Gift Cards remembered

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

We met Alexander at the mall for dinner at Bubba Gump’s – successfully remembering to bring the gift cards (put in Keith’s wallet immediately after getting home from the last attempt). We celebrated Alexander getting a pay raise because “he’s awesome” and “when I’m gone for a day, things sorta fall apart”. Yay, win! After dinner, we returned the shoes we bought last trip. Ha. I knew they wouldn’t work.

I had an interesting interaction at work today. I was subbing in an AVID class (Advancement via Individual Determination). The kids were working with adult tutors – as they do every Tuesday and Thursday. The kids prepare and present a Point of Confusion – usually something from an assignment that was difficult for them, or something on a test that they got wrong. They show what they know and demonstrate how to solve the problem. There was a girl showing how to use a formula to find the surface area of a triangular prism – 2B + Ph. I watched her lay out the groundwork and explain how to substitute numbers into the formula. I whispered to the tutor that she was explaining it correctly, but was using the wrong numbers and not actually following the formula. I actually did not know if that was a problem. Did it matter that the math was wrong if her procedure for this class was being followed, or was that okay? She said I should help with the math, if I knew how to do it. I then expanded the truth and said I teach math. I hopped in and asked the girl a few questions, showing that her correct answers to me were not the numbers she had put into the equation. She said, “I got this wrong, but I corrected it and got it right, so I am right.” Then I straight-out lied and said I was a math teacher, and could I just show her where she had gone wrong? She said no, she had gotten it right, so I was wrong. I stepped away and said okay. The tutor didn’t want to let it go. I said I didn’t think it was worth getting into, since the kid was quite irritated (not upset that I was saying she was wrong, but irritated that I was in any way participating). The tutor asked me to explain to her how to do it. I gave a quick once over and she said she had gotten it wrong and corrected it and now it was right. I gently suggested we try it one more time and was heartily rebuffed. I slithered away to bother another group.

I circled the room, stopping in at all five groups. When I got back to the first group, they were still debating it. All the kids in the group had gotten out that math assignment. Either they hadn’t done it or had gotten it wrong – no help. The girl at the board said her assignment was in her locker and was dispatched to get it. She came back in five minutes with nothing, having thrown it out. The tutor suggested calling her math teacher to find the right answer. I reiterated that I knew the right answer and how to do it. The tutor nodded her head, then suggested the girl go around the room looking for someone with the right answer. I wondered if I was invisible. The girl left to canvass the other groups and one of the other kids in the group asked me to explain it to her. I did and she nodded in agreement. She said she was pretty sure that is how their teacher explained it. She went to the board and filled in the formula, produced a calculator, and got the right answer. The original girl came back, and the second girl showed her where she had made her mistakes. The original girl said, “Yes, that’s right. That makes sense.”

I was still invisible.