The Coach has Classes of Sixty
The coach has classes of sixty. That’s OK, though, because some of our language classes, say Advanced Chinese, have four kids, so our average high school class size is 32, the exact state maximum. The coach is holding down his end of the arithmetic average. Anyway, three weeks ago the school closed the gym for renovations, so the coach and his kids are now housed down the hall in a classroom built for thirty with only twenty desks. Needless to say, there’s no basketball court in that classroom.
So this morning, first thing Monday, I hear the coach say to another teacher that the district finally started the renovations in the gym. “They did an hour’s worth of work last Friday, and have scheduled an hour’s worth of work once a week for the next fifteen weeks.”
Some days I come so close to asking …
My lunch gang has a jar where we save for our end of year party. We charge a quarter each time someone asks a how or a why question. Me and the art teacher just throw in a five now and again.
Which reminds me of the computer class without computers. When I taught middle school near here, I noticed one day that all the kids are going around with cardboard boxes. Big ones. With one whole side cut-out, a big hole. They mention that a computer class just started. I don’t get it, but I know better than to ask. Later, during my free period, I walk by the new computer class. First I see the board, and there’s a very detailed assignment about going from one URL to another and like that. Then a few steps more and I can see the kids. There are no computers. The kids are intently staring into the holes in the cardboard boxes set-up in from of them. That’s the computer — the box with the hole. The hole is like the screen. They have cardboard mice with a string to the box, cardboard keypads, and they’re staring into the hole and typing and moving the mouse and the teacher is telling them, “Once you get to such and such a page, remain there. There will be an icon marked Continue but do not, I repeat, do not …”