Chop Wood

About ten seconds into today’s lesson:1

Student #1: Have you ever taught ESL?2
Me: What?? No…
Student #1: You’d be good at it.
Me: Why?!…
Student #1: You’re very patient.
Me: Oh… okay. [insert slight pensive pause] Actually… I’m really not; I just act like it in front of you guys…
Student #2:3 So when you go home do you just let it all out and “rraaAAWWwwrrr”4 and like, chop wood? 5
Me: [looking dumbfounded and possessing no idea where to go with that]… okay so, the null and alternative hypothesis for this problem… … …

(oh... chop wood... I see what you did there...)
(oh… chop wood… I see what you did there…)

I am filing this one under “Can’t make this stuff up.” 6


For the ninth time in my teaching life7 I was reminded how brutal it is the first couple of days back from Spring Break.

I mean, brutalbrutalbrutal!.8

Perhaps I found my footing sometime today9 but good night, could we please make Spring Break two weeks long?!

keep-calm-and-karate-chop-10

  1. which was the M&M’s Chi-squared goodness-of-fit lesson []
  2. ESL: English as a Second Language. Not sure we really call it that anymore… []
  3. This particular character is a fast-talker, for context. If you watch “Scandal”, picture highly caffeinated Quinn Perkins. []
  4. yes, this kid literally roared and waved her arms around in psycho karate fashion, to boot. []
  5. WHAT. []
  6. Yes, I created a new category of posts just for this one. []
  7. This is my ninth year of teaching… []
  8. Yes – there’s a factorial at the end of that last nested exponent! []
  9. about the time the above “wood-chopping” conversation occurred — which, for the record, was during my 5th attempt of teaching the same class. -_- []