1 My first years

I have always known that I liked to teach. From a very young age, I liked so much to give things an explanation and watch someone’s reaction to assess whether or not they got what I meant.

For example, when I was six, my mom gave me this book on basic grammar for kids, and I remember that it started with verbs. I quote from my mind now that “a verb is a word that represents an action, a state or a natural phenomenon”. I remember that that I was just fascinated to learn that many of the words I used dayly had an actual classification and were so important that books could be written about them!

Also, in Portuguese, which is my native language, verbs have many, many variations depending on a lot of things. And then I kept on reading the book and getting ever more fascinated by the things one could study and understand. And there came the will to explain everything: being a Portuguese teacher, my mom, noticing how much I loved the book, would ask me, “Alef, could you please define what a verb is?”, to which I replied perfectly with the definition I had learnt from the book, and she would go on and ask me for examples and questions about how verbs could vary and all of that.

I think that, at that moment, I was bound to become an educator.

2 Middle school

Life kept on, I had an excellent infancy, full of interesting magazines that my parents would, whenever possible, buy me, and I would learn all of these facts about the world, like the chemistry of fireworks, or the biggest word there is in Portuguese, which is equivalent to “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” in English and so on. And then came the math olympiads in 6th grade.

One day, the math teacher informed us that those who had excellent grades in math could participate in the Brazillian Mathematical Olympiads (Olimpíada Brasileira de Matemática), and that the first test would be on such and such day. Boy, was I excited. That day came, I classified to the next state and then nothing. I did not get a medal or anything and I discovered that there was a whole world of math stuff that I did not comprehend. So much so that I remember thinking that I did not even know what it was that I did not know, and I once searched on the internet “list of all math contents” in order to become acquainted to the whole thing. Of course I could learn the whole mathematics if I had enough dedication, right?

Well, actually big, big no. One of the things that I learned, and I am talking about 2010 now, is that I was simply not smart enough. Secondly, that even people who were smart enough did not know everything there is to know in mathematics. And I remember how frustrated I was by that. Like, even if I spend my whole life trying I would never get to where I wanted to be.

I got a bit sad, but kept on trying to learn more and more and so forth. 7th grade came, math olympiads again. First stage passed, like the previous year. Second stage was on the horizon and my math teacher gave me this high school math book, which to me was like a math encyclopedia, and told me, “you must study these contents in order to do good in the next stage”. I remember learning about triangles, right triangle trigonometry, non-right triangle trigonometry (law of sines and law of cosines) and combinatorics. Finally, the second stage day came and I was satisfied with myself: everything I had studied was useful. And then I got sick.

After having stayed away from school for a week, I came back. I was unware of it, but I came back on the very day that the teacher would tell us how we did in the second stage. He said something like, ”so, out of the whole school, 3 people classified to the final stage.” He told us of this boy in high school with 4 or 5 points and there was also this girl in my class who scored 7 or 12 points, something like that. He made a pause and proceeded, “and then Alef, with 22 points”. Everyone in the class looked at me and congratulated me. It felt amazing having come back from being sick and receiving such a warm reception.

Well, that meant final stage was coming. I studied harder and more, but from the previous papers, I could see that it was on a whole new level. It was a 5 question exam that I was supposed to answer in 4:30. To my surprise, I had also classified to the state level of the olympiads, which was a bit strange, like, first you take the first two national stages and then you classify to the state level. But I was happy to take that exam.

And it was great that I took the state level because for that one I got a bronze medal! I was incredibly happy with the results. My efforts had paid off! And I unfortunately did not get any awards from the national level.

But there I was, eyes bright for mathematics. And, of course, now I knew this whole lot of things that I was supposed to learn in the next years only, which made my life at school very easy with respect to my grades in mathematics. And it also meant that I could help my classmates when they needed.

Later on I kept trying my best at the olympiads for the next few years, but then I found out that there were other schools that had dedicated lessons for the olympiads, where the students got proper training in exactly the type of thing they would be asked. I did not have that, and this was a frustrating feeling.

So I would say that this is what I took from middle school about math education: first, it requires effort. A whole lot of effort. I spent most of my free time preparing myself for the olympiads. Secondly, education was not fair. Not everyone had the same intelligence, not everyone leaned the same way, and not everyone went to the very top best schools. Lastly, I learned that I loved mathetmatics, like I-could-spend-my-life-doing-this kind of love.