Wed, 12 Nov 2025, 10:27 PM (-06:00)
“Let me tell you how my day started, Mr. Hasan,” Matt said.
He was fidgeting in his chair, something he doesn’t usually do. He was particularly animated, waving his hands around with a huge smile on his face. And he wasn’t waiting for me to ask him how it started.
“My dad and I went to Taco Deli,” he said. “We go there in the mornings.”
“Mmm…Taco Deli,” I mused.
“Let me tell you what I had…”
“An Otto,” I said, imagining the refried black beans, the bacon, the avocado, the cheese…
“That’s right!” he said. “But, let me tell you the best part.”
I was thinking chips. Coffee. Maybe another Otto.
“Three Ottos,” he exclaimed rather loudly. The students around him were listening intently. “My dad said I could have three. And I added an egg to each one! And that was just the beginning of…”
The bell rang. It was time to pass out the Unit 3 test.
Mon, 10 Nov 2025, 10:34 AM (-06:00)
Is there music coming from the classroom next door?
I can barely hear it. Wait. Can I? A high voice that periodically gets drowned out by the chit-chat in class (some of which is related to the test review they’re supposed to be doing, some of which is … not). There it is again. I don’t recognize the tune. It sounds classical. Or operatic.
I walk over to the wall to see if I can hear it better.
Andy looks up at me, waves his funny wave and points to the Sara sitting next to him. She’s looking down at her desk where there’s sheet music laid out with the test review is peeking out from behind.
She’s quietly singing. Reading the music and singing. Practicing for a competition.
She’s a top-notch singer — likely going to state this year. And she’s quite good at math. With that review hidden behind the music, I guess we’ll see how things go with her test in a couple days.
Sat, 8 Nov 2025, 08:05 AM (-06:00)
It was first period. It’s a luxuriously small class. The kids all get along well. For the most part, they get their work done. Emma, who a master at math, sometimes brings in a snake. Today she had a corn snake.
As we derived the quadratic formula, Cornelius slithered around her arms and neck.
Yesss, studentsss. Ssso nice to sssee you again. Now, sssolve these quadratic equationsss.
Sat, 1 Nov 2025, 05:57 PM (-06:00)
On Wednesday, they learned how to complete the square, a long-ish process that generally makes the kids’ eyes roll back in their heads. In a few days, we’ll use that to derive the quadratic formula. But first, we need to discuss taking the square root of a negative number. (Quelle horreur!) For this, they’ll need to learn complex numbers.
So that’s what we did on Friday.
In the course of the lesson, I grabbed a green highlighter and highlighted the real part of a complex number in an example problem. Then I highlighted the imaginary part in yellow. As I did this, I heard talking at the desks behind me.
Now, you must know that during this period, at this pod of five students, there is almost always some talking. They’re rascals, and nothing I have done has solved that problem. Still, they’re good-natured rascals, we get along well, and there’s something about the five of them that seems to be engaged, even if there’s consistently a lot of talking among them.
I glanced over my shoulder, preparing to stare them down. This technique works remarkably well — turn, stop teaching, and stare patiently until they realize that everyone is watching them chat. But when I looked over, I saw that the conversation was about who was going to get which color highlighter. Matt held a blue one up in the air, taunting Dannielle until she settled on orange.
It’s not every day that students wrestle over who gets dibs on the highlighters for the notes. So I turned back around and continued the lesson.
Tue, 28 Oct 2025, 10:51 PM (-06:00)
There was that Whip-Poor-Will singing outside at dusk the other night. And there were those Monarchs turning circles in the front yard among the blooming wonders in the yard yesterday.
And a few days ago, there were the Stag Beetle grubs slowly turning in the compose pile as I buried the kitchen scraps. They’ve returned this year. I didn’t tell you about them? Just as well I suppose, for I suspect some of you might not rate squirming grubs up there with butterfly vortices or evening bird song.
But certainly ranking up there is what the Fair and Industrious Trudy spied leaving our yard the other morning. She saw a Roadrunner, dissatisfied perhaps with the dry creek that runs along a greenbelt a few blocks from here. It had evidently heard of the water that we set out. Word gets around, it seems.
Trudy spied the Roadrunner, and then the Roadrunner sped away. Can’t you just hear it?
Mon, 27 Oct 2025, 10:00 PM (-06:00)
With the long-overdue rain we had over the weekend, the front yard is abloom.
Fall Asters, Purple Trailing Lantana, Russian Sage, and even Mealy Blue Sage have exploded in purples that complement the yellow and oranges of the rest of the yard. And those yellows and oranges have found new vigor, evidently casting aside the seed-making on which they had become focused in favor of new buds and blossoms.
Because it had rained.
When I stepped out of the car in the driveway after getting home from school, a Monarch butterfly flittered about my head. I shouted in glee to Trudy who said they had been all over the yard all day.
Let’s be clear, the demise of Monarchs is so complete that a single butterfly is cause for celebration these days. Just one.
Yet there we were, standing by the curb with the yellows and oranges and purples spread before us. And swirling among the blossoms or sitting on a flower stretching their wings was a host of Monarchs. Ok, six of them maybe a dozen, or maybe more. Who’s to check my figures?
It was enough to make our hearts explode, the Monarchs landing here for a moment and then fluttering there. Gathering nectar, perhaps. Because it’s a long way to Mexico.
