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By Kyle, June 4, 2008 10:40 am

I can’t believe how fast this year has gone by after Spring Break. Usually the months following Spring Break create what is usually the longest and most difficult unbroken stretch of school. The kids typically disengage, and it’s not much later until the teachers do as well. For some strange reason, that has not occurred for me this year. After Spring Break, my students and I dove right into preparation for the California Standards Test (CST), and halfway through May they took the test. For the past three weeks (after the test), they’ve been scrambling to make sure they’ve turned in enough work (and earned enough points) in order to earn a passing grade in my class, and thus be eligible for our culmination ceremony that takes place on June 20^th. Now that the deadline for failing students has passed, the question is what on earth to do for two weeks?

For this, I’ve turned to one of the best integrations of pop-culture with my profession, a television program called NUMB3RS, a CBS series not unlike CSI, in which the FBI tries to solve crimes. The fun twist is that the main character has a brother who is a mathematician who joins him and uses math to help the FBI solve these crimes. (For those of you who grew up on PBS in the 80s, you might recall Square One and MathNet)! Anyway, for the final couple of classes we’ve got together, I’ve been showing my students some of the episodes, which they love. What is better yet, is that there are even pre-made activities for each episode that I can print and use with the students so they can actually do some of the mathematics in the episodes! Today my students will be doing some examples with the Goldbach Conjecture! Cool.

Anyway, as school wraps up, I begin to contemplate summer projects, the least of which include polishing several books off my reading list, cleaning and reorganizing my garage, or organizing 4 years worth of data files related to teaching. Fun.

Finally, as randomness determines that another chapter from my Blue Like Jazz
audio book begins to play in the background, I reflect and ponder as this year comes to a close about how much I am loving teaching despite all the not-so-fun elements that are now becoming more and more a part of it (such as dealing with an inept and ineffective district, as well as dealing with all the personal and personnel politics in the school and in the department).