Decades before the Wordle game took the Internet by storm, the College Ready Mathematics curriculum had the Silent Number Game. The two games worked similarly; in the Silent Number Game, students had to guess a two- or three-digit number, and the teacher would silently mark how many of the digits were correct and how many of the correct digits were in the correct position. Both games were inspired by the board game Mastermind, which in turn was inspired by various pencil-and-paper folk games. The CRM geometry textbook instructed teachers to play a few games with students over the course of a week, and some of the homework problems in the book asked questions based on this game. By explaining what someone knows or does not know after a few turns, and why, students use thought processes useful for making mathematical proofs, a concept that is introduced soon after the Silent Number Game.
Mrs. Tracy, my master teacher in the geometry class, let me lead the class in a few rounds of the Silent Number Game. The students were getting better at the game over the few days that we had been playing. Mrs. Tracy walked to the front to take over and finish teaching the lesson; I took a deep breath, still feeling tense after what had happened earlier that day in the Basic Math B class. At least no one in the geometry class cussed me out today.
After Mrs. Tracy finished, I walked around the room helping students with their work. I happened to glance at Andy Rawlings’ paper as he wrote an answer to this problem:
Tara is playing the Silent Number Game.
923 1 correct, 1 in the right position
964 1 correct, 1 in the right position
945 2 correct, 0 in the right position
Tara thinks that the number must start with 9. Explain how you know Tara is wrong, and find the correct number.
Andy had written, “Tara is dumb.” I pointed at his answer and said, “Really? That’s what you’re going with?”
“Come on, Mr. Dennison,” Andy replied. “It even says she’s wrong.”
“Yes, but explain how you know. Without calling her names.”
“Fine. Let me think about it.” Andy erased his work as I moved on to the student behind him, Kayla Welch. She had left the problem blank. “Mr. Dennison?” Kayla asked. “I don’t get this one. I thought the number started with 9 too.”
“Let’s talk this out,” I replied. “Why do you think it starts with 9?”
“Because the first two guesses started with 9, and she had one number correct and it was in the right position. And the last one had two correct digits.”
“How many of the digits in 945 are in the right position?”
Kayla reread the problem. “None of them,” she said, trailing off as she contemplated this information. “But 9 has to be in the first position.”
“Let’s think about this. If there is a 9 in the number, it has to be in the first position, because 923 had one digit correct and it was in the correct position. But 9 can’t be in the first position because of what you said about 945. What does that mean?”
Kayla thought about this, then said, “There isn’t a 9 in the number?”
“Right. So which two digits of 945 are correct?”
“The 4 and the 5.”
“And, look at the other guesses. Which digit is 4?”
“The last one. Because 964 had one number in the right position.”
“So which of 923 is the correct digit?”
“Not the 9. It’s the 2, because we already know the last digit is 4. So the number is 524.”
“That’s what I got! Good job!”
After the bell rang, Mrs. Tracy asked to talk to me for a minute. “You did a good job of making Kayla think through that problem.”
“Thank you,” I said. I sighed and added, “I don’t feel like I did a good job in Mrs. Matthews’ class this morning. A girl cussed me out for telling her to get back to work.”
“That happens sometimes. What did you do?”
“I looked over at Mrs. Matthews. She gave me a Room Two form, and I filled it out,” I explained. Everyone at Nueces High School knew that Room Two meant the room where students get sent out of class for misbehaving, and I learned this quickly during the week of teacher meetings at the start of the year. “And I called her mom and left a message.”
“Then you did the right thing. Don’t let it get to you.”
“I know.”
“Not every student is going to like you.”
“I know. I’m learning that.”
“You did great today. Don’t let it get to you. Enjoy your weekend, and I’ll see you Monday.”
“Thanks.”
After I got home from student teaching, I made a sandwich, as I always did. When I finished eating, I got on my bike and headed to campus. Yesterday was the first day of classes for the University of Jeromeville’s fall quarter. Classes started on a Thursday, as fall quarter always did, but fall quarter this year felt very different from usual. For one thing, one of my classes for the student teaching program had already been meeting for a month. Student teaching itself was an eight-unit class officially called Education 306A: Teaching Mathematics in Secondary Schools, consisting not only of the time I spent at Nueces High every morning but also an hour-long seminar every day. The UJ academic year started later than that of public high schools in the area, but Ed 306A followed the public school schedules. I had two other education classes this quarter that met on the university’s academic schedule. One of them started yesterday, and the other would start on Monday. Neither of these classes met on Fridays, so all I had today was the seminar.
The classroom was about half full when I arrived, but of course “half full” was a relative term, so this meant that eight students and Dr. Van Zandt were in the room when I arrived. This class was exclusively for students in the mathematics teacher certification program. There were seventeen of us in the program this year, and Dr. Van Zandt, who had been the professor for this program since 1990, said that it was the largest class of future math teachers he had ever had.
Today, Dr. Van Zandt asked if any of us had any experiences to share regarding difficult students. I raised my hand.
“Yes, Greg?” Dr. Van Zandt said.
“Just today, I told two girls to get back to work because they were talking. One of them looked me right in the eye and said, ‘I don’t effing have to do what you say.’ But she said the actual word.”
“What a little brat,” Ryan Gaines, another student teacher working at Nueces High, said. Some of the others chuckled.
“And how did you handle that?” Dr. Van Zandt asked.
“Mrs. Matthews gave me the form to send the girl to Room Two. That’s where misbehaving students get sent. She took it and stormed off.”
“Then I think you did what you needed to. Did you do any kind of follow-up after that?”
“I called her mom and left a message. Mrs. Matthews said that was required.”
“She’s right. According to State Ed Code, if you send a student out of class for the period, you have to contact the parents. That’s called a class suspension. And it’s always a good idea to make contact with the parents as soon as possible after any kind of discipline. Thanks for sharing, Greg.”
I listened to others share stories of their own misbehaving students. Although I handled it well this time, that kind of defiant behavior from students made me angry. And although a conversation with the girl’s mother may be productive in the long run, I secretly hoped that she would not call back. Talking to parents terrified me, mostly because I was barely twenty-two years old and did not expect to be taken seriously by parents of high school students who were probably twice my age.
For the last three years, the highlight of my Fridays had been the large group meeting of Jeromeville Christian Fellowship. Again, I knew that this year would be different. I was no longer an undergraduate, and for some reason I had yet to understand, there were very few graduate students attending JCF. I only knew of one at the time, a guy named Andrew Bryant who was now in his second year of getting his Ph.D. in chemistry. Of course, this might just be a consequence of the fact that most graduate programs are a lot of work, leaving students little time to be involved in campus activities outside of their program. I did not see a need for my student teaching to take me away from my involvement at JCF, or from activities at church. Being in the student teaching program, I was classified as a graduate student, but I was pretty sure that actual graduate students working toward master’s, doctoral, or professional degrees had a much greater workload than I did.
The most visibly obvious difference at JCF was the location. Since I started attending JCF early in my second year, the large group meetings had been in Evans Hall, but this year they moved to Harding Hall. The buildings were not far apart; Harding was on the corner of Davis Drive and Colt Avenue, diagonally across from Stone Hall, and Evans was just on the other side of Stone. But psychologically, I always associated Evans with JCF. I had never been inside Harding, so this would feel like unfamiliar territory.
Harding Hall, like many of the buildings on this part of campus, was an older building, dating to the 1940s. The University of Jeromeville had a world-class School of Veterinary Medicine, one of the largest in the United States. Harding Hall was the original location of the vet school, but many of the laboratories and the teaching hospital moved in the 1970s to a new location on the edge of campus, between Andrews Road and Highway 117. The vet school still had offices and classrooms in Harding Hall, and the entrance of the building reflected its history; above the doors stood relief sculptures of various animals.
My housemate Jed was with me when we arrived. “Have you had a class in here before?” I asked.
“No,” Jed replied.
“Me either. I’m not sure exactly where the room is.”
I opened the door and walked into the lobby. A large stairway led up, with hallways on either side.. A handwritten sign on poster board said “Jeromeville Christian Fellowship” with an arrow pointing up the stairs. As I walked up the stairs, the soft din of voices that I heard upstairs gradually became louder.
“What’s up, G,” Todd Chevallier said from the table where he sat, handing out the weekly newsletter and writing name tags. He wrote “G” on mine and stuck it on my shirt before I could object, then he handed Jed his name tag.
“‘G,’” I said. “I guess I’ll be ‘G’ tonight.”
“It’s not a bad nickname,” Jed said.
“There are only two people who are allowed to call me ‘G,’” I explained
“Oh yeah? Who?” Todd asked.
“When I was in high school, my friend Jessica always used to shorten everyone’s name. Melissa became ‘Mel,’ Renee became ‘Nee,’ Kevin became ‘Kev.’ She called herself ‘Jess.’ I already went by a one-syllable name, so I became ‘G.’ And then later our other friend, Melissa, also started calling me ‘G’ sometimes, but not as often as Jessica.”
“That’s funny.”
“And now I guess I’ll have to tell people that story,” I said, patting my ‘G’ name tag with my hand.
The large lecture hall, room 2101 Harding Hall, held around three hundred students, larger than JCF’s previous location in 170 Evans. The seats were steeply inclined, such that the entrance to the room, in the back of the seating area, was on the second floor, but the front of the room was level with the first floor. The room was not very full yet. Jed and I sat on the left aisle about halfway toward the front. I skimmed through the newsletter, then watched the room gradually fill up.
I had been part of this group for long enough that I knew many of these people. But I could not help but notice the absence of those people who had graduated last year and left Jeromeville. Ramon Quintero, Sarah Winters, Krista Curtis, Xander Mackey, Raphael Stevens, Scott and Amelia Madison, Joe Fox, Alyssa Kramer, Evan Lundgren, and Haley Channing were all gone, among others. There were some students from my year who had graduated but stayed in Jeromeville, as well as some from my year who had not finished their degrees; I said hi to one of those, Mike Knepper, as he took a seat down the row from Jed and me.
Brent Wang was a senior this year; he played keyboard and was this year’s worship team leader. He led the group in a song. Eddie Baker, who graduated my year and was now on staff with JCF, gave the announcements, followed by Brent and his band playing a few more songs. After this, Todd and Brent, along with senior Ajeet Tripathi, a junior named Ellie Jo Raymond who was on the worship team with Brent, and sophomores Brianna Johns and Chelsea Robbins performed a skit based on the TV show “Friends,” which most people I knew were obsessed with but I could never get into. The skit was amusing, but many of the references to the TV show went over my head. I made a mental note that the first large group two years ago, with the Scooby-Doo skit, was funnier. Of course, I was a little biased, since I was part of that skit.
The rest of the night was structured similarly to every other JCF meeting I had been to, except that Janet McAllen’s message was fairly light and general about following Jesus without including any heavy theological concepts. This made sense, because new students who are just checking out all the groups on campus often came to the first meeting of the year, and we did not want to get too intense for students who are just checking out Christianity for the first time.
After the message, the band played one more song, and then the group dispersed. Jed walked over to talk to a group of students from his year; I followed him.
“Hey, Greg,” Tim Walton said, looking at my name tag. “‘G?’ Is that what we’re calling you now?”
“What’s up, G?” Brianna Johns asked, emphasizing the G and giggling.
“Todd wrote that as a joke,” I explained. “How were your summers?”
“I just went home,” Tim explained. “Nothing special.”
“Same,” Brianna added. “I was just working. How was yours?”
“It was good. I just hung out in Jeromeville, doing youth group stuff with J-Cov. And I started swing dancing.”
“Fun!” Brianna said excitedly. “Are they still doing that at the U-Bar? I went a few times back in the spring.”
“Yeah. You should come back,” I said, adding in my mind without saying out loud that I could always use more beautiful women like you to dance with. “And my student teaching program started five weeks ago, and one of my classes here did too.”
“Wow! You’ve been busy!” Brianna said.
“How is teaching going so far?” Tim asked.
“Pretty good,” I replied. “So far I’m just observing and helping answer students’ questions. I’ll gradually start teaching soon, and a few months into the year I get to take over the class.”
Chelsea Robbins turned around, having overheard what I had just said. “What grade are you teaching?”
“High school. Geometry and Basic Math B.”
“Here at Jeromeville High?”
“No. Nueces High.”
“You commute to Nueces every day? Wow.”
“It’s not that bad of a drive. And all my classes here are in the afternoon, because these classes are specifically for student teachers who are in the classroom in the morning.”
“That makes sense. Have the students been nice so far?”
“Some are, some aren’t,” I explained. “There’s this one girl in the Basic B class who is really mouthy and defiant. I told her and her friend to get back to work, and she just looked at me and said, ‘I don’t effing have to do what you say.’ But she said the real word.”
“Wow,” Chelsea said.
“So what happened to her?” Brianna asked.
“She got sent to the detention room. I got to call her mom, my first parent phone call as a teacher, but she didn’t answer. I had to leave a message. I can tell I’m going to have trouble with this girl. On the first day of school, she came with a shirt that said ‘420.’ The master teacher sent her to the office to change on a dress code violation. I had no idea what that even meant.”
Tim now rejoined the conversation, saying, “You didn’t know what ‘420’ meant?”
“No!” I answered emphatically. “I grew up sheltered, my only friends were other honors students, and my social life in Jeromeville revolves around church. How and why am I going to know marijuana slang?”
“You have a point,” he replied.
That night that Todd wrote my name tag as “G” happened during a time when I had lost touch with everyone I knew in high school. Melissa Holmes was the last high school friend I had heard of, about six months ago. I got back in touch with Melissa about a year later, and Jessica Halloran not too long after that. Decades later, at our 30-year class reunion in 2024, I had already arrived when Jessica showed up. She saw me and immediately said, “Hey, G! How are you?” I told her that she and Melissa, who was also at the reunion that night, were still to this day the only people allowed to call me “G.”
Dealing with students like Marie, the girl who cussed me out, was always my least favorite part of teaching. My strength as a teacher is the subject matter, and it takes so long to walk to my desk and fill out the necessary forms when sending a student out of class that my natural inclination is to just ignore the misbehavior and move on with the material. However, I also know it is necessary to deal with disruptions immediately, because small problems left unresolved become larger problems later that are more difficult to deal with. This is true in many areas of life, not just issues of classroom management, and this is something that I am still learning now in middle age. Early in the student teaching program, Dr. Van Zandt mentioned that teachers are lifelong learners, but we are all lifelong learners in some way regardless of profession. Life is full of surprises, everything is constantly changing, and nothing I can do will change that.
Readers: What is something that is a key part of your job (or a key part of being in school, if you are a student) that you feel like you are not very good at and still have things to learn? Tell me about it in the comments.
If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.
Don't Let The Days Go By 
4 thoughts on “October 2, 1998. Fall quarter this year felt very different from usual. (#194)”