After watching Frank McCourt speak about his experience on how he got into teaching, there were a few things that stuck out to me. I consider his story to be quite motivating as it's an example of starting a life in a totally new environment, humble beginnings, with no qualifications to what he ended up with in his career and in life. One thing that I definitely changed my mind was when he mentioned that his way of teaching is considered as an extension. It makes sense to incorporate projects and assignments related to what the students already enjoy doing but it's easier said than done. I've noticed for myself that increasing and changing my mindset into creating extension instead of just planting new information in student's head, it would make the experience for students more enjoyable. This resulted in thinking about how math is already everywhere around us, and the question that came out of that is 'How can I show my students that math IS already everywhere around us?'.
Although his story is quite motivating in my opinion to watch in 2021, it might not seem the same if I were to witness this story at the time he was finding opportunities for a job. The circumstances individuals were facing back in the day is definitely different from society now, so it makes me think about how the story might seem impossible to certain less privileged individuals or women who had different rights and opportunities as men. He had books readily available as his resource and that's how he was able to hold a conversation with a dean that gave him the opportunity to be admitted into the program. The thing is, having access to so many books is considered very lucky already so although his story is still inspiring and motivating, I think it's also important to keep in mind the situation he was already in compared to what other individuals had to face on a day-to-day basis.
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