My Kind of Math

This morning I was writing about growing things and overall how much better it makes me feel when I'm doing it. This reminded me of my life as Ms.J, second grade teacher. It made me think about how I spent five days a week in a room full of seven year olds, no aide, no extra help, sometimes parents would come in for a craft, or party, but for the majority of the time, it was me and my kittens. It was a lot of energy in that room with the big windows and wide sills. The cubbies spilling out with folders and pencil cases and snacks. And other stuff the kids would bring to play with at recess. 

They were the most creative,energizing,and exhausting years of my life. 

I loved those kittens. (still do, wherever you are - xo)

Every Christmas my mother gave me a bag of paper white bulbs (oh I miss her) and from that tradition I gave them to my students in the New Year. Each kid got a bulb - well you can read the scratchings in my journal entry (above), written in a flush of memory this morning. A wonderful memory of that big sunny room with all the window sills filled with pots of paper whites. The scent was overwhelmingly sweet once all of them bloomed. In pre-No-Child-Left-Behind and other craziness put in place, I taught math and science using journals and rulers and crayons and plants and other stuff like that. I'm sure we had math workbooks,  good for straight up computation practice, but getting out our science/math journals and documenting the growth of our paper-white bulbs - that was my kind of math. 

It was only 7:30 am

Life is so much more charming and simpler than we humans make it. Especially in the world of education. It's not that f*cking complicated to engage little kids (and ourselves) in life-long learning. For the paper-white project, all we needed was our notebooks and simple tools: 

Kids could be out of their seats at the window measuring, comparing their bulb's growth to a friend's, or going down the row sniffing each one while looking out the window. I was big on bar graphs because visually they're the easiest to understand and you can have a lot of fun doing it in different ways. I'm not sure where I was headed this morning with this one, see below attempting to illustrate my amaryllis, now split into two - Big Vivie + Little Vivie. The proportions are way off, I mean, the pot isn't that big compared to the flowering bulb, and honestly, I shouldn't point this out since I'm writing about second graders, but amaryllis's, at least until the flower blooms, bring to mind a penis, or two - come on, they're totally phallic! Plus I grew up in a house full of naked brothers and to this day, I see us squished in the bath tub together, laughing and carrying on, bubbles for beards and big white hair, plastic soldier's bayonets poking me in my chubby thigh.

not sure what happened with this graph?

You don't need to be a green thumb to grow a bulb. This amaryllis came in a pot with the disk of compacted soil - all I had to do was add water, fluff up the soil, and plant the bulb. Then, find a lovely spot, not too hot, not too cold, for your bulb to follow the light. 

                                                        I measured the two Vivies this morning. 

As illustrated from my scientific, mathematical calculations and life-like drawing - Big Vivie is ten inches + Little Vivie is seven. How many inches taller is Big Vivie to Little Vivie? 

Do the math, people.

As we enter the final week of this year, may your holidays be blessed + safe + healthy. Scott Peck opened his book, "The Road Less Traveled" with this sentence: Life is difficult. We all get that. Yet, we don't have to add (+) to the difficulties. Why not grow something instead?

An idea

A deeper love

(A deeper love for)Yourself

Gratitude

...or a simple bulb in a pot of soil. Maybe start there. 

It's too tiring at this time of year (especially this year) to take on more, don't you think? 

                           

Grow something.

  love b

  XO