Insane in the Phambrane

My students uplift me to new levels of insanity everyday. This is good and bad. Most geniuses are crazy, but most crazies are crazy. Between the hours of mania and dementia, exist motes of genius. I have a student who frequently finds the impetus to act a fool. I have this same problem so we call each other out on a regular basis. Luckily, February is Black History Month, and any time he acts up, I guilt trip him by asking him to remind me what month it is.(He's African American.) This afternoon, I assisted him with a unit on using elimination to solve systems of equations. He usually demands solutions immediately without trying to understand the many methods used to arrive at them. I tend to dangle the solutions in front of them just far enough to watch them suffer. Suffering is the only way to learn. I learned that while suffering through teaching. After he finally solved the problem, he asked, "Mr. Pham, why do you work us so hard?" To which I facetiously responded, "listen Darren, I am doing this because...I have a dream...I want change in the world...change I can believe in!" He slyly deflected without missing a beat, "well you need to take that change to Obama cuz you ain't gettin' none of that here!" O children. Another gem I stumbled upon today was during an egg drop project. The objective is to use certain materials to form a chamber around an egg which will keep it intact as it plummets to the ground from 30 feet up. There were candy prizes for the students whose eggs survived the most drops. As I stared up at my students on the bleachers, notebook above my head to block the flood of sunlight upon my already squinty eyes, I shouted, "alright you guys, this is it. This egg symbolizes all of your hopes and dreams...GOOD LUCK!"