Even Math Teachers Can Have Math Weaknesses

I’ve taught just about every math subject and topic you can imagine right up through calculus. I’m pretty good at all kinds of math problems, which is nice when you’re expected to help kids make sense of them. But there’s a skill—mathematical in nature—that I’m not so hot at.

Spatial estimation.

How many feet are between me and the car in front of me? Couldn’t tell you.

How many gallons of water fit in my bathtub? No idea.

When it comes to teaching, this isn’t really a problem. I know about measurement. I know how to take measurements. I know a few benchmarks (like a football field) and can easily estimate whether something is more or less than those.

It’s a problem when I’m moving today. Do I have enough boxes? Is everything going to fit in the size of moving truck I’ve rented (plus the two cars coming along)?

I guess I’ll find out.

After packing up my classroom this past week, though, I’m happy to say I’ve at least gotten better at optimizing box space. I got some books packed in an arrangement that was a thing of beauty.

Is there a minor section in your area of expertise where you don’t feel so expert? Has it gotten in your way? How do you work around it?

R.C. and the Terrible/Wonderful, No-Good/Very-Rad Day

Wednesday, May 23rd was the most awesome bad day ever. Emphasis on the “awesome,” seriously. Hang with me, and you’ll see what I mean. First …

Some of you know, I’ve been on the job hunt for a while now. As much as I love my current job, I feel I need to relocate closer to family. In fact, I made confirmed plans to leave … without having landed a new job yet. Leap of faith? Oh, yeah.

Also, if you’ve been around the blog at all the past few months, you know I was involved in a contest called The Writer’s Voice. This meant Monday (the 21st), my entry was up on my coach’s blog, available for any of the eight participating agents to place a vote.

I got five votes, which meant five full requests. I also got some requests from lurking agents and queries I’d sent the week before. Lots of yay!

I had a week and a half left of school. Finals to prep for, paperwork to complete, a classroom to pack up. Plus I had preparations for moving (despite having no job) soon after the end of school. Lots of stress.

Wednesday promised to be busy. I had a phone interview for a prospective job during my morning prep time. It went well. Really well. I even had a little time afterwards before my next class, so I got things squared away and glanced at my email.

One of the agents from Monday had already finished reading the full and wanted to know if there was a time for us to talk.

Cue the out-of-body experience.

After a little back-and-forth email, we agreed she’d call at 7:00 that evening. Then I threw myself into getting my physics students ready for their final. Then another job interview (this one on Skype) during lunch. It went well, too. My afternoon prep hour held a mix of “holy crap, am I really talking to an agent tonight?” texting with my critique partner (thanks, Mindy!) and wrangling some sub plans for my 7th period, because I would be on an interview panel for a candidate to replace me at my current school.

6th period went pretty well—always good to have students keeping me busy and distracted. But, the time for the interview comes around, and no sub shows up. I check with the other math teacher, who was also going to the interview. No sub for him either. Some back and forth with the secretary, already late … finally one sub shows up to watch both classes. I knew nothing mathematical would happen, but whatever.

Interview was solid, but a little long because the candidate was technically interviewing for two different positions. It was Wednesday, which at my school meant staying until 5:00. Good thing, because I had plenty to do, like getting my calculus final ready for the next day.

The clock hit five, and I was out the door. Except I passed a classroom where a few teacher-friends were chatting, and they called at me to wait. Vicki wanted to know when we could have a little get-together before I left town (love you, Vicki!). I promised to let them know as soon as I had my schedule worked out, Jill gave me a cupcake (<3), and I was off again. I hit the road just before 5:15, and my afternoon commute takes about an hour. No problem. Five minutes later, wall-to-wall cars. NO!

It was okay, though. A delay of no more than ten minutes due to one of the traffic lights flashing red, creating a four-way stop during rush hour. On I went to the freeway.

Ten minutes later, gridlock.

Gridlock in a town that never has gridlock.

Stop-and-go traffic. A section that normally takes three minutes took twenty. Then it flowed a little more through a section that was being resurfaced.

Math-teacher me couldn’t stop looking at the clock, calculating how many minutes I still had to spare. I’d be okay, just barely.

Once through the construction and back to regular speeds, I forced myself to take calm, relaxing breaths, because I knew I’d have no time for that once I got home. I walked in my door at 6:52. Got settled and situated.

She called. We talked for over an hour. At the end, an offer of representation.

That’s right. AN OFFER!

Naturally, I asked for a week to notify the other agents with the manuscript. Everyone promised to read quickly. Then there were new requests. I didn’t need new requests! Too many variables! But okay. By end of the week, I’d had a total of eleven requests, one turning into the offer, one bowing out, and one arranging to call the following Tuesday.

Oh, and the first interview I had Wednesday morning? They offered me the job, and I accepted. My relocation is a leap of faith no more.

Tuesday involved no fewer than four phone calls with agents and further offers. Serious quandary. All five offering agents are amazing. Much hashing-it-out-with-Mindy ensued. Finally, I made my decision and accepted one of the offers—from the agent who offered first, it turned out.

So, here’s the important part.

Too bad, I’m doing it anyway.

I am now represented by the marvelous Jennifer Laughran of Andrea Brown Literary Agency. But most of you already knew that.

I suspect the real work is about to begin.

Don’t Take that Tone with Me!

It’s one thing when you’re communicating face-to-face. When someone’s “taking a tone” with you, it’s usually pretty obvious. Take the conversation to the realm of the written word, though, and suddenly there’s more than enough room for interpretation.

As a novelist, it’s tricky enough to make sure a character’s tone matches the intention. I remember I once had a reader of one of my early manuscripts say, “Man, he’s being a little harsh.” I looked at the line of dialogue, mystified. Then I realized my reader (a teenager) was assuming a sarcastic tone for the brief statement. Not at all what I intended.

Did I tell her she was wrong and skip happily on my way? Nope. I adjusted the line and the information surrounding it so the intended tone came across more clearly.

Real-time conversations by text can be so much worse if we’re not careful. That’s why emoticons were invented, right? To give an extra cue of whether we’re teasing or annoyed or uncertain? (I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds good, and it’s why I use them.)

What if one of our online compadres says, “Hey, on that post over there, you’re coming across kind of (insert undesirable trait)”? Do we say, “That’s not what I meant at all,” and continue on without changing? Hopefully not. The fact I know what I meant is irrelevant. How it’s taken by those reading is more important.

I may need to adjust my approach in the future, make sure my tone is more clear without the benefit of facial expression, vocal tone, body language, and all the other cues we use in real life. If I learn how to do that, who knows? Maybe it’ll make me a better writer in general.

Have you had any experiences with misunderstanding tone or having your own misunderstood? Any tips or tricks for making tone clear in writing?

Chances Are, We Don’t Understand Chances

Personally, I think probability is one of the most fun math concepts to teach. Break out the dice, the coins, the different-colored marbles, and the spinners. Do a bunch of trials to see how the experimental compares to the theoretical.

Despite the fun, I see a lot of students get all the way to high school without a solid understanding of what probabilities really mean. Take, for example, these two questions:

People often think these are asking the same thing. Our gut instinct for #1 is that if we’ve already gotten an uncommon five heads in a row, surely the chance of getting heads again isn’t that good. But the coin doesn’t know what it landed on before. The situation only has two choices: heads or tails. For that single sixth flip, it has a 50% chance of landing heads just like every other time.

The situation in #2 is completely different. You’re taking all six flips as one situation, so there are a lot more “choices” for the results. All heads, all tails, one tail and five heads (with six different configurations for this one alone), and so on. There is only a 1/64, or a little more than 1.5% chance, of this happening.

The difference in the two is that in #1, the five heads in a row have already happened, and cannot influence the sixth flip.

It’s also good to talk about what makes a game fair or unfair, and why gambling isn’t such a great idea.

The thing about probabilities is that they often make an assumption about all else being equal. The coin or dice being evenly weighted. Every individual outcome (like heads or tails) having an equal chance.

In life, we can’t always make that assumption. That’s where people sometimes confuse “probability” with “statistics.” For example, say we collect some data and find that 2% of writers querying a novel this year will secure representation with an agent. Does that mean any given querying writer this year has a 2% chance of getting an agent?

Not remotely.

Within that pool of querying writers, we can’t say “all things being equal,” because they aren’t. Some of the writers don’t have a clue what they’re doing. (You’ve seen Slushpile Hell, right?) Some aren’t making such egregious mistakes, but just aren’t ready yet. Some just don’t have the right timing with market trends. Some aren’t querying that aggressively, only sending out a few here and there. And then some are at the top of their game, do their homework, and go at it. The percentage of that last group getting representation is probably quite different.

So, strange as it is for a math teacher to say, don’t get caught up in the numbers when it comes to these subjective, highly variable, real life scenarios. Save thoughts of probability for when you’re deciding whether to walk into a casino, or figuring out whether you should take an umbrella when you leave for work.

When it comes to situations where all things aren’t equal, work to make sure you belong to the group that successes draw from. That’s the way to up your chances.

Hazards of the Blame Game

This is kind of an extension of my prior post on accepting responsibility. Blaming others is probably built into our genetic code. Little kids certainly pick up the skill quickly. They don’t even have to be talking yet—they can just point at their sibling.

I teach teenagers, so I see it plenty. A student’s grade is slipping, they’re not doing what they’re supposed to in class, and there are a thousand reasons for it. None of them acknowledging that maybe they bear some responsibility and control for their own academic fate.

Actually, since I’ve taught a lot of the same kids over several years, I’ve been able to see them grow and mature. I’ve seen them go through this transition to understanding, “Yeah, there are some factors I can’t control, but my own decisions have the biggest impact on my life.” It’s very cool to see that change.

Not everyone gets there, though, even in adulthood.

A number of people I know are currently pregnant. I admit, #blamethefetus tweets are frequently amusing, so I’m not saying any hint of “blaming” someone/something is going to make my head explode. Even less humorous blaming can be okay once in a while. Sometimes you need to blow off steam. Sometimes something really is someone else’s fault.

The not one but TWO traffic jams I had to get through on Wednesday after school, for instance. Definitely someone else’s fault, definitely preventable, and definitely annoyed me. A lot.

But … when we’re looking at something that’s not going right, trying to figure out why, and we look at everyone except ourselves, we have a problem. If we’re the ones to blame (even partially), we’ll be blind to it, and we’ll likely miss opportunities to FIX IT.

I mean, hey, who doesn’t want their life to go better?

Not getting the promotion we want at work? Maybe there’s discrimination or favoritism going on. Or maybe we aren’t working as hard or as well as some others.

Not getting requests with our queries, or not getting anywhere with submissions? Maybe trends in the market aren’t lining up. Or maybe we can improve the story and writing in some way.

Do you catch yourself blaming others when you shouldn’t? Has it gotten you in trouble? Do particular iterations of the Blame Game annoy you more than others?

Crushing the Contest Curse

Some of you know I haven’t had the greatest history with contests. I’d only entered two—well, the same one, two years in a row. I got through the initial slush round both times. When it came to the agent judging/voting round, however … silence.

Ouch.

All the things people say about subjectivity, not the right mix of agents for you, etc. are true. Someone thought my work was good enough to put me through the slush.

Those true words don’t stop the hurt. The feeling that readers and other writers may appreciate aspects of my writing, but to the “people who matter,” I’ll never be good enough. The conviction that I’m doing something wrong and no one can tell me what.

Or maybe someone could tell me. They just don’t.

I kept writing, kept revising, kept querying. With each story, I’ve gotten better. I know that. But I figured contests weren’t for me. The sting of public silence was too much.

Then a couple of friends talked me into trying one more contest. (Okay, they didn’t have to try that hard. Mostly it kept coming up in conversation and they said, “Yeah, you should.”)

Maybe I’m just a masochist at heart.

I got picked by a coach, thus getting through the slush again.

Monday was agent voting day. One or two votes meant partial requests. Three or more meant full requests.

Would I suffer silence again?

No. Not this time. Five votes. Five full requests.

Nothing is guaranteed. An agent still has to love the whole manuscript enough to offer representation, and that’s a whole different hurdle. The point for now is that when I was put up next to lots of really stellar work, I still caught some eyes. That feels really good.

But I still remember how the silence felt.

If you’ve suffered the silence, it’s okay that it hurts. I’m a big believer in letting yourself wallow for a day or so, but only if you definitively cut off that wallowing before it does some damage. Keep working on the story you’ve got, or start working on a new one. Tweak your query or opening pages. Do some research on which agents are most likely to love your story.

Hope that you hit the right agent at the right time with the right story, because it takes a little luck. I’m not one to say we will make it if we keep working, because no one knows that. The only thing I know is that if we stop writing and stop trying, failure is guaranteed.