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At the end of a lesson, I often tell the students: “I must now release you back into the wild.”

Once, Tung responded, “Is this a jail?”

“No!” I declared, “Math class is not a jail!”

“Then why are you releasing us?” he asked.

Good question. “I am releasing you back into the wild. Do you watch National Geographic?”

“No,” he said bluntly.

“Releasing you back into the wild means that you have been in my care, like a hurt animal, but now you are strong enough to go back into the cruel world. For example, if an injured bird flies into your house, you take care of it, make it better, and then release it back into the wild.”

“Oh,” he said, “that happened to me once.”

“What—an injured bird flew into your house?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“So, what did you do, did you nurse it back to health and then release it back into the wild?”

“No,” he said, “I killed it.”

“Oh no!” I was shocked. “Why did you kill it?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “I was young, about 5 years old. I didn’t know what to do.”

“How did you kill it?” I asked, “Did you step on it?” I was hoping that the murder was accidental.

At this point, Nathan chimed in: “Tung snapped its neck!” Nathan imitated the ritual execution of a chicken.

“No,” said Tung, forthrightly. “I didn’t do that. I broke every bone, one by one,” and he proceeded to demonstrate, snapping his wrists: click! click! click!

I was appalled.

“I didn’t know,” he shrugged, “I thought I was helping it.”

Boys and Girls

I like to give hard problems. For example, today I asked the Year 11s to calculate the logarithm, base 27, of 6561, without a calculator.

"How are we supposed to do that without a calculator?" they asked.

I gave them a hint: "it's easy!"

Then Mr. Ross walked in. "Mr. Ross," I asked, "what is the logarithm, base 27, of 6561?"

He turned pink.

Then Mr. Barry walked in. "It's simple!" I screamed. "Mr. Barry, what is the logarithm, base 27, of 6561?"

"Four!" he shouted. WRONG!

"Three!" WRONG!

"You said it was simple," Mr. Barry observed, "so I figured the answer is simple."

Once Mr. Barry started, the boys started shouting out all sorts of silly answers: "SIX! TWO! FIVE! ELEVEN! EIGHT!"

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

The answer is 8/3.

Some people think these problems are too hard, but if there is at least one person in the class who can do it, I don't think so. Later I checked their answers and Erin, Ji-Young and Natsumi all had the right answer.

That's the difference between boys and girls. Boys love to shout out the answers, even though their answers are wrong. Girls prefer to keep quiet, even though their answers are correct.

Multiplication is Marbles

We had the Parent Teacher Conferences last week. Many teachers don’t like PTCs because it’s a long day, but they’re fun for me. I like to see where the students come from (literally, since I’m usually meeting with their Moms). The parents are always nice and thankful, and I usually feel like I have an ally when I meet with them. Like me, most parents are old-fashioned. They don’t understand all these newfangled theories about enquiry, discovery and reflection. Many of them are successful engineers, doctors, or business people who have counted a lot of cash, and they figure, “the way I learned mathematics was good enough for me, so why isn’t it good enough for my child?”

They also think we need more emphasis on basic skills and I agree. For example, one student asked me, “I understand 6x = 18, but how did you get x = 3?”

“It’s called division,” I answered, “you learned it in elementary school.”

“I don’t think we learned that,” she said, but her best friend came to my rescue:

“Yes, we did! Don’t you remember, in Ms. Dearborn’s class?”

“Ohhhhh,” she remembered, “you mean the marbles?”

“No!” chided her friend, “division is beads, multiplication is marbles!”

Exchanging Vowels

I apologize to my regular viewers (both of you) for failing to update the blog.

It’s a new year and there’s not much to report. Same, same but different. There’s a new principal (he’s quite nice, actually) and a new Deputy Head (he’s the old principal), and it’s still work, work, work, and then more work. The students get it even worse than we do.

Today, the Y13s were funny. We were talking about set theory. They were asked to write in set notation:

e is an element of the set of vowels.

“What’s a vowel?” Adarsh asked (I’m hoping he gets a 7 — in math, not in English).
I rolled my eyeballs and growled, “a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.”
“Really?” asked Nick, “I thought the set of vowels was what you exchanged before you got married.”

Darling, I give you my i and my e.
Sweetheart, you can have my o and my u.

The Tablet Ate My Homework

When I was a child we used to tell the teacher: The dog ate my homework.

Now the students say: the technology ate my homework. I told the Year 10s to email their homework to me. Two thirds of them were unable to do so. A typical exchange:

Student: I emailed it to you.
Teacher: No, you didn’t.
Student: Yes, I did.
Teacher: No, you didn’t.
Student: I thought I did. Oops, it’s still in my Outbox.

Or, they send us attachments we cannot open. A typical exchange:

Student: I emailed it to you.
Teacher: But it was nonsense.
Student: Don’t you have Mozilla Zippety CyberWolf Version 8.05(a)?

Modern students cannot print out a nice-looking paper copy that their old teachers can read with pleasure. They don't know what paper is. The saddest and most pathetic students are the ones without their tablets. Ha-Woon now walks around like he is in mourning; he might as well dress in black:

Ha-Woon: I couldn’t do my homework
Teacher: Why not?
Ha-Woon: My tablet is broken.
Teacher: Why?
Ha-Woon: I dropped it.
Teacher: Don’t you have a computer at home?
Ha-Woon: Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.

So, three days later, Hawoon-without-a-tablet brought his homework to me. Is it a nice-looking paper copy that I can read with pleasure? No! He handed me a thumb drive and said: here it is! I opened his thumb drive and found forty pictures of dogs.

Busted

When they first passed out tablets to the students, they told us, "don't worry, the students won't be able to put games on their tablets." Hah!

A week ago, I busted Pipe and Anu for "inappropriate use." I got tired of seeing them in the back corner tapping furiously on their tablets. When I called on Anu, he would say "huh?" and then look at Pipe. When I called on Pipe, he would say "huh?" and then look at Anu. It was like watching Dumb and Dumber.

Finally, I shouted across the room

"Pipe and Anu, hands up! Don't touch the computers, scoot your chairs back!"

It was a classic cops-and-robbers scene. I should've said "Reach for the sky!" like Clint Eastwood. Sure enough, they each had about six applications going and there was no sign of mathematics. I didn't bother checking but they were probably playing Warcraft and NBA Action, downloading music, shuffling their ipods, and chatting with naughty girls in California all at the same time. I sent letters home and got their mothers to agree: no more computers during math lessons.

What a difference! Now they sit up front and are ahead of the rest of the class. They particpate, ask questions, take notes and even explain solutions to some of the smartest students in class. I knew they must be smart to run so many applications at the same time. Imagine if they had been paying attention all year!

Potlickers

I went golfing this weekend with the potlickers in the photo. These are grown men but they don't act like it. They ate fried pork all weekend and then had a farting contest in the van back. Mr. Nicolson was the winner.

I hate golf for many reasons but mainly because I suck at it. So I was in a foul mood all weekend, and my mood wasn't helped by the fact that I was playing even worse than I normally do.

On the 14th hole, four of us were walking up the fairway for our 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th shots. The always impatient Mr. Clark teed off despite the danger. His shot whizzed past my head and rolled to the middle of the fairway near the green and about 330 yards from the tee. Mr. Nicolson didn't like Mr. Clark's impudence so he stomped on his ball and placed a leaf over it. Five minutes later Mr. Clark came looking for his ball. He paced about nervously, genuinely puzzled and confused, while we were shouting directions:

Forward, no back! Left, no right! Maybe it went in the water!

Mr. Clark was wandering around in circles like a prize bull with Mad Cow Disease. When he finally found his ball, he plucked it out of the mud and gently placed it atop a tuft of grass, which is allowed in Canada. Now, forty yards from the pin, he expected to birdie the hole, but he duffed his next shot into the woods.

Tater Tots Pre-School

The Year 8s came today and I gave them some really difficult algebra problems. A few Year 8s get pulled out of their regular lessons and sent to my room for "Extension/Enrichment". They love math, they're loads of fun and they're very smart. But that doesn't stop me from teasing them:

WHAT? YOU HAVEN'T MEMORIZED THESE ALGEBRAIC IDENTITIES?? WHAT WERE YOU DOING IN EARLY YEARS??? MY 2-YEAR-OLD COULD SOLVE THIS!!!!

They used to believe me but now they just laugh. We have lots of fun and they love the motto that is posted above my door: WORK is for people with jobs.


I wrote a recommendation letter today in which I said, "His parents have that lovely Nordic quality of thinking childhood is for play, not work." I wish more parents thought that way, but who am I to talk? We are so anxious about getting Jason into a good Pre-School that he's studying Calculus.