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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

This Batch of Children Will Do Just Fine

They didn't seem overly impressed with the origami time-lapse, but I found three (THREE!) secret-admirer origami presents on my desk throughout the day. A water bomb, a box, and a more-different box that looked kind of tulip-y. (When did they find time to make them in the midst of my dazzling instruction? It's a mystery.) (They were impressed by the ~500 views. "WHO ARE ALL THOSE VIEWS?!" "They are mostly my Mom." "Naw Miss Nowak has like 1000 Twitter followers." "WHAT?!" "Yeah she's apparently kind of a big deal." "Why?" "I have no idea.")

A child was making Vi Hart sketches of a triangle with an inscribed circle and infinity-more inscribed circles while waiting for his classmates to finish simplifying $\frac{4+\sqrt{-48}}{2}$. Me: "YOU WATCH VI HART?!?!!" Him: "Yes, I love her." Me: "ME TOO! YOU ARE MY NEW SECRET FAVORITE!"

One child keeps DOING SOMETHING to my rubik's cube in like four moves that I can't undo anywhere near that quickly and it's driving me literally insane. (Just changing the middle square color on all six faces? Wtf. I should be able to undo that THE RUBIKS CUBE HAS INVERSE FUNCTIONS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.)

Calculus is still a very timid group, extra afraid of being wrong slash anyone knowing they are wrong, but had lots of fun looking into the "there are always two antipodal points on a great circle at the same temperature" thing today. (Which true confession I'm not totally sure is a good use of Intermediate Value Theorem day but I kind of suspect is it, so I went with it.) There was a distinct, entrenched camp arguing "no," and a diverse, poorly-organized camp valiantly arguing "yes," and the "no's" were very gracious when they realized their position was untenable.

They will do just fine indeed thank you.

This all makes up for how I got observed today during quite possibly the worst-ever Geometry class of the year. (Observation the first day back from a four-day weekend? Who does that? We spent 45 minutes recalling the mathematical differences between their assholes and a hole in the ground. Not really but it took ten minutes for someone to summon a vague recollection of having heard of the pythagorean theorem before. I wish I was kidding. Needless to say we did not even get to the dazzling lesson that was planned. Why didn't she come last Thursday? We were pouring salt on triangles. It was epic.)