Algebra Teacher Quotes

I accidentally vaporize my pre-algebra teacher.

The voice belonged to Mr. Pzyrbovich, an algebra teacher who was always called Mr. P, for obvious reasons. He has a heavy accent, which a lot of kids said made him hard to understand, although to be fair some of these kids would have never understood algebra anyway.

The poet dreams of the classroom I dreamed I stood up in class And I said aloud: Teacher, Why is algebra important? Sit down, he said. Then I dreamed I stood up And I said: Teacher, I’m weary of the turkeys That we have to draw every fall. May I draw a fox instead? Sit down, he said. Then I dreamed I stood up once more and said: Teacher, My heart is falling asleep And it wants to wake up. It needs to be outside. Sit down, he said.

Is everything all right? Is everything all right? Hmm, hold on a minute, let me see . . . my mom is going out with my Algebra teacher, a subject I’m flunking, by the way; my best friend hates me; I’m fourteen years old and I’ve never been asked out; I don’t have any breasts; and oh, I just found out I’m the princess of Genovia.

It’s sort of weird to be hugged by your Algebra teacher. That’s all I have to say.

Noah was no longer at my side when I turned. He had Kent from algebra pinned against the car. "I should injure you considerably," he said in a low voice "Dude, chill." Kent was completely calm. "Noah," I heard myself say. "Its not worth it." Noah's eyes narrowed, but apon hearing my voice, he released Kent who straightened his shirt and brushed the front of his khakis. "Get fucked, Kent," Noah said as he turned away. The idiot laughed, "Oh, I will." Noah whirled around and I heard the unmistakable impact of knuckles meeting face. Kent was on the concrete, his hands clutching his nose. When he started to get up, Noah said, "I wouldn't. I'm barely above kicking the shit out of you on the ground. Barely." "You broke my nose!" Blood streamed down Kents shirt and a crowd formed a small circle around the three of us. A teacher parted the throng and called out, "Principals office NOW, Shaw." Noah ignored him and walked over to me, inordinately calm. He placed his good hand on the small of my back and my legs threatened to dissolve. The bell rang and I looked at Noah as he leaned in and brushed his lips against my ear. He whispered into my hair, "It was worth it." - The Unbecoming Of Mara Dyer

Ode to Algebra Thrust into this dingy classroom we die like lampless moths locked into the desolation of fluorescent lights and metal desks. Ten minutes until the bell rings. What use is the quadratic formula in our daily lives? Can we use it to unlock the secrets in the hearts of those we love? Five minutes until the bell rings. Cruel Algebra teacher, won't you let us go?

That was probably the reason that history was more of an oracle than a science. Perhaps later, muck later, it would be taught by means of tables of statistics, supplemented by anatomical sections. The teacher would draw on the blackboard an algebraic formula representing the conditions of life of the masses of a particular nation at a particular period: 'Here, citizens, you see the objective factors which conditioned this historical process.

Thrust into this dingy classroom we die like lampless moths locked into the desolation of fluorescent lights and metal desks. Ten minutes until the bell rings. What use is the quadratic formula in our daily lives? Can we use it to unlock the secrets in the hearts of those we love? Five minutes until the bell rings. Cruel Algebra teacher, won’t you let us go?

In all likelihood, Sonja had more academic journal subscriptions than friends. She could explain advanced calculus to her fifth-form algebra teacher but couldn't tell a joke to a boy at lunch.

There have been complaints?' said Miss Susan. 'Er, no ... er ... although Miss Smith has told me that the children coming up from your class are, er, restless. Their reading ability is, she says, rather unfortunately advanced ...' 'Miss Smith thinks a good book is about a boy and his dog chasing a big red ball,' said Miss Susan. 'My children have learned to expect a plot. No wonder they get impatient. We're reading Grim Fairy Tales at the moment.' 'That is rather rude of you, Susan.' 'No, madam. That is rather polite of me. It would have been rude of me to say that there is a circle of Hell reserved for teachers like Miss Smith.' 'But that's a dreadf---' Madam Frout stopped, and began again. 'You should not be teaching them to read at all yet!' she snapped. [...] 'I mean,' the headmistress mumbled, 'childhood is a time for play and---' 'Learning,' said Miss Susan. 'Learning through play,' said Madam Frout, grateful to find familiar territory. 'After all, kittens and puppies---' '---grow up to be cats and dogs, which are even less interesting,' said Miss Susan, 'whereas children should grow up to be adults.'" [...] 'What precisely was it you wanted, madam?' she said. It's just that I've left the class doing algebra, and they get restless when they've finished.' 'Algebra?' said Madam Frout [...] 'But that's far too difficult for seven-year-olds!' 'Yes, but I didn't tell them that and so far they haven't found out,' said Susan.

I felt a downright fear of the mathematics class. The teacher pretended that algebra was a perfectly natural affair, to be taken for granted, whereas I didn’t even know what numbers really were. They were not flowers, not animals, not fossils; they were nothing that could be imagined, mere quantities that resulted from counting. To my confusion these quantities were now represented by letters, which signified sounds, so that it became possible to hear them, so to speak. Oddly enough, my classmates could handle these things and found them self-evident. No one could tell me what numbers were, and I was unable even to formulate the question.

Because it is bad enough living with a neurotic cat, a drum-playing Algebra teacher, and a woman in her last trimester of pregnancy. Throw in a dowager princess of Genovia, and I’m sorry: Book me a room on the twenty-first floor of Bellevue, because it’s the funny farm for me.

Mr Davis knew any quantity of Greek, Latin, Algebra, and ologies of all sorts, so he was called a fine teacher; and manners, morals, feelings, and examples were not considered of any particular importance.

there are teachers who without much fanfare take the students who others say “can't”—can't read great literature, can't do algebra or calculus, can't and don't want to learn—and turn them into scholars who can.

The teacher manages to get along still with the cumbersome algebraic analysis, in spite of its difficulties and imperfections, and avoids the smooth infinitesimal calculus, although the eighteenth century shyness toward it had long lost all point.

In high school algebra, someone had already worked out the formulas. The teacher knew them or could find them in the teacher’s manual for the textbook. Imagine a word problem where nobody knows how to turn it into a formula, where some of the information is redundant and should not be used, where crucial information is often missing, and where there is no similar example worked out earlier in the textbook. This is what happens when one tries to apply statistical models to real-life problems.

There have been complaints?' said Miss Susan. 'Er, no ... er ... although Miss Smith has told me that the children coming up from your class are, er, restless. Their reading ability is, she says, rather unfortunately advanced ...' 'Miss Smith thinks a good book is about a boy and his dog chasing a big red ball,' said Miss Susan. 'My children have learned to expect a plot. No wonder they get impatient. We're reading Grim Fairy Tales at the moment.' 'That is rather rude of you, Susan.' 'No, madam. That is rather polite of me. It would have been rude of me to say that there is a circle of Hell reserved for teachers like Miss Smith.' 'But that's a dreadf-' Madam Frout stopped, and began again. 'You should not be teaching them to read at all yet!' she snapped. [...] 'I mean,' the headmistress mumbled, 'childhood is a time for play and-' 'Learning,' said Miss Susan. 'Learning through play,' said Madam Frout, grateful to find familiar territory. 'After all, kittens and puppies -' ' -grow up to be cats and dogs, which are even less interesting,' said Miss Susan, 'whereas children should grow up to be adults.' [...] 'What precisely was it you wanted, madam?' she said. It's just that I've left the class doing algebra, and they get restless when they've finished.' 'Algebra?' said Madam Frout [...] 'But that's far too difficult for seven-year-olds!' 'Yes, but I didn't tell them that and so far they haven't found out,' said Susan.

In their writing on education, Deci and Ryan proceed from the principle that humans are natural learners and children are born creative and curious, “intrinsically motivated for the types of behaviors that foster learning and development.” This idea is complicated, however, by the fact that part of learning anything, be it painting or programming or eighth-grade algebra, involves a lot of repetitive practice, and repetitive practice is usually pretty boring. Deci and Ryan acknowledge that many of the tasks that teachers ask students to complete each day are not inherently fun or satisfying; it is the rare student who feels a deep sense of intrinsic motivation when memorizing her multiplication tables. It is at these moments that extrinsic motivation becomes important: when behaviors must be performed not for the inherent satisfaction of completing them, but for some separate outcome. Deci and Ryan say that when students can be encouraged to internalize those extrinsic motivations, the motivations become increasingly powerful. This is where the psychologists return to their three basic human needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When teachers are able to create an environment that promotes those three feelings, they say, students exhibit much higher levels of motivation. And how does a teacher create that kind of environment? Students experience autonomy in the classroom, Deci and Ryan explain, when their teachers “maximize a sense of choice and volitional engagement” while minimizing students’ feelings of coercion and control. Students feel competent, they say, when their teachers give them tasks that they can succeed at but that aren’t too easy — challenges just a bit beyond their current abilities. And they feel a sense of relatedness when they perceive that their teachers like and value and respect them.

Albert Einstein, considered the most influential person of the 20th century, was four years old before he could speak and seven before he could read. His parents thought he was retarded. He spoke haltingly until age nine. He was advised by a teacher to drop out of grade school: “You’ll never amount to anything, Einstein.” Isaac Newton, the scientist who invented modern-day physics, did poorly in math. Patricia Polacco, a prolific children’s author and illustrator, didn’t learn to read until she was 14. Henry Ford, who developed the famous Model-T car and started Ford Motor Company, barely made it through high school. Lucille Ball, famous comedian and star of I Love Lucy, was once dismissed from drama school for being too quiet and shy. Pablo Picasso, one of the great artists of all time, was pulled out of school at age 10 because he was doing so poorly. A tutor hired by Pablo’s father gave up on Pablo. Ludwig van Beethoven was one of the world’s great composers. His music teacher once said of him, “As a composer, he is hopeless.” Wernher von Braun, the world-renowned mathematician, flunked ninth-grade algebra. Agatha Christie, the world’s best-known mystery writer and all-time bestselling author other than William Shakespeare of any genre, struggled to learn to read because of dyslexia. Winston Churchill, famous English prime minister, failed the sixth grade.

When Benjamin Bloom studied his 120 world-class concert pianists, sculptors, swimmers, tennis players, mathematicians, and research neurologists, he found something fascinating. For most of them, their first teachers were incredibly warm and accepting. Not that they set low standards. Not at all, but they created an atmosphere of trust, not judgment. It was, “I’m going to teach you,” not “I’m going to judge your talent.” As you look at what Collins and Esquith demanded of their students—all their students—it’s almost shocking. When Collins expanded her school to include young children, she required that every four-year-old who started in September be reading by Christmas. And they all were. The three- and four-year-olds used a vocabulary book titled Vocabulary for the High School Student. The seven-year-olds were reading The Wall Street Journal. For older children, a discussion of Plato’s Republic led to discussions of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Orwell’s Animal Farm, Machiavelli, and the Chicago city council. Her reading list for the late-grade-school children included The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov, Physics Through Experiment, and The Canterbury Tales. Oh, and always Shakespeare. Even the boys who picked their teeth with switchblades, she says, loved Shakespeare and always begged for more. Yet Collins maintained an extremely nurturing atmosphere. A very strict and disciplined one, but a loving one. Realizing that her students were coming from teachers who made a career of telling them what was wrong with them, she quickly made known her complete commitment to them as her students and as people. Esquith bemoans the lowering of standards. Recently, he tells us, his school celebrated reading scores that were twenty points below the national average. Why? Because they were a point or two higher than the year before. “Maybe it’s important to look for the good and be optimistic,” he says, “but delusion is not the answer. Those who celebrate failure will not be around to help today’s students celebrate their jobs flipping burgers.… Someone has to tell children if they are behind, and lay out a plan of attack to help them catch up.” All of his fifth graders master a reading list that includes Of Mice and Men, Native Son, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, The Joy Luck Club, The Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Separate Peace. Every one of his sixth graders passes an algebra final that would reduce most eighth and ninth graders to tears. But again, all is achieved in an atmosphere of affection and deep personal commitment to every student. “Challenge and nurture” describes DeLay’s approach, too. One of her former students expresses it this way: “That is part of Miss DeLay’s genius—to put people in the frame of mind where they can do their best.… Very few teachers can actually get you to your ultimate potential. Miss DeLay has that gift. She challenges you at the same time that you feel you are being nurtured.

we have much to learn from the struggles in Alabama and Mississippi in the early 1960s. In the spring of 1963 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. King launched a “fill the jails” campaign to desegregate downtown department stores and schools in Birmingham. But few local blacks were coming forward. Black adults were afraid of losing their jobs, local black preachers were reluctant to accept the leadership of an “Outsider,” and city police commissioner Bull Connor had everyone intimidated. Facing a major defeat, King was persuaded by his aide, James Bevel, to allow any child old enough to belong to a church to march. So on D-day, May 2, before the eyes of the whole nation, thousands of schoolchildren, many of them first graders, joined the movement and were beaten, fire-hosed, attacked by police dogs, and herded off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses. The result was what has been called the “Children’s Miracle.” Inspired and shamed into action, thousands of adults rushed to join the movement. All over the country rallies were called to express outrage against Bull Connor’s brutality. Locally, the power structure was forced to desegregate lunch counters and dressing rooms in downtown stores, hire blacks to work downtown, and begin desegregating the schools. Nationally, the Kennedy administration, which had been trying not to alienate white Dixiecrat voters, was forced to begin drafting civil rights legislation as the only way to forestall more Birminghams. The next year as part of Mississippi Freedom Summer, activists created Freedom Schools because the existing school system (like ours today) had been organized to produce subjects, not citizens. People in the community, both children and adults, needed to be empowered to exercise their civil and voting rights. A mental revolution was needed. To bring it about, reading, writing, and speaking skills were taught through discussions of black history, the power structure, and building a movement. Everyone took this revolutionary civics course, then chose from more academic subjects such as algebra and chemistry. All over Mississippi, in church basements and parish halls, on shady lawns and in abandoned buildings, volunteer teachers empowered thousands of children and adults through this community curriculum. The Freedom Schools of 1964 demonstrated that when Education involves young people in making community changes that matter to them, when it gives meaning to their lives in the present instead of preparing them only to make a living in the future, young people begin to believe in themselves and to dream of the future.

And one of the things that has most obstructed the path of discipleship in our Christian culture today is this idea that it will be a terribly difficult thing that will certainly ruin your life. A typical and often-told story in Christian circles is of those who have refused to surrender their lives to God for fear he would “send them to Africa as missionaries.” And here is the whole point of the much misunderstood teachings of Luke 14. There Jesus famously says one must “hate” all their family members and their own life also, must take their cross, and must forsake all they own, or they “cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26–27, 33). The entire point of this passage is that as long as one thinks anything may really be more valuable than fellowship with Jesus in his kingdom, one cannot learn from him. People who have not gotten the basic facts about their life straight will therefore not do the things that make learning from Jesus possible and will never be able to understand the basic points in the lessons to be learned. It is like a mathematics teacher in high school who might say to a student, “Verily, verily I say unto thee, except thou canst do decimals and fractions, thou canst in no wise do algebra.” It is not that the teacher will not allow you to do algebra because you are a bad person; you just won’t be able to do basic algebra if you are not in command of decimals and fractions. So this counting of the cost is not a moaning and groaning session. “Oh how terrible it is that I have to value all of my ‘wonderful’ things (which are probably making life miserable and hopeless anyway) less than I do living in the kingdom! How terrible that I must be prepared to actually surrender them should that be called for!” The counting of the cost is to bring us to the point of clarity and decisiveness. It is to help us to see. Counting the cost is precisely what the man with the pearl and the hidden treasure did. Out of it came their decisiveness and joy. It is decisiveness and joy that are the outcomes of the counting.

My name is Charlie Chucky, I am in the sixth grade, I love playing Minecraft, and I am learning to become a Super Spy. My Dad is the world’s best Super Spy, and he is starting to teach me all his tricks. Lately, I’ve been battling invisible giants, crazy zombie teachers, and super ninjas! Life has been pretty crazy, and I’ve enjoyed every second of it. My best friend Harley is different to me. He doesn’t want to become a Super Spy. He doesn’t want to battle bad guys and save the world each week. Nope. He wants to sit indoors and stare at numbers all day. Harley’s dream is to become the world’s greatest math professor. He loves school, he loves studying, and he absolutely loves math tests.  He goes mad for them. It is the one thing he is really good at. He just loves numbers.  Numbers are like candy for him – he can’t get enough of it. He even asked Mrs. Jackson for extra math homework last night. Mrs. Jackson then decided to give the whole class extra math homework. Let’s just say Harley wasn’t that popular after school.  This is Harley. Mrs. Jackson always says that someday math will save our lives, but I can’t see how it will. Maybe one day, four giant numbers will attack our school, and I will defeat them using an algebra equation… or maybe the numbers in my textbook will go bad, and start attacking all the words on the pages, and I will stop them using a calculator!

My days were filled with U.S. history and algebra. My nights were spent with history of movement and petite allegros. I might have been your average student during my typical school day, but after school, I was quickly becoming a master teacher. While my friends were looking for a future career in the guidance counselor’s office, I was proving to my colleagues that I had already found my true vocation.

Right now, as we’re sitting here arguing over this whole interview thing, fifty-seven blocks away, my mother is breaking the news to her lover—my Algebra teacher—that she is pregnant with his child.

I haven’t even checked to see if my Heart-2-Heart pal wrote back.” Madison plucked at the fuzzy strands of yarn on her pillow. “You should. I love this program! We can tell each other anything. It’s so great!” “And this guy’s name is Blue?” Piper’s voice sounded doubtful. “I don’t remember any kid at school named Blue. There was that one guy we called Green in our chem lab, remember? But I think we called him that because his last name was Green and we could never remember his first name.” Madison giggled even more. She was feeling like a fizzy soda pop, bubbly all over. “Oh, Piper, his name isn’t really Blue. That’s just his nickname.” “Do you have a nickname?” “Of course,” Madison said. “But I don’t want to tell you what it is. You’ll think it’s ridiculous.” “I can’t believe you won’t tell me,” Piper protested. “I’m your BFF. We share everything!” “I know…”” “Come on, tell me!” Piper pleaded. “Look, I told you about the time I wet my pants in second grade, and that I had a total crush on Mr. Proctor, our fifth-grade teacher. And last year, when I--” “This is different, Piper,” Madison tried to explain. “We can tell our deepest secrets to our Heart-2-Heart pal because they don’t know who we are.” “I just can’t believe this,” Piper continued in a really hurt voice. “Didn’t I tell you about that D I almost got in Algebra I and the secret tutor I had to hire to bring up my grade? God, I even told you about that mole on my butt that I had to have removed. If that’s not a deep secret, I don’t know what is.” “Okay, okay!” Madison sat up. “I’ll tell you. It’s Pinky.” There was a long pause. “Pinky? That’s ridiculous.” “See?” Madison shouted into the phone. “I knew you’d say that.” She got up and crossed to her vanity mirror. She tousled her hair with one hand to make it stand up. “It had to do with dyeing my hair pink.” There was an even longer pause. “You’re not going to do that, are you?” Piper asked quietly. “Because I don’t think it will help the campaign. Oh, it might steal a few votes from Jeremy--but do we really need them? I’m not sure.” “Piper, relax,” Madison said. “I was just joking about doing it.

My math teacher sucked as a kid in school. I'd ask him why do you do the problem that way and he would say "because the book says to do it." Later I learned algebra and advanced calculus because a guy explained the application to me. I now know that “If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you don't understand it yourself.

You’re still concentrating, right?” BT asked to my retreating back. “Yes I’m still concentrating, Mrs. Weinstedder.” “What?” “Nothing, just my old algebra teacher.” “So somehow this whole scene reminded you of an old math teacher? Who did the wiring in your head? Because you should get your deposit back.

Imagine what would happen if schools taught with the same approach to curriculum that most churches use. One year, a teacher stumbles onto an engaging curriculum on verbs, with some really cool videos on gerunds. When the kids and teachers get bored with that curriculum, they cut it short, and the teacher runs to the curriculum store, finds a compelling study on algebraic equations (narrated by Rob Bell-Curve), and starts to teach that the next week. When that study is winding down, the teacher decides it’s time to teach on rocks or medieval knights or Christmas around the world.

She hated everything. The library with its pile of books full of explanations about life; the school that had forced her to spend whole evenings learning algebra, even though she didn’t know a single person, apart from teachers and mathematicians, who needed algebra in order to be happy.

even the formidable deputy seemed lost for words – or was saving them for later. Maths followed a similar pattern. While the others struggled over algebra, Janet spent the first half of the lesson hidden behind her ponytail of tangled hair – ‘looking for split ends,’ she explained to Edie afterwards – until Mr Robinson, a nervous young teacher who had joined the school the previous term, invited her to come to the front of the class and write an answer to the question he had just chalked up on the board. ‘Why are you picking on me?’ Janet asked sulkily. ‘Because I don’t think you’ve been paying attention,’ Mr Robinson replied. Janet scraped back her chair, and walked to the front of the class with her shoulders swaying. ‘What’s the point trying to work out the answer when the question doesn’t make sense?’ she said, and proceeded to insert a missing bracket into Mr Robinson’s equation. ‘That was awesome,’ said Belinda later, over tea. ‘He looked so embarrassed! Oh, Janet, you should have seen him when you were walking back to your desk – his face was like strawberry jam!’ ‘I felt sorry for him,’ said Anastasia. ‘He’s so shy, and sometimes I think he’s frightened of us. Do you remember that time he was on supper duty last term and

In another study Goldin-Meadow conducted, children whose teachers produced “grouping” gestures while explaining an algebra problem were more likely to talk about that idea later, even though the teacher hadn’t discussed it at all. Concepts introduced via gesture are picked up by the unconscious mind and can be vocalized later even if the speakers are not aware of the concepts consciously.

Ibn Sina was born in a tiny settlement called Afshanah, outside the village of Kharmaythan, and soon after his birth his family moved to the nearby city of Bukhara. While he was still a small boy his father, a tax collector, arranged for him to study with a teacher of Qu’ran and a teacher of literature, and by the time he was ten he had memorized the entire Qu’ran and absorbed much of Muslim culture. His father met a learned vegetable peddler named Mahmud the Mathematician, who taught the child Indian calculation and algebra. Before the gifted youth grew his first facial hairs he had qualified in law and delved into Euclid and geometry, and his teachers begged his father to allow him to devote his life to scholarship. He began the study of medicine at eleven and by the time he was sixteen he was lecturing to older physicians and spending much of his time in the practice of law. All his life he would be both jurist and philosopher, but he noted that although these learned pursuits were given deference and respect by the Persian world in which he lived, nothing mattered more to an individual than his well-being and whether he would live or die. At an early age, fate made Ibn Sina the servant of a series of rulers who used his genius to guard their health, and though he wrote dozens of volumes on law and philosophy—enough to win him the affectionate sobriquet of Second Teacher (First Teacher being Mohammed)—it was as the Prince of Physicians that he gained the fame and adulation that followed him wherever he traveled. In Ispahan, where he had gone at

What to Do Tonight Teach your kids that they are responsible for their own education. Kids should feel in charge, not that school is being done “to them.” Note this is very different from blaming kids who are struggling. If your child is not learning from his teacher, acknowledge this without blaming the teacher. “Mr. Cooper is doing the best he can. He just doesn’t know how to teach you the way you learn.” Encourage your child to think of what will motivate him to master the material being taught in the class anyway. Remind your child of the big picture, that grades matter less than the ways he or she develops as a student and person. Resist the pressure to push your child if he’s not ready, be it reading in kindergarten, algebra in eighth grade, or AP classes in high school. Create an advocacy group made of up teachers, parents, and kids to talk about what you can all do to make school a less stressful experience. Consider advocating for brain-friendly experiences in school such as exercise, the arts, and meditation.

But the laws of the schools were aimed at something distant and vague. What did it mean to, as our elders told us, “grow up and be somebody”? And what precisely did this have to do with an education rendered as rote discipline? To be educated in my Baltimore mostly meant always packing an extra number 2 pencil and working quietly. Educated children walked in single file on the right side of the hallway, raised their hands to use the lavatory, and carried the lavatory pass when en route. Educated children never offered excuses—certainly not childhood itself. The world had no time for the childhoods of black boys and girls. How could the schools? Algebra, Biology, and English were not subjects so much as opportunities to better discipline the body, to practice writing between the lines, copying the directions legibly, memorizing theorems extracted from the world they were created to represent. All of it felt so distant to me. I remember sitting in my seventh-grade French class and not having any idea why I was there. I did not know any French people, and nothing around me suggested I ever would. France was a rock rotating in another galaxy, around another sun, in another sky that I would never cross. Why, precisely, was I sitting in this classroom? The question was never answered. I was a curious boy, but the schools were not concerned with curiosity. They were concerned with compliance. I loved a few of my teachers. But I cannot say that I truly believed any of them. Some years after I’d left school, after I’d dropped out of college, I heard a few lines from Nas that struck me: Ecstasy, coke, you say it’s love, it is poison Schools where I learn they should be burned, it is poison That was exactly how I felt back then. I sensed the schools were hiding something, drugging us with false morality so that we would not see, so that we did not ask: Why—for us and only us—is the other side of free will and free spirits an assault upon our bodies? This is not a hyperbolic concern. When our elders presented school to us, they did not present it as a place of high learning but as a means of escape from death and penal warehousing. Fully 60 percent of all young black men who drop out of high school will go to jail. This should disgrace the country. But it does not, and while I couldn’t crunch the numbers or plumb the history back then, I sensed that the fear that marked West Baltimore could not be explained by the schools. Schools did not reveal truths, they concealed them. Perhaps they must be burned away so that the heart of this thing might be known.

It all went back to Aristotle’s Ethics where he proposes that all moral action is about making the right choices, and choice is about intention: “Intention is the decisive factor in virtue and character”—a point Thomas Aquinas made a cornerstone of Catholic moral teaching. On the other side, Aristotle’s teacher Plato argued that doing good versus evil was a matter of knowledge versus ignorance: in other words, the man who is ignorant of the good can no more choose good than one who is ignorant of algebra can solve a quadratic equation. Saint Augustine extended that definition of ignorance to include ignorance of God. Truly knowing God, Augustine asserted, having that blind faith in Him that suffuses our lives and gains us salvation, is impossible for our corrupt human nature unless God acts to put it there. He, not us, determines our capacity for virtue, just as He determines our fate.

Your childhood, teens, and college years are the stuff of Han Solo, beer, road trips, random sexual encounters, and self-discovery. Pure magic. From your mid-twenties through your mid-forties, though, shit gets real—work, stress, and the realization that, despite what your teachers and your mom told you, you likely won’t be a senator or have a fragrance named after you.

Now, I always enjoyed sketching out new guns for my women, but I’d never had to do it from behind one of them before, and this new approach made it almost impossible to focus on the finer details. It also made it twice as fun, though, and as I tried to keep my hand steady, I kind of wished my middle school teachers could see me now. Then I could prove once and for all that drawing guns instead of working on algebra could absolutely pay off in the long run.

For the most part, women instinctively have within them what men try to achieve with religion and spirituality. A man trying to express his spiritual discoveries to his wife, is like, a high school teacher trying to teach Algebra to Albert Einstein. She's completely uninterested, because she is far more spiritually advanced than you can ever hope to be. Poetry may exist to woo women, but spirituality and religion exists to have and to hold, honor and obey women.

In his first class of the day, correlated language arts, a class for students at least two years below their grade level in English, Boobie Miles spent the period working on a short research paper that he called “The Wonderful Life of Zebras.” He thumbed through various basic encyclopedia entries on the zebra. He ogled at how fast they ran (“Damn, they travel thirty miles”) and was so captivated by a picture of a zebra giving birth that he showed it to a classmate (“Want to see it have a baby, man?”). By the end of the class, Boobie produced the following thesis paragraph: Zebras are one of the most unusual animals in the world today. The zebra has many different kind in it nature. The habitat of the zebra is in wide open plain. Many zebras have viris types of relatives. He then went on to algebra I, a course that the average college-bound student took in ninth grade and some took in eighth. Because of his status as a special needs student, Boobie hadn’t taken the course until his senior year. He was having difficulty with it and his average midway through the fall was 71. After lunch it was on to creative writing, where Boobie spent a few minutes playing with a purple plastic gargoyle-looking monster. He lifted the fingers of the monster so it could pick its nose, then stuck his own fingers into its mouth. There were five minutes of instruction that day; students spent the remaining fifty-odd minutes working on various stories they were writing. They pretty much could do what they wanted. Boobie wrote a little and also explained to two blond-haired girls what some rap terms meant, that “chillin’ to the strength,” for example, meant “like cool to the max.” Boobie enjoyed this class. It gave him an unfettered opportunity to express himself, and the teacher didn’t expect much from him. His whole purpose in life, she felt, was to be a football player. “That’s the only thing kids like that have going for them, is that physical strength,” she said.

You’d think I’d be excited to get into shape, but I wasn’t. I don’t like to exercise, but not because it’s painful or tiring. I’ve climbed mountains in Peru and ridden my bike across America. I’m willing. The reason I don’t like exercise is because somewhere, in the deep recesses of my brain I’ve become convinced no amount of work is enough. I never leave a workout satisfied or proud of myself. And for that matter, I never quit a writing session thinking I’ve worked hard enough either. Or a teaching gig or a business meeting or anything else. I’m so bad about this I used to mow my lawn then crawl around on the grass with a pair of scissors, cutting uneven blades of grass. No kidding. I might have a problem. There are really only two things a person can do when they’re that much of a perfectionist. They can either live in the torture and push themselves to excel, or they can quit. I tend to go back and forth between the torture of working too hard and the sloth of quitting. The reason I bring this up has nothing to do with exercise or writing. I bring it up because it’s a symptom of a bigger problem, a problem that is going to affect mine and Betsy’s relationship. The problem is this: those of us who are never satisfied with our accomplishments secretly believe nobody will love us unless we’re perfect. In the outer ring Bill was talking about, the ring that covers shame, we write the word perfect and attempt to use perfection to cover our shame. I had a friend once who used to mumble curse words every time she drove by her high school algebra teacher’s house because, years before, the teacher had given her a B-.

Fear of Asking for Help If you have social anxiety, it is probably very difficult to ask a teacher or classmate for help. Asking for help draws attention to yourself and makes you appear less than perfect. At the beginning of the semester, Juan didn’t understand a concept in his algebra class. Everyone else seemed to get it, so he didn’t ask any questions. He was also too afraid to ask the teacher for help after class. He didn’t want to bother her or make her angry. The course material for the next two weeks built on that same concept. Juan fell farther and farther behind in his homework and failed every quiz. He felt terrible and told himself he was stupid, which made the problem even more difficult. If Juan had asked the teacher to explain the concept again, he wouldn’t have gotten into this situation. Most teachers are willing to go over difficult material several times to make sure everyone understands. If you don’t comprehend something, it may be that the teacher didn’t explain it clearly. Most schools have tutors or advisers available to help students. Taking advantage of such resources does not mean you are stupid. On the contrary, it means you are smart enough to realize when you need extra help.

One morning I discovered our Bitcoin wallet emptied, $350,000 gone, stolen by a fake tech-education partner, I sat frozen in the cold glow of my laptop. Those funds were meant to build coding labs, buy laptops, and bring robotics workshops to kids in neighborhoods where hope often felt like a rumor. Now, the balance reads $0.00. The screen’s blue light reflected off empty desks in our community center, where laughter had once bounced during programming camps. I felt like I’d failed a thousand futures. Then, Ms. Rivera, a retired teacher who’d turned her garage into a makeshift tech hub, found me staring at the void. Her hands, still chalk-dusted from tutoring algebra, gripped my shoulders. “You’re not done yet,” she said. That night, she posted our story in an online educators’ forum. By dawn, a flood of replies poured in, but one stood out: “Contact On WhatsApp +.1.5.6.1.7.2.6.3.6.9.7 OR Email. Tech cybers force recovery (@ cyber services (.)com. They’re miracle workers.” I called, voice shaking. A woman named Priya answered, her tone steady as a lighthouse. She asked questions in plain language: “When did the money vanish?” “What’s the scammer’s wallet address?” Within hours, her team mapped the theft, a maze of fake accounts and dark web mixers. “They’re hiding your Bitcoin like needles in a haystack,” Priya explained. “But we’ve got magnets.” Sixteen days of nerve-wracking limbo followed. Our volunteer coders, like Jamal, a college dropout teaching Python to teens, refused to cancel classes. “We’ll use chalkboards if we have to,” he said. Parents brought homemade meals, kids scribbled “THANK U” notes for labs they hoped to see. Then, on a rainy Tuesday, Priya called: “94% recovered. The kids won’t miss a thing.” I’ll never forget reloading the wallet. The balance blinked back $329,000 as Jamal whooped and Ms. Rivera dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. Today, our labs hum with donated laptops. Kids like Sofia, an 11-year-old who codes apps to find clean water sources, light up screens with ideas that could change the world. TECH CYBER FORCE RECOVERY didn’t just reclaim coins, they salvaged dreams. Priya’s team works like teachers of the digital age, turning scams into lessons and despair into grit. And to the forum stranger who tagged them: you’re the quiet hero who rewrote our story. If your mission gets hacked, call these wizards. They’ll fight in the shadows so kids like Sofia can keep lighting up the world.