Confessions of an Anarchist Math Teacher

By John Thayer

“Teaching is about taking risks and crossing borders. It’s an unpredictable road trip with your family dog. You have responsibilities and worries, but the dog is always ready to go forward, to jubilantly explore and happily negotiate a way out of a gunfight.”

John Thayer learned this the weird way after teaching in many schools throughout the country, and being open to learning from his experiences. Like the time in the ambulance on the first day of school one year, “That kid has probably always wanted to do that to a math teacher,” he joked to the paramedics after they found him flopping around on the pavement like a fish, and wishing he’d taken the bus.

In this candid look at teaching, he challenges the status quo and asks hard questions to get at the heart of how teachers can solve problems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: May 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483430447

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Thayer

Copyright © 2015 John Thayer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3045-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3044-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015906679

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 4/28/2015

Contents

Preface

First Days of School

Tangents, Duels, and Making up the Rules

Seno de Theta

Undertow Railroad

Race Dogs and Rat Sandwiches

One, Two, Freddy’s After You

Lying to Children

Teaching in the Cracks

Gatorade Baby

Nuevo Burque

On God and Architecture

Albuqeurque Ink

Pizza and Genocide

Noise Art

Graduation

Acknowledgements

Preface

For a good many years while I was teaching in Albuquerque, some teacher friends and I made it a tradition to meet at O’Neil’s pub on the last day of the school year. We would always get there too early and the waitstaff was terrified of opening the doors for us, knowing what day it was, and the kind of pent-up energy we were capable of releasing. But we were there to laugh and tell stories. How could we not, with the incredible cross-section of humanity that we had just spent the past 10 months intertwining our lives with? Some of the storytelling was just about being able to laugh, some of it was to rant. This book is a collection of those kinds of stories. As far as the rants, they mainly deal with the aspects of the school system that both students and teachers are struggling under. There are many official names, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Elementary and Secondary Education Act. To me, they all amount to using standardized tests to evaluate schools and teachers. I am not an education researcher, I am a teacher, so any arguments I make against standardized testing come through the stories of my students, which range from hilarious to heartbreaking.

But talking about testing and political concepts too much can ruin a good story. It strips it of its humanity about as much as those tests do from the students who are subjected to them. All kids and teachers have great stories. They should tell them more. This one is mine, it’s for anyone who is interested in education, not just teachers. The math can be skipped over if needed, there isn’t too much of it. Just grab a beer or a sarsaparilla, and imagine we are hanging out together with music and friends and stories all around us. Hopefully someday I’ll get to hear yours as well.

First Days of School

As I crested the hill, caught my breath, and turned west with the sun and the mountains behind me, I could see everything in front of me with perfect clarity. Including a car turning and accelerating toward me. I thought, Whoa! This car is really going to hit me. I saw it come at me and somehow, even though I knew what was happening, I had no fear. Instead, I felt myself float like a falling autumn leaf into crashing river rapids.

If you have never gone for a bike ride early in the morning in Albuquerque, then there are just too many things you don’t understand about life. First of all, the light. There is no other place where the sky is so expansive and generous with its beauty. The New Mexico sky holds nothing back. Then there are the smells, especially in the fall. During my eight-mile bike ride to Del Valle High School, I would pass by Garcia’s New Mexican Restaurant on Central before crossing over the Rio Grande. They would be roasting their batches of Hatch green chile, a flavor and smell only found in this state. I would leave my house at six a.m. to see the city wake up, often to be treated to a throng of hot air balloons as I rode up the hill on Atrisco Avenue and then paused at the top to take it all in, the view of downtown, the Sandia Mountains, the river, the dazzling sunrise hitting the earthy architecture.

It was my fourth year of teaching at Del Valle and the first day of school. Everything I had ever done or learned had prepared me for this day. I was finally going to get to teach an Advanced Placement Calculus class, something that I had wanted to do since finishing my master’s degree in mathematics at California State University, Sacramento, almost ten years before. I had my lesson plans ready, a discovery-based collection of activities and projects that would require the kids to dig deep down within themselves and conquer unknown demons. I would be just like Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, where she plays the eager ex-marine-turned-beleaguered-teacher-turned-karate-master-turned-savior-of black-and-brown-youth (or did they save her?). I would prove the world wrong. I planned to come out on top this school year even if it took some makeup and body chiseling to make me look sexy in a leather jacket. All while Coolio made a song with me in his comeback video sequel to Gangster’s Paradise.

As it turned out, the car coming toward me changed my first day plans. I hit hard, then rolled, or bounced—not really sure—and was in the air again along with shards of glass and the promise of kissing pavement. As I lay there trying to collect myself, my first thought was of my classes: I have to get to work! There are lessons to teach and kids to save!

I mean, you really are screwed as a teacher if you don’t get everything right in the first few days of school. We all learned that from Harry Wong’s classic book for new teachers, a real page-turner with a riveting title, The First Days of School. Here is some of the wisdom he brings us:

The effective teacher assigns seats on the first day of school. I was just handed mine. On a serious note, I do understand why he says this. If a teacher wants to take control of the school year, knowing it is going to be another year of trying to coerce students into paying attention to content that they dislike, this is an absolute way to start. The question is, is there a better way to teach? Where you aren’t spoon-feeding boring and meaningless content, and managing the behavior of frustrated students in the process?

The very first thing that must occur when the students walk in is they must immediately get to work.(This one I like). If it’s a math class, the central problem they’ll be working on that day should be posted on the blackboard. Their work should be to sit and think about it without picking up a pencil. Next they can try stuff on paper for a while, then talk to each other about it. They should savor it and the class should use this as a springboard for deeper, more exciting mathematical morsels. They should talk about how to build models to illustrate concepts such as creating miniature golf courses containing putting diagrams, so students can apply the geometry of angles and reflections. Then things should get loud and messy and out of control. But wait, I think he means one of those easy warm-ups or do now things that teachers assign so they can take roll and not be bothered while they finish their donut and try to remember what they were going to lecture on. Instead of giving your students busy work, get to know them as human beings, though it is definitely more difficult to do when you are recovering from head trauma.

The number one problem in the classroom is not discipline; it is the lack of procedures and routines. No, I’m pretty sure it’s the lack of thinking going on. That is the number one problem. Thinking, creative problem solving, making things, these have all gone out the window to make room for procedures and routines and worksheets and test prep.

Oh yeah, I remember this from somewhere, I thought after I collapsed into a heap onto the pavement. When you are on a bike, and a car hits you, it’s never good. I looked to where the car should have stopped and, not seeing it there, began screaming for help. The driver did stop eventually. He couldn’t go far because he no longer had a windshield. He got out and asked, Call 911?

YEEESSSSS!

He ran into a house and people started coming out in their bathrobes and curlers with their morning coffee, curious about the commotion. As they stared down at me, I saw myself through their eyes. I remembered a time when, as a ten-year-old, a car ran over a cat near our house. We all stood there looking at the writhing animal, not knowing exactly what to do. It was the first time I had seen an animal, I considered to have a soul, die. I had seen plenty of fish, fowl, and reptiles sputter out, even at my own hands, but never a person or a pet.

Staring down at the cat, I remember thinking how strange it was that, although it was horrible to see this beloved member of a family in such suffering, with bones and parts in all the wrong places, I wasn’t afraid of looking. It didn’t seem all that different than watching my father clean a striped bass we had caught.

I recognized the same expression on their faces. People shaking their heads, thinking to themselves, He doesn’t really seem too much different than a fish.

And you thought you would never hear a real-life juxtaposition of a fish and a bicycle.

After what seemed like the length of both first and second periods, a teenage girl came running out, removed my helmet, placed it under my head, kept me from moving, and talked with me. She commanded the adults around her: You! Go in and get some towels for the bleeding! After asking me who I was and getting my wife’s phone number: You! Call his wife and you call his school. Don’t worry, she told me while gently stroking my throbbing head, Help is coming, you are going to be OK, everything is going to be OK. She talked to me about the kid who hit me. It was her boyfriend, a senior on his way to pick her up for their first day of his last year.

This was clearly the most vulnerable I had ever been in front of a student, and the only time a student had ever literally held my life in her hands. It was such a paradoxical moment that I really felt I needed to pronounce something worthy of this profound occasion.

Oh, I said, Is he all right?

A motorcycle cop arrived first and stood over me, perhaps remembering that he was planning on picking up some fish for dinner that night. Then the ambulance arrived, I was strapped in, and we went on our way. I finally felt safe. I tried out a joke, That kid has probably always wanted to do that to a math teacher. One of the EMTs said, You know, buddy, we are still pretty worried that you have some serious internal injuries so we need to get you to the trauma ward as soon as we can. Tough crowd. He opened up his fancy flip phone and showed me a pic of the car from the front. This is what your body did to that windshield.

I was discharged later in the afternoon with no more than some stitches around my temple and a broken clavicle. I was at home for a few days but was going crazy with our neurotic cat Copernicus, my own weird thoughts, the pain of a clavicle broken in half, and daytime television. I mean, who knew that Victor Kiriakis was still around on Days of Our Lives, the show’s schemer from at least when I was a kid? He hadn’t seemed to age a day! But I felt like I was accelerating my own aging process by watching him so I decided to go to work with my head bandaged, my shoulder in a sling. And, since they felt useless and trivial to me after my near-death experience, my best plans and procedures remained at home in my junk drawer with Harry Wong’s book.

Whenever I am teaching, I am accompanied by an ever-present anxiety that I have come to think of as a socially inept friend that I never invite over or try to encourage in any way, but still won’t leave my side. Let’s call him Joe. Sunday nights are the worst, other than the first day of school after a long break (especially after a long summer break punctuated by being hit by a car). Joe will tell me about all the stuff that can go wrong. How the kids won’t want to listen or participate. How there will be too many in each class and how they will cause all kinds of problems. He’ll tell me, Man, you are a boring-ass speaker, and you look and act like a schlub. Pathetic. I’ll look in the mirror at my receding hairline and expanding waistline and think he might be right.

When