It Doesn't Quite Add Up

It began with a stream of unexceptional thoughts: Katherine's birthday is tomorrow, oh, yeah, I want to mail that birthday card and I still have time to get a coffee before school starts and here's the place where I can turn around and BLAM! I ran my new blue Prius up and over a snow-covered curb with a wrist-wrenching thud, and jerked to a stop 100 yards from where I had intended to turn. DAMN! I yelled. HOW STUPID! Air hissed from my left front tire, and the plastic sheathing protecting the undercarriage was buckled and torn. Screws dangled. Pieces of mangled black plastic lay in the road.

Just yesterday I had been congratulating myself on how carefully I was driving these days, how long it had been since my last speeding ticket - except for the one in California two years ago -  how my insurance rates had dropped, how mature I was becoming in general...

BLAM!

I drove to school and parked, resigned to the fact that my tire would be flat by the end of the day. I would deal with it later.

"Good morning!" the school secretary greeted me.

"Hi," I said.

"Let's see, today you're in 7th grade math."

"Math?" I repeated. "Are you sure you don't mean language arts?"

"No, it's math."

"Not social studies?"

"Math."

I have taught some math, an extremely elementary form of it, possibly up to fourth grade level, but no further. If, in my role as assistant, it fell to me to teach a lesson in fourth grade, I could safely turn to the answers in the back of the teacher's manual. If a student asked me how I had arrived at an answer, I solicited aid from Hannah, aged 9.

The 7th grade teacher had thoughtfully left me a lesson plan. The math text book lay open to a page filled with what was quite possibly ancient Sumerian, although it was titled "Coordinate Graphing." I identified charts with intersecting and bisecting lines and arrows and points and letters. There were some algebraic terms: x-axis, polynomial, and linear equation. 

I remembered that when I had coached middle school students in remedial math, a fellow teacher had organized the lessons for me. We had shared space in the same classroom, so when situations arose - such as the rare student actually wanting to know the mechanics of something - I could summon my friend for help.

Once the school principal had pulled me aside after observing a literacy class, and after congratulating me on the efficacy of my teaching style, the engagement and liveliness of my students, he asked bluntly, "But, you don't really teach much math, do you?"

"Not much," I admitted.

After the 7th graders swarmed in, and we ran through the pledge and morning announcements, we played a few rounds of Mum Ball. Mum Ball is a game played silently in which a soft Nerf-ish ball is pitched around the classroom. If you drop it, you're out, if you throw it too hard, you're out. If it goes in the fish tank or out the window, game over. I figured if we played for 15 minutes, that would be nearly half the class.

"Are we gonna to do some math today?" Jimmy finally asked.

"Oh, we have time for one more game," I told him. "What's the rush?"

When the Mum Ball flew onto a shelf containing glass beakers, and a scuffle between 2 basketball players broke out, I grudgingly agreed it was time to stop.

I stood behind a wooden podium at the front of the classroom, math textbook open, and read the instructions aloud. Then I had Jimmy read them again. I pointed to the white board where there was something that looked like an example of the indecipherable Coordinate Graphing and said, "If you get confused, you can just um, look here."

"Any questions?" I asked.

Heads shook no. I breathed. I remained at the podium poring over the answer page, willing some sort of meaning to emerge.

Please I thought don't let anyone have a question.

"Mrs. Palmer?" 

"Yes?" I replied.

"I don't really get this," a girl with red hair muttered. 

"Hmm," I said, feigning thoughtfulness, "Well, what's your best guess?"

"Huh?"

"Okay," I said. "I'm going to level with all of you."

Heads looked up.

"I don't do math. I'm a writer. So if people are having trouble, perhaps one or two of you who actually understand this coordinate graphing stuff could help the others out. Practice some team teaching or something."

Hands went up. The class worked it out; so did the succeeding class. I remained behind my protective wooden podium, math text open. Nestled ever so discreetly between its pages was my Kindle. As the class worked, I finished The Art of Fielding. 

At the end of the day, having arranged for a mechanic to put on my spare "donut" tire and having limped to my automobile dealership, and having conversed with the insurance company, I actually practiced a little math myself. I was able to calculate that the repairs to my car, out-of-pocket, would roughly total a month's pay.