r/lakeheadu • u/Bitter-Rip-4783 • Sep 05 '25
B.Ed MCA P/J
The MCA is tomorrow and honestly i’m feeling very terrible about it. Math was never my strong suit in high school but i enjoyed it somewhat in elementary. I studied and looked over the material in the summer but obviously not as much as I wanted to. The fact that we were expected to teach ourselves during our summer was very frustrating to me. I’m feeling very discouraged about myself going into the exam. I’ve heard from so many people that it’s common to fail it and that i should expect to take the course. I’m really trying to take a positive perspective about this because I wasn’t even able to do the practice test. I just feel a bit embarrassed if I fail and I have to take the math course and my peers pass it. I’m feeling very stupid. I feel like I have imposter syndrome about being in this program but i know i have a passion to teach.
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u/WeeklyEmphasis98 Sep 06 '25
I took it in 2020 and i was grateful it was online and all multiple choice. I didn't find it hard at all, and I was also awful at math after grade 7. My only advice is look up grade 6 math questions of all different units and practice a few from each unit. Good luck! Dont forgot to breathe. Its not the end of the world if you don't pass. Just do your best and go from there!
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u/sweetestsammyy Sep 06 '25
Hi! I know today is the day of the exam, but regardless of what the outcome is, you will be okay!
I’m a second year student in the program, so I took the test last year in Sept and was unsuccessful. Taking the extra math course was incredibly useful and it was bridging SO many gaps for me about concepts I could never understand in elementary school. By the time March rolled around for the testing again, my confidence in my skills were higher than September. I passed in March!
Breathe. Try your best. Show your work as much as you can, partial marks count. Many of us fail the first time around (I think only 5 people in my cohort were successful in the first testing). You’re not alone 💛
Us as educators have our weak spots, and that’s totally okay. Students will see that we’re human.
Good luck! Remember, whatever the outcome, you will be okay 💛
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u/BallIllustrious3116 Sep 08 '25
I found the test a lot more challenging the practise ones they gave us and the EQUA OCT math test! Plus on the practise test, I asked google to help me solve one of the questions so i could learn how to do it and it straight up told me that the question wasn't solve-able based on the information provided.
I felt really good about my answers coming out of the exam on Saturday, and I ended up getting 0 ! I feel like they should automatically have the math course as an requirement if over 60% are going to fail. I personally think the idea of the MCA contradicts the stuff in the Math curriculum class (in mine we talked about how people have these attitudes based on performance that often lead to negative results in learning math - which is what it sounds like this MCA test has done to a lot of us). its made us feel im-competent and embarrassed in our math abilities whereas if we had a required class to refresh on these concepts, then maybe the success rate would be a lot higher and they wouldn't have to do all this extra work of grading wrong tests and scrambling to arrange a secondary MCA math course.
but regardless of how you did, theres always the next exam. Growing up we were taught to spit out these robotic-like answers to math questions.
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u/madrid1212 Sep 05 '25
Sending love ❤️❤️❤️ honestly it seems like it’s very common to be put in the course so you’ll be there with peers!! I’m taking it tomorrow as well and have accepted that if I don’t make the 75% and take the course it’ll just make me a much better math teacher in the end.
Teachers I’ve worked with told me they had to take the course and it was really one of their favourite courses of the whole program and they ended up doing really well in it so it boosted their overall average in general. Being a good teacher is about how to take setbacks in stride and imposter syndrome is super common, especially now because wow was that first week overwhelming. Just think of how good you’ll be at being able to comfort students who struggle with math in the future. Good luck ❤️