jumpingfish

1. Will We Ever Use This?

“Mr. Hasan?” he asked from the back of the room. “Will we ever use this?”

This is a frequent complaint in math classes. To my everlasting frustration, it’s a common refrain. Frustrating because, do they ask this of their English teachers? Their Theatre teacher? History? Band? Economics, for heavens sake?

Of course, that’s not how I answered. I didn’t say that, because in this particular case, his polite, diplomatically phrased question was a good one. 

I had given the pre-AP kids a really hard homework assignment (finding zeros of polynomials, including complex conjugate pairs). The four problems were long, tedious, and difficult. The algebra for one of them filled a full page. It must have seemed like busy-work. 

I conceded his point and explained my rationale.

“I know these were hard,” I said. “I assigned them because there are some things in life are just plain hard. Some things require paying attention to detail. Cooking. Changing a transmission. Installing a downspout without cutting into the plumbing that runs behind it.”

(Just kidding. I didn’t go into my own downspout shame.)

“I designed these problems precisely because they are hard, because they are tedious, because you won’t get the right answer unless you are neat and careful.”

I stopped for a second and looked at them.

“We talked about this at the beginning of the year. This class isn’t just about the math. It’s mostly about teaching you to think clearly and communicate well. And for those things, you need to sweat the details. These problems teach you that.”

I waited a second and then looked back at the boy who had asked the question.

“Does that answer make you angry?” 

“Kinda,” he said.

“That’s fair,” I said. “But that’s the best I can do. And it’s the truth.”

2. Logarithms in the Real World

We started with logarithms a few weeks ago.

One of the challenges of teaching logarithms is that the notation a bit odd and logs just seem… seem so… irrelevant. Certainly none of my students has seen much less used a slide rule. With the calculators we have on our phones, logarithms seem about as useful as the trig tables in an old CRC Handbook.

I anticipated the “How are we going to use this?” question. So I put together some problems in that showed real-world examples of logarithms. The Richter Scale. Decibels. Cents…

Wait. What? Cents? Yes, cents. 

Not cents as in “dollars and cents” but a measurement used to quantify relative pitch in music. I had stumbled across cents when I was putting the lesson together. 

While we were going over the problems, I stopped and looked up.

“I had never heard of cents. Have any of you?”

The percussionist in the front row nodded. He said they use it when they tune.

And there you have it. Logarithms in the real world.

3. My Cornet

“I am so ashamed,” I said. “I mean, I was in band, and I’ve never heard of cents!?”

“You were in band?” one of the kids asked. One of the others told her that they all knew I had been in band.

“Yes,” I said. “My cornet is in the band hall.”

“Wait, what? Why is… your cornet in the band hall!?”

I started to explain how I had given my old high school cornet to the band director.

“Oh yeah,” one of the band kids said. “Lucy was playing his cornet yesterday.”

Lucy is in a different period later in the day. When that period rolled around, I walked up to her.

“Lucy, I hear you are playing my cornet.”

She smiled and her eyes sparkled.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s so much easier than a trumpet.”

So you see? Logarithms will take you far.

We had been doing polynomial long division which spooks a lot of the kids. There’s a lot of writing involved in that procedure, and you have to be meticulously neat. They prefer synthetic division where you just write down numbers instead of all those pesky variables, and it’s easier to stay neat.

It was morning before school. My students know I’m always there then if they need help.

He was sitting at a desk closer to the front than where he usually sits. He didn’t really need help per se. He just wanted to do the homework there in case he had questions.

She came in for help, too. I must have been working with someone else, because she went over to where he was sitting and they began talking. I looked up and watched.

He leaned over and stared at her paper. He said something quietly and wrote something down. Then he pushed the paper back and gave her the pencil. 

“Now you do it,” he said. “Write that down.”

That’s how it’s supposed to work!

1. Leaving For Town

Their ice chest is good, but it’s not a Yeti. They periodically look at them but recoil in horror every time they see the price tag. It’s just crazy. And as he’s let the fair and industrious Trudy know, thanks to his cousin Stevie’s stories when he was young, he’ll never be camping en pleine air in bear country. For them, a Yeti unambiguously qualifies as a want not a need.

Being Yeti deprived, after three days almost all the ice was melted. The fair and industrious Trudy had been talking about this eventuality for two days, and her husband had not been responsive, finding the prospect of cranking in the van’s awning to be just an epsilon more than he wanted to deal with. But now there could be no further procrastination. It was time to leave South Llano River State Park and drive the five miles into Junction for ice.

They retracted the awning that was attached to the van, which they agreed they’d leave rolled up, since next day’s weather called for rain, and they didn’t want it to be wet on their drove home.

Then he drove into town alone. No sense, they figured, in the both of them going into the store — no sense when we’re all keeping our social distance. He left campsite 39 behind with Izzy sitting in Trudy’s lap who was reading a book in the sun of that warm afternoon.

2. At The Grocery Store

The park is on US 377 which runs north into Junction where it turns west a few blocks and then continues beyond Interstate 10 on the north side of town.

There is a grocery store there, where 377 turns west. So instead of making the turn, he drove straight into the lot and went inside. In for ice, of course. But also maybe in for toilet paper. And maybe in for some wipes. Or a gallon of bleach. 

As it turned out, there was only a small bottle of bleach, which he bought. No toilet paper. No wipes. So he rolled the cart up to the cashier with that bleach. And four bananas. And a box of pop-tarts — a splurge for his fair and industrious spouse who had made a comment the previous day about pop-tarts after they saw a kid walk by with some. (In the event, her desire for pop-tarts implicitly required a companion toaster which their well-stocked rental van did not include. And having no desire for pop-tarts himself, they ended up taking them home the next day, additional provisions perhaps for the shut-in life that they’d soon be returning to.)

“And two bags of ice, please,” he said to the cashier.

3. They Got Eggs?

As he pushed his meager load back to the van, a pickup truck drove up and stopped next to him. The driver had a sun-worn face, a cowboy hat, and an elbow out the window.

“They got anything in there?” the driver asked.

“Well, they got some things.”

“Eggs? They got eggs?”

He had not gone in for eggs, but he did remember seeing another sun-worn man pushing a cart laden with many things that included eggs and bread. 

“They got eggs.”

“And what about bread?”

“Yep, I saw someone with eggs and bread.”

“Well that’s great,” the driver said. “Thank, you.”

“Take it easy,” he said to the man who drove on. He loaded his modest purchase into the van, turned the ignition, listened to the sound of the Volkswagen engine, and headed back to campsite 39.

1. What Andrea Told Me

I was stranded in Dallas.

It was Friday on a three day weekend. I had just arrived at Love Field to catch a connecting flight to Chicago Midway, but that flight was cancelled due to a winter storm.

At the customer service desk, I spoke to a woman named Andrea. She summarized the options. They could get me to Chicago two days later (So many flights had been cancelled, it would take that long.), or I could return home in two hours. There were 23 seats on the return flight, so I had some time to make up my mind. I told her I’d be right back. She smiled.

The terminal was busy. I found a quiet-is corner and consulted with my brother and the fair and industrious Trudy. I decided to fly home.

When I returned to the service desk, Andrea was no longer there.

“My friend Andrea is gone,” I joked, pointing to her now-vacant computer. The rep behind the desk looked over at the empty computer and smiled.

2. What Deborah Couldn’t Do

This woman’s name was Deborah. I explained my situation and and summarized what Andrea had told me.

“I think I’m going to fly back home.”

“Ok,” Deborah said. She stared at her computer, punched a few keys, and was staring some more.

“By the way,” I said.

She looked up.

“You guys are awesome!” I said, smiling.  

You must understand that this isn’t like me. My mother called me Eeyore when I was very young. But this business of “It’s All Good” as part of teaching, has had some kind of transformative effect on the neural pathways in my brain. More myelin. More dopamine. Less cortisol. Less lizard brain. I am more cheerful. I am happier. Eeyore makes fewer appearances. And so it was as I spoke to Deborah.

“You guys are awesome!” I held up my hand. She smiled, and we did a high-five. 

After a few minutes, Deborah had booked me on the return flight. I asked if I could apply the fare from the (cancelled) connecting flight to my flight back home. And I asked about Monday’s (now abandoned) return flights from Chicago?

“From here, I can’t give you a credit. I don’t have the permissions,” she explained. “You’ll have to call customer service next week.”

“Ok, that’s fine,” I said. “Let’s just get me home. I’ll handle the return flight myself.”

3. What Deborah Did, Anyway

I might was well said, No worries. It’s all good.

Just as I was about to walk away, Deborah said, “Wait. Let me call my help desk and see what they can do.”

She picked up the phone and had a conversation with someone in some office in some city likely far away. When she hung up, she pushed a few keys, stared at her screen, pushed a few more keys, stared again, typed for a while longer, printed something out, and then looked up.

“Here is your boarding pass for your flight home,” she said. Then she turned it over. On the back, she wrote an 800 number. 

“Keep this boarding pass,” she said. “On Monday during working hours, call this number and tell them that there are some notes in your record. They will help you.”

4. What Thelma Saw and Did

This morning I followed Deborah’s instructions. I called and spoke to Thelma.

I gave her the background. I asked if she could see a note, which she could. She put me on hold, and when she came back, Thelma said everything had been taken care of.

“Do I need to do anything else?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ve refunded the cost of your full itinerary to your credit card, since we didn’t get you to your destination. You should see the refund in seven to ten days.”

Not a flight credit, mind you. A full refund.

Thank you, Andrea. Thank you Deborah. Thank you Thelma. What customer service! It is indeed all good.

1. Boarding the Plane

I had boarding pass C12. The plane was mostly full. It was going be hard to find a seat like this which had enough room for my backpack in the nearby overhead bins. There was a middle seat available in Row 2.

 “Is that seat taken?” I asked the woman in the aisle seat. 

“This one?” the woman asked, pointing to the seat next to her. I smiled and nodded.

“I don’t know, there’s this …,” and she held up a box of Kleenex that had been sitting on the empty seat. A young girl was sitting alone in the window seat, engrossed in a video on an iPad. The woman thought the Kleenex might be for someone who was with the her. 

I leaned over and said to the girl, “May I sit in this seat?”

She turned her head, held up her hands, and shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Maybe!” I repeated. The people behind me laughed. 

“Ok… here I come. I’m maybe sitting next to you.”

2. Flying to Austin

When the plane pushed back from the gate, the girl set down her iPad and tried to buckle her seat belt. Clearly she had done this before. She fumbled with the buckle for a few tries, gave up, and returned to her iPad. When we got to the tarmac and the announcement came that we had been cleared for take-off, she tried again unsuccessfully.

“Do you want some help?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I reached down and turned her buckle around.

“Here, try again.”

She did. It worked. She quickly turned back to the iPad.

As the plane accelerated down the runway, I heard her talking to herself, but it was hard to make out what she was saying. Whatever it was, she was clearly unfazed by the whining turbofans and the plane shaking. 

The flight from Austin to Dallas is brief. On this day it was also bumpy. We bounced around. There were no drinks. But the girl was oblivious, setting her iPad down only to change positions.

A few times she looked over, and I tried to talk with her. Had she flown before? Was she going to visit someone? She would look at me and then return to her iPad. 

3. Arriving at the Gate

When we landed, her face was glued to the window, and I heard her mutter, “There’s Austin.” The thrust reversers roared. The breaks groaned. As we turned off the runway, she pulled her backpack from under the seat and put her iPad away. At the gate, she unbuckled her seatbelt in one smooth pull.

A flight attendant came to get her. Since we were in Row 2, within moments they were walking up the gangway. I was behind them. The girl jogged up the slope. The flight attendant walked quickly to keep up, holding the girl’s hand and leaning down to read her unaccompanied minor badge.  

A man was at the end of the gangway, framed by the door leading into the terminal. He had a backpack over his right shoulder. He was smiling. She broke into a run, her pack bouncing on her back. The flight attendant let her go. 

When she got to him, he said, “How you doin’ kid?”

She said, “Fine.”