Where You Are. J.H. Trumble

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      “Are we doing anything today?”

      “Can we just have a free period?”

      “I don’t know why we have to come to school these last two days. We don’t do anything anyway.”

      God, two more days—two more days—two more days.

      It’s this way right before every long holiday. We intentionally schedule final due dates and tests a few days before a break or the end of a grading period so we have a couple of days for makeups or redos or whatever concessions we have to make to get those sixty-niners—those kids right on the border—over the hump. And there’s no point starting something new with a two-week break coming up.

      And with boring regularity, some smart aleck argues that we should cancel those last two days. I remind this current smart aleck that no matter what day we end on before a break, there will always be a last two days.

      I don’t think they really grasp that logic though.

      Anyway, the best we teachers can hope for is to keep the kids contained until we can dismiss at two thirty on that last day (in this case, Friday).

      “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say over their grumbling. As they settle in, I turn on my projector and a collective groan rises in the room.

      “What?” I say, clicking Play on my tablet screen. “You’re going to love this movie.”

      Stephen Newman picks up the DVD case as he passes by my computer cart in the front of the room. “Stand and Deliver?” He rolls his eyes and tosses it back on the cart.

      “Why so cynical, Stephen? How do you know you’re not going to like it? You haven’t even seen it yet.”

      “I saw it in Spanish last year. Lame.”

      “Yeah, Mr. McNelis,” Kristyn Murrow says. “That movie’s like a million years old.”

      “It was released in 1988,” I say in its defense.

      “We weren’t even born. Can’t we watch Scream Three?”

      “No. And don’t get on my nerves, or I will get on yours. And, Stephen, don’t get too comfortable. You won’t be watching the movie anyway, pal.”

      He looks at me in disbelief.

      I motion him to my desk. He sneers, and for a moment, I think he’s going to refuse, but then he slouches over.

      I hold out his last test. “You didn’t do any test corrections yesterday. As I recall, you chose to use that time to entertain Kristyn. Yet, despite your fascinating performance, she managed to complete her corrections.”

      “So? I didn’t want to do them.”

      “You don’t do them, you fail the nine weeks, and that leaves you very, very borderline for the semester. Your choice, but you fail, you won’t be participating in athletics when we come back from the break.”

      I open my hand and let his test drop to my desk, then turn my attention to the attendance screen on my computer.

      After a moment, he snatches it up and makes his way over the kids stretched out on the floor to the hallway, intentionally nudging a few with his foot and sending up a chorus of heys.

      “Let me know if you need some help,” I call after him. I can’t help smiling to myself. God bless coaches and their policies.

      I open an e-mail from Jen. Showing a movie?

      “Stand and Deliver,” I reply. You?

      So you’re the one who rented it. All I could get was “Shrek the Third.”

      Oh. I’m sure that has a strong correlation to our math standards.

      Yes, in fact. Mathematical logic in sentences. Pinocchio and Prince Charming. Hold on.

      A few minutes later she e-mails me a scene from the movie, a scene where Prince Charming pushes Pinocchio to tell him where Shrek is and Pinocchio answers with a bunch of rhetorical mumbo-jumbo: I’m possibly more or less not definitely rejecting the idea that in no way with any amount of uncertainty that I undeniably . . .

      I chuckle at the exchange. Now that I read it, I remember it well. It’s a stretch, but I concede the point.

      Is that your kid sitting in the hallway? she writes. He’s looking in my door window and mouthing something to one of my girls.

      I sigh. I’ll get him.

      I step over the kids and open my door, catching him red-handed.

      “Stephen, what the L-M-N-O-P are you doing? Can I assume you’ve finished your test corrections already?”

      “I’m working on them.”

      “Looks to me like you’re working on something else entirely. Look through the window again. Go ahead.”

      He looks suspicious but does what I say.

      “You see Ms. Went over there at her desk? If I get another e-mail from her or anyone else in this building telling me your face has been anywhere other than hanging over that test, you will spend your last day sitting next to me. You will be teacher’s pet for the day, my friend. Me and you.” I give him my brightest smile.

      Apparently the thought of sitting with me is so humiliating that he actually sits his butt back on the floor and finishes his test corrections.

      I congratulate myself on winning another round.

      The whining continues through fourth period. It’s a relief to get to fifth and my calculus kids, and a real pleasure to see my sixth-period AP Calculus class.

      I’m especially pleased to see that Robert is more himself today. He gives me a shy smile when he enters the room, and I give him one back.

      Robert

      I half expect Mr. McNelis to show us Stand and Deliver the last two days before Christmas break. It’s this movie, a true story, about a California teacher who takes a bunch of low-achieving Latino kids in an equally low-performing high school and turns them into calculus superstars. I’ve already seen it four times—twice in eighth grade (Spanish I and Algebra), once in ninth grade (Spanish II), and once in tenth grade (with my testing group during state testing week). It’s actually the perfect movie for Calculus because it’s, well, about calculus, or cal-CUL-lus, as Lou Diamond Phillips calls it in the movie. But there’s no movie. Instead, he passes out pages of math puzzles.

      Some of them are pretty challenging and they take my mind off the long Christmas holiday coming up. Others are easy, like this one:

      A teacher writes the Roman numeral IX on the board and asks students how to make it into 6 by adding a single line, without lifting the dry erase marker.

      I copy the IX, then add an S in front of it: SIX.

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