The Number 2

Today, in class, a student said something that was so funny I did the unpardonable... laughed out loud. OMG! Can you believe it! I forgot my teacher training for a brief moment and let loose some humaness.

Well, it goes like this... integers. You know, positive and negative numbers. All those rules that I can't believe I remembered: positive times a negative is a Negative, and on and on and on. Well, we spent MOST of class today practicing and exploring multiplying and dividing with integers with some review of add/sub, too. Needless to say, there was some whining. However, they did a pretty good job and where totally, 100% challenged, which is an accomplishment within itself. Seeing that they had stretched those large brains to the max, I decided to switch gears and review some fractions. These guys like fractions. They are my kinda peeps. So, the problem went like this, 20 2/5 / 10 1/5. Not a complicated problem, but their are several steps to the solution. If you go the long route, which most of my students do, you first change the mixed numbers to improper fractions, then find the reciprocal of the second fraction, multiply and and finally simplify. You should end up with the answer being 2. Most of the students got this answer without too much difficulty. I was proud. OK...let me get to the point of the story. Once the answer was announced, a student piped up and and said rather disgustedly, "2!!! All that work for the number 2!" Like certain numbers have more "value" than others. Well, I laughed, and laughed. I couldn't help myself. I looked at the student and said, "I know, right. It should have at least been 100 or something higher. I mean all that work for just the number 2." She nodded her head in agreement. And I laughed some more.

I so love to teach.