Everyone is bringing food, and we’re going to play Apples-to-Apples. Monday will be the first time my calculus class will be doing something almost-totally non-mathematical (except for the one time we watched “Numbers” before winter break). I’m convincing myself that this is okay because I have the deluxe edition of Apples-to-Apples with blank cards; we’re going to be throwing in some calculus terms.

We often expect to hear thanks for our work. But as you well know, teaching goes both ways, and I wanted to thank my students for their work. Not just for their mathematical work in class and at home, but for their positive attitude and humorous good-nature as we fought tooth-and-nail against the beautiful beast that is calculus. Being a new to a school, and being a new teacher, was made so much easier because of them.

In the envelope with that letter, I’m including two additional things.

1. Their first day’s homework assignment — this form which they filled out (stolen from dy/dan).
2. A juxtaposition of two quotations about Nature and Wonder. Many of my students have their grillzs all up in the humanities. I am not trying to convince them to be mathematicians and scientists. But I want them to see that the two are not mutually exclusive. So I will be giving them the poem and quotation below the cut.

I wouldn’t let them get away with having no homework. So I’m leaving them with one final homework assignment, playing on the theme of “the letter”: write a 1-page letter to yourself a year ago, giving your “old” self advice on how to succeed in this course.

After the next three days, they’re gone.

Sigh.

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