Throughout most of my schooling, and especially my high school years, I struggled greatly with math. The math teachers in my small school were no aid to my struggles. Often, the math teachers were not, in fact math teachers, and struggled themselves to get through teaching the course. On the rare occasion where we had a teacher with math experience, it was almost more of a struggle. The struggle was that the math had to be done in the exact same way as the teacher had taught it. Even if you got the answer correct, it would still be incorrect if the steps to get the answer were not correct. I suppose this was discriminatory to the different ways that students learn. It made lessons difficult and frustrating for not only myself, but my fellow classmates as well.
Whether teaching or learning math, it is necessary to keep an open mind. By keeping an open mind you are exposed to new ways of learning, and by thus become more considerate of others learning as well. Take Poirier`s writing and the Inuit base twenty method for example. This method is much different than our own, yet it is how an entire culture expressed themselves numerically.
One thing to remember, and to remember especially while teaching is this: what you have always known is not necessarily always right.
Miss Sawchuk`s Education Blog 
Averie my struggle with math was in the same way as yours. No content every came easy to me and if it did, others would not. Teachers in my school were also no help with me either and I found that I needed to resort to my peers to teach me or myself through YouTube tutorials. I was privileged enough to have credited math teacher who was very smart and could teach very well when he wanted to, but decided to teach less than what he could and this is where I struggled. It brought down my self esteem when I compared myself to other students who I was very close to and excelled in both mathematics and sciences where I did not.
When you say “What you have always known is not necessarily always right” was a great representation of the ever changing society and expectations of what teachers are to understand when educating their students.
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I also struggled with math growing up and at the time I thought I was the only one struggling so it really made me insecure about my learning abilities. I’ve always blamed myself for not understanding and never thought that the system was at fault so it was really interesting when you said that math teachers were not exactly math teachers because it explained so much of my struggle in that subject area. They taught right from the textbook and never really spend the time to understand the questions but only focused on going through the course.
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