to find by doing that process.