 What math course is right for you? Math 181. My name is Austin Roberts. I teach Math 181, geometry for K through 8 teachers. This class is aimed for future K through 8 teachers. Also, people who want to take ELL will often take this class as well. Why did you take Math 181? Well, I take this math class because I want to expand more on my mathematics skills. Because I know that it's vital for elementary education. I took this math class to get a feel for whether or not I want to pursue mathematics education. I still didn't know career-wise whether or not I should teach elementary school, middle school, or even college. And so I wanted to take a class where the content itself wasn't too heavy compared to continuing my calculus courses. At the same time, I want to feel for what education would feel like and whether or not teaching would be something that I would like to explore. One of the reasons is that's the requirement for all the education class students. And the other reason is because I really want to focus on math while I'm teaching kids in the future. So I really want to learn how to teach kids how to explain math to them because this class is more focused on the explanation and the reasoning of why we're doing this. I took this math class because I need it to graduate. What advice would you give to students taking Math 181? I would say never say you hate math because you have to keep that optimism and enthusiasm going to survive this class. I would let them know that it honestly doesn't hurt to be able to give it a try. It does help to give a good foundation for exactly why we have all these equations, kind of like the justification of all the proofs, which you don't really get in higher level math classes because you're just solving for the proofs that you get to feel for the reason behind why you're using all these different stuff. Maybe read ahead the textbook because in this class I think everyone has a different level of geometry because a lot of students they learn in high school, but some yes, some no, so I think read ahead the textbook it will help a lot to let you stay the same level as everyone. The advice I'd give students for taking this course is to do your homework and make sure to hit up the math center, they'll help you out. In this course it tends to be a little bit more dynamic and flexible than some other math courses because we're talking simultaneously about math that's appropriate for little children and math that's appropriate for an eighth grader, which means as the class goes on the feeling changes a little bit, the content changes and for some students they feel really good like oh I already know this in one week and the next week it's a challenge which means you have to stay on top of it, you have to kind of have a sense for what is coming down the road week after week. Other than that it's a lot of fun.