My Inaugural Blog Post

Many of my friends, family and people I look up to are doing blogs nowadays. I tend to be a bit slow technicalogically because I am more of the tactile, hands on type and you can't really hold cyberspace all that easily. Its more abstract. Many of you may think since I am a math teacher, the abstract like blogging and other techy things (yes, a very technical term for a female) should be more natural to me. Alas, they are not. I am anything but the usual, linear math teacher and definitely NOT a mathematician! Ha! I am really good at breaking down the abstract high school math into do-able steps and use as many "laman" terms as possible. FYI, in the world of mathematics, high school math is just scratching the surface. I'd rather scratch a whole heck-of-a-lot of others things, thank you very much! I will give blogging a go since I have more time on my hands for abstract things since school is out.

As many friends know I go by thefish, and I figure this is a great time to explain where that came from in the first place, as I am not sure who does and who doesn't know by now. A few years ago, one of my more colorful students AJ, who actually is a spitting image of a blond Jack Black, asked if they could call me The Fish (Miss Fisher to the lot of the rascles). I told him it depends; he asked, "on what?" "if you want a response or not" I replied, "You can call me Madame Queen and you will always get my attention." He laughed.

The next day AJ and his budies came to class late and they were giving me grief about marking them tardy. AJ, "You're too cool to go by the rules...You're The Fish." I said in my best you-know-who-is-boss tone, "Remeber one thing...You are in MY waters now. " That sealed it. From then on I am known as The Fish, or Fish. They also call my room the Fish Tank. Totally fits with school...haha...get it...a school of fish...lol!

ANyway, it doesn't end there. I give a couple extra credit points to anyone who brings in a math comic strip they see in the paper, or a cheesy math joke, or anything math whimsical. AJ asked if I would give him extra credit for bringing in a sticker. I'm like, whoo weee, a sticker...a scratch 'n sniff sticker...a math sticker seems more of a stretch...but then again I thought he was just engaging in our usual banter. I told him of course I would. For a month I teased him about it, "AJ, where's my sticker?" Finally one day he brings the sticker...a 8'x8' decal sticker that he designed with this knarly parana-like fish in the middle and "The Fish" at the top and "You're in my waters now" at the bottom. The sweetest sticker I had ever seen! I put that sucker up in my window. LOve it! I really miss that decal and couldn't take it with me when I moved classrooms about 3 yrs ago. The memories are forever though!