Democratic Mathematics

Come on and we’ll sing, like we were free
Push the pedal down watch the world around fly by us
Come on and we’ll try, one last time
I’m off of the floor one more time to find you

The week went well. I figure I should post now as I'll be internet-less the next three days and quite unreachable (unless you know my digits in which case give me a shout yo). I got to sub twice this week, the first one was chronicled in my last post I believe. Odin's day, however, I taught English and Math. English was nice and smooth. Watched The Last of the Mahicans (with the main character who Mrs. Rice referenced as "Hot-guy" (character name: hawk-eye)) then finished up with She's the Man and Much Ado About Nothing (the version full of currently famous actors). I went hungry this day as I gave my lunch away to a girl who had forgotten to bring one. After these classes I finished my paperwork and was on my way out the door when I got called last minute to emergency cover a class. Now, I haven't done, much less seen calculus in about five-ish years, so covering a Calc class was... a learning process. While covering math I invented a new type of math I officially dub "Democratic Mathematics." This process mainly involves me being asked how to answer problems that I can vaguely remember doing something like at some time in the past, but otherwise having no idea even how to approach (I had no answer key). So... I had the kids write down their various answers and processes on the board, and we voted based on how many people arrived at each conclusion which answers were correct... Democratic Math, at least this way, if the answer is wrong, everyone can take comfort in the fact that they are all wrong together. Also I learned that I can look at how one kid did his work, and tell another kid how to do it and it's not cheating anymore since I'm now the teacher...

Otherwise though, the times and the epics have been good. I'll keep you posted though if anything changes. Now I'm off to explore the wild (more and more I feel like a Romantic Hero (you know from the romantic writing period)...)

And here we go there’s nothing left to choose
And here we go there’s nothing left to lose