Fall 2016 - Professor Kate Poirier

Category: HW#1: Introduce yourself (Page 1 of 2)

“Introducing Tyniqua Hinton”

Hello everyone, as noted I am Tyniqua HInton. This is my fourth year at City Tech, and getting to this point in my academic career has been a trying task. I started off in a remedial math class my freshman year due to the fact that I graduated high school in June 2001. So, I forgot the majority of everything I learned and was not prepared for college math courses as yet. Therefore, I was not able to begin a major in math education until I was able to complete the prerequisites required to get into the major. It took me two and a half long years before I was able to be a math major.

My first two years at City Tech was amazing, I did well in every class receiving a majority of A’s which I was invited to be in our school’s Honors Program. My favorite subjects were every history and English class I have taken, but I always looked forward to my math classes I never surpassed an opportunity to take one or attend a workshop. I learned to love math in my freshman year of high school where I had a dedicated group of teachers and a gifted tutor who taught math in the most enlightening way which gave me a new understanding an appreciation for the subject. As a result, I received a 97 on my math regents in the 11th grade, still, I felt my school failed me because they did not offer me any additional math classes that would of better prepared me for college. I never saw trigonometry until I attended a college trig class which I struggled to receive a B.  I had more  difficulty in math when I started my calculus classes which has proven to be my most challenging subjects. Even so, my passion for math has not changed, I am always willing to learn and I am looking forward to teach everything I learn about teaching middle school math to my future students. I believe  middle school is a very crucial time in a students academic career, for the reason that the students are introduced to more abstract or complicated  topics that requires a higher level of thinking and they need a teacher that is willing to understand that all students are unique and have their own way of learning so we have to add a little bit of everything to the learning experience to help develop the blossoming minds of adolescents.

I had a bad experience during my middle school year, I was introduced to the concept of the variable and my 8th grade teacher taught it in a way that was not catching for me. When we came into class all the work was previously written on the board as he proceeded to teach from the back of the classroom and spoke like the man from the popular dry eyes commercial. As a consequence I failed math the entire year, but due to the city wide exams that all New York city students are required to take I passed the eighth grade and my poor grades for that class did not leave me behind and I continued to go to high school.  Thanks to my mom who got me a brilliant tutor and all of the extra math classes my high school gave me I excelled in mathematics throughout high school. Hopefully when I graduate I could put to good use all of my past experiences along with my present ones and become an awesome teacher. Also, I ran an after school program and summer camp for the past nine years, but I resigned last August in order to finish school. Currently I became certified by the Department of Education to be a paraprofessional at New York City’s Public School, this will be helpful to me because I will learn hands on what is required to be a teacher.

 

JODEL DELECTABLE

I was born in Cap Haitien, Haiti; however, I went to school in Port-Au-Prince, which the capital of Haiti. I never like Port-Au-Prince because it is too crowded; I always spent my vacation in the suburb or other cities far away from Port-Au-Prince. I speak Haitian Creole, which the mother’s language of Haiti. I also speak French, which is the official language; and, I learned Spanish and English from junior and senior school.

When I was in middle school, I felt the tension was very high. There were more subjects, a lot of things to memorize and above all writing got harder. I found math was a bit easier to approach because it was all about practice. Along the way math was the only subject that kept me going. Several times after school hours I stayed with other students to help each other in math. Even though it was a study group, I did not find quite easy at all.

On my 12th grade I found a teaching position from a local school in evening. There were two teachers in the classroom, me and another guy. They paired us up based on our qualifications; I was good in math and the other was good in writing. As teachers of the class, we were competing to each other because I wanted to show to the students that I was better than him. Every week-end I prepared the math lecture for the week and reviewed it several time to be sure that it was legit to present to the students. The most important was the explicit explanation so that the message could go through the students. Overall the beneficiary of the competition was the students because that promotion was the most successful one from the school at that time. The students took an official exam; 23 out of 25 passed it. For us, the teachers, that was incredible.

Before coming to America, I forgot to take my high school diploma and also my transcript from the department of education. I had a lot of difficulties to get in college. The diploma was not one of them because I obtained my GED diploma easily. However, my immigration document was the dilemma. I finally got in college in fall 2008 at Citytech. After two semesters I stopped due to some financial problem. As everybody knows, 2008 and 2009 were the most nodus period in USA. The end of December 2009, I went to Haiti for my grandmother funeral. The day before I came back to USA I got caught by earthquake on January 2010. On spring 2011 I went to Manhattan College for Civil Engineer. I was very in the school; until, 2013, which was my sophomore year I received a letter from immigration that summoned me to court and stated that “all my transactions and assets are being block at this moment.” I spent three years fighting with immigration to get my document back. In the middle of August I prevailed again upon immigration. So I am back in college and I am not going to stop without my math education diploma.

After I graduated from Citytech, it will be a dream comes true for me. I will go straight to grad school in order to excel my education so that I can give a better contribution to the education of the upcoming generation; also, for a better and more secure position.

 

 

 

 

Introducing[Abdelmajid][Ihda]

Hi everyone, I’m Abdelmajid, I grew up in Morocco, I came to the USA 7 years ago and since then I have always lived in NYC  .I have visited some other beautiful states but NYC is the best; it is an amazing city. I speak 4 languages: Amazigh witch is my native language, Arabic, French( studied it for 10 years in school) and English.

Math was always my favorite subject in school. and since I remember I have always been in a position where I have to teach and explain a math problem to one of my classmates. I was the math teacher In my family  during my school years in morocco( note: very bad on other subjects. mostly history). sometimes I go to visit my relatives and their kids would meet me with math problems by the the door asking me for help, and it was a good feeling. It always feels exciting when I explain a math problem to someone and that’s how I became interested in math. topics that I I love in math,  I would say all of the topics. I think classifying topics in math is a bad idea  because once a student says I hate that topic…. he will not learn it. and that is bad for us as a future graduates. I believe  that  Once you love something you love every thing about it.

About mathematics software’s I have used Maple and Matlab but not good at them. I also used a Geogebra once in a research paper last semester and I liked it, I think it is more useful. I’m hopping to learn more about theses software s and become good at them.

My plans is to get a bachelor degree, teach high school for a couple years and then go for my Master and PHD degree. Teaching college is where I want to land and hopefully do some good research.

I’m a yellow cab driver it is  a job and a hobbies in the same time because I like driving in general.   I’m very interested in movies especially action and because of that I started writing movie scripts, that allows me to practice my English writing. As you can say I’m still struggling with my English writing.  Another thing I like to do is play soccer, I loved the game since I was a kid.

One last thing, my first name is long so  you guys can called me Magid and am very excited to be with you in this class.

Introducing Luis Lora

Allow me to reintroduce myself my name is Luis. Born on the planet Earth on an island they call North America. A specific place you might ask? That information need not be spoken just think of it as the imaginary number I. It exists in certain cases but, not really. I recently came back from a trip from the south that has rendered me still in vacation mode. The trip has opened my perspective of the land I live on. New York City seems to crowded. I speak fluently two languages but, have taken French and sign language and mathematics.  I became interested in mathematics when I found out how much of our world can be expressed using mathematics. My other passion is physics which, I would really like to obtain a degree in. I haven’t chosen a specific subject yet though. I don’t necessarily have a favorite topic or subject in mathematics but, one of the most enjoyable classes have been trigonometry and calculus two because of its level of difficulty and generally good time solving problems. I haven’t used many electronic devices or applications for math haha  just kidding I almost started collecting calculators as a hobby. No I don’t know how to use them all to their 100% ability. I have used this other application for calculus lab here at city tech called Maple. The program was a tad bothersome some times because of all the commands I needed to input and sometimes I would get lost and couldn’t really fix it myself. I am interested in learning about all the technologies available for teachers in order to be considered technologically savvy in mathematics. After graduating City Tech, I hope to further my studies in mathematics and education and teach middle school. One day I’d like to work in the field of physics and maybe work on some of the worlds unexplained phenomena.

Introducing[Mei][Zhu]

Yet, the summer ended. We are back in class, and my head and mind reset in motion and gear up to get in motion. I still have so many things to learn to improve myself to be a well- prepared person with critical thinking about teaching.

I come from China. Chinese is first my language, and I also speak some proper Spanish. I was grown up in a small town, and my family lived in a small place in a small town. Life was hard; public education was not accessible for every children because the cost was too high. Especially, my family, me and my two sisters, it was very difficult to pay for the tuition and all expense. My parents had to work very hard to support us to stay in school.

Now in America, as an immigrant, language was my first priority problem when I came here. English was difficult for me to transfer my thoughts clearly as I wanted to. After ten days’ going back and forth to the Department of Education and high school, I began my first day in American high school. Fort Hamilton High School – the most beautiful and advanced one that I had never seen in my hometown. I was excited about everything surround me especially the people who speak American English. The supervisor of the Language Department arranged me in an ESL class. I felt comfortable when I saw Chinese in the class.

When I was little girl, I used to dreamed to be a police woman many times, also a supermarket owner, a lawyer, etc. As time passed by, when my headmaster in high school asked me what I want to be in the future, I answered that I wanted to be a dedicated person that can contribute to the society. Gradually, I found the dream being a police woman fades out. And the dream to be a teacher is taking place.

I chose to be Mathematics teaching because I realized that learning Mathematics can be productive if we learn by hands-on approaches with open minds. It is not about reading and doing homework assignments, which is not enough for learning Mathematics.

I love the MEDU 1021 class very much. Before I entered this class, I did not know that teaching has so much fun by hands-on activities. That was a Mathematics class but more about how to teach and learn mathematics by working together. We worked on the problems in groups and then shared with the whole class; we learned by group discussions. We listened and gave feedback to other peers; we learned by critical listening and thinking. We presented our topics and responses to “students”; we learned by actual practice ourselves as future teachers. In this class, each of us learned at the same pace because the content knowledge is within our pre-knowledge. We learned more from ourselves as we made progress. The least I love about Mathematics is rote memorization of formulas because I think that is the most difficult part for me to learn something new.

I learned Maple to compute and graph in Borough of Manhattan Community College. Also, I learned some basic coding in R in the summer’s Mathematics research from Prof. Bessonov. In this class, I want to learn some software that are being widely used in secondly schools. I have seen a teacher in City Poly High School who used her cell phone to scan students’ answers and presented the bar chart in the class. I believe that must be a new program because my teachers from high school never taught class that way.

In CityTech I have learned many requirements and internships which will help me to succeed my dream of teaching profession, and school has opened many doors to many programs such as Peer leading, Noyce, CSTEP, PERC, I will need the school to assist me in my future plan that I wish to be a teacher after graduated from here. At the same time I will continue to pursue my Master degree in teaching. I will need a lot of help and guidance here in CityTech. Shortly, I want to pass the required certificate tests before completing my Bachelor’s degree. Besides learning, I also love swimming even though I just learned how to swim this summer. I found it very interesting and healthy.

 

Introducing Evelin Perez

Hey guys! As you can see my name is Evelin but you can call me Eve whichever you prefer. I was born in California but I was raised in Brooklyn, New York. The reason why we moved to New York  was because we didn’t have any family members in Cali. All of my family was and is still in New York. I can speak both English and Spanish.

I’m a very stubborn person so I don’t like to give up easily. Especially when it comes to solving  math problems.  I’ve always loved math ever since I was in elementary school. I’d like to thank my 5th grade teacher, Ms. Carter, for that. She showed me little tricks to make math fun and easier. Since then I enjoy solving all types of equations. The second person I would like to thank for inspiring and motivating me would be my ex partner. She was awful in trigonometry so in order to help her out, I would go the extra mile just to help her pass the class. I would study the topics more, even practice solving new problems each day. Every time I would tutor her, I would get a satisfaction feeling. It made me feel great.

I’ve haven’t had much experience with technology in math class. The only technology I’ve used are scientific and graphing calculators. This semester I’m being introduced to a software called Maple.

Introducing Soanam Gyamtso

I grew up in Tibet, I speak Tibetan, Chinese, and English. I came to United States five years ago.

Since I was in elementary school,  I am interested in History and Math. I love history because it tells you a lot of interesting stories happened long long time ago. And math, I did not really liked it  at the beginning, until Ms.Kang Ruo became my math teacher when I was forth grade. I liked the way she taught us Math, and I started like math after that too.

When I was in the high school, I believed that graphing calculator was a very helpful tool for my math class. other than that I also think Maple is a great tool  for solving advance  Math problems.

 

I hope I can get  best grates I can get from all the classes.  And become a qualified teacher at the end.

Introducing Gary Zeng

Hi my name is Gary I’m from Brooklyn, NY I’ve lived there my whole life and I probability move away later on in life or just stay here. I’m asian, and I prefer to speak in english than speaking in Chinese.

I became interest in math when I was in middle school and high school because I would enjoy the fun activities and stories my teacher in middle would do when doing a review before a test or when learning about a new topic in class. When I was in high school I was a teacher’s assistant for one of my summers and I enjoyed doing it and made me want to continue doing this again in the future.  My favorite topics in math are algebra, trigonometry, and statistics because I had a lot of fun when I was taking these course in high school and in college. My least favorite topic is calculus 2 because when I taken the class I found the course challenging and the professors not trying to make the course better for students to understand the material or fun. I have used Desmos and maple before and I’m interested in learning about geogebra. After I graduate from citytech my short term goals are to go for a master degree probability in city college while my long term goals are to get a job teaching at a middle school or a high school teaching.

I’m really excited about this course and the new programs I’ll be learning throughout the semester.

Introduction Armando Cosme

My name is Armando and i’m from Hells Kitchen, NYC. Lived there my whole life and will probably never leave. I’m Puerto Rican, and speak English and Spanish.

I wanted to be a Math teacher since 9th Grade. The whole thing started when me and my cousin were in the same class and she wasn’t doing so well, The teacher then assigned me her and three other people as a tutor group and said to me if I could get them to pass the class, I would be rewarded. They were all special ed students and with my help they all passed. It was great.

My favorite topics in math is anything Trigonometry. I love it! Trig, Arithmetic and Geometric Sequences, Binomial Distribution, Locus in Geometry, Derivatives, Integrals and Messing around with Eigen Values and Eigen Vectors.

My Least Favorites are Disc & Shell Methods, Vectors and Matrix Operations.

I’ve used Maple before and I absolutely  HATE IT! I’ve also used Geogebra, and i thought it was pretty neat. I’m interested to learn any technology that makes my future job easier.

Short Term Goals: Pass all classes with a B+ or above, Graduate as soon as possible from City Tech, End my procrastination problems.

Long Term Goals: Countless Vacations, Finally get a job Teaching, Master Guitar

Other Cool Interests/Hobbies: I love to sing, whether i’m good at it or not is up for debate, I love Pop & Country Music (old country, not current radio country). My favorite Singer is Reba and always will be. I’m currently learning to play Guitar. I acted for 9 years and even toured in Canada in 2012. I’m also a Mets fan, a WWE fan & I love making people laugh and having fun. 🙂

 

Introducing Josiel Nunez

As you can see my name is Josiel Nunez and I grew up here in New York City. I currently reside in the Bronx, and I think I want to move away from the city someday. I’ve always loved math since middle school and I think the reason is because I can grasp concepts fairly quickly. Math Education wasn’t originally my career option but I’ve always had a feeling that I would become a teacher. I used to be a Civil Engineer major. What made me change was how passionate I was to educate others. I love passing down knowledge and I hope I do a great job at it.

My hobbies includes playing guitar and piano, and I love tech. I can rant on about technology, I know how to build computers, fix computers, I just love tinkering with devices. I currently work for HP as a sales representative for the company. So in terms of teaching as my career, my job allows me to teach others (consumers) about the latest and greatest products out there now. It works hand in hand in my opinion and I love it.

I am excited for this semester because I love school and I cant wait to educate myself further!

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