Work
September 2020
Teaching is going well for me, and the kids like my working too. I love helping people to learn almost as much as I love doing math problems. The hardest thing to get used to, next to using community bathrooms again, is having math thoughts going through my mind at all times.
A few days ago, as we were going to school, I asked the younger children, “Am I working too much?”
“No. It’s perfect.”
“I like you being with us.”
“This is the perfect job for you.”
“You should do you.”
Jonah likes working on his homework at the board game table with me when I’m writing out the precalculus homework. Now that Syra’s Scribbles III is published and there isn’t any more re-reading and editing to do, it’s easier to finish my work for school when the kids are out of the house, but my school work is never out of my mind.
Last week while I was folding clothes, I was thinking about whether or not to have my students derive the quadratic formula by completing the square for the general quadratic. Their text has them completing the square in almost every assignment in their current chapter. I pulled the towels from the dryer into a laundry basket and put the basket on another basket turned upside down as a folding table and pulled the first washcloth from the pile to fold. It occurred to me that I wasn’t sure if I had the quadratic formula memorized after all these years.
At the top of my lungs, I shouted, “X equals negative B plus or minus the square root of four A C…”
From down the hall Sophia called back, “You forgot B squared.”
“I thought I was forgetting something,” I said.
“And put it all over minus 2 A.” Mike called from the dining room.
I love being in a math driven family. Mike and Sophia are often busy with work and school, but we meet in the kitchen every so often. It’s nice seeing them around.
I see the younger children in the morning as we are getting ready to go to school and in the evenings. The mornings are often noisy times though. Xenia has an audiobook going and Basil always listens to music. He loves Irish ballads these days and that passion has been passed on to the younger boys. For a few weeks, all I heard every morning was the boys asking, “What shall we do with a drunken sailor, early in the morning?” I still don’t know the answer to this question because that’s the only part of the song the boys sing over and over and over again, but the answer is out there.
When we get home from school everyone goes their own ways. With the nicer weather, the kids have been going to the park together and occasionally walking home from school. Between making dinner and keeping up on the laundry and dishes there are pockets of time for the kids and me to work on puzzles, read books, watch a little television, and cuddle. I love the cooler temperatures. I love the rhythm of the school year and the chance to get back to solving math problems. I love the fall.
Syra's Scribbles 