They Never Really Go Away

It’s May, so it must be Bizarre Teacher Dream Season™ around here.

This week’s edition of “Bizarre Saturday Night Dreams”:

1) something about teaching and explaining to my students how hard I was working to get them to engage in class

2) making some kind of meatball/veggie soup in a brown sauce#SundayAfternoon #teacherlife

— Stephen Dull (@thedullguy) April 30, 2023

At least its not the Nuke LaLoosh dream.

It doesn’t require a degree in psychology to find the common thread. There are a lot of nutritional plan changes happening in my house and I’m glad to help people reach their goals, and willing to do the work on my end to make that happen. We’re tearing a wide swath through the Skinnytaste recipes in this house, for real. Folks who have intentionally decided on changes to their plan are more receptive to that help than other folks who haven’t, obviously.

For example, I’ve been fighting an uphill battle to engage my students out loud in class, a holdover from pandemic-era remote learning. Dream-Me was laying out my POV of geometry class on the daily and pleading with my students to please please please just answer a question out loud, or at least take out your Air Pods?

It’s also NFL Draft season which is a shared area of interest with my O-lineman son and me. We both love giant bad-intent dudes who can move the guys in the other color jersey out the way. Especially the guys who do that but feel a little overlooked.

Did the Bears find a hidden gem in UDFA? 👀

Bears Lineman Gabe Houy from Pitt is a MEAN S.O.B.
He uploaded this sick highlight real of himself. pic.twitter.com/rt5KM8bXN7

— DeeksView (@DeeksViewOG) April 30, 2023

The Bears used their first-round pick on a highly-regarded offensive lineman to protect their franchise quarterback. But not before doing their due diligence. Because jobs are on the line when you’re picking a 22-year-old to help your organization reach its goals:

Full breakdown of the private workout the Bears hosted with Darnell Wright at Tennessee that Ryan Poles and OL coach Chris Morgan attended. They wanted to push Wright physically to the brink and see how he responded and focus in on his ability to retain/absorb information. pic.twitter.com/NMHE9LvZS3

— Courtney Cronin (@CourtneyRCronin) April 28, 2023

Detail from the Chicago Tribune’s Dan Wiederer here.

Also: if you’re unclear on up-downs, you saw Remember The Titans right?

But the big deal is this. “Here, I just taught you something. Teach it back to me so I know you understand it.”

That sounds familiar…

Then: “OK, you learned one set of circumstances, what if conditions change? “

Rapidly. (Omaha Omaha Omaha)

While you’re exhausted.

What now?

We definitely ask our kids to do that in class. Hey, here’s how to find area of a rhombus. What if instead of the diagonal length, you know half of one diagonal, and then one side length? Can you find the area now?

So maybe they aren’t going to be NFL offensive lineman. They’ll probably have to show what they know to somebody at some point. They’ll probably have to think on their feet. When they are too tired to think.

I appreciated the Bears staff giving me backup.

I’ll keep processing the world around me through a Math-Teacher lens, and hopefully it will continue to help me help my students make sense out of whatever we do in class that day.