Learn Me Gooder (5 page)
Authors: John Pearson
Yesterday, we wrote out all of the introductory sections – Problem, Hypothesis, Materials, and Procedure. The hypothesis was, “I think that the mass of the bubble gum will _____________ when it is chewed.” I wrote the four choices on the board and let each kid fill in the blank with his or her own opinion.
Thankfully, no one chose “change color.” When I took a quick poll in each class, the other three options all had takers, and there was no overwhelming favorite.
Today, we carried out the experiment. I’m sure that the intention of the original writers of this lab was to have each individual child weigh their unchewed piece of gum, then again weigh their piece of gum after each minute of chewing. I calculated that if we did it that way, it would take us roughly 217,089 minutes of class time. Figuring we didn’t really have that much time, I decided that all of the kids would be able to do the chewing part, but that everyone could watch as I weighed MY piece of gum each time.
When I pulled the packs of Orbitz gum out of my desk and started to unwrap them, several kids called out, “What flavor did you get?”
I replied, “Lemon-lime,” and suddenly there was a unified chorus of gasps and cheers.
You would have thought that I had just parachuted out of a helicopter and into the classroom, holding a ginormous bag of cash in one hand and a dragon’s egg in the other.
I had somebody pass out a piece of gum to everyone while I set up the balance on a table in the front of the classroom. The first step of our procedure was to unwrap the piece of gum, so we all did that, and no less than eight kids in each class held the wrapper up to their noses, inhaled deeply, and then shuddered with satisfaction. I know it sounds vulgar, but it really did remind me of Booger from Revenge of the Nerds, sniffing a pair of unmentionables after the panty raid on the girls’ dormitory.
Moving on from that disturbing image, the kids held onto their gum while I weighed my piece on the balance in front of them. I called out the measurement, and everybody wrote the number down in the Results table in their science journals. Then we started chewing. We used the red second hand on the wall clock to chew for exactly one minute. At the end of one minute, everyone took the piece back out of their mouth, and the kids held their own pieces of gum while I weighed mine.
During this time, many of the kids commented on the flavor of the gum. There was one or two comments along the lines of, “Thanks, Mr. Woodson – this gum tastes great!” But most of the comments were more like, “This tastes SOOOOOOO good!” – spoken in a tone of voice that I would more commonly relate to a nicotine addict who, having involuntarily gone an entire weekend without access to his smokes, has just taken his first drag.
After the first minute, we chewed for another minute and weighed again. Chew, weigh, record. Chew, weigh, record. Lather, rinse, repeat. We did this until we had officially chewed the gum for five minutes. At the end of it all, the results were clear-cut. The mass of the gum had decreased by about half of its original mass.
This lead to cheers and taunting from the kids who had chosen that as their hypothesis. Meanwhile, the kids who had chosen another option either cried or secretly changed their journal entry so they could join in the cheering.
With my morning class, I let the kids continue to chew their gum until it was time to switch to Mrs. Bird’s class. Then I held the trash can for them to spit out their gum as they filed past me out the door. However, my afternoon class finished the experiment at about 2:55, so there was a mad rush to get everything ready to go home, and I forgot to have them spit out their gum before they left.
As we were walking down the hall to go outside, Coach Keys, our PE teacher, noticed and asked one of the kids, “So they’re letting you chew gum now?”
I heard him and replied, “Yeah, it’s for science.”
As if that was the world’s greatest blanket explanation for everything.
If my kids picked up on that, I can imagine hearing about this conversation next week:
Teacher: “Did you just spit water on him and throw his pudding across the room?”
Student X: “Yeah, it’s for science.”
Teacher: “Oh, OK then. Carry on.”
Have a great weekend, man. Do a little science. Chew a little gum. Get down tonight. Get down tonight.
Have a good one,
Forest Gum
I would not recommend using the “It’s for science” argument to explain a poor heat pump design at a production meeting. Paul and Reggie are both way more “science” than you or I could ever hope to be, so that phrase might come across as something close to blasphemy.
Thanks for telling me that Steve Potts is having surgery tomorrow. I’ll be sure to keep my old boss in my prayers. If you see him today, tell him it’s okay to have his appendix removed, and maybe even his index, but nobody better lay a hand on his glossary.
Now that a few weeks have passed, I’ve had more of a chance to get to know my kids and their quirks.
There’s a boy named Eddie in my morning class that I may as well call Simon. This is because if I ever want him to do anything, I have to actually address him by name. If I don’t, it’s like he doesn’t even hear me.
So I find myself forced to play Simon Says. If I say to the class, “Boys and girls, please take out your science books,” then nearly everyone will take out their science books, EXCEPT for Eddie. He’ll just sit there at his desk, totally oblivious to the actions going on around him.
However, if I say, “Eddie, please take out your science book,” THEN he’ll immediately do as he’s asked.
He’s very consistent about this. It’s not a once or twice occurrence. So I’ve started making requests in the following manner.
“Eddie, and everyone else, please take out your science books.”
“Eddie, and boys and girls, please stop writing, and take out something to grade with.”
“Be sure to tuck your shirt in all the way around, Eddie – and everyone else.”
Another little boy, Amir, is very friendly and intelligent, but he has some pretty odd characteristics. For one thing, he doesn’t like to touch paper. I’m not just saying this as something I’ve observed. Amir actually told me that he can’t stand the way paper feels, and it makes him want to throw up sometimes.
Remind me to look into printing up my homework on lambskin.
Amir works around this obstacle pretty well. He WILL occasionally touch paper (and really, in this environment, how could he not?), but for the most part, he uses a couple of pencils like tweezers or chopsticks to move the paper where he wants it on his desk. Then as he’s writing, he doesn’t touch that paper again. It’s oddly fascinating to watch, but it explains why I can barely read what he writes.
Oh, and did I mention that he also carries a wet stick in his backpack?
Franco, the discoverer of a DIFFERENT way to do his homework (one that involved no work whatsoever), has another quirk. When called upon, he begins many of his answers with a chipmunk-quick, “Oh yeah, what’s it called?” Just today, I asked him if 37 was odd or even. “Odd!” he shouted.
“Why is it odd?” I persisted.
“Oh yeah, what’s it called, cuz the 7 doesn’t have a partner?”
Then there’s Big Jack. He and I share a name and a gender, but not much else. He lives up to his nickname in that he’s about 4’10”, which is big for a third grader. Also, he weighs around 150 lbs.
Big Jack has some Big ADHD. He is distracted by the merest thing, sometimes just the twitching of an ant’s legs in the front office. To him, pencils are rocket ships, meant to blast off (loudly) and fly around and often crash into each other. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that he drinks three Red Bulls for breakfast every day, because he fidgets non-stop, and he throws out rapid-fire questions. He’s always asking me if I like to perform various actions.
“Mr. Woodson, do you like to go bowling?”
“Mr. Woodson, do you like to go swimming?”
“Mr. Woodson, do you like to go Porky Pigging?”
I wouldn’t mind so much, if he didn’t ask these questions in the middle of class. I usually just respond, “I really like teaching and being listened to.”
Also, I can expect to be asked, “Did I do good?” at least once a day from Big Jack. It doesn’t matter whether he buckled down and focused (as much as he’s able) or whether he floated breezily through Shiny Object Land, he never leaves without asking, “Mr. Woodson, did I do good today?”
I visited Mrs. Bird’s room this morning to ask her something, and Big Jack had just contributed a verb to the list on the board. As he walked back to his seat, I was not at all surprised to hear him ask, “Did I do good, Mrs. Bird?”
I was tempted to say, “Eddie – and everyone else – please tell Big Jack that he did good.”
Later,
Joe Kerse
How did I know that it would be Nancy who asked about the stick? Her skills as a customer service representative demand that she gets all the details.
I certainly can’t explain WHY Amir carries a wet stick in his backpack, or even why it has to be wet. I can only tell you that it is about ten inches long, with a fork at one end. Maybe it’s a dowsing rod, in case he needs to find the nearest water fountain? His mother advised me not to ask him about it when she dropped him off one morning. As long as it stays in the backpack, I’m honoring her request.
I think it’s hilarious that you and Tiffany are going to start asking Larry, “Did I do good?” every time you give him a project update. I totally support that. Be sure to ignore him every time he doesn’t address you by name as well.
It’s nice that you’re having fun at work, but once again, I am feeling majorly frustrated with these kids. There are a few very enthusiastic kids in my class, like Jessie and Jacob, but overall, the kids are really low, and they don’t seem to care about improving that condition.
I’ve always understood (while simultaneously despising the fact) that a kid’s brain over summer vacation is like a beach ball with a slow leak. They always come back acting like they’ve never heard of concepts like symmetry and perimeter. But what frustrates me most about this year is that my kids don’t even know their basic facts. When most of the class needs to stop and count on their fingers for a question like “10 minus 9,” I start to get worried!
Still, I prefer the counting on fingers to the random guessing. The kids this year are low on knowledge but high on competitiveness, and in their minds, being first completely outweighs being right.
For instance, last Wednesday in my afternoon class, I asked, “What is 8 minus 6?”
There was a low collective, “ummmmmmmmmm” for about a second, and then the wild guessing began.
“SIX!”
“THREE!”
“EIGHT!”
“GREEN!”
OK, so no one said, “green.” Thankfully. And Tyler DID shout out the right answer amidst all the others. But this was not a difficult question!
Regrouping, or borrowing, on the other hand is not an issue for them – since most of them don’t do it!
“What is 12 minus 8?” I ask.
“SIXTEEN!!” the kids shout, as the high fives begin and the party favors get passed out.
Never mind that this is a totally unreasonable answer, since 16 is larger than the number they started with. 104 minus 98 apparently equals 194, 23 minus 7 is 24, and 200 minus 89 is, naturally, 289.
Even a lot of the high kids missed the problems that required borrowing on the pre-test I gave Monday. This is something they should have mastered in second grade, and it should be a quick review this year. Instead, I find myself having to teach it from scratch.
My Sir Mixalot approach to subtraction – “I like Big Bottoms with a Tiny Top!” – which worked fantastically last year, just has not stuck with the kids this year.
Recently, a teacher at another school passed on a little rhyme to me, so I’ve been giving that a try. It’s a mantra that goes, “If there’s more on the top, no need to stop. If there’s more on the floor, let’s go next door and get ten more. If the numbers are the same, then zero is the game.”
I thought it was super cheesy when I first heard it, but when I recited it in front of the class on Tuesday, the kids loved it! It really seems to be sticking, too, because more of them are remembering more frequently to regroup. Getting them to actually recite the rhyme has been a little bit more of a challenge, though. When I try to get them to explain why they need to regroup, I’ve heard a few mishmashes like, “If there’s more on the bottom, let’s go next door. And get another ten!”
I should make a note to ask Mrs. Bird to work on what makes a rhyme.
Still, they are slowly beginning to get the concept, and that is making a world of difference. Now if I could just get them to learn the WORD difference.
Remember that free response question on the addition test? Since it went over so well then, coupled with the fact that I’m a glutton for punishment, I put a similar question on today’s test. “What is the math word that means, ‘the answer to a subtraction problem?’”
Thirteen kids wrote, “Sum.”
I think I would have been happier if they had written “GREEN.” Culinary school is starting to look better and better. Just saying.
Talk to you later,
Tay Quay
Tom Winter sent me a note on Monday with a slightly modified version of my subtraction rhyme. I’m not sure if he’s shared it with you yet, so here it is:
“He’s got more on the top, so his gut will flop. If he’s down on the floor, he’ll continue to snore, and get mocked some more. If zero is his game, then Bommerson is the name.”
I’m thinking this will look lovely on an embroidered pillow in the corner of your cubicle.
