Dear future self,

The current you doesn’t really think his actions will greatly impact society in some

large way. The current you is me, and that is to say I don’t think my actions will have

that large of an impact. This is not to say that my actions will have no impact at all. It is

more accurate to say that I don’t believe it is truly possible to measure this impact, no

matter how large or small. Additionally, to try to measure it in the first place may just be

an attempt to convince myself that I can achieve some sort of importance. But this is not

a reflection on my importance; it is more a reflection on the nuances of history.

Significance is merely how we try to assign meaning to certain events, yet the truth is

often more complex and diluted when we scrutinize and examine it. My focus as an

educator begins not with what impact I will bring about but merely the actions I will

directly be trying to do.

So why is the current me trying to become a teacher? What is the motivation

behind my actions? Well let’s begin by trying to break down the truths of what I am'

trying to do and what assumed impacts they may have. I want to try to be a math

teacher and I want to try to teach my students well. For me, this means that I will be

assessed by my students’ performance. If my students are succeeding in my class, then

I am winning this game. If my students are not succeeding, then I am failing this game

and need to reflect on what strategies I need to adopt to improve. This also implies I will

use mastery based grading and will set the bar high so I cannot cheat myself in my own

game. And what about the potential impacts of teaching math? Well the immediate

impact is if I succeed at this game, my students will be good at the math I teach them.

Maybe what they learn will help them later in life. Maybe they will never use what they
learn, but the approach to learning will stick with them. Or maybe it really won’t have

any benefits, but at least I tried right?

However, what if I fail the game and my students do not learn math too well. In

this case, many of them probably leave the class without a solid understanding of the

material. But maybe some lessons on the right approach to learning stick, and later in

life what I taught them does help them out in some sense. Maybe not. But this letter is

not about what assumed impacts my actions will have. This is more about my own

purpose as an educator, what I want to do, and what I hope to accomplish. I want to

teach because I enjoy helping people learn and grow. I dislike when I myself struggle to

learn and become stuck, so I wish to minimize this experience for others. I want to

create a system where everything is streamlined, organized, and built like stepping

stones; a learning experience with resources which allow students to help themselves

as much as possible.

This is my first goal as an educator: to outline and break down every skill in a

curriculum to its core components. Too often, as people who have already learned a

concept or subject, do we experience the phenomenon known as “curse of knowledge.”

Our own knowledge prevents us from seeing how difficult it was to learn something in

the first place. We forget the mistakes we’d made and the steps in between, which now

to us have become trivial. Too many times have I seen students get stuck or give up in

math because it “doesn’t make sense.” The problem however is not always the students’

inability to understand, but that the idea is not well enough explained. It is up to me as

an educator to present thorough, precise, yet simple enough explanations of concepts.

This begins with understanding the nuances of the subjects I am teaching and outlining

them in great detail.

After I have broken down all the skills into basic components, the next step to

consider is how to present this material. I believe this is the hardest part of my path as

an educator. If our current textbooks accomplished this well, our students would seldom

need teachers for the content alone. However simply reading a textbook is probably not

how most students would want to receive their knowledge. Thus it is my job to create

lessons which engage students’ curiosity. To account for different types of learners,

they must contain low barriers to entry to account for students who may not be the most

adept and high ceilings for students who are ready for more of a challenge. Something I

find potentially valuable is ways for students to assess their own knowledge. Too often a

challenge one faces as a learner is the question, “How do I know I truly understand

what I need to know?” Thus I believe with technology we can accomplish more accurate

and reliable methods of self-assessment.

An inspiration I believe we can use to guide this idea of self-assessment is video

games. When you play a game, the game often teaches you the controls, and allows

you an opportunity to test out the controls before moving you on to a next section. The

player must pass an assessment to show they understand what the game wants the

player to know how to do. Similarly I believe we can apply this to how we learn math. If

we have truly broken down our knowledge to its simplest, fundamental form, we can

build it up using guided modules. The assessments will provide a scaffold and can hold

students learning accountable. This allows for measurable growth and progress in

learning, something I believe is very important to learning of anything technical in nature.

 This is not to say that learning will only be self-contained in a virtual system.

Learning is largely still a social activity. We often learn our best when we have the

opportunity to communicate and share our ideas. However, I believe technology does

not inhibit the social aspect of math, but we need to also rethink where we draw our

inspiration for how to make it a social activity. We only need to look to games like

Runescape, Dota, Tetris, and many others to try and draw elements of what activities

do people find engaging. People play Runescape despite its repetitive nature because

of the feeling of accomplishment from reaching our goals. People play Dota because it

challenges our creative, mechanical and decision making skills in a competitive

environment. People play Tetris because it challenges your thinking. Interesting to note,

some of these elements are common to learning anything. Thus I believe to incorporate

this into our teaching is what will enrich the process into a more social and interactive

process.

One criticism I have of current attempts at combining technology with math

includes lack of thoughtfulness in relating the math to the tool. Tools need to help

people understand the concept behind the math itself and not just process of abstract

operations. Another is that a tool should not only replicate what a teacher can do in

class. Khan Academy, for example, has great ambitions for individualized learning,

Unfortunately, its model focuses on video lectures, whereas students need something

interactive that guides them in their learning and not only feeds them information. Finally,

we need tools more creative than whether or not the final answer is correct. We need to

use our knowledge of the various elements of understanding a concept and be able

conceptualize ways of assessing for each part. This would aid greatly in scaffolding and
differentiating, helping a teacher figure out where exactly a student may need help and

how to proceed with helping that student.

Now, a lot of what I plan to do in education sounds more like curriculum planning.

Perhaps that is because that is largely relevant to my goals as an educator. I wish to

create a curriculum, a system that better utilizes technology and scaffolds math so that

it is more widely accessible to all students everywhere. I believe that anybody can learn

math if it is explained simply enough and broken down to its very core component

pieces. It does not matter if someone has special needs or not and math is not about

how fast one can learn. Everybody walks similar roads in arriving at the same

destinations in math. To create such a curriculum would be similar to providing a map

that caters and adapts to the person using it.

That is not to say I will disregard teaching in classrooms. In order to better

imagine such a system, I need the classroom experience of actually working with

students. I need to better understand their needs and how to reach them. What use is a

system if there is no buy in? This is why it is important to me to be a social justice

educator. I need to work with students who may not believe in the value of the math that

I will try to teach. I need to learn how to better communicate and convince students that

it is important. I often express my belief that there is no difference between a good

educator and a good social just educator and this is because I believe a good educator

is one who already embodies the various elements of social justice within their teaching.

You cannot teach well if you have students who don’t believe in their own ability to

succeed. If you believe that, then I would claim you are not rigorously measuring your

own effectiveness in the right ways. I believe my choice to try and build students who
not only excel, but own the math they learn embodies my decision to be a social justice

educator.

The number one thing I learned from the class on helping students with special

needs is just to be aware and attentive of their existence. I believe that if I keep my

attitude that every student can and should succeed, then I will hopefully seldom fail at

helping any student. Students often need encouragement and support beyond their

understanding of the content matter. My approach to helping students who lack

confidence is, “Don’t believe in yourself! Believe in me. Believe in the me who believes

in you.” This is not to say that they should stay this way. Along the way I challenge them

in the words of Kobe Bryant, to be a different animal but the same beast. They always

had the capacity all along (they are beasts), but must learn to adapt differently when

they are struggling (different animals). Scaffolding is just as much about guiding

students towards a point of self-agency. Therefore, the goal is to eventually tell the

students, “Believe in yourself. Not in the you who believes in me. Not the me who

believes in you. Believe in the you who believes in yourself.”

In short, I wish to be an educator who measures my success by the success of

my students and someone who puts in the effort to create the opportunity for all

students to thoroughly understand math. That attitude defines me as a social justice

educator and my success will simply make me a good educator. Although I currently

struggle with many elements of teaching I hope that the me that reads this letter has

reached a point where they are proud of what they do and find joy in their work.

Sincerely,

David Liu