Let me propose a point system for measuring the success of the first three days of the math summer school I'm required to give. Five students were supposed to come, so let's give the program one point per student per day they attended classes. And since the worst math students tend to be the worst English students, too, the camp requires the attendence of the Kazakh math teacher. It was her who said we had to have the summer school in the first place, and she agreed to come. So let's give the camp three points for every day this teacher shows up. That means for the first three days we have five student points plus three teacher points, all times three days, for a total of twenty-four possible points.
Before going on, guess how many points the summer school has earned.
The answer is: one point! That is, one student, one day out of three. The teacher has not come once.
My English classes are going much better. We're learning about American football. We spent a day learning football vocabulary and practicing plays in the hallway. The next day they got a simplified copy of touch football rules and we played a quiz game. Today was the big day - we played our first game.
Some of their understandings of the rules were still a little fuzzy. Whoever was the quarterback wanted to throw the ball IMMEDIATELY, often cocking back to throw even as they were saying "hike". After catching the ball, people usually wanted to throw it again instead of run with it. Some of my seventh graders wanted to play rough. "Let's give you the ball, Mr. Ryan," said Nurgul, a sweet kindly seventh grade girl in the huddle, "and Sabira and I will go knock Bryan down so he can't catch you." And Asel, at the end of the game, ecstatic at having ran so far toward the end zone, couldn't restrain herself from joyfully throwing the ball the last twenty feet through the soccer goalposts. (We let the touchdown stand.) In short, it was the most fun football game I've ever played in my life.
