Sub Notes

     I don't sub too often anymore. Cara and I are busy enough with work and baby and playstation. Willamette high school was having three math teachers out last Friday and needed an advanced math sub, so I acquiesced. (big word!) A few notes from my recent subbing adventures:

     - I had a conversation with a student that I wish I could have with every student. He doesn't like math - and my guess is he doesn't like school. He said to another student "It's not like the world will end if I fail a math class."
     I was helping another student at this time, but luckily it's part of my job to eavesdrop. I turned around, looked at him, and said "You're right. The world won't end. But the world won't end if you study and pay attention in class either."
     Him: Why? What's the point of learning math? (I love this question).
     Me: What do you want to do when you grow up?
     Him: I don't know.
     Me: Exactly. You don't know what you want to do. So, we teach you everything. That way, when you do start to decide what you want to do, you have options.
     Him: But, what if I just want to work on a boat?
     Me: Great! Go join the Navy and work on a boat.
     Him: (he didn't like this idea) No, I mean like, some old fishing boat.
     Me: Great! If you want to work on an old fishing boat, go for it. But, my guess is you have never actually worked on a boat. What if you do it, and then find out that it's not what you want to do? What if you decide you would really like to design boats or build boats or do something entirely different. Wouldn't it be wise for you to not limit your options now? So that if you want to do something that's hard, or that everyone wants to do, like design video games, you are educated and equipped? You might not care about making a lot of money, and that's fine, but money is very nice to have. It's very nice to be able to take care of yourself and, maybe one day, your wife and family. Well, the best way to make money is with an education, and more specifically with and education in math and science. You're right: the world's not going to end if you fail this math class. But you might end up regretting it later on.
     Him: Huh.

     I don't know if I made any sort of difference in his life or future, but let's pretend like I did, okay? The other boy he was talking to was also paying pretty close attention, so maybe I got a 2-for-1 there.

     - The school wanted me to arrive around 7:30, for classes that start at 8:00. That's no problem. However, the school was on a block schedule and I didn't have a first period, so I didn't start teaching until 9:45. That's over two hours of me sitting by myself in an empty classroom!! Super frustrating. I took my Kindle and Ipod but was still painfully bored. Additionally, their wi-fi was password protected. So I started guessing. Willamette high school is in the Bethel school district, so I guessed variations on "Bethel," "Bethel School District," "BethelSD," "WillametteHigh," "Password" and "Wolverine." A student later told me the password was "B3thel." Dang it!!

     - I sing and hum very often. Especially when I am in the room by myself. Back when I was teaching high school, It was always weird for my TA's, or students that were taking tests, when it would just be me and him or her in a room and I would start singing. I think it's even more weird for students that I am subbing for. I'll walk around handing out papers or checking work, humming whatever song I heard last. I am fine with being the weird-guy-that-likes-math, though.

     - I was just terribly bored while subbing. Students did worksheets, classes were 90 minutes long, I wasn't needed for anything. There was one point where I was spinning on the stool in the front of the room, trying to make myself dizzy. (No, really!) While spinning, I heard a conversation out in the hall. A student had stepped out to talk to a friend. A school employee of some sort - like a campus monitor - was interrupting their conversation. I hear him say "Would you be doing this if your teacher was here?" and promply stopped and looked up. He was giving me a quizzical look. I am a good sub.

Anti-April

I have two questions: 1) Is this what spring is like in the rest of the world?
2) Could I get any lazier with the photos I grab off google?

     April is my least favorite month.

     It is the longest teaching month, in my opinion, because there are no holidays. Students start to get antsy for summer, but it is still to far away to really look forward to. Days get long, but it's still raining and gray out. I feel like April is one big, long holding pattern before summer really starts to roll around. I am glad it is only 30 days. I am glad it is almost half over.
     When you live in a place that gets one big burst of sun from June till the end of October in a good year, and from late July until early September in a bad year, you learn to really cherish the sunshine and warmth. Missing out on sunshine is a particularly devastating feeling, as I've mentioned before. That's part of why I became a teacher, so that I could have my summers off (as well as all of that stuff about raising the next generation and helping people with stuff and stuff). When April rolls around and you can see some sun and blue sky, but know it rarely lasts for more than 20 minutes at a time, it's a particularly tough tease to deal with.

     So today, with Cara at work all day, Wyatt scooting all over the floor entertaining himself, and me stuck trying to get some work done in a messy house, I found myself feeling nostalgic. I usually get nostalgic when the weather gets warmer. A few nights ago I tutored a college student on U of O campus. It was a warm spring night, just after a rain. It smelled great. There was energy on campus. People were young and having fun. I walked right by my old college house. I thought of all the nights where I started having fun at 10 pm, playing disc golf, or riding to a friend's house, or just riding along the bike path. College was fun, and it's over.

The view out my back yard this morning. At least there is one pretty
flowering bush. And the moss on that apple tree is coming in nicely. Do you notice how the sky blends in perfectly with the background of the blog? Wow. Long caption.

     I tutored some high school students as well. I don't miss high school much, but I had so much fun in those summers. Swimming and biking and playing and sleeping in and working late and counseling. I love summers. Will I ever get another one? I haven't had a great summer in a long, long time. I've been stuck in different towns without adventure friends and without cars. I've had to teach in the middle of the day, four days a week. I've had torn acl's keeping me on couches. I've camped maybe four times and rafted maybe two rivers in the past 5 summers. I used to call that July. The threat of not being able to play for another summer is looming, and depressing.

     I used to hate change. When I was young I made my best friends every summer counseling at camp. They were older and usually went of to college come September. The last week or two of camp even had that different feel, where we had to get fill-in counselors to make up for the college students who left, or the athletes who had daily doubles in August. On the last day of camp I wouldn't see them ever again. It saddened me.
     I've gotten over that loathing of change, though. I truly believe that the next stage of life is better than the last one if you let it be. Still, the lack of permanence in life is unsettling. Friends get jobs and move away. Wyatt will one day go to college, and he might not come back. It's at times like this that I find the comfort of a loving God and everlasting savior to be of immense importance. I take great comfort in knowing that one day I will be with Him and those I love forever. I just have to get through this life, really.

     Change is good when we go from April to August. Change is bad when October moves to January. But I can't try to live in a way where I only accept the good and the bad, I need to just make the best of the bad when it comes along. It turns out, that's easy to do when I have a beautiful wife, healthy baby, warm house and loving God. 

Criticism

     "Can I just say, you can be a real ass."

     I haven't been the best teacher this term. I've noticed that my energy and patience are much lower than usual. I respond less frequently to emails. I am finishing my grading more slowly, and have made a lot more mistakes in grading (and while teaching) than I am comfortable with. This hasn't sat well with me, as the term has wore on, but I haven't really dealt with it either.
     The day I gave my first test in one of my classes, about three weeks ago now, I got a note from a student (which stated it was written on behalf of at least a couple of students). These students felt that I moved too quickly when teaching, and that I needed to give more time on the test I had them take. I considered their arguments (I feel that I often do move too quickly), but in that scenario there were extenuating circumstances.

     Today, however, I was approached in back-to-back classes. In my math 65 course, a student told me about how he was struggling. He was a very frank, honest and mature person. He told me he thought I was a fine teacher and that if I taught anything but math he'd be "all about" my class, but that he needs more hand-holding and coddling in math (his words). I get this from students a lot. I think all teachers of entry-level math do. Students come in with such a fear of the subject, and a history of frustration, that we are both losing the battle before class starts.
     He explained that he didn't find me approachable. That it took him a lot of nerve to talk to me after class. And that he didn't think he was the only one that felt that way. Okay.

     A couple of weeks ago, in another class, a student did very poorly on her test. She talked to me after I returned the graded tests and asked if she could retake it. I asked her why she thought she would do better the next time, and she told me she met with a tutor (after the test) and understands things better now. I told her she could re-work the test, and if she did improve I'd give her a retake. She didn't improve. I think she felt that I was being dismissive of her (which, in all honesty, at that point I was). I asked her what she was in school for, and she wants to be an elementary school teacher.
    About a week later I tried to talk with her again about her plans and her future. I was trying to get a read on the sort of help she needed, or if it was worth an investment of my time. (It's kind of hard to view someone as "worthy" of extra help, but it happens). She told me she was going to have to quit school after this term because of her baby that was coming soon.
     Well, today in her class I gave a quiz. She finished last, and as she finished she said, to no one in particular, "Math takes me a while, but I'm not stupid at math." I had made no suggestion of impatience or frustration that I was aware of, so I said "Oh yeah, I understand." She followed with "Can I just say, you can be a real ass."
     I wish I could say I was caught off guard.
     "I apologize, that's not my intention. Can you help me? I don't want to be an ass to you or anyone else, so can you tell me what I did that made you feel that way?"
     "When we had that conversation, you made me feel retarded."
     "I'm sorry, I would never try to make you feel retarded, and I don't think you are retarded. Which conversation was it? Was it the one about the test?"
     "No, the one after that."
     I assume she is referring to the one I described above, where I was trying to determine if I should be helping her more. I've run it through my mind several times, and I thought I was being understanding and genuine and showing concern. Apparently I was not coming across that way.

     In the span of about two hours, from two extremely different personalities and backgrounds, I had been told I was an unapproachable ass. Not the qualities of great teachers.

     I have been less approachable this term. I am a bit more - how do I say this - myself this term than I normally let myself be in front of the class. It's not like I am trying to be less approachable, but I am not putting forth the effort that I used to to make it clear that I am happy to help people and take any question. Like I said, I haven't been the best teacher this term. So I guess these two students have confirmed what I have been feeling for a while.
     But here's where I struggle: those tests that my students complained about? This class averages were 74% (good) and 80% (great!) - and I don't give easy tests. I have lots of students in all my classes that ask lots of questions. I crack jokes and they laugh, they crack jokes and I laugh. I am connecting with a strong majority of my students. That's a good thing. I used to work to connect with the others, and this term I am not. That's a problem.
   
     The term is now half over. Five weeks down, five to go. I am going to work at being more energetic, approachable, and not-assy. I think I can do better.

Winning The Lottery

     Cara comes home one day and asks: "Are we ever going to win the lottery?"
     I reply: "No."
     "Why not?"
     "Because we never buy lottery tickets."

     She had probably driven by the big lottery billboard on I-5 that haunts everyone that passes through Eugene. 40 million Megabucks and 200 million Powerball - I believe them's are the winnings at the moment. That's a combined fifteen zeros. I drive by the sign twice a week, typically, and always figure I might as well buy a ticket and see what happens.
     The thing is, I am an incredibly lucky person. I pretty much expect things to work out in my favor - all the time - because history has taught me that they will, regardless or the effort or skill I put forth. I am constantly winning tiny little lotteries.

     Today was another example of a little lottery I have won in life: the office mate lottery.
     I was hired at LCC (win!) at a time when their enrollment was soaring high. It still is, really, so the fact that I teach "part time" at the college doesn't really matter because there are so many classes for me to teach each term (win!). But it does mean that there is very little office space to go around. I learned that I would be sharing an office with two other people: a husband and wife named Don and Inga Cataldo.
     They are the best office mates in the United States of America.
     I walked in and they immediately started clearing space for me and offered me the computer in the office. Forever. They bring their laptops and don't need it. We're off to a good start. Inga is from Ukraine. She and Don got married ten years ago when she came to the states. She has a daughter my age back home. As soon as I walked in the door on that first day, she asks me my age and I told her 25. She says "That's my daughter's age." She asks me some questions about myself. After knowing me for perhaps 12 minutes she declares "You are like son to me." She will bring me food to the office and any errand she runs for her husband (which is pretty much every chore in the office: getting copies, picking up mail, heating up lunch) she will offer to do for me.
     This fall we had a math-department meeting before the term began. We went around and said our names and something about ourselves. In typical Russian-accent-cadence, Inga says "Hello I am Inga I am married to Don and share office with Grant. He is super-handsome." She then sits down.
   
     A week ago the three of us are in our office. It's a crowded little room, and each of us face a different wall. I was getting up to leave for class and said "Oh, um, would you guys like to have dinner with Cara and Wyatt and I sometime soon?" Inga bolted in her chair and looked at Don and I in flash as soon as the "din" in "dinner" was uttered. She says "Uhh, yes. Saturday. You have baby, so you bring baby and I'll make dinner at our house. What do you like?" I said "Everything." She excitedly goes about her work again and I head out the door. She calls out to me "Don't eat anything between now and then!"
     We had dinner with them tonight. Just a few hours ago. I cannot describe the feast she threw our way. It was absurdly delicious. It was incredibly huge. She made enough food for a dozen people, when only four of us were eating people food. She made three desserts, just to make sure she found one we liked.

     These are the leftovers she sent home with us, to give you some idea.

The box of scones at the top-left she bought off a
fundraiser but didn't want, so she gave them to me. Jackpot.

     Again, I'd like to stress the word leftover, as that easily makes an entire meal. There was at least four times as much food at dinner, and lots of dishes that weren't sent home. She actually forgot to bring out an entire dish, but was okay with that because she felt it was too dry anyways.
     I was cleaning the table at the end of the night and she says "We always have leftovers. I won't eat leftovers and I won't give them to Don. We have no dog so I just throw it away." I said "Inga you can feel free to treat me like your dog," and she lit up and said from now on she will bring leftovers to the office.

     All of this post has been about Inga, but Don is wonderful too. He and I spend a lot of time in the office together. We talk politics or sports or news or, best of all, nothing at all. He is in the office a lot because he and Inga work pretty separate hours, so one is usually waiting around for the other. So he'll play freecell on his Ipad or take a nap. It's very relieving to have an office mate who is comfortable taking a nap with you around, as I feel like I can do the same.

     I should probably play the lottery, because I bet I'd win it. I would pit my luck against anyone else's and probably come out looking good. I am thankful for this and hope that it never changes. For what it's worth, I truly believe that I have such wonderful fortune because I obey God and His commandments, but if you would like to explain it a different way that's fine.
     I am going to go fulfill my role as Inga's son/dog and go eat that leftover fish.

Stuff That Happened To Me Today

     I subbed at the high school today for the first time in like two months.I've learned a couple of tricks in my last couple subbing adventures that I'd like to share with you.

     If the class has no homework assigned, I will lie to them. I should point out, I lie to students all the time. It's one of my main teaching strategies. I tell students I like them when I don't or that I don't like them when I do, or that their test is going to be hard when it's easy, or that I once hit a squirrel in the face with a rock. Things like that. Well, if the class doesn't have any homework, it's because they have a test that day. So I tell the students, "After you finish your test I'll put the homework on the board." When they all finish the test, I say, "You know, you worked real hard on that test and were a good class, so I am just not going to assign the homework. If your teacher has any issue with that, she can take it up with me."

     You should see the smiles on these kids' faces. They call me a hero and applaud me and give me high-fives and handshakes. It's wonderful.

     I wanted to feel that feeling more often. The feeling of being more-than-tolerated. So now, when classes do have homework, I lie. Say they are supposed to do problems 25 - 45 odd. I will write on the board "Page 312, problems 25 - 45 odd, 53 - 61 odd. Then, after a few moments, say, "no, that's too long," and erase the made-up stuff. They get much more confused and stressed, and aren't really relieved or proud of me at all, but I am still having fun. I think that's what matters most.

     I've always been kind of fascinated that I can just say stuff and people do it. Not even in teaching, but in life in general. I have a pathological addiction to lying, I think, kind of like the janitor. Everything written here is totally true, though.

     Another sub trick, although it is really more like a life trick, happens when reading names. I'll read, out loud, about 130 names a day when I sub, and I always feel bad for the kids that always have their names pronounced wrong. I've learned that you are much more likely to say a name right if you say it as fast as you possibly can. This works especially well with Asian names, if I am allowed to say that. Also, I will somewhat randomly alternate between first and last names, so that if a person has one name I am comfortable with I can say it and not look like I am singling anybody out. Still, I really butchered like 5 names today...

     I was walking Wyatt around the loop trying to get him to fall asleep. After a few laps, I burped, then he burped, then he farted and I farted before he was done farting. Then he peed.

     

Tutoring Terrifying Children

Do girls really like this show? Do they want to talk
about it? I have no idea.

     I am tutoring quite a few students in math right now. Most of them are in pre-calculus or calculus, but I cover pretty much anything. I've been tutoring high school students for a few years and am getting a pretty good system going. What I'm doing now for the first time is tutoring an elementary school student. It's a totally different ballgame, and what that I am not really trained for. What's more, it's with a fifth-grade, ten-year-old girl.

     I used to be really good with kids. I counseled at Camp Harlow for years and worked at an elementary school when I was a senior in high school. Every high schooler is good with kids if they want to be, because they are already everything a kid wants to be: older. When you are 17, you're already cool. By wearing a hat backwards and driving your own car and talking to other high schoolers, kids love you.

I didn't draw this, but I wish I could

     Beyond that, however, I am essentially a kid myself. I honestly like the cartoons Spongebob Squarepants and Phineas and Ferb. if Power Rangers was on I would probably watch it if they were air-fighting and not trying to develop plot. I know lots about Pokemon. I can talk and play sports with anyone but also like video games and nerdy things. I have a lot of random, probably-true animal facts at my disposal from working at a zoo. (Did you know that a kangaroo's nasal passage runs around it's brain before going to the lungs, in order to ventilate its brain? That might be true.) I think that farts are very funny if timed correctly.
     But my main two tricks with kids are this: 1) talk to them like they are an adult, and 2) call them "dude." I've found that kids really respond to being talked to like adults, because it doesn't happen hardly ever. I don't raise the pitch ofmy voice or talk super slow or generally baby-talk them, and we can have a normal conversation about how awesome the Dragonzord is (answer: super awesome). I don't talk to their parents about them, I talk to them. They appreciate this. And when you call them "dude," they just assume both you and they are cool, and everyone wins.
     As you've probably noticed, all of my strategies for relating to kids really pertain to boy-kids. I always babysat or camp-counselled boys. I don't know what the equivalent show to "Power Rangers" for girls is, and I am not a Bronie who knows about My Little Ponies. I can't talk fashion, don't want to talk about cute boys, and am not crafty. Girls are (still) terrifying.
     (additionally, at "teacher school" when I got my master's degree and teaching license, pretty much every lesson ended the same way: "gentlemen, DON'T EVER BE ALONE WITH A FEMALE STUDENT EVER EVER OR YOU WILL DIE." We could be talking about returning tests promptly and the instructor would have a statement like "when you are grading your tests make sure you are consistent, and guys, if a girl walks into your room while you are grading by yourself make sure you grab someone to join you immediately." You think I'm kidding, but I'm just exaggerating.)

     I was thinking over all of these things before my first session with the totally intimidating fifth-grade girl. Between me no longer being a cool-by-default 17-year-old, her not being a boy, and me not being around kids for about eight years, I was nervous.

I recognize this is my best weapon for
combating little girls.

     So, before our first tutor session, I was running through all of my conversation options. I had to win her over from day one - not so much for my sake, but because she needs a tutor and I want her to enjoy math, which means she needs to enjoy her time with her math tutor. When she walked in I shook her hand and said hello and had her come sit at the table with me while her dad sat in a chair nearby and read. I told her I liked the hat she was wearing, and the sparkles on her jacket (then felt stupid, was "sparkles" the right term to use there?) and I grabbed a bunch of colored pens for us to do our math with. Colors and pens was a big part of my plan. I tried to have some crafty-things that we did, and I complimented her on her handwriting. I even talked about how hard it is for me to make my "twos" look pretty when I write them. She met baby Wyatt and answered my questions about her family and class. She even giggled when I asked towards the end of the session "so, are there any boys in your class you think are cute?" and promptly explained that boys don't get cute for a long, long time. Getting a giggle was huge.
    I pulled out all the stops. I did everything I could. In fact, I used Letterman's go-to questioning when he interviews a kid on the Late Show: "Are you married? Do you have a house? Do you have a car? Can you drive?" When the kid says no to all these things, Letterman says "sounds pretty boring." The first session went well. Now what? I'm out of ideas already. If you have any suggestions, send them my way. We've had a few sessions and we don't have a common ground yet, meaning nothing to have a conversation about, just me asking questions and her answering them. I am working towards conversation, which I know doesn't necessarily happen with grade-school kids. At the same time, when I counselled boys we would talk about things like Charizard and Dragonball (not what it sounds like). I am sure we can get to the point where she and I can talk about things too, I just might need to get invested in Adelle or something, I don't know (seriously, if you haven't gathered, I have no idea).
     In the meantime I am still nervous before she comes over. Here I am, a math teacher that doesn't blink when a student wants to come over and get calculus help on stuff I haven't seen in years, and I am sweating out working with an adorable, sweet little ten-year-old girl on her long division. Some things never change I suppose.


(PS: if you didn't click that "bronie" link above, it's pretty fascinating/sad. There's a whole bunch of 20-30-something aged men who watch and blog about the new My Little Ponies TV show, and the call themselved Bronies. Look into it: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/06/bronies-my-little-ponys/)

Napster and the Rise of Entitlement

     I have spoken with a lot of veteran teachers who claim that students don't work as hard or are as well trained as they used to be. They also feel that cheating is much more frequent today than it used to be, and that students don't feel like it's necessarily wrong to cheat. I think a lot of those sentiments are common, with every generation feeling like important values are in decline and things were better back in the day.
     I do think cheating is more common and more acceptable now than it was 20 years ago. I think a big part of that is due to Napster. I don't mean that Napster is to blame for any perceived decline in morality among young people, I mean that it was the first thing to really capitalize on the best things about the internet: free, fast, everyone.
     Napster would let you download any song you could find for free, of course. That means that everyone who put songs up to share and grabbed songs to listen to could get those songs in a fast, free manner. This is very different than the prior system, where I could only get songs from a friend. We both needed a blank tape or cd, and a system to record the music from one to the next, and had to actually possess the music already. That's not a system that is going to cripple the music industry. It wasn't fast, free, everyone. It was slow, a few bucks, and limited to my very small circle of friends.
     Napster let me get all kinds of songs I wanted and didn't really want. But what's important is this: it never crossed my mind that it might be right or wrong. It just didn't. I was in high school, the songs were there for me to listen to and make mix-cd's with, and no one seemed to care.
     This idea that everything should be free grew from that. I can watch movies on youtube, catch up on old shows in a million different places, and have all the information in the universe at my disposal. Fast, free, everyone. I believe that the freedom and ease of the internet has crept into many other realms of society, especially among young people. If test answers are available, they are probably fast, free and for everyone. If a video game can be downloaded, it too is fast and free. It's really hard to stop and think about the morality and ethics of things that come so easy and quickly.
     Maybe this leads to the occupy movement at some level as well. I know that Occupy Your Town has a lot of different things they are complaining about, but one key sign that I see often is "bailout my student loans," or something to that effect. Why aren't there free, easy jobs for people to get? Why wasn't there free education? So much in life has been free up to this point, why does the system change so fast? The internet is a huge piece to this sense of entitlement that we see among 20-somethings and under, in my opinion.


     Now the senate is considering a law that allows the government to shut down websites that violate copyright laws. Most of the fun, free stuff would go away, including tons of youtube videos, all torrenting/streaming sites that don't have rights to their content, and loads of other related sites. Most of my facebook friends that comment on this law are opposed to it. While I agree that giving the government more control of the internet can be a scary proposition, companies like Nintendo, which was one of the first to publicly support the law, lose an insane amount of money due to piracy. I read a report that, worldwide, the videogame industry lost near $400 billion due to piracy in 2010. I am sure that number is inflated, but I am also sure that whatever the real number is, it's still absurdly massive. This report states that almost 10 million games were illegally downloaded in one moth alone. Fast. free, everyone. We feel entitled to have what we want when we want it, when it comes to the internet, and that sense of entitlement is expanding.

"Doing Math"

     I will often hear students say that they are solving problems without doing any math. An example: I put an equation on the board and asked my students to make a table of points that solve the equation:

2x + y = 12  was the equation.

Some points that solve the equations are (0, 12), (1, 10), (2, 8), (3, 6), (4, 4), etc. There are an infinite number of points that solve the equation.

When I ask my students how they got the points, a lot of them well say something (sheepishly) like "well, I didn't use any math, I could just look at the equation and see it."

When they say "I didn't use any math," what they mean is they didn't write stuff down and do adding/subtracting multiplying/dividing. Like, at no point did they plug in a 5 for x:

2x + y = 12
2(5) + y = 12
10 + y = 12
-10          -10
y = 2

so the point (5, 2) also solves the equation.

The above work they call "math."

     I try to stress that "doing math" isn't actually math. It's arithmetic. The adding/subtracting multiplying/dividing of numbers is simply arithmetic which is just a part of math.
     But mathematics is really just logic. It's logic applied to a very precise, well defined system. Looking at the equations 2x + y = 10 and just "seeing" points is really an application of logic, and that's math.

    Similarly, some students find more points in the equation above by noticing the pattern (every time the x-value increases by 1, the y-value decreases by two in the (x, y) points). They seem to feel that noticing and using a pattern isn't "math." No, it's not "arithmetic," because math is nothing if not lazy people noticing patterns to make their lives easier.

     I feel like this must be a result of poor teaching, from a young age. We call arithmetic "math" and never really teach straight, plain logic. It's frustrating, and something that CS Lewis mentions often throughout his writings. Teaching logic is challenging, and arithmetic can be easily grasped at a young age, so i understand its emphasis, but this is a huge disservice to our children.

Stuff That Happened To Me Today

     A student of mine at LCC went deer hunting and brought me back some venison steaks and a stew. Do I have to give him an A now? This is a quandary. It was very thoughtful of him to give me some meat without me prompting him at all. I guess, When he told me he was going to miss class because he was deer hunting, I said "if your freezers full you can always throw some venison my way," but it's not like I asked for some venison.
     More subtly, on the first day of classes I always begin by saying "My name is Grant Gilchrist, I've been teaching here for two years, and I can be bribed." As a government employee I feel like that's the right thing to do.

     I grabbed my frozen burrito and put it in the microwave for a few minutes, and went to my office to check facebook grade. When the microwave beeped that it was finished, I went back to the kitchen and checked the freezer again. My burrito wasn't there (venison still was, luckily). Where did it go?! Did someone seriously steal my frozen burrito? As I was freaking out I smelled it in the microwave and felt like an idiot.

     Did you know that a gallon's size was determined by the size of a goat's stomach? I really hope that's true because I've been telling my students that for years.

     I think I encountered my first brown recluse spider: the very poisonous spider that lives in the northwest and hides in dark, dank corners. I was moving a bag of pellets from a corner of the garage to the pellet stove, and I'm pretty sure that bag had been sitting there for a couple of years. When I picked it up, I thought "I bet there's a brown recluse under this thing. Sure enough!!! There, on the bottom side was a big, really dark spider with a huge butt (that must hold all of its deadly poison I am sure) that started moving around frantically. I ran with the bag into the house, threw it on the stove, and freaked out a little. I did my best to bury the spider underneath the pellets and hope it burns.
     I told all of my friends about my near-death encounter. Then I looked up brown recluses. Turns out they don't look like the thing I've had nightmares of, and don't tend to live up here. It definitely wasn't a recluse on my bag. I don't plan to tell my friends this.

     I was subbing at a high school and a kid just got up, went to the back of the room, sat on the counter and started talking on his phone. I wasn't teaching or anything, it was general work time, so it wasn't offensive or disrespectful. Usually if I see a kid texting, I write down my "phone number" on the board, and if they are asking their friends for help with math they can just text me. This makes them blush like crazy, and depending on the reaction I will start calling them "texter" and have texter work on the problem I was doing. It's lots of fun for everyone except maybe one person.
     Well, this was a new one for me (someone cavalierly on the phone in the back of the room). I grabbed my phone, held it up to my ear, and started talking on the phone right next to him. "Yeah, so I guess this is the place in the room where we just get on the phone and talk. No, there's not any more appropriate place to do this. Yeah, I know, right!?" Then I started basically repeating whatever he was saying on the phone into my phone.

Picture on my phone

     He turned to me, showed me his iphone picture and said "I'm talking to my dad." I showed him my phone with a picture of Wyatt on the desktop and said "I'm talking to my mom!!" He handed me the phone and said "no really."  He was talking to his dad. Not that it's any better. I handed back the phone and started yelling at people (on my phone) to buy low/sell high, move the inventory and stop mismanaging my funds. Things like this went on for a bit longer until I was bored. He outlasted me.

     When subbing, I try to not call of names for attendance if I can help it. It kind of halts the class, people start talking, and it reminds the class that I am not in charge. So if I have a seating chart, I just use it, and if not I take attendance at the end. I work really hard at saying people's names right on the first try. I usually read through the list once or twice to myself before I go live, and try to work through how I think names are pronounced.
     I was doing a great job. I called Juan Juan, Jesus "hey-suess" and Julia "who-leah." But her name was Julia Anderson. Julia with a J. And I'm an idiot.

Making a Difference

Sometimes I really feel like I am getting through to my students:

  When I asked him what time it was, he said "blue."

Stuff That Happened to Me Today: Building a Deck

     True story: A student of mine approached me at Lane Community College after class. She said "Grant, I have a question. I am building a deck and want to know how I can make sure to get a right angle when I am laying it out." I got excited, and asked her what we had to work with. She had the pile of wood from Jerry's, all cut and ready to go, a tape measure and a chalk line.

     Perfect. Absolutely perfect. This was the most validating thing that had ever happened to me in my math career. In geometry you do what's called "constructions," where all you have is a pencil, straight edge, and compass, and you need to make things and prove things and do things and things. It's fun and challenging and I will do it in my spare time (like, at a boring meeting, or when my wife is telling a story).

     I essentially had a compass and straight edge to make this right angle from a given side. Here's what I tried to explain:

Let's start with a picture I took of their house (well, I copied it off google maps)

Now let's focus on the pertinent part.

We want to make a right angle from point A upwards, and want to find the most accurate way to do that (note: not the easiest way, the most accurate way).

Along the same line as the side of the deck you have plotted, mark a point the same distance away from A on each side. (This is easiest shown with a circle)

Points X1 and X2 are the same distance from
A (6 feet) and lie on the same line as the deck

So we end up with

Having never remotely done this in real life, I can safely recommend using a distance of about 6 to 8 feet from A to X1 and X2.  Now we can use the points X1 and X2 to make a perpendicular to A. 

Whatever that distance from A to X1 is (let's say it's 6 feet), choose a substantially larger distance to measure. I'm going to use 10 feet to make the pictures work, but the longer the better (it really depends on how far out you want your deck to go, but we'll work with this). Draw two circles around X1 and X2, each with the same exact radius (10 feet in this case).

Points X1 and X2 are each the center of a circle with a radius of 10 feet.

You don't need to draw the entire circles, just trace enough to find the point where the two circles intersect above Point A.

Using your chalk line, mark the line from Point A to the intersection above Point A (let's call it Point I... for "interesting") and you have a perpendicular line! It's as accurate as you were.

Anywhere along that line you can put the other corner of your deck. Wasn't that fun!?

There are all kinds of tools and tricks construction workers use to make right angles that I will pretend to know, but given just a tape measure, chalk line and wood we can do it (truth be told, you don't even need the tape measure - a chalk line and a place to start is sufficient).

There are a couple of faster ways, from this point, to finish the rectangle. Maybe for another time.

Life Lessons

                There are life lessons I would try to impart with my high schools students when I had a classroom. Lessons like: go to college, don’t major in English or History unless you either absolutely love it or want to be a teacher, save your money, and don’t get into credit card debt. Teaching math is very challenging and very important, and opportunities to share these sorts of lessons don’t always come up naturally.

                I currently don’t have a high school class. I teach math at Lane Community College, where I would feel a bit odd sharing a lot of the above lessons to adults, many of whom are older than myself, and I substitute teach about twice a week. Tomorrow, if I get the opportunity I am going to share one of my favorite life lessons with my classes at South Eugene High School. I want to see what it’s like for a sub to do more than just hand out a worksheet and take attendance. When I had my own classroom, I had about 120ish students. What if I didn’t have to limit my personal ideals to just the 120ish students I had in a given year? What if I am able to reach more students while subbing? This is a new and exciting thought for me.

                I’ll give you the gist of the lesson, if you are curious (if not, you might as well go to some more entertaining website I suppose). It’s about the balance of freedom and responsibility in our lives. I feel that having more freedom requires one take more responsibility, which might be a new, possibly illogical thought for a 15-year-old, and when freedom and responsibility aren’t balanced there tend to be consequences.

hours-old Wyatt

                When we are born, we have absolutely no responsibilities, whatsoever. And when we are born, we have absolutely no freedom, either. We can’t do anything but cry. It’s a struggle to move our head, we can’t get food for ourselves unless a nipple is in reach, and we certainly can’t go anywhere. No responsibilities (sweet), no freedom (lame).

                When we are very young, we have very few responsibilities (clean your room, eat your vegetables) and just a bit more freedom (physically able to do simple things, freedom to play in most rooms of the house or designated parts of the neighborhood). A bit of responsibility and a bit of freedom, more or less in balance.

                The responsibilities and the freedom continue to grow together for a long time, and a few significant jumps occur. Maybe you get a car, or have your choice of classes in school (or a free period). When those freedoms start to occur, ideally responsibilities come with them. Get yourself to school on time, get a job to pay for gas, maintain a certain GPA or get into college. Still, this balance between freedom and responsibility remains.

                What happens to young men and women, from about age 15 to 25 (maybe 35 these days), in my opinion, is they will often try to keep increasing their freedoms without gaining the appropriate responsibilities. Get your car and go to parties or the beach. Get your free class and skip a few others. Go to college and go wild with experimentation. These actions, which are glamorized and encouraged throughout almost all media, can have consequences which rarely are mentioned. In 2008, the CDC stated that 1 in 4 American girls has an STD, and there are over a million abortions per year in the US, to cite two examples for women. For men, this pursuit of freedom without responsibility has led to less men in college (women outnumber them for the first time), men earning comparatively less than women and possessing fewer jobs than women ten years ago. (I compare men’s jobs to women’s jobs, because obviously men would make less and have fewer jobs now than 10 years ago due to recessions and high unemployment, but in that same time span women are still gaining.)

                I tell my students that I had had my most freedom when I had a full-time job and a full-time marriage: I had enough money to have a place to live, food to eat and a car to drive. When I wanted to go to the beach, I had a friend to go with and didn’t need to ask anyone. I can afford the video games I want and the food I like. They usually counter by saying “it seems like money is the key to freedom.” Well of course it is, at least in the ways I listed above, but you need a job to get money. At least, I did, and most of them do too.

Doesn't look like I've had much freedom lately, does it

                Now, here’s where my theory breaks down, and I used to tell my students this hypothetically, and now I can do it factually: Having a kid gives you much more responsibility and much less freedom. They no longer balance. That’s okay though, because I am happy with the other benefits and joys the new responsibility brings that aren’t freedom.

                So, we’ll see if I can spit this out tomorrow. I am subbing for a teacher I have already subbed for this year, so the students know me a bit. I expect to be mostly ignored or snickered at, but I am used to those things as a math teacher.