EXPLORING THE TEACHING EXPERIENCES OF MILLENNIAL SECONDARY MATHEMATICS TEACHERS IN PALAWAN

Teaching mathematics requires a great deal of passion, much like other disciplines. While Education 4.0 emphasizes the importance of students becoming self-sufficient, it also highlights the need for life skills training. This study aimed to explore the teaching experiences of millennial secondary mathematics teachers in Palawan. Specifically, it examined their perspectives on the meaning of mathematics, their goals in teaching, their experiences in the classroom, and their inspirational messages for fellow mathematics teachers. This is a descriptive study that employed non-probability sampling to categorize the upper and lower 40% of the class, who were selected as participants for comparison to determine whether both groups of teachers shared similar perspectives. The researcher carried out various tasks, including administering a final examination designed to include a questionnaire relevant to the topic at hand. The themes that emerged regarding the meaning of mathematics for the participants included life skills, aesthetic appreciation, and mathematics as a discipline. These themes aligned with their goals of teaching mathematics to help students apply their mathematical literacy in everyday life, appreciate the beauty of mathematics and develop positive attitudes and virtues, all aimed toward problem-solving and critical thinking skills in learners. The participants viewed themselves as highly competent, creative, very confident, expert, technologically adept, and effective in assessing their students through performance-based assessments. The participants' perspectives, measured using a semantic differential scale, were analyzed using chisquare (X²) testing, which showed no significant difference in their perceptions (p > .05). The data gathered was insufficient to conclude that performance in the final examination contributed to the respondents' perspectives. Finally, the inspiring messages were synthesized as follows: Mathematics is for everyday life, should be taught with passion, and should instill virtues and aesthetic appreciation. Therefore, teaching mathematics must be aimed at living a wonderful life!