jumpingfish

We didn’t have much time. His grandmother was coming to get him soon. We had a couple more algebra problems to review, a couple more equations to write.

Then she stuck her head in thru the door, flashing eyes, floating hair. She shouted over to him. 

“He’s a good teacher, you know.”

And then they said some things that I didn’t quite catch — maybe something to do with my shirt.

“What?” I asked them.

“You got a backstory, Mr. Hasan!” he said.

“You’ve got years behind you!” she said.

…

Years behind me. They got that right.

1. A High School Math Teacher’s Lament

Something’s not happening in middle school math.

For six+ years, students have been showing up in my Algebra 2 classes with little ability to think about (much less calculate with) fractions or negative numbers. You’ll hear this from any high school math teacher you talk to. And it seems to be true of kids in both advanced and regular classes.

Let’s talk about negatives…

My guess (based on no data) is that much like cursive or long division or how to hold a pencil or even keyboarding, teaching fractions and negative numbers has been abandoned in middle school. With so much to curriculum to cover, with so many standardized tests to administer, and with calculators so ubiquitously present, I’m tempted to think that the negative numbers have been dropped by the wayside.

I know. I know. I’m whining. Thing’s just aren’t like they were in the good old days. They don’t have to do what we had to do. I’m fully aware of how this sounds. And full disclosure, the comment on an old report card of mine, David isn’t learning his math facts, might be important to add into this mix (although truth be told that was elementary school).

Yet it’s getting in the way of teaching Algebra 2.

2. A YouTube Video

This morning I watched a video on YouTube. The teacher was at a whiteboard teaching how to solve linear systems of equations by elimination. The core skill has little to do per se with the arithmetic of negative numbers. Yet if you don’t understand the arithmetic, you’re doomed. 

I watch the video in disbelief as the teacher introduces elimination and the kids enthusiastically shout out the answers to the underlying arithmetic. They don’t hesitate. Their responses are instant — and correct. When asked to add -5 and 7, they shout “two!”, not “twelve”. (I have kids who will look at me as if I am from Mars when I say -5 + 7 = 2.)

Ok, who are these kids? Where is this school? That is obviously relevant. But then I look down and see that the video was filmed eleven years ago.

Is that really it? In the last decade, have middle schools simply abandoned teaching negative numbers? From my vantage point, it sure seems so. And as a result, if I am to teach the core skills, I am left with no alternative but to tell them “Go get a calculator.” 

And thereby I become part of the problem.

She came walking across the room as everyone else was walking out the door. There was a smile on her face, which is not really saying much, since she is always smiling.

“Mi Mila. What’s up?” I asked.

“Mr. Hasan,” she said. “I just want to say thank you for teaching us so … earnestly.”

I smiled and tried to think what it is that I do “earnestly”. Maybe it was… But of course that misses the point. She had just given me a stunningly wonderful compliment.

“Thank you, Mila,” I said. “What a sweet thing to say. You’ve made my day.”

Scribbled on pieces of paper years ago. Stashed under a pile only to be rediscovered recently. A transcript of a dream evidently recalled just after I woke up…

1.

I woke up camping beside a cliff. I could see and hear a creek in the distance. And there was a cave. My grandmother is there, already awake (as usual) when I get up. Atypically, she has a camera and is taking pictures. We wake up Ben. He goes off somewhere with friends.

How did the car get here? I have a vague memory of driving thru brush the night before, but that is all I can remember. It must have been late, and I must have been tired for me not to remember anything else.

2.

Not far down the road, after driving thru many rocky passes and over some mountains, we find a place to eat breakfast.

It is busy. There are many people seated inside, including John who taught me composting many years ago. I tell him about our camp site with the cave and the creek. He knows the place but is not impressed. Evidently is was private property, and he doesn’t approve.

3.

There are holes to be dug and posts to set. And of course, on my third swing, I miss the mark, and the sledgehammer handle breaks. [Don’t ask why a sledgehammer was the right tool for driving posts.] John has some kind of miracle glue, and fixes the handle. It seems as if the head will slide off the end of the handle, and everyone chooses to stand way back as I resume swinging.

I take mighty swings with my mended sledge, but I end up pounding a post thru the side of my large galvanized tub and break the handle again.

4.

I buy cinnamon rolls for Ben and another guy we’re traveling with. They’re five for a dollar, but I only buy four. I end up paying a dollar, anyway. The two of them stop talking and eat. I drive off [leaving them behind?] looking for a road back into the mountains.

All the side roads are private drives with locked gates. Mountains rise up on either side of the road, but the gated roads are all on the left. I continue up the main road and come to a gate with a cowboy standing next to a horse. He’s looking at a pile of brush. I stop, get out, and walk up to the gate and ask him if I may watch, to which he replies “Yes.” So as he begins to work, I lean against the gate and eat my cinnamon roll, which has transformed into a cupcake.

A group of kids walks up from somewhere — further up the main road maybe, or from the other side of the road, or from the man’s driveway on the other side of the gate.

5.

[On the next page, there is a map. It shows the gated drives that wind up into the mountains. It shows the main road running thru a valley from the café with the cinnamon rolls. And it shows the site of the sledgehammer pounding, which evidently was at a rest stop. Far to the northwest, it shows the camping spot beside the creek.]

6.

The group of kids who showed up are on some sort of tour. They’re led by a tall woman who is talking with animated gestures. I watch and listen. They disappear into a building, which I hadn’t noticed before [but which seems to be indicated on the map]. The cowboy tells me that the woman hasn’t been feeling well, but she is so good with kids.

Some other folks show up. We begin talking, and they invite me over to a deck under a shaded trellis. They tell me the story of this place. How it’s a private club.

7.

These people are evidently retirees, and they complain how the club benefits decrease when you retire, yet you still must pay the same membership fee.

We talk some more, and then I excuse myself to go back to the gate where the cowboy had been standing with his horse. But I take a wrong turn and instead of returning to the site of the cowboy and horse, I find myself in the mountains. I can see more buildings along the road. I realize that I must have taken a wrong turn. So I turn around to retrace my steps.

In the dead of night through the eyes of infrared cameras after an autonomous deorbit burn, two drogue parachutes and then three mains slowed an uncrewed Starliner to a successful touchdown.