Dayah's Mathematics Autobiography

Dayah’s Mathematics Autobiography

Written by

Nurul Hidayah (2010110015)

            Actually, I did not remember how I learned mathematics in elementary school. However, there was a moment that I can still clearly remember until now. Once, I was solving a mathematics problem about multiplication. I used several line to represent the numbers that would be multiplied as following bellow.

 

My teacher laughed at me. She said, “your way of solving multiplication is a waste of time.” I was embarrassed. I hated her. At elementary school, mathematics was just a subject I had to learn. I did not like it but I did not hate it too.

            I had an awful experienced of learning mathematics in the 7th grade. I did not understand anything at all. This happened because my 7th grade teacher rarely explained anything. When she came into the classroom, usually she just  sat on a chair and told us to work on problems from the book. Additionally, she never paid attention to her students except the higher achiever. I did not like her. As the result, I always got bad score in mathematics.

            In the 8th grade, it was the first time I started to like mathematics. I had a great teacher who always gave clear explanation when teaching mathematics. He made me understand the materials. Since then, I become better in mathematics. I started to help my other friends to understand mathematics. A friend asked me to competed with him about who was best in mathematics. I competed with him for fun and to motivate me to keep on learning. I really enjoyed learning mathematics.           

Since then, I thought I will always like mathematics. However, that did not always happen. In the 9th grade, again, I found difficulties in learning mathematics. I could not understand my 9th grade teacher’s explanation. At that time, I had to face the National Examanation. So, I had to find a solution to be able to understand mathematics. As a result,  I decided to join  PRIMAGAMA. Joining PRIMAGAMA helped me understand the mathematics that I was not able to understand at school. My mathematics score increased. I was satisfied with that.

            In senior high school I really liked mathematics. Maybe that was an impact of joining with PRIMAGAMA at 9th grade.  I was satisfied with my mathematics score from 10th until 12th grade. Even I often help my friends to understand mathematics.  Additionally, my National Examanation score was good. I realized that the score was an very important at that time. The reason is my teacher was a person that score oriented.

I realized that I always blame my teacher if I did not understand. I did not like mathematics teachers that never made me able to solve the mathematics  problems. However, I never thought I took mathematics education in Sampoerna School of Education (SSE). SSE is a place that was taught to me that the most important is the process not only the score.

            At the first semester, I still remember I got bad score. I felt down at that time. I thought I were not a good candidate of teacher. However, my lecturer and my best friend supported to me. They said “There were so many chance to improve your score”. Finally, I tried to do the best. As the result, I got B- in Basic Mathematics. I did not regret about the result because that was a considerable value for me.

            At the first semester until now, I experienced the decreasing and increasing in mathamatics. However, I never regret because I could learn from that to do the best for anything. I really liked math more and more since I am here. Since then, I have to be an educator that able to made my students like math.

            In conclusion, I think the teacher have a big role to made the students understand about what the material that was taught. The teacher have to have clear explanation and instruction to the students. The aplication of mathematics is also the important thing. Because, the students will be easier construct their understanding through what they see in real life.