Perfect Circles

I can make perfect circles on the white board. 

Really, it’s my secret talent. 

It comes in handy when I teach phases of the moon, seasons, use venn diagrams etc.

I don’t know how to teach anyone to draw perfect circles, it’s just the way my shoulder works.

I suppose I’ve had this unique ability for my entire life but It went unrecognized until high school. 

One day, I was sitting in Mr. Borigine’s trigonometry class and I was making snarky comments about his inability to draw a circle (of course, the word “snarky” had yet to be invented, but that’s what my comments were - snarky). Even when he used a giant compass, his circles came out egg-shaped. 

I was feeling pretty full of myself. I was editor of the school newspaper, had recently founded the school astronomy club and was coming off a year of geometry where my average was a cool 104 (I almost always got the bonus question on the tests).

So here I was, sitting in the back row of math, feeling very confident and making fun of my teacher’s egg-like circles when he suddenly stands upright and slowly extends his arm towards me. He was holding a piece of chalk (white boards had also yet to be invented). “If you think you can do better, Mr. McKellar, please come draw us a circle,” he said with a sneer in his voice and a tilt of his head. 

Uh-oh, busted. 

Now I’ve got to draw an eggy circle and everyone, especially, Mr. Borigine, will laugh at me. 

Slowly, I rose from my seat, hoping the bell would save me from my impending doom.

No such luck. 

I took the chalk from his hand, as if it were kryptonite, and in a single swing of my arm and shoulder, drew a perfect circle on the board. 

There was dead silence in the room. Especially from me, because I was expecting to have completely humiliated my snarky self at that point. 

I had drawn a perfect circle on the blackboard. 

I was stunned, to say the least.

Mr. Borigine was stunned even more than I was. 

Finally, after a long pause, he said “Okay, McKellar draws the circles from now on.” 

And so it came to pass. When Mr. B needed a circle, he’d call on me. My magic shoulder and I would draw him a circle…and they were always perfect.

How Many Questions?

“Any last questions before we start the test?” I ask, standing before a group of 8th graders. We’re about to do our first test in Pre-algebra. Up to this point we’ve done classwork, homework and quizzes but this is the first actual test. 

“How many questions on the test?” a young scholar asks from the back of the room.

“Three hundred and fifty-six,” I reply completely deadpan.

The room explodes in chaos - voices talking over voices, complaints blending into complaints, a frenzy of emotion all focused on this ridiculously long test.

“We can’t do three hundred questions in an hour!”

“I’m not takin’it.”

“Shhhhhsh, we need all the time we can get.”

“Are they all true and false?”

“Twelve,” I say to the din, with a large smile on my face. 

“Twelve, problems,” I repeat, grinning. 

Slowly, my intrepid scholars calm…they’ve been had. I was kidding. The fell for it hook, line and sinker. 

This is a routine I will repeat every time they ask how many questions on a test or quiz. 

Six months later, as we near the end of the school year, we go through this song and dance again for, probably, the fifteenth time. 

“Any last questions before we start the test?” I ask.

“How many questions on the test?” a student asks.

“One hundred and seventeen,” I reply, completely deadpan, as usual.

By this time, most of my students know I always answer that question with a stupidly large number, but a few, and thankfully only a few, still haven’t caught on. 

“We can’t do a hundred questions in an hour!”

“Is this a take-home test?”

“Can we use our notes?”

“You know he’s kidding, right?”

“He always does this.”

“How many questions are there really?”

“Eight, there are eight questions. Please show your work. You can begin when I hand you the test.” 

Maybe it’s mean, but it amuses me so much to do this over and over again. 

It just never gets old for me.

What My Neighbors Must Think

I try not to think about what people think about me. I’m pretty confident about myself now, but I wasn’t always that way. In middle school, I was painfully shy. I tried to blend into the background in class or in the cafeteria. I was always worried about what people were thinking of me. It took a long time, but I almost never worry about that now. 

Except recently. 

A few months ago, when the 7th grade was about to start building their milkweed bug habitats, I was sitting in my favorite chair watching TV about 9pm. With a start, I remembered I needed to bring in sticks for the habitats! I had planned on finding sticks right after I got home and forgot.

I leapt from my chair, threw on my shoes and dashed outside…into the dark. Oops, gonna need a flashlight, so back inside I went to get one.

I spent the next 20 minutes looking for sticks in the dark with my flashlight. And not just any old sticks, they had to be strong enough to support the food supply, but not too thick. They needed to have a fork in them for the simulated milkweeds and they had to fit in the bags we would be using to build the habitats. 

Pick up a stick - inspect it under the flashlight - keep or drop to the ground. I tried to do this in a systematic way so I didn’t waste time picking up and inspecting the same sticks over and over again.

“My neighbors must think I’m crazy,” I said to myself. I figured if any of them were watching, they must think I’m doing yard work in the dark at nine o'clock at night. That’s crazy. 

And, you know what?

I didn’t care. I had my own reason to be wandering around my yard picking up and dropping sticks with my little flashlight. I didn’t care if they did think I was crazy. 

The same kind of thing happened to me this morning. On Monday, I’m teaching a first grade class why leaves change color. So, there I was wandering up and down my street inspecting leaves and putting some in a bag while rejecting others. I went into my neighbors yards and even pulled leaves off their trees.

I probably looked crazy again, but who cares. I had something I needed to do and was getting it done. 

It doesn’t matter what other people think, it matters what you think of yourself.

The Joy of Reading

I just spent an hour with Scott Kelly touring the International Space Station.

A couple of weeks ago I roamed the arctic with Buck and was accepted by a wolf pack.

I’ve been on stage in front of 100,000 fans with Bruce Springsteen and inside the Patriots locker room with Tom Brady after a five touchdown performance.

I’ve flown a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain, fighting through a screen of Luftwaffe fighters, to attack Nazi bombers as they bored through the grey sky intent on destroying London.

I’ve done all these amazing things, felt the rush of emotion in all those situations and I never left my home. 

I was reading.

I discovered the joy of reading in middle school. I read scores of books in 7th and 8th grade and I’ve never stopped. 

Sometimes I think I’ve learned more from reading than I have from sitting in a classroom. I read everything - fiction, nonfiction, biography, literature, science fiction, history, science (of course), and more. 

If something catches my attention, I’ll find about book about it. I get to choose what I read. It’s up to me. It’s anything I want. I’m free to explore the universe in any way I want with anyone I want. I can spend time with Sally Ride, explore sunken shipwrecks, escape from a POW camp, learn how our DNA works, or any of a billion topics. I can choose any title I want.

It’s a astounding thing. You read - you learn - you feel - you understand.

Fell Off A Chair

How does this happen?

I mean, please explain exactly what caused this.

It makes no sense to me - I can not comprehend how this could happen.

You fell off a chair. 

One minute, you’re sitting. Then you’re in free-fall. A split second later the chair falls on you. 

Think about that. You were in class, taking notes, doing your work, minding your own business and then, suddenly and without warning, you fell off your chair.

Did you get dizzy? Did you pass out? Was there a highly centralized earthquake at your lab table?

Face it, you weren’t performing death-defying acts on the balance beam or the uneven bars. You weren’t pointe dancing through Swan Lake……you were sitting.

I know you weren't leaning back and balancing on two of the chair legs, because, well, we’ve talked about that before.  

I do wish you could give me a rational and scientific explanation for this phenomenon. (Here’s a hint: Gravity is going to be a big part of the story).

Had to go to the nurse because you…fell…off…a…chair. <pfffft>

My Most Interesting Science Teachers

I remember all of my science teachers from middle school to high school. I remember none of my college science teachers. I don’t know why, I guess it’s because I made personal connections with my teachers in grades 7 to 12 and no personal connections with my college professors.

In middle school, I had the same science teacher for both 7th and 8th grade - Mrs. Ferrence (Don't tell anyone, but I had a huge crush on Mrs. Ferrence). We did labs involving hydrochloric acid, used liquid mercury (This is VERY dangerous and I have no idea why we had access to mercury) and used the bunsen burners along with asbestos hot plates. The burners hooked up the gas spigots like we have in the science lab (The gas spigots in our science lab are turned off) and after we heated a flask or beaker, we could rest it on the asbestos hot plates. Asbestos is a carcinogen and is VERY dangerous. The affects of asbestos were not well understood at that time and now it’s considered a hazardous material. God knows how we all survived middle school science with all this dangerous stuff around!

In high school, I had Mr. Moreau for 9th grade biology. He is the one who forever locked the phrase “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” into my brain. 

I had Mrs. Olsen for physiology in 10th grade. The highlight of the year was dissecting a fetal pig. It went on for weeks and those pigs were getting a little ripe by the time we were done. 

My lab partner, Tom Murphy, played on the football team. He was a senior and had zero interest in science. He was required to take and pass the class to graduate. Every Friday we took the quiz at the end of each chapter called “Test Your Knowledge.” Tom would copy off me like crazy and as a homage to me, changed the “Your” in the title to “Mark.” I don’t know who got that text book the following year, but each and every quiz was called “Test Mark’s Knowledge.”

The following year, for physics, I had Mr. Olsen - yes, they were married and their classrooms were directly across from each other. I never really thought about it at the time, but that’s pretty unique. I can only image their dinner table conversation.

Mr. Olsen (Left) and Mrs. Olsen (right)

My last science teacher in high school was Miss Archambault. She was very tall - nearly 6 feet and had long, long blond hair. She was an earth science and biology teacher and the advisor to the Astronomy Club (which I had helped start). She was forced to teach chemistry and did not want to do it. She was not comfortable with the subject, and did a poor job teaching it. 

When the final exam rolled around - a massive test where your understanding of the entire year’s worth of chemistry was assessed - we were panicked. We basically had to pass the final to pass for the year. 

Someone had gotten hold of a copy of the test and almost every senior had the answers. The funny thing is, when the teachers corrected the tests, the kids who hadn’t known a bit of chemistry all year were getting 90’s and 100’s. This made the teachers just a wee bit suspicious. The administration launched a full-scale investigation - kids were getting called down to the office over the loud speaker, parents were called in, teachers were in meetings - it was electrifying! 

In the end, they figured out who stole the test answers, who had the answers and who used the answers to cheat. The administration threw out all the chemistry final test scores except for Miss Archambault’s class.  As a group, we had done so poorly, the administrators concluded we could not have been part of the cheating scandal. 

They were wrong of course. I knew kids who had the answers. I saw them sneak a look at them during the test. I also had the answers in my pocket, but never looked at them - I swear. I scored a 77 on the final.  

What's With The Unfinished Work?

I have seen a trend in the work I’ve recently graded. People are not finishing their assignments. 

It seems a significant amount of the work I have looked at has at least one question blank. I see four question Do Nows with blank answer spaces. I see homework where all but one of the questions has been answered. I look in your notebooks and questions are left blank.

What’s with this?

Do you think I’m giving you seven questions about a reading but am secretly hoping you only answer five? Folks, its not done until all the questions are answered.

I don’t give a lot of homework, but what I do give, I expect to be done. 

Would you enjoy your dinner 80 percent cooked? Would you like to play a video game where the designers stopped writing code when they got most of the game done? Would you appreciate if your phone worked 75 percent of the time because Apple or Samsung figured that was good enough?

It’s simple…you need to finish what you start.

It’s like a great joke I heard the other day:

      A man was walking down the street, followed by six penguins. A police officer asked him, “What are you doing with those six penguins?” The man replied, “That’s just it, Officer. 

I don’t know what to do with them.” The police officer shakes his head and said, “Why don’t

you take them to the zoo?” 

      The man agrees that this is a great idea. Well, the very next day, the same police officer sees the same man and he still has the six penguins following him. However, the penguins are now wearing sunglasses. 

      The police officer calls the man over and says, “I thought I told you to take those penguins to the zoo.” 

      The man says, “Yes sir, I did. And…