jumpingfish

She asked me if I had seen Jupiter and Saturn. They had been gazing skyward. The warming winters being what they are, I imagined them standing in their furrowed field in shirt sleeves in amaze at the star-strewn sky. Ours was cloudy, so my envy had to settle on an approximate conjunction the night before.

That was a week ago or so.

Tonight she asked if I had seen the full moon. She so puts my aerospace to shame. And again my envy had to be happy with a sighting last night as I took out some garbage, because this afternoon’s bluster blew in a solid deck of clouds and there is nothing to see.

“I wish you and I could sip coffee,” she said. “Swap stories and thoughts. That would be amazing.”

Indeed.

There is so much about this year that I want to ask her about. So much about students struggling. About reaching out. To encourage them. To make them smile. To maybe learn. There are so many things she could teach me. 

So yes, coffee. That would be amazing.

Did she ask about it? I don’t remember. She was standing at my desk in the front of the room, and somehow we started talking about my Google avatar. 

“It’s kinda me,” I said. “Do you know what he’s doing?”

She stared at it for a moment. “No.” 

“Saturday Night Fever?” I asked. “That help?”

“Um… no,” she said.

“John Travolta?”

“Oh,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “Isn’t he from Grease?”

So sad. Although truth be told it was only after I drew it that the Saturday Night Fever/Travolta interpretation suggested itself. 

“You’ll have to google it sometime,” I said.

She walked back to her desk. 

That day I said something about my father’s childhood. Perhaps the story about counting the cattle when they came back through the gate at the end of the day.

After class, a student came up to the desk. He looked at me through the light of the document camera.

“I thought you were Hispanic,” he said.

“You did?”

“… because of how you pronounce our names,” he said.

I nodded. And glowed on the inside.

“…and”

I looked up.

“…because of the color of your skin.”

I nodded. And glowed on the inside.

1. An Activity

What was it that day? Maybe there was a planned fire alarm. Or maybe a lot of kids were out testing. Whatever it was, we didn’t have a lesson. We had an activity, instead.

In the morning, I had cut strips of blue paper for the in-person students — two inches wide, 11 inches long. Three strips for each. For those on Zoom, I had posted instructions on what tools they’d need, how to make their own strips, how to get ready for what we were going to do.

“Do this,” I said. They followed what I was doing under the light of the document camera. We made a loop out of one of the strips, taping it together at the end. Then we drew a pencil line down the strip until they got back to where they started.

We agreed to the non-controversial conclusion that the paper had two sides: one side with the line, the other without it.

“Now do this.” We made a different kind of loop from another strip, twisting it just before taping the ends together. “And draw another line.”

“No way!” someone in the back of the room said. We had arrived at the odd conclusion that the paper no longer had two sides. Without picking up their pencils, they had drawn a single unbroken 22 inch line that somehow traversed what used to be the two sides of the paper: a Möbius strip.

2. Scissors

With a spritz of disinfectant and a paper towel, the kids grabbed scissors from a basket as I walked around the room. (They’re high school kids, but they still love using scissors.)

Together, we cut down the middle of the Möbius strip. Again, someone in the back got it: “Cool!” One big twisted loop.

Finally, we made a third strip but this time cut it not down the middle but off to one side. It pushed the limits of their scissor-hand dexterity. 

I was asking them to tell me what they thought was going to happen when voice in the back of the room shouted, “Wow!” and held up their result: two twisted, interlocked loops. A Möbius chain?

3. Feedback

Who knows what the Zoom kids thought.

I can never tell whether they’re even really there. Some obviously aren’t, since they don’t sign off at the end of class. And some seem to be. But how can you tell what they really think — of the lessons, of the problems, of today’s activity?

Then at the end of the day, a student email showed up in my inbox.

“Hi Mr. Hasan. I want you to know that I participated today.” And they attached this picture. “This was fun.”

There are lizards in the Turk’s Cap. Geckos scurry in the dry leaves and sticks on the ground below them, chirping in the dark of the night. Spiny Lizards climb the trunk of the Ash tree behind them, blending in with the bark so that you cannot see them unless they move. And Anole’s move slowly, changing from brown to green depending on the light. They move slowly until they leap in a flash to grab some aphid or fly or ant or other unsuspecting insectoid. 

There is also a Hummingbird that visits the Turk’s Cap regularly. I wonder what the lizards think of it.

It hovers and hums as its long bill probes deep into the red. It must certainly be mere inches away from some lizard hiding there. And I wonder what those hiding lizards think. Of that humming. Of that hovering. Of that invasion of their space. Which is of course not theirs. Or the Hummingbird’s. Or the insectoids’. 

But still I wonder what those lizards think.