Emmy Award

WOW, what a day yesterday was! After a terribly "long" week that included a near 15-hour work day on Monday night with PTA Open House, Fall Friday nights belong to High School Football.

Our team was hosting a very good team from Beeville, who were totally dominating us on our home turf. Working the chains on the visitor's sidelines, I was impressed with Beeville's entire program and especially their coaching staff. This, however, was little consolation to the fact that our team, my alma mater, was putting getting beaten like a lazy math student beats his addiction to doing homework. We were down 27 -3 at the half.

At halftime, I always return to the home side to bring my two children down to the sidelines. They love to watch the band, talk to all the "cool" high school kids, and drink the football players' gatorade. It was during this time when I ran into our district's public information officer who told me to call the producer for a math show I do for out local district network.

The show I did last year was called "That Geometry Show," a show with a math/disco version of the hit TV show "That 70s Show." Now I know you're probably already thinking "math?! disco?! tv show?! who watches that?!" Well, that's just the thing, I didn't think anyone but my Mom and Dad watched the show (boy were they proud! After being a priest, this is what they always imagined I'd be doing: disco dancing while working math problems in a dark basement studio on Wednesday afternoons.) During each show, I would invite viewers to email with questions or comments they had on the show. After initially getting no responses, I checked to make sure that I had given out the correct address--yep! Then I began beseeching viewers to email me with comments, good or bad, on the show--empty mailbox! Then I begged anyone to email, even if it was my mom pretending to be a loyal viewer, just to give me the encouragement to keep making the shows. Even mom didn't watch that episode.

So when they asked me to do an Algebra 2 show this year, I wondered if the time commitment was worth it. I had to create the schedule and material for each show, producing downloadable handouts with keys. I took up a good 4 to 5 hours of my time each Saturday morning, time that I could spent sleeping or watching cartoons. Of course, I said "yes" to what is now called "Deja vu, it's Algebra 2."

Anyway, back to the phone call. It turns out that last year while I was still filming "That Geometry Show," one of my producers secretly submitted an episode to a prestigious dance competition . . . . for which I promptly did not win. But then . . . she actually submitted an episode to a prestigious competition that places more value on quality television programming, rather than cheesy dance moves. To make a long story short, she wanted to tell me that we had just been nominated for an Emmy!!

"An AMY?" I asked her confusedly amongst the clamor of the band's halftime performance. "What's an AMY award?"

"No, an EMMY award."

"An E-M-I-E award, or an E-M-M-I-E award?" I asked, still in disbelief of what I actually believed she was trying to tell me.

"NOOOOO, and E-M-M-Y award!"

"Wow! very surprising news. It's not everyday one gets nominated for an Emmy Award. We sure can use some of that good fortune here tonight on the football field," I told her.

The rest of the evening only got better. Our home team went on to put up 27 unanswered points in the second half and ended up with an award-winning performance of their own, pulling it out in determined, tenacious fashion 30 -27. After the game, I liked to think that that at halftime, the coach told them that if they pulled out a victory, instead of watching tape the following week, they would be treated to reruns of Mr. Korpi's Emmy nominated geometry show, and that it was the only incentive they needed to turn the game around.

The actual winner will be announced in late October at a fancy dinner in Dallas. Apparently ALL the famous disco-dancing TV mathematicians will be there, so I'll have no one to talk to. The award nomination does prove one thing, though--that my mom and dad DO have good programming.

Test Day

Oh how I love test day in math class, or as I fondly refer to them: "Celebrations of Mathematical Knowledge." For me, it IS a celebration of my hard work. It symbols the end of a unit of meticulous lesson planning, cogently delivering the lessons from bell to bell, and grading piles upon piles of what seem like reproducing homework papers. Yes, indeed, test day gives me a day to sit at my desk at watch my industrious pupils demonstrate what they have learned. And oh, do I enjoy watching them.

Most them are very anxious, nervous individuals. The best students are the conscientious ones who hate the anticipation. They sweat every little detail. They have gone over every possible question I can ask in their mind, and they deeply fear the unexpected, lest they score less than a perfect score. They are tense and red throughout the affair. They break their pencil lead several times from the force of their hand upon the paper. If they had any nails left, they would scratch their faces off.

Then there are the average kids who feel prepared, but who know they won't ace the exam. They will be happy with a B. They are not very entertaining to watch. They don't react much, and work with a casual efficiency, deciding not to go back and check their work. They are usually the first ones to turn in their exam papers.

And then there is the last group. This group is almost as entertaining as the first group, although for very different reasons. These are the students who like to work in the margins of their exam paper, but not in the same sense that Pierre de Fermat did. These are the "I don't understand a single thing on this exam" students who, instead of filling the pages with precise calculations (or even calculation attempts), decide it best to use their time to advance their art skills. It's very easy to spot a doodler: no real math student traces out the number zero that many times! The only thing more amusing that watching how an unprepared student handles 90 minutes of what must feel like an eternity to them, is actually viewing their masterpieces when the time comes to grade their paper.

Also in this category are the unprepared, non-artists. These are the writers. Instead of the intermittent jump between writing and punching buttons on a calculator, the writers are fully engaged in putting down every excuse into pathetic words where numbers should be. Paragraph after paragraphs of " . . . Mr. Korpi, I'm really sorry that I am not prepared for this test but . . . ." or " . . . believe it or not, math has always been my favorite subject before this year . . . " or " . . . it's not that you are a bad teacher, it's just that . . . " Although they are as interesting to read as the drawings are fun to look at, they are much faster to grade than a real math paper, so I can't help but applaud their efforts to lighten my load, save me time, and entertain me a bit.

I guess, really it's the students who get the last laugh, 'cause now I'm the one who gets to go home and carefully grade 200 math tests over the next two days. It is only then, in the middle of mind-numbing grade-a-thons that I truly appreciate the fresh perspective of the artists and writers in my math class.

Memorable Lyrics

Each day in class, I post a multitude of quotes: one math quote, one motivational quote, four "funny" quotes, a serious vocabulary word, a "funny" vocabulary word, a word phrase puzzle, and finally . . . . a song lyric.

Now, I have a diverse taste in music, and I know a lot of lyrics, but I always seem to struggle with an appropriate one to post. I suppose the ideal lyric would be one that in not only appropriate to post to a general audience, but also one that invokes fond memories, appeals to people's ideology, or awakens them to a new idea. It would help if they were actually sung to a catch melody.

Some of my favorite song lyrics are the following:

"You don't see no hearses with luggage racks."--Don Henley: If Dirt Were Dollars

"If we weren't all crazy we would go insane.”—Jimmy Buffett, Changes In Latitudes: Changes In Attitudes

"Never again is what you swore the time before."--Depeche Mode: Policy of Truth

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."--John Lennon: Beautiful Boy

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."-- Rush: Freewill

"It seems to me that 'maybe' pretty much always means 'no'."--Jack Johnson: Flake

"An honest man's pillow is his peace of mind." - John Cougar Mellencamp: Minutes To Memories

"Might as well share, might as well smile. Life goes on for a little-bitty while."--Alan Jackson

"If you want it, come and get it, for crying out loud."--David Gray: Babylon

“I was me, but now he is gone.”—Metallica: Fade to Black

“Thinking is the best way of traveling.”—The Moody Blues: The Best Way To Travel

“He not busy being born is busy dying.”—Bob Dylan: It’s Alright, Ma

I'll stop here for now, but the list goes on and on and on . . . .

What are some of your favorite lyrics???

SCAAAAAARY!

I have always thought that one of the best, scariest costume anyone could ever dress up as is something right out of a math textbook--A FRACTION!!!! (Horrible screams now invariably follow.) It's like these fractions were actually screaming "BOO!" at the students, while the students were throwing it right back at them, "Boooooo fractions, Boooooo!" These seemingly innocuous numbers have undeservedly earned a bad reputation among math students, at least since the proliferation of what I believe to be the culprit--Graphing Calculators.

Sure, the fact that every kid owns one now and that they are used in every math class all the way down to some elementary classes is good for the calculator companies, but not necessarily for the student. Students have developed a calculator "reflex," grabbing for it when asked to do mind numbing calculations like "five plus seven" or "three take away two." Many students use the calculator like a crutch. Some students use it as a stretcher!!

The consequence is that many a student's ability to work with numbers in his head has atrophied. Students lack number sense and the mental agility required to quickly determine the solution to a problem such as 1/2 + 2/3. They don't even know if the solution is greater than one, less than one, or equal to one. When they have this much difficulty working with concrete numbers, imagine how difficult it is for them to do similar calculations or procedures on a more abstract level involving variables (or even complex/compound fractions!!)

As students enter into my precalculus class, the weening period officially begins. Initially, students are only allowed to use their calculators as a straight-edge. They groan. They whine. They want nothing more than to cuddle in the safe arms of their TI-83s. I slowly introduce the proper way to use a calculator, as a graphical tool to confirm and verify answers and to explore the behavior of equations that would be too tedious to do by hand.

"Are we going to get to use are calculators on the quiz?" they inquire.
"No"
*GULP* "Are we going to get to use them on the test?"
"Absolutely not"
**Double GULP**
"Are we ever going to use them?"
"Eventually. I'll let you know this summer." *Ha, Ha, Ha. Evil Math teacher strikes again*

Here's a quick example that came up in class the other day when we were completing the square.
"What is half of five?" I asked
"2.5" a sharp student quickly replied as he stared down at his calculator screen.
"OK, what is 2.5 squared?" I asked as I ran over an covered his screen. I thought he was going to cry. He didn't know the answer was 6.25 (actually a very easy calculation for someone with number sense.) His calculator buddy next to him fortunately bailed him out.

So I instructed them the advantage of thinking in pure rational form.
"Half of five is simply five halves, written 5/2. Now 5/2 squared is 5 squared over 2 squared or simply 25/4."

You would have thought that I was a Mathemagician. The students who were not shrieking in terror were enthralled at the simplicity of this new, equivalent approach. There might be something to these fraction thingamajiggers after all. Maybe they are not so terrifying after all!

Now those compound/complex fractions . . . those sound REAAAAALY scary.