Math! (Maths!)

Raise your hand if you call it maths!!  Yes, you are probably not from the States. Drives me crazy.  Maths. Math has always been plural in my world view.  Anyway, despite working with mostly 3 year old girls all day now, I have one class 3 days a week of 8-9 year old kids who are in regular school.  Previously they went to the kindy and are in English class to continue with it.  So they're using the same books all the kids at my school system use, but their language abilities are actually much higher than the typical kid at the same level (proof that the all day English kindergarten from ages 3-6 works).  


Yesterday, we open our books to do a little book work and they all start laughing at the page we're on because in a picture next to the dialogue, there are letters instead of numbers in a math problem.  hahaha.  Literally it says this:
x = 23
x+y = 50
y = ???
They think it's a mistake and hilarious- but no.... it's algebra!!  I being the math nerd that I am (and the fact that a couple of the kids in there are super at math...maths...and I know this), we did a little demo of teaching algebra.  And they got the answer correct (y = 27!!!) Then I hear "when do we get to learn this?!?!" in an amazed type of voice, to which I replied give it a few years.  I love the future math(s) nerds that I teach.


I was also using graphs to explain the reading passage "as summer went on, Roger started spending more and more time in the garden" ...(these are 2 really high level 11 and 12 year olds) in an x = summer months passing (April, May, June, July) and y = time spent in the garden for graph number 1, and then graph number 2 had the same x and y = amount that Roger had a crush on Mimi.  The passage was really stating that Roger liked Mimi more as thes summer went on but we were having a hard time getting that from just reading it.  Sure enough, this did the trick.  Then the boy in the class looks at me and goes "Teacher, you are really good at math" It made me laugh.  I'd rather be teaching math!  I miss math and using my brain in that way all the time.


I'm entering my first fantasy football league ever.  Here.  In Taiwan.  hahaha.  When watching is a near impossibility...12 hour time difference from the East coast and all...Hilarious.  And we have at least one English dude involved.  I also think I'm the token girl.  Shocking.


An article stolen from Amanda who posted it a while ago, but I'm behind in my reading...I think we peruse a lot of the same sites but she's way more on top of it than I.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/can-the-middle-class-be-saved/8600/?single_page=true

and one on what teachers want to tell the parents-US education based focus, but, go work with children.  It is always the parents that are nuts (and if a kid is nuts, you can bet that it probably has something to do with the parents)...no matter what country you are in, where you are, on land, at sea, etc...this holds true across the board from what I've seen (and good job to all of you non-crazy parents who don't think your child deserves special attention in a group based setting, and haven't given him/her everything s/he's ever asked for, and have taught them to act like a cool kid, and who don't freak out over every little thing)
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/06/living/teachers-want-to-tell-parents/index.html