jumpingfish

Someone left behind a package of minty gum. It was sitting on a desk after all the kids had gone. The box was full and wanted chewing. I figured someone might claim it if I put it on my desk in plain sight — next to the left-behind water bottles, headphones, and hoodie.

The next day, after we were finished talking about factoring quadratic expressions, Martin asked me a question.

“Mr. Hasan, did you find a package of gum after class the other day?”

“I did,” I said. “Is this yours?” I held up the abandoned minty gum package.

He nodded.

“Is it really yours?” I asked. (I’d ask the same for someone claiming the headphones, so why not for gum?)

“Yes,” he said.

I handed it to him. He took out a couple sticks of gum and passed them out to the other students sitting at his pod.

…

After class, I noticed the package of minty gum was on the desk. He had left it behind, again.

I walked over and picked it up. A scrap of paper fell from beneath it.

As the temperatures moderate, it’s possible to actually sit outside. Sit outside and enjoy cool morning and evening breezes. Sit outside and enjoy the profusion of yellow and orange and purple in the yard. And enjoy the bees who especially enjoy the profusion. 

The bees are impossible to catch in a photo. They buzz quickly from blossom to blossom and then fly off to parts unknown before the camera will cooperate.

But the flowers with their yellow and orange and purple blossoms are more accommodating.

We had a short day last week. Not enough time for a full lesson, and several periods had just come off a legit hard test.

I put this up on the monitor at the front of the class.

“What’s that?” someone asked when they came into the room, pointing in genuine perplexity at the cryptic (?) glyph.

“It’s our plan for the period,” I said. There was an almost-audible sign in the room.

Of course that wasn’t quite true. (Of course it wasn’t.) There were kids who worked on test corrections. There were kids who worked on missing assignments. There were kids studying for other classes.

But there were no phones (as is the case every day this year, now that the legislature has our back on at least that issue).

1. Background

Years ago after I returned to work following surgery and lymphangiograms and more surgery and radiation therapy and chemotherapy for cancer, a colleague sat with me at lunch.

“You know, chemotherapy isn’t natural,” he said.

There just wasn’t much further that conversation could have gone. It was clear what he was implying — I was corrupting the gene pool.

Fast forward to today, and we have billionaire tech bro masters-of-the-universe breathing new life into eugenics.

2. Canceling Cancer Funding

I claim that bro-rebranded eugenics is hard at work. For example, Google around a bit. You’ll find articles about the Trump administrations cuts to cancer funding.

Admittedly, the story is a bit more complex than sensationalist headlines let on (link: snopes), but there is a reality on the ground that makes the full truth of the matter misleading — funds were just temporarily delayed and meetings temporarily suspended. Yet temporary or not, the actions have had consequences. Clinical trials got canceled in the temporary absence of dollars to pay salaries. Fundamental research projects got shut down in the temporary absence of approvals from review boards who are forbidden from collaborating with researchers.

Some cancer work was canceled.

1. Read the Instructions

I walked over to their desk when they raised their hands.

“Mr. Hasan,” one of them asked, “can we just write our work for problems 2 and 3 over here?” They pointed to the right of problem 1.

“No,” I said.

“What!? We can write small!”

“Did you read the instructions?”

They had guilty looks on their faces.

“For shame,” I joked. “Read the first two sentences out loud.”

They looked at the top of the paper and started to read out loud.

I have not left you any room on this sheet for your work on problems 2 and 3. To get credit for this assignment, you must do all your work for those problems on separate sheets of paper, closely following the steps we did in the notes.

“Oh,” they said.

2. Why Would I Do this?

You might ask why I do this. Am I just mean-spirited? After all, if they can write their work anywhere, doesn’t that demonstrate mastery of the core underlying skill?

Well, that is sufficient only if you have an incomplete notion of what the core underlying skills really are. There are in fact two.

You see, what I’m doing in this lesson is preparing them for the next. Tomorrow, the problems will be more confusing and the technical steps involve many more details than today. If they squeeze their work into an arbitrary block of white space they’ll “lose lock” on what the heck they’re supposed to be doing.

In tomorrow’s problems, being organized will be a necessary precondition for getting the math right. Without that, the whole process will be a dizzying blur. (I know this from personal experience as a student many years ago.)

So no, I do not do this to be mean. I am intentionally teaching (1) organizational skills and (2) mathematical skills together to prepare them for what’s next.

Because without mastering both, they’ll be toast on the next test.