Once upon a time there was an enthusiastic English teacher who loved words and reading and writing and poetry and especially grammar. She looked around the great state of North Dakota, trying to decide where the best place to indoctrinate, oops, she meant inspire, her students to love words and reading and writing and poetry and especially grammar.
She searched from Bowman to Langdon, Beach to Fargo, and Williston to Wahpeton and finally decided that Hazen was the place to indoctrinate, er, she meant inspire, a love of words and reading and writing and poetry and especially grammar. She slaved, er, she meant worked diligently, creating lesson plans and assessments, correcting paper after paper, and taking on too many extracurriculars.
She realized that this teaching gig was a lot of work, but she loved it. She loved words and reading and writing and poetry and especially grammar and was quickly realizing that she loved her students as well. But one day, she was feeling especially burned out as some naughty, er, she meant challenging, boys were giving her a run for her money. So exasperated, she threw her hands in the air and queried to her empty classroom, "Why do I slave, er I mean work diligently, for all of my students when they don't all want to learn and they don't care that I grade their papers or that I put all this time into creating lesson plans. I wish that all my kids wanted to learn everything, that all my lessons were perfect and already prepared for me, and that papers and homework would correct themselves."
All of a sudden the lights flickered off and her ActivBoard whirred to life! "Your wish is my command." It said in a ridiculously soprano voice. And with that the teacher who loved words and reading and writing and poetry and especially grammar and now her students was sucked into the ActivBoard and was never seen again for she no longer had a job to do and was not needed in her classroom.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
I Stand Up
When I listen to the whistle
shriek like a tornado's moving in
against my 8th graders--
those brave experiments out in life
and
When I listen to elbows meeting jaws
of my fragile 8th graders--
those fierce warriors conquering life--
and listen to the silence that
reverberates erratically from the whistle--
For them, I stand up.
When I listen to the
teasing, taunting, terrorizing
of a beautiful girl trapped in her own world--
Inwardly I cry--willing them to stand up
Outwardly I glare--and verbally declare,
"I thought we are all humans."
For her, I stand up.
Then I remember my own laughter.
She put a whiteout snowstorm on her pencil box.
Her clothes were a discordant song.
Her hair was a faded rainbow
And my 6th grade laughter was a dagger to her heart.
I chose to sit passively by,
So now, I stand up
shriek like a tornado's moving in
against my 8th graders--
those brave experiments out in life
and
When I listen to elbows meeting jaws
of my fragile 8th graders--
those fierce warriors conquering life--
and listen to the silence that
reverberates erratically from the whistle--
For them, I stand up.
When I listen to the
teasing, taunting, terrorizing
of a beautiful girl trapped in her own world--
Inwardly I cry--willing them to stand up
Outwardly I glare--and verbally declare,
"I thought we are all humans."
For her, I stand up.
Then I remember my own laughter.
She put a whiteout snowstorm on her pencil box.
Her clothes were a discordant song.
Her hair was a faded rainbow
And my 6th grade laughter was a dagger to her heart.
I chose to sit passively by,
So now, I stand up
My Love Affair with My Calculator
I developed a love of my calculator from Mr. Nagel, the most demanding, nerdy, hardworking, intelligent, calculator-loving math teacher of all time. He could hear a calculator fall to the ground a mile away and send his evil glare across space accordingly. (I often wondered if he had figured out a mathematical formula for that space traveling phenomenon.) He believed (rightfully so) that calculators were beautiful instruments because it could do advanced math problems in a few seconds. The same advanced math problems that he had to cut down trees to solve in college. However, he always emphasized that a calculator was only a tool to be used and you had to know why the problems worked as well.
This was all fine and dandy for me until I hit senior math: pre-calculus. Or perhaps a more apt description was that it hit me. I could crunch the numbers and figure out derivatives and probability and compounding interest and the wonders of the sine and cosine curves, but something was missing: I never understood the why behind it. Why would anyone want to divide by zero? Isn't that the cardinal rule of math? NEVER DIVIDE BY ZERO.
But I could crunch the numbers and go through the processes well enough to earn an A in the gradebook, so I decided I didn't need to know everything (which was a major concession for me).
Not understanding the why of derivatives, I took NDSU's math placement exam and was told by a lovely computer-generated printout to sign up for Calculus I or Applied Calculus. My English advisor had no experience with the math classes and told me to choose. My thought process went a little like this: Applied Math is the dumb math of high school; thus it must be the dumb math of college. My sister took Calculus; thus I can take Calculus.
I stayed in Calculus for three days. Several contributing factors: a quiz on the first day that contained a combination of numbers and symbols that I didn't even know could be put together; the professor commented that we had an English major in the class and that would be refreshing among engineers and maybe word people liked numbers too; I discovered pharmacy students only had to take Applied Calculus, and pharmacists aren't dumb; and the one that takes the cake: Calculus did not allow calculators.
So I took Applied Calculus and lovingly took my calculator. And somehow everything that I had gone through the motions of as a senior in high school actually made sense. I understood the why.
Two semesters later I forgot, and I am continuing to forget. So I lovingly gifted my calculator, that intricate mechanism of joy, to my brother. He let that TI89 slip off his desk into the graveyard of calculators. I hope he had to endure the wrath of Mr. Nagel's calculator-on-the-floor glare to the 100th degree, and I hope he figured out the formula for that awe-inspiring glare for I'd like to recreate it.
This was all fine and dandy for me until I hit senior math: pre-calculus. Or perhaps a more apt description was that it hit me. I could crunch the numbers and figure out derivatives and probability and compounding interest and the wonders of the sine and cosine curves, but something was missing: I never understood the why behind it. Why would anyone want to divide by zero? Isn't that the cardinal rule of math? NEVER DIVIDE BY ZERO.
But I could crunch the numbers and go through the processes well enough to earn an A in the gradebook, so I decided I didn't need to know everything (which was a major concession for me).
Not understanding the why of derivatives, I took NDSU's math placement exam and was told by a lovely computer-generated printout to sign up for Calculus I or Applied Calculus. My English advisor had no experience with the math classes and told me to choose. My thought process went a little like this: Applied Math is the dumb math of high school; thus it must be the dumb math of college. My sister took Calculus; thus I can take Calculus.
I stayed in Calculus for three days. Several contributing factors: a quiz on the first day that contained a combination of numbers and symbols that I didn't even know could be put together; the professor commented that we had an English major in the class and that would be refreshing among engineers and maybe word people liked numbers too; I discovered pharmacy students only had to take Applied Calculus, and pharmacists aren't dumb; and the one that takes the cake: Calculus did not allow calculators.
So I took Applied Calculus and lovingly took my calculator. And somehow everything that I had gone through the motions of as a senior in high school actually made sense. I understood the why.
Two semesters later I forgot, and I am continuing to forget. So I lovingly gifted my calculator, that intricate mechanism of joy, to my brother. He let that TI89 slip off his desk into the graveyard of calculators. I hope he had to endure the wrath of Mr. Nagel's calculator-on-the-floor glare to the 100th degree, and I hope he figured out the formula for that awe-inspiring glare for I'd like to recreate it.
The Beautiful Girl
The girl was known to be of a melancholy sort. She didn't play like the other children did. She didn't smile like the other children did. She didn't laugh like the other children did. Perhaps that's because she didn't have a loving home like the other children did. She washed the floors with buckets of soapy water, she washed the windows with buckets of vinegar, she washed the clothes with cups of detergent, she washed the dishes with spoonfuls of soap, and she washed away her joy with a waterfall of tears.
She hadn't always been of the melancholy sort. Once she had beautiful floors to imagine the world was hers on, beautiful windows to daydream out of, beautiful clothes to dress up in, beautiful dishes to have grand tea parties with, and beautiful joyful laughter that washed all sorrow away.
But that was before. Before everything happened, and she was left with few beautiful things, and her beautiful spirit was washed away like sidewalk chalk on a rainy day.
But not everything changed after everything happened. The old man was still her neighbor. The old man still loved to see the beautiful girl even though her joy was fading fast and even though it grieved him. So even though he was old and sometimes grumpy and sometimes curmudgeony, he decided he needed to find the beautiful girl whose joy was fading fast a new source of joy. For a world without joyful girls is no world at all.
So the old man thought back into the past in order to remember what brought him joy when he was but a lad. Now reader, this thinking back into the past did not happen overnight for he was a very old man and a very many horrible and joyless things had happened to him over the course of the many years since he had been a lad.
Slowly he thought back to homemade pie, adventures to the swimming hole, and stars smattered against a clear, crisp sky. So he brought her homemade pie, but the pie did not bring her joy. He took her swimming and still the joy would not return. The old man tried to get her to gaze upon the stars that lit up the night sky, but her eyes were too full of her own tears.
What am I missing? the man thought. He thought farther and farther back and had a new old thought. A thought that he had thought often as a young lad. His eyes started to sparkle, and he envisioned her eyes sparkling as well.
The old man planned and planned and finally his plan matured into action.
The dog's glossy coat sparkled and the girl's eyes lit up briefly, oh so briefly. And the man's eyes glowed as he saw joy finally returning to the girl's beautiful eyes.
She hadn't always been of the melancholy sort. Once she had beautiful floors to imagine the world was hers on, beautiful windows to daydream out of, beautiful clothes to dress up in, beautiful dishes to have grand tea parties with, and beautiful joyful laughter that washed all sorrow away.
But that was before. Before everything happened, and she was left with few beautiful things, and her beautiful spirit was washed away like sidewalk chalk on a rainy day.
But not everything changed after everything happened. The old man was still her neighbor. The old man still loved to see the beautiful girl even though her joy was fading fast and even though it grieved him. So even though he was old and sometimes grumpy and sometimes curmudgeony, he decided he needed to find the beautiful girl whose joy was fading fast a new source of joy. For a world without joyful girls is no world at all.
So the old man thought back into the past in order to remember what brought him joy when he was but a lad. Now reader, this thinking back into the past did not happen overnight for he was a very old man and a very many horrible and joyless things had happened to him over the course of the many years since he had been a lad.
Slowly he thought back to homemade pie, adventures to the swimming hole, and stars smattered against a clear, crisp sky. So he brought her homemade pie, but the pie did not bring her joy. He took her swimming and still the joy would not return. The old man tried to get her to gaze upon the stars that lit up the night sky, but her eyes were too full of her own tears.
What am I missing? the man thought. He thought farther and farther back and had a new old thought. A thought that he had thought often as a young lad. His eyes started to sparkle, and he envisioned her eyes sparkling as well.
The old man planned and planned and finally his plan matured into action.
The dog's glossy coat sparkled and the girl's eyes lit up briefly, oh so briefly. And the man's eyes glowed as he saw joy finally returning to the girl's beautiful eyes.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Trivia
Trivia isn't trivial when it becomes the means to winning a competition. From the perspective of an English teacher, it also isn't trivial when it deals with words, words, words (just ask Hamlet and he will tell you that three words in a row is a far cry from trivial; it might be more like maniacal or schizophrenic or, my favorite, pure genius). From a math teachers perspective, it also isn't trivial when it is about math because math makes logical sense and how could logical sense ever be trivial? These arguments could go on and on and on (like a certain song that doesn't end sung by a certain lamb puppet); thus I conclude that trivial is not trivial. However, I think I ultimately disagree with my conclusion: it is trivial compared to what matters in the long run. For what really matters in the long run? Your legacy, and if your legacy is only to be the best container of trivial knowledge, then what have you really left the world? I could contradict that, but I haven't the time for such trivialities.
A Delayed Resolution Resolved?
On January 1, 2010 I resolved to write three hours a week. On January 7, 2010 I lost my resolve. On July 6, 2010 I started to make up for lost time. Thank you Northern Plains Writing Project. I have made up for many lost weeks, but I still have a lot of time to make up. Perhaps this might help. Perhaps this might be another delay. Perhaps, perhaps not.
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