Pumpkins and Calculus

What a week. I think I was experiencing post Shelby Fest dissonance. Enthusiasm was at a year long low, attitude was sitting somewhere between despicable and horribly obnoxious. I went to visit my buddy F… for an attitude adjustment. I drove by his school (50 min away) to help him carve some pumpkins. For the first time ever I tried some raw pumpkin, straight off the gourd. I think it had carrot like qualities, but I was told that I was being misled by the color of the vegetable. Well, I am sticking by my story, raw pumpkin is bland and carrot like.

We stopped by a friend’s house and munched on some peanut butter and fluff and talked calculus. E… is a math major and loves math. I am considering taking a calculus class as a grad school pre-rec. As E… was teaching me some basic calculus ideas and proofs, I was cognizant of the waxing and waning of my attention. It was bizarre. This is how my students feel in class. We crashed and burned with long division. The kids were missing to many of the pieces to successfully assemble the equation and it was way to abstract. Pop! My attention smacked back in when E…started talking about the relevance of calculus when dropping bombs, then I would space out as he was laying out a formula. Generating investment is huge, no matter what your subject matter or activity. If people don’t care, they are not going to do ANYTHING.

I went to school reinvigorated by Thursday’s conversation and pumpkin eating extravaganza. I regained control of my class. We did some yoga and solved some problems. One little boy called someone retarded. He thinks this type of behavior is funny. The last few days this sort of disrespect had become all too common. However, today, it was not going to work. The comedy from his disruption was squashed along with the smile he had from gaining the attention. The peer pressure was once again palpable and this sort of outburst will not be tolerated. It is a necessity for me to be on my game a 100 percent of the time. Cracks in culture let the demons slip out. Pandora’s box had been opened and it was not pretty. I had gotten too comfortable and forgot what lives within the personalities and attitudes of some children.

I am ready to be in school and to be positive. I will not be like that pumpkin, bland and lacking excitement. Nor, will I be like revenge a dish best served cold. Instead the school day will return to a smorgasbord of necessity by meeting individual learners needs, creating a safe and welcoming environment and working as hard as we can all the time.