Things that creep, hiss, and sting

I was thinking today as I was teaching my middle schoolers that the math they were trying to wrap their arms around will be, in the end, almost useless divided by two. It's great mental excercise, don't get me wrong. And it leads to diverse and wonderful discussion. I AM a math teacher. I love math...or rather, Math in the same sense as Truth, or Quality like it may have been spelled out in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Real big idea stuff that we capitalize, you know? And because of this, many of the traditional math educators, and old- school math enthusiasts don't consider me a "real" teacher.

I have an expired interest in school math, for sure. My readers, both of them at most, know this. However, make no mistake about it, I love teaching, or perhaps I should say, Teaching. And I love the spirit of middle school kids...especially the ones in my school! I think it's what I'm here for. It's just that...there has to be something else. I can't help looking for something else. I feel this nudge, I mean Nudge, pushing me from behind on my way home from school.

I wish I could teach something else. I wish it was my responsibility to teach middle schoolers the things that they don't want to know (like those would be hard things to come up with). Things that some parents, teachers, and certainly pop culture don't want them to know: That living is difficult. My class would be titled Things that creep, hiss, and sting, metaphorical musings of some sort. The concept of getting kids (and adults as well I suppose) to go beyond what is absolutely and minimally necessary, is utterly alien to most of them. Anyone who trains in a gym or conditions for a marathon knows that if you don't push your body past what it's used to doing, you're giving it no reason whatsoever to change and grow. Choosing the easiest, non-overloading workout is a waste of time, as far as change and growth is concerned. Certainly, rest is important, but there will be no adaptation to something that doesn't get your body's attention.

That would be a teaching challenge. If kids believe math is crucial, it's because they've had it slapped into them that it is so. And being quantitatively competent is critical, let's not fool ourselves. I want something else. Give me the impossible. Everybody "knows" that math is important. I want people to know that difficult is important too, or Difficulty rather.

Driving by a church one day, the reader board stated, "Faith makes things possible, not easy".
Amen. Maybe I need to become self-ordained.