Oh God, here we go, the unending spiral of Catholic Guilt. Really, it's got to be in my DNA. I mean I feel as though I'm sliding down a double helix of terrible juxtapositions. Okay....wait....I said my morning prayers, I dusted the box that my rosary is in and I thought about going to church with my goddaughter tomorrow. Those three things should help me break the spiral of Catholic Guilt for just a moment or two.....wait.....focus.....focus......
Okay, lets talk about kids. As some of you may remember, I teach math.
Now, I know this is what you are thinking when I say math
But really, this is what's going on:
The problem is that the majority of us experienced mathematics instruction from this:
LOUISE.... If you don't remember, Louise is the person that runs my committee. You know, the one that wakes me up at three in the morning and tells me what an awful job I do at life. She and I are really old acquaintances. Little did you realize, but you also know Louise. Well, she may not be named Louise. Hell she may actually be male and named Reggie. What's important here is that we learned math from people who told us/implied that we weren't smart if we didn't understand what they were explaining. My favourite memory of Louise is when I asked her where Pi came from and why it works. "IT JUST DOES! PUT IT INTO THE EQUATION!"
God, I hated math. Of course, it didn't end there for me. My dad was a mathematician. Now, I use that term loosely. He is one of Lousie's ilk. The kind that don't question and are just concerned with procedural fluency; what I like to call plug and play. They really don't know why things work or where they come from. All they know is how to make the recipe. Throw in another variable...(get it..variable...) they don't know what to do.
It was brutal at my house. Lots of let me show you 15 ways to get that answer while telling you how smart I am at math and never really answering your question. OMG! It was just like school.
So, fast forward to today. Why do I teach math considering Louise and my dad both ganging up on me, making me feel stupid in math? It's because of teachers. Yup, Teachers! However, not the Louise type.
I was required to take math in college. I dreaded having to do it and put if off to the last possible semester. I ended up in a woman's class that was not at all like what I was used to. She ACTUALLY explained how things worked and where they came from. It was mind blowing. I can totally picture her but I can't remember her name. God Bless Her. She is the one that started me on the path to becoming a math teacher. The final push came from a professor at Portland State University, Ted Nelson. At the time, I was a special education teacher and I had my own pull out math class for students with learning disabilities in math. A colleague of mine got me to take a class from Ted on teaching problem solving for middle school teachers. It was amazing. Ted made me tap into my inner puzzle solver and to really start to connect to the WHY of math. Here it was for me; I would become a math teacher different from the others and help kids learn to love math!
Fast forward to today and that's what I'm doing! Guess what! I still love it.
This year my kids are extra special. I don't know how it worked out but they are super sweet. For example, the other day, I was teaching a lesson, working with algebra tiles under the document camera (for those not in the know, algebra tiles are basically blocks that represent math; imagine that, geometry and algebra collide..wait..aren't they both math?) The phone rang and I asked a student to answer it since I was so involved. "Mr. Hunni-nut's Room", she said. So, if you don't know by now, my last name is Hunnicutt. Having such a name has left me at the mercy of many a childhood trauma..Hunnibutt, Hunnibarf, Hunnibucket...etc. You get the idea. However, at my age, I'm really over it and I've heard them all. My student got off the phone and said, "I'm so sorry Mr. Hunnicutt. I couldn't help myself. It was just so funny." I told her not to worry, that I had heard it all before. WELL...at that point they all started in, making tons of variations on my name. They had so much fun. But the biggest thing that occurred to me was that they had really never thought about making fun of my name. REALLY? I couldn't believe it. I actually stopped the class and told them that if they were not making fun of their teachers from the time they walked in the door of their first year at our school, then we were not doing our jobs. Seriously, when I was I kid, we always respected our teachers but we also always made fun of them. It's expected! Well, I'm proud to say that my kids report that they are happily making fun of their teachers this year. I am patting myself on the back at this moment.
Okay, now let's get down to some serious business....KNITTING! Whilst I have been not blogging, I have been doing some serious knitting. Here is a pattern that I'm particularly fond of. This is the Traditional Gansey that I knit for Knit Picks. I actually knit it for my husband Jeff. He got the original. I don't know who the model is but my pattern works well on him.
This is a dream knit. It's supper easy and it's all done without seams!!! I designed it so that you knit it from the bottom up. When you get to the gusset, you split it into front and back. You then knit them separately and put the stitches on holders. Next you knit the shoulder strap from the neck down, connecting the front and back. When you get to the edge of the armhole, you pick up the stitches for the sleeve and continue the pattern down to the cuff. Lastly, you pick up the neck stitches and knit the collar. Really, it's not that bad. Give it a shot. There is some person in your life that would love a traditional gansey like this!
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