Primary/Elementary Teacher becoming a Mathematics Teacher

[mattyk]

So the title sums up who I am right now.
I've been a primary teacher for a few years and I am taking a few years off to be the stay at home dad and I thought I'd retrain to become a high school mathematics teacher.

Successfully made it through the first semester and I'm now half way through the second and calculus is really stretching my brain.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Welcome. If you are going to teach high school math, you got to know calculus. This is the course you are preparing all those students for in Algebra 1, etc.

When am I ever going to need this?

When you get to Calculus!

I recommend a year of College Physics also to understand what those high school math students will be doing downstream.

 

[atyy]

Successfully made it through the first semester and I'm now half way through the second and calculus is really stretching my brain.

Maybe the real maths people will complain, but in physics calculus has only 3 ideas (everything else is a variation of these):

1) velocity = distance/time ie. rate of change is the slope of the distance-time graph (differentiation)

2) distance = velocity X time ie. distance is the area under the velocity-time graph (summation = integration)

3) As is obvious from above, integration is the inverse of differentiation, since differentiation of distance gives velocity, while integration of velocity gives distance (fundamental theorem of calculus)

 

[Evo]

Welcome mattyk,

Despite what you may see written here at times, we ask that members use correct English, got to and going to are not actual English words, they are slang.

For example

Learner's definition of GONNA

— used in writing to represent the sound of the phrase "going to" when it is spoken quickly

• I'm gonna [=going to] get you if it's the last thing I do!

◊ The pronunciation represented by gonna is common in informal speech. The written form should be avoided except when trying to represent or record such speech.

http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/gonna

a way of saying or writing ‘going to’ in informal speech, when it refers to the future "What's she going to do now?" You should not write this form unless you are copying somebody’s speech.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/learner/gonna