jumpingfish

As they were reviewing for the final, a student walked up and quietly asked a question.

“Well,” I began to answer. “Do you remember when we talked about matrix multiplication?” 

“Kinda,” she said, drawing it out in the way they do when they in fact don’t remember.

“There was a problem about four women runners and how many points they earned.”

“And you made sound effects.”

“I did,” I said.

I reached to the whiteboard and acted as if I were removing a row from a matrix (making a creaking “errrrhhhkkk”), turning it (making a hooting “wooop”), and lining it up against an imagined vector (making a tongue-popping percussive sound).

“That was it,” she said.

The rest of the answer to her question was relatively easy.

“Are you going to decorate your door, Mr. Hasan?” a student asks.

“Well, I’ve kinda started.”

“That’s it? That red paper? I thought someone was helping you.”

“They’re not finished.”

“Judging is Friday, Mr. Hasan. You want us to help?”

Easy question to answer.

And so they take the snowflakes cut out from handed-in worksheets. And they take the elf with my face superimposed. And they ask for tape and scissors and pens and more butcher paper (because the red paper on the door was ragged at the bottom and needed to be neatened up).

They’re in the hall as I write. I see movement under the door. And periodically I hear the sound of packing tape being pulled from the roll. 

“We’re going to redo the tape at the top,” they say. 

“Yeah, the top of the door is dusty, so the tape didn’t stick. If you want, you could…”

“Mr. Hasan,” Sonya says peering around the door with a smile to reassure me. “We got this,”

And so they did.

Note #1

A colleague sent me a note the other day. A student aide knocked on my door and held out a sheet of paper. The aide said that she had asked him to deliver it. I thanked him, set the paper aside, and continued with cubic functions. 

I looked at the note later. It was an Amazon receipt for clear plastic spoons with a sticky note attached. It was signed … uniquely.

Now, it is true that this colleague and I get along well. She and I really love our kids. We like foreign languages. We have both been recognized as good teachers. But evidently I didn’t realize the depth of our relationship. 

Note #2

In response to her note, I sent an email back letting her know that her secret was out: that the gift of clear plastic spoons was unexpected but … appreciated. And I attached a photo of the receipt with the sticky note attached.

Moments later a horrified reply arrived in my inbox.

It seems that the receipt was intended for the school secretary and that the sticky note was for her not me. “Oh Mylanta,” she wrote. “What will Trudy think?” 

A Birthday Party

Last night this colleague had a birthday party — a big one, a multiple of 10. She saw me when I arrived and graciously came over to thank me for coming.

“I have a card for you,” I said.

She looked at me suspiciously. “You didn’t…” 

“Well, open it,” I said.

There was a drawing of a cake on the cover. A cake with many candles — a multiple of 10 and then some. And on the inside there was a hoard of celebrating stick figures lined along the bottom of the paper. They had their hands in the air. Some were jumping. Some were dancing.

In the middle of the card there was a brief note: “We all ❤ you!” The heart was prominent. The emphasis was on all.

The party was really fun. Sadly, it appears I won’t be getting clear plastic spoons this year.

#silentsunday

Ben took us to Beacon Hill today. We walked beside red brick row houses along gaslit streets staring into the windows where we could, making sure not to trip on the bricks and paving stones.  We gazed at the dome of the state house in the distance. “That’s real gold,” Ben told us the tour guides say. He had a mischievous grin on his face, but in spite of that, Wikipedia backs up the stories (guilded first in 1874, then again in 1969, and most recently in 1997). 

Our destination was Beacon Hill Friends House, where he is the facility manager. He showed us the courtyards with fall color strewn about even though the real color of the season by east coast standards has long since passed.

He showed us the boiler and woodworking room in the basement and other dark corners. He showed us the ancient elevator. We climbed narrow stairs and walked out onto a roof deck above the kitchen where Vickie was preparing a Thanksgiving turkey and filling the room with delicious smells. He showed us the library, lined with old books.

And then on our walk home home, Ben took us to the Boston Central Library and into the reading room where we sat at oak tables under green reading lights in the quiet. And my eyes grew teary.

His grandparents would have been very proud.