I need a vacation from my vacation within a vacation. (Translated: I need a week to recover from going to a high school friend’s wedding at the very tail end of my summer vacation.)

I just got back from Seattle, spending 5 days with high school friends, going to a wedding. What struck me is that we’ve known each other for over 13 years, and that these particular friends have actually grown closer to me with each passing year instead of more distant. High school can be extraordinarily important, socially. Heck, when I moved from my first high school (few friends) to my second high school (lots more friends), I felt free to be whoever I was, without the weight of years and hardened opinions of classmates weighing me down. I was able to become who I became — a colorful, irreverent, independent, overly dramatic personality — in high school.

Even though I very rarely commit anything about my personal life to this here blog, I just wanted to give a visual toast to those friends who forged the backbone of who I am today in that crucible that was high school.

(And I just know all y’all were dying to know what I look like. Hot, right?)

So clearly I haven’t posted in forever – and I’ve been feeling slightly guilty. Not guilty about not posting, but about not feeling bad about not posting, actually. I’ve been having a really awesome summer, taking my rests and enjoying my days. I haven’t done much math teacher work at all (yet). I plan on ramping up in the next few weeks, but I wanted to just say: I’m not gone for good, but I’ve been taking a much needed respite from blogging (and reading blogs). This summer I’ve taken off my teacher hat for many weeks and am enjoying that experience.

I’ll be back, and catch up reading and start up writing. So see you all soon!

On the last day of classes, one of the seniors anonymously (but with the approval of the administration) put out a fake newsletter titled The Kaleidoscope. I don’t know why, but I got all swelled up with pride when I was mentioned in it a few times. The newspaper is full of inside jokes — jokes that only people at my school would get, or in the case of where I’m mentioned, jokes that only kids in my classes would get. But since I consider this blog a communication and archiving tool, I’m going to put the exerpts from the newspaper here. (I would also like to say to readers that my school is not religious in any way; it is in a historic church. So “chapel” just refers to meetings that we as a school have in the chapel.)

Last Rights of Last Chapel Gives Seniors the Rare Chance ot Draw Attention to Themselves

During the incredibly nostalgic “last chapel” for the Class of 2009, current study body president David “Nightfire” Palgon took extensive time out of a long block of jam related announcements to outline what this year’s student council had been working on. “After much deliberation, extensive research and statistics gathering, an MSA basketball tournament, four bake sales and a year’s worth of early morning meetings, the student council has outlined in the utmost detail a plan to put new pencil sharpeners in every classroom.” At first the chapel was filled with stunned silence, and then, like the flapping of a thousand pelicans’ wings, applause echoed from newly cleaned, non-religious stained glass windows to rarely used organ, to the strange, hieroglyphic, snowflake patterened lights. In no time at all, students were on their feet, broken and dulled pencils raised above their heads in celebration. “It’s about time!” yelled estatic long time anti-pen advocate and calculus teacher Sameer “Worchestershah” Shah. “I’m going to call my high functioning Aunt Derivative, send her some pie, fibenachos and a DXie chicks album and tell her about the pencil sharpeners! I’ve had the absolute maximum a person can take with pens!”

The article continues, but you get the point. And yes, I am a vehement anti-pen advocate in my classes. I do not, however, have any idea why my middle name is “Worchester” or why there is a picture of a Worchester bottle next to the article with my name under it. But I like it. Another article is about the student-faculty judiciary committee.

In the Court of Lawlessness: New SFJC Disciplinary Strategy Raises Concerns about Questionable Interrogation Tactics

“It was horrible!” chimes a confused [StudentName]. “I was late to school. Not too often–once, twice, eighteen times, and forced to go to SFJC. I had to get to school at 5:00am and when I refused to acquiesce to their demands they forced me to watch videos of old activity periods. I couldn’t take it…”  She buries her head in her hands and bemoans her early sign in.

[…]

“It’s really tough,” mumbles a disgruntled Sameer Shah, who recently misplaced an attendance sheet and was forced to follow a sophomore around for a whole day. “The new SFJC punishments, which apply to both students and faculty,” Shah continues, “effectively involve a role reversal.” If a faculty misbehaves he or she must do homework, papers, study for tests, worry about finals, do clean-up duty, and has sign out privileges revokes. But if a student breaks a rule he or she must grade papers, attend TALL Tuesday afterschool meetings, get fired, or in the most sever instances, serve as cafeteria monitor for middle school lunch.

I have to say that this newspaper is hilarious, especially if you got o my school… It’s like the author(s) wrote down every funny thing about our school — from our strange Pelican mascot to the fact that it has taken over a year to work through the red tape to get new new pencil sharpeners in each classroom — and wordsmithed it to priceless gems. I literally was laughing out loud at every sentence. They tap into that very thing of what it means to really go to and live our lives at our school. That’s a hard feat to do. It’s also why you probably read everything above and were like “ummm, Sam, these are NOT funny.” To that I bite my thumb at thee.

I’m sorry I’ve been out of commission lately. We had comment writing (we write narrative comments for all our students) and I’m moving to a new apartment in two weeks and I’ve been anxious about that.

But before I forget, here are some topics I’ve been musing about posting on in the near future:

1. comment writing (obviously)
2. function transformations
3. senioritis
4. random questions about stuff i don’t fully conceptually get in the last chapter of the multivariable calculus book

I had to write them down here before I forgot about them in the hectic day-to-day that is my life.

Wednesday was April Fools day. I had all these ideas of jokes to play but they all got foiled. My students, on the other hand, got me twice.

My attempts:

1. One of my students in my 7 person calculus class was not in the room at the start of class.  I told all the students that they should each have one of their English or History papers ready to hand in, because in the middle of the class I was going to exclaim “Oh my! I forgot to collect your reports on the mathematicians important to the development of calculus.” And then everyone would go in their bags, rustling their papers, and one of them was going to say how they didn’t have a stapler… The student who was late was going to totally freak out, about this huge assignment that he clearly knew nothing about and didn’t do.

It didn’t work. Why? The student wasn’t late. He was absent.

2. I finished class 5 minutes early, so I sent two students to the math office to get the department head, or any teacher who wasn’t teaching. They were supposed to say something about how I got angry and threw a calculator at a student, and it hit the student in the head and now the student was bleeding and I was freaking out, and they didn’t know what to do so they thought they’d get the department head. Then I would yell APRIL FOOLS when she came into the room.

It didn’t work. Why? Because the department head wasn’t in the office, and the teacher who did come knows me too well. Plus the students were being overly histrionic and said that I was sobbing in the corner. She knew I wouldn’t sob.

However, students in the same class pulled two jokes on me.

1. We’ve been working on integrals involving inverse trigonometric functions, including . Literally 30 seconds after reviewing this, I put up a new smartboard page and I put on the board the question:

One student raises his hand and says he wants to try to solve it. He then proceeds to do a really convoluted substitution, which basically led us down the worst paths possible. Each step he takes, I start cringing some more, but I don’t want to give it away that this is just lunacy, and that we can solve this problem SO easily. I want him to come to the conclusion that whatever he’s doing won’t work. Finally, after we take up 5-7 minutes going down this path, and he suddenly shouts out “APRIL FOOLS! IT IS OBVIOUSLY !”

2. Later in the class, I’m working out some harder problems at the board, and I notice that one of the students is seems like he’s closer to me. I continue on, and every few seconds, I’m thinking “something is off in this room.” About sixty seconds later, I look at this student, who is sitting at his desk, which is now literally 2 feet away from me. He had slowly been inching his desk towards me. APRIL FOOLS MR. SHAH.

However, I did get a small prank in today, April 2nd.

In my OTHER calculus class (17 students – and 10 of them were absent for a field trip), I gave a 3 question pop quiz and 8 minutes to complete it. Well, two minutes before time was up, I told everyone “don’t forget to do the problems on the back.” Frantic students flipped over to see what they still had to do. (Of course, the other side was blank.) Then I shouted “APRIL SECONDS!” They said “Good one Mr. Shah.”

And it was. And it was.

On spring break in San Francisco, one of my most favorite cities. (Hence the lack of posts.) Eaten great food. Had great coffee. Hung out with great friends. Met great new people.

Remind me again why I work in New York City?

I think the SF might be giving the NYC a run for top billing as my favorite place in the world.

I have been addicted to this little web show dorm life.

Check it out on hulu. My suggestion: watch it from the beginning of season 1. One of the best things about this show is that you grow to love the characters.  Plus there is some larger story arcs.

The worst part? The episodes are only 5-10 minutes each.

None of you know me, really, but I have to say I have one special, secret most favorite character. Guess if you want. I’ll tell you if you’re right.