Math Stories


In the land of Mathmatica, there are two happily married variables named Xara and Yesod. They lived happily, and they deeply enjoyed each other’s company. One peaceful day, however, the widely-feared gang of Arithmetic Operations suddenly took Xara within their clutches.

That was how one of my students started their Math Story, an assignment I gave students last week. The assignment tasked them with writing a piece of fiction that weaves an Algebra 2 problem into the plot. Students had a choice between eight problems my cogen helped me select, all of which we discussed as a class during the last several weeks. The only other restrictions for the assignment were:

  • The story has a clear beginning, middle, and end
  • The story has a problem or challenge that is resolved by the characters
  • The solution to the chosen math problem is included in the story, with work
  • The story is at least one page, double-spaced (not including the solution)

I gave students the option to work together, even if it was with students from another class period.

Students write regularly in my class throughout the year. However, asking them to write a short story offers them something entirely different than what I have previously done. With it, I aimed to tap into their creativity and let their imaginations run free, using math as the driving force. I’m truly horrible at unlocking this side of their brains within the context of problem solving. Practically all of what we do daily is grounded in algorithms and procedures. The Math Story was a break from that.

The assignment came as a recommendation from an English teacher at my school. We were at one of our monthly professional cycles discussing literacy across disciplines, and he suggested I try it. I always find myself telling stories at home with kids. It seems natural to bring the idea to school. Why not?

I drafted a version of the assignment and took it to my cogen students. They were into the idea and offered a few pointers to tighten it, like how long it needed to me and when it should be due. They thought it could be fun. I wrote two exemplar stories for the class to accompany the guidelines. Students had one day in class to work on it to help kickstart their writing. Everything else had to be done on their own.

The result was some awesome stories! Sometimes I forget how creative teenagers can be! Here are a few excerpts that do not do the students justice, but will have to suffice for the purpose of this post:

Once upon a time in the realm of Mathlandia, there ruled a king of mathematics known as “King Palacios.” King Palacios wasn’t your ordinary ruler. He didn’t just wear a crown; he wore an oversized calculator as a hat. Also, instead of having royal duties, he had math duties, where people had to pay him $2,000 of gold to get a chance to talk and solve their math problems. People from all over the kingdom came to him with their problems.

There was once a quiet city on the edge of the earth. In this small city, there was a mathematician that people had huge expectations for. You might ask, why? This mathematician was supposed to save the city from a nuclear beam by solving this one equation. The solution would disarm the beam.

Evil Mr. Palacios and Mr. Palacios have a math fight. This was one of the most insane math battles of all time. Their auras grew stronger as the battle continued, improving their math knowledge by a factor of seven. They both expanded their math domains, one of their most powerful techniques. This meant that whoever was stronger would win the battle since being in another’s domain meant being completely vulnerable to any attacks and having no way of fighting back.

Mrs. Yasin had a really hard time solving this problem. First, she replaced p(x) with c(x), but that didn’t work. Then she remembered what her amazing Algebra 2 teacher Mr. Palacios taught her way back when she was in 11th grade, which is the equation p(x) = r(x) – c(x). This equation shows the relationship between profit, revenue, and cost of owning a business.

There was a trend of students using me (or at least my name) in their stories. As students wrote, they asked for extra credit if they used my name in their story. I don’t give many extra credit opportunities, so why not? It was a fun twist that proved to be worth it. Very memorable!

The cherry on top is that, at the end of the year, I hope that some of my students’ math stories will be included in our class book, Mathematical Voices Volume 5. It’s been a few years since the book welcomed a new writing task, so I look forward to adding it to the compilation.

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Beverage Friday

I’m always looking for ways to foster community in my classroom. As a teacher, being close to my students and sharing unique experiences brings out the best in me. I only hope my students feel the same.

“Building community” can take many different forms, but for me, it often takes the form of a class tradition. When in-person learning resumed several years ago, I wrote about some classroom traditions that emerged (or reemerged) after remote learning, many of which have been staples in my teaching for years.

Many class traditions are short-lived by design. They appear out of nowhere, last for a year (or less), and are never heard of again. For example, one year, my fifth period students clapped for me when I walked into the room (I had a class right before them in a different room and always arrived just after the bell). Last year, fourth period hung Doritos bags in the classroom. We collected as many different varieties as we could find. (We even had one from The U.K.) Come to think of it, there have been so many of these pop-up traditions and rituals through the years…I really should do a better job of writing about them!

This year, another interesting tradition has found its way into my second period class. We call it Beverage Friday.

It started two months ago when I randomly asked a student in the class about a bottled drink they had with them, clearly purchased from a corner store. It was 11am and the drink was unopened. That seemed odd, so I asked why. The student told me that she had bought it for a friend and hadn’t given it to them yet. I remarked how kind she was.

“My friends don’t do that for me!” I said, half joking.

We started talking about how cool it would be if more people started buying each other drinks just because. We chatted for a few more minutes. Before I knew it, she volunteered to buy me a beverage. I politely asked that she not spend her money on me, but she insisted. I gave in. That was on a Tuesday. She vowed to give it to me on Friday.

Before I caved into her demands, my one condition upon accepting her gift was that her beverage had to be intentional. I requested that she not get me a drink randomly; she had to put thought behind it. I even encouraged her to do her “homework”: figure out what I liked and didn’t like. I wanted the drink to be representative of me rather than something that would simply quench my thirst.

When Friday came around, I was excited. Before class, I asked her if it would be okay if I announced our little pact to the class before she presented me with my drink. She loved the idea.

After our warm-up, I told the class all about our conversation, and then she revealed her beverage of choice to the class: a kiwi strawberry Snapple. A day before, she overheard me saying to another student how I didn’t like drinking soda. She also remembered me saying a few weeks earlier how I love fruit, especially strawberries. Thus, her choice of drink was a type of strawberry juice. The class erupted in applause.

Uplifted by her mini-presentation and the class’s reaction to it, I proposed that this turn into a weekly tradition. My pitch to the class was impulsive and on a limb, but why not indulge in such a tradition? It would be a fun, generous, and unique way to show appreciation to one another. Each week, the person who received a drink the week before would give a drink to someone else and present it to the class. And that person would do the same the following week. And on and on. The recipient of the drink remains unknown until Friday. And, just as with the drink I received, the beverages we gifted to one another couldn’t be random — they had to be given with purpose and thoughtfulness. The class was totally into the idea.

So far, five drinks have been exchanged, including one from me. Forgetfulness on behalf of the givers has caused recipients to not always get their drink on their assigned day, but overall the kids have been really into it. New traditions can be hard to get off the ground, but it seems like this will take us until the end of the year.

We’ve even found a neat way to help us chronicle our beverage-giving journey. When a recipient finishes their drink, we keep the bottle in the room. Our collection is growing!

The Traitors of Algebra 2

When new teachers ask me for advice, one of the most important things I tell them is to find ways to incorporate their own passions and interests into their teaching. There are far too many demands on us not to do that and still have a thriving classroom. Teaching can quickly become an unsustainable enterprise when followed by the letter of the law.

The most recent example of me taking my own advice is a game I’ve started playing with my students. It’s called Traitors.

If you’ve watched the popular reality show on Peacock of the same name, the game is identical — with some modifications for the classroom setting. I fell in love with the show the moment I started watching it, and playing it with students allows me to tap into my interests. Here are the slides I used to explain the game to my students:

A few things not covered in the slides:

  • I am in private communication with the Traitors (via Slack), who inform me of who they want to murder
  • I announce murders to the class (each murder victim receives a letter from the Traitors declaring their murder)
  • All Banishment votes are confidential (at least for the foreseeable future, no one will know who voted for whom)
  • The prize pot starts off with nothing in it and gradually grow as the class completes Weekly Missions, ultimately resulting in a pizza party (I hope)

In the remaining time we have together as a class, I hope the game fosters anticipation in the hearts and minds of my students. Who will the Traitors murder next? Who has the class voted off? There will certainly be drama when the answers to these questions are resolved each week, but I’m confident that the game’s edginess will fuel student engagement. Of course, the twists and turns that I will add along the way will only heighten gameplay!

To add to the game’s theatrics, each student has a portrait of themselves hanging in the room, which will be X’d out whenever they are eliminated. This mirrors what happens in the reality show.

Students portraits, which are X’d out when they are eliminated

Other than gameplay, which is loads of sneaky fun, I appreciate several other things about Traitors. First, it’s a long-term game that runs in the background of our class. Most games that are played in my classroom span a class period or maybe two. But Traitors, as I’ve designed it, will last over two months. And despite its long lifespan, the game will not disrupt instruction all that much. Everything I would normally do will still happen. After the launch, which took about 20 minutes, the time investment for the game is small. Banishments and murders each happen once a week, and we’ll use the last five minutes of class to announce them. All the gossip and interrogation the students will do to each other will happen outside of class or in the shadows of our work together during the week.

Another aspect I really like about the game is the Weekly Missions. These are going to be a great way to have a classwide goal each week, something we can work towards. The missions will be tangible and obtainable, but not always linked to grades. For example, since a couple of my classes have had issues with tardiness, here was my first Weekly Mission, which I called “3-for-3”:

The first Weekly Mission

I believe the end of the school year should stimulate as much anticipation as the beginning. I chose to play Traitors in the latter months of the year because it will add a thrilling finale to a series of activities I use to bring closure to our class. When June rolls around, our Traitors endgame will be a great addition to my end-of-year class events.

Despite my giddiness for playing the game with my students, I’d be remiss to not admit my hesitancy. My students are a wonderful lot, but before starting the game, I had to be confident that my class culture could handle the lies, deception, and mind games that Traitors will undoubtedly bring to the class. It could be a lot! I had to run the game by my cogen and ask colleagues about it multiple times in order to build my confidence to actually do it. The biggest piece of advice I received: To keep the Banishment votes confidential.

Time will tell how the game pans out and if the Faithful can indeed identify the Traitors before the end. We’ll see!

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The end of snow days

What a shame.

Today, New York City Public Schools closed because of inclement weather. Instead of having a day off, students and teachers were required to dust off our Zoom credentials, log in, and conduct remote learning.

This is a terrible idea.

Snow days are an essential part of what it means to be a kid. There is something invaluable that comes with waking up to discover that school is canceled. While school officials fear a loss of instructional time, children gain something just as important: unmitigated joy.

For me, snow days felt like cheating the system. By staying home, I was getting away with a crime. It was thrilling. I got to reclaim my day from the regimented schedule of school and no one could say anything about it. Snow days brought about a mental release that can only emerge from having unexpected, unstructured time.

Snow days gave me power. For one day, I didn’t have to unnaturally drag my tired body to meet up with a bunch of other tired bodies to do things we were told were important. Instead, we had snowball fights and sipped hot chocolate. We watched movies and played video games. We ate cereal multiple times a day. Snow days offered us the type of autonomy we rarely experienced, except for maybe on our birthday. We were on top of the world.

That type of joy is good for the soul. Kids need it. I know I did. Taking it away and replacing it with artificial learning — like that which happens on Zoom — is futile. It’s a decision that disrespects childhood. Besides, have we not learned anything from the disaster that was the 2020-21 school year? Zoom learning was a joke then, and still is. Replacing one day of unfiltered joy with a Zoom link is a brazen attempt to hold on when the right decision is to simply let go. Days like today are misguided attempts to hurry children into adulthood, where work never stops for a snowstorm. Let our kids be kids. Give them the day off and all the merriness that it brings.

Thanks to the pandemic, I know snow days will never be the same again. We’ve officially turned a corner. This is deeply concerning given all that students are losing in the process.

I’ll be there for my students today on Zoom, but so will my contempt for this day. Part of me was going to tell my kids to forget about Zoom and to go have a true snow day. Legally, I can’t do that, but boy I wanted to.

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