Learn Me Gooder (14 page)

I didn’t need to spend long in the store, having just a couple of things to grab. I took my items up to the cash register, said hi to the cashier, put my items on the conveyor belt, and started flipping through my wallet. As I was pulling out the ol’ magic plastic money card, the cashier asked, “So how is my daughter doing?”

I completely had not recognized Ella’s mother, who was standing behind the counter and waiting for me to reply. She hadn’t worn the Target apron to parent conference night, and that must have thrown me off.

I tried to recover as best I could. “She’s doing pretty well, actually. She seems to be paying more attention in class – oh, could you put the booze in a separate bag, please? – though she has turned in a few incomplete homeworks.”

While we waited for the credit card transaction to go through, I considered asking her if she had seen the ninja kitties video on the internet, but I figured I had already embarrassed myself enough by not recognizing her.

I really need to remember not to do my shopping so close to the school.

Well hey, have fun at the HPU Christmas party! Be sure to take pictures or video if Larry once again transforms into “Ted, the guy who hangs mistletoe in inappropriate places.”
Merry Christmas!
Gene E Awlogee

I haven’t heard from you since the New Year’s Eve party at Winter’s place, so I hope you’ve managed to recover fully. I guess you realize now that you’re too old to do tequila shots, and even more importantly, GIN shots are a horrible idea at ANY age.

Have you made any New Year’s resolutions? Here are a few of mine:
Continue to teach our society’s youth the basics and complexities of mathematics – after all, they are our future.
Establish a space base on faraway Pluto. It might not be recognized as a planet anymore, but it still has strategic value.
Learn a new language. I’m waffling between Elvish and Na’vi.
Further explore my newfound love for the cranberry.
Display compassion and patience with the students placed in my care, and stop snapping them with rubber bands.

Yesterday was the kids’ first day back after Christmas vacation. As expected, there was a lot of information that had been forgotten over the break, many groggy expressions, and a great disdain for having to be back at the school again. But enough about MY attitude; the kids were pretty good.

Before we left for break, several children gave me little gifts. I got some decorative candy containers, a candle or two, a tranquility fountain, and a couple of other items. So today, I handed out thank you cards to those kids who had begifted me. As a stocking stuffer, my mom gave me a set of Justice League thank you notes. Superman, Batman, the Flash, et al. graced the front side, and my heartfelt appreciation graced the inside.

Reactions were mixed. Jacob actually seemed embarrassed to be receiving a superhero card from his teacher, while Tomas exclaimed, “I’m too old for Batman!”

To which I replied, “Well I’m not!”

Clearly, I am going to have to go in tomorrow wearing my Batman tie, my green power ring, and maybe even a red cape for good measure. But not my Incredible Hulk underoos. He’s not in the Justice League, and the underoos are in the wash.

While I didn’t lose any students over the break, I did gain two new ones yesterday. Ta’varon and Demontrae are brothers, but not twins. That’s never a good portent for the older one, in this case, Demontrae.

Ta’varon is in my homeroom and Demontrae went to Mrs. Bird. Already, I can see tiny little differences, like the fact that Ta’varon is friendly and easy-going, while Demontrae is surly and workophobic.

Happy New Year to me!

While I was getting my new student settled, Mrs. Frisch came into my room and caused a bit of embarrassment. I can’t remember if you’ve ever met her or not, but you’d never forget her if you had. I love her to death, but the woman has no volume control.

She walked in right after announcements and said, “Hey, Jack. Did you have a nice break? How are things going with your new girlfriend? Are you in LUUUUUUVVV?”

This was in her normal tone of voice, which is only slightly quieter than a jet engine.

Naturally, all of the kids had stopped any pretense of doing their work and were just staring at me. I almost expected Jessie or Smoker Anna to ask, “Yeah, Jack, how IS your new relationship?”

I awkwardly told Mrs. Frisch I would talk to her later and drove our visitor out of the room.

This afternoon, though, I had a fantastic surprise visitor that was also a blast from the past. Pinar, one of my favorite students from my very first year of teaching (actually, one of my all-time favorites) stopped by my classroom around 2:00 today. She’s in the tenth (!!!!) grade in a nearby district, and they don’t go back to school until next week.

I was right in the middle of working a word problem with the kids when she came in, so after the exclamations and hugs, I told the kids that we had a guest teacher, and I let her take over for me. My kids from this year seemed absolutely flabbergasted that standing before them was an actual, real life example of someone who had been in my class years ago. They were practically falling over themselves trying to get Pinar to call on them as she went through the steps of the problem.

When she was done, she informed me, “I don’t really like math.”

D’OH!!!

We chatted for a few minutes, and I learned that she had skipped 5th grade, she was on her school’s volleyball team, and she still thought fondly of her old teachers. She was disappointed that Mrs. Swanson wasn’t at the school anymore but seemed very happy to hear about her two kids. We exchanged email addresses, and then she left to look for Miss Rooker.

Seeing Pinar made me think back on some of my other kids from my rookie year. I wonder if Kelvin is still rapping and dancing, if Ariel is still so overly somber, and if Marvin is still telling everybody that he tastes like chicken.

I’ll bet none of THOSE kids are too old for Batman.
Talk to you later,
The Flashback

Yes, I know full well that YOU are not too old for superheroes, but I’m not in the practice of writing thank you cards to people for dating advice. BAD advice, at that! Jill would most definitely NOT be impressed if I showed up wearing jean shorts, flip flops, and three popped collars.

Speaking of flip flops, I’m surprised you remember Esteban from my first year. I doubt that he skipped a grade like Pinar did, so that would make him a high school freshman this year. I wonder if he’d tell me the name of his girlfriend.

“AMANDA!”

“NO, CHRISTY!!”

“WAIT, IT’S KIMBERLY!!!”

Today we started something that wasn’t done during my first year at all. It’s an “enrichment” program after school on Tuesdays. (Sounds like something to do with wheat and associated by-products, right?) From 3:15-4:30, most of the teachers stay and supervise a group of kids in a specific activity. Some teachers run a soccer club, some do cheerleading, some do puzzles and Legos, some do chess. I wanted to do a “Texas Two-Card Hold ‘Em” club, but they wouldn’t let me. I don’t know why not, it would reinforce mathematical concepts of probability and multiplication. Instead, I chose to lead a basketball club.

I had a group of seventeen third graders (not just my own) at the outdoor baskets today, and the first thing I did was teach them how to play Knock Out. This is a fast-moving game involving two basketballs and a fair share of coordination. I’m holding off on teaching them anything that requires TOO much coordination, like the full court three-man weave or the 360 Tomahawk dunk. We’ll save that for the advanced club.

We were having a lot of fun, and the atmosphere was very relaxed. At one point, when several kids had hit consecutive baskets, I shouted, “I’m gonna start calling you ‘butter,’ cuz you’re on a roll!” This brought on a stunned, “HUH???” from several kids, and it effectively ended the streak. Note to self: third graders not yet ready for SportsCenter.

They did have their own little catch phrase, though. Whenever somebody made a shot – and quite often even when somebody just TOOK a shot – several of the boys would yell, “SWAGGER!”

I’m not familiar with this interjection at all, and nobody could tell me what it meant or why they were saying it, other than that they had heard other people say it. Even Tyler, who was screaming it the loudest and most aggressively, had no idea WHY he was screaming it.

This made me want to see if I could get them to say something else nonsensical.

The next time I made a shot, I shouted, “PICANTE!”

That got me some strange looks. I told the kids, “That’s what we used to say back in the day.”

I continued to shout it every time I made a shot. As I had hoped, by the end of the day, a couple of boys had tentatively shouted, “Khan-tay!” after making a basket.

As I was playing with the kids, it made me think back on some of my fond basketball memories. Going winless in my senior year of high school was not one of them. Being compared to a spider monkey by the Guam Bomb didn’t make the list either. But one of my brother’s 8th grade games IS up there as a high point.

My dad was the coach of Zack’s team, and I helped out as an assistant coach. This particular game was against the dreaded arch-rival, so we enacted Operation: Super Spazz. The Saturday morning of the game, I dressed as one of the team. I was a senior in high school, so I was already at full-size – 6’4”, 180 lbs – and I stood out monstrously from the other kids on the court. In addition to my size advantage, I had meticulously cultivated a wild, animalistic appearance. I wore a pair of racquetball-style goggles (think Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, circa mid-80s) and the most severe case of bedhead this side of Jimmy Fallon.

During pre-game warm-ups, I participated in the layup lines, each time running full speed at the basket and heaving the ball at the backboard as hard as possible. I was going for maximum rebound distance, hoping to have to chase the ball past half court into the opposing ranks. With each heave, I let out a primal yell, like the Goonies’ Sloth trying to free himself from imprisonment. I think at one point, I even picked up one of my brother’s teammates and shook him around.

Once the game started, I couldn’t play of course, so I sat on the bench. But the psychological impact was visible. The other team’s point guard frequently stole glances over at our bench, and whenever he did, I pointed at him and made a gesture like Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off of a bat. They played scared the entire game, and we won easily. Years later, in high school, my brother became buddies with several of the players from that team, and one of them confided in him that he had almost wet his pants that day.

Making memories. That’s what I’m all about.
Talk to you later,
Arlen Globetrotter

I apologize for giving you such a sports overloaded email earlier this week. I sometimes forget what a sports weenie you are, and that even athletes’ nicknames tend to confuse you. Though it’s certainly entertaining for the rest of us when you talk about Michael “The Refrigerator” Jordan, Alex “Air” Rodriguez, and Wayne “Too Tall” Gretzky.

But let’s move away from sports.

Earlier this week, Miss Gellar, a special ed teacher, approached me in the hall and asked if I had a boy named Maurice in my class. She told me that she thought he might be responsible for some graffiti out on the playground, as some writing with his name on it had been found on the inside of one of the tube slides.

I told her that none of my kids ever write their names on anything, so it was probably the Maurice in Mrs. Fitzgerald’s class. I did ask what he had written, though. I was fully expecting to hear that he had spelled “F-U-K” or “B-I-C-H-T.” Instead, Miss Gellar said the graffiti read, “Maurice has 25 hot wheels cars. His friend has 19 hot wheels cars. How many cars in all?”

Maurice is a math graffiti artist! SCORE!! Just kidding, nobody should be defacing school property. But hey, if you’ve got to write something onto the side of a public façade, why not make it something that is likely to stimulate brain cells?

Since we’ve been back from vacation, we’ve been focusing pretty hard on word problems. Maurice’s example notwithstanding, this has proven to have many “problems” of its own.

Most word problems follow some sort of logical path. Most third graders do not. So while it might make perfect sense to you or me that if somebody gives away five pencils, they should then have LESS pencils than they started with – prompting subtraction – that’s not always the way it works out.

Usually, when we walk through a problem together out loud in a class discussion, logic prevails. The kids, even the low ones, can tell me when they should add and when they should subtract. The problem arises when the kids face the questions on their own. The main issue being that many of the kids don’t actually read the problem or think about what the words mean.

Did you ever see that Far Side cartoon captioned, “What dogs hear?” The human says, “Spot, fetch my slippers! Good boy, Spot, that’s a good boy, Spot!” and the dog hears, “Spot, blah blah blah blah blah, Spot, blah blah blah blah Spot!”

Gary Larson could do a similar cartoon called, “What kids read.”
“Blah blah blah blah blah blah 15 blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah 3 blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah?”

The kid would then go through a complicated thought process – “Ooooooh, I spy, with my tiny little eye, two numbers!! The magic 8-ball in my head says to ADD them! Adding is my favorite!”

Then the teacher, ME, reads their answer and wonders why the heck each friend has 18 hotdogs, if Alex started with 15 hotdogs and split them up evenly among 3 friends. (Never mind the fact that they added hotdogs and friends and magically turned them all into hotdogs.)