#math used to be such a disorienting and upsetting experience for me

[shock]

today one of my caseload students was meeting with the social worker so i went and took my break in my favorite room (the in-school suspension room, run by one of my favorite colleagues who has a language arts and restorative practices background with 20+ years of experience) and there was a kid who I've NEVER seen in there with an unusual situation, and apparently all day she and this student couldn't figure out the math work she was supposed to do for one of her classes...

So I said okay, let's look up this type of work, I taught myself how to do it, then I tried to figure out a way to show her the steps, and we did this problem together:

and then with each problem I started having her do more and more of the steps, and by the time we got to the 5th one she was going up to the board and doing them herself, and I was getting so excited, and when I sat back down my colleague came up to me jumping up and down and stage whispering "you are a TEACHER!!" and she's one of the first people at the start of my educational career who told me that I had "it" three years ago and it really just made my day today.

I can't even begin to describe the special, unique sense of deep pride I feel when I get to model learning for a student and see it click for us both in real time to the point that they can replicate it without my help. Not knowing the answer isn't shameful, it's a part of the process, and I just love it more than anything else. 😭😭

[magnetictapedatastorage]

Cataclysmic Certainty

What if the last two people left in the zombie apocalypse were a vampire and a human? 1k words, two women that are endlessly uneasy.

Day 77:

It rained all day, so I drove slowly. I pulled over early to watch the sun go down. When I was sure it was gone, I woke her up. She was hungry. I didn't want to go to sleep, but the rain on the metal roof, the clean-smelling sheets, and the pitch darkness from the taped-over windows did me in.

--

"You're not eating enough," she told me. "Are you trying to lose weight?"

"I'm trying to stretch our supplies, I don't know how long this stash will last."

She looked at me oddly.

"I can see the logic in that, but I can secure more dry goods quite easily."

It was true, the undead- or rather, the other kind of undead- weren't much danger to her. The only real threat for her was starvation, so keeping me alive was a top priority.

"Well, if you're offering…"

"Of course," she said smoothly.

"I'd love some shredded raw coconut, if there's any that's still good. It looks sort of like grated cheese, and in stores it should be in the refrigerated section near the fruit. I don't think any houses will have it though."

"Got it, what else?"

I thought for a moment. "More D batteries for the hotplate, and whatever washing powder you found last time, because these sheets smell amazing."

---------

 Day 101:

She asked if I wanted to waste the day with her in the dark. I agreed, because there was no good reason not to.

-

The summer heat was only slightly deflected by the van's white paint job. The absolute darkness was disorienting, not that there was much space to get lost.

‐--------------

Day 346:

Winter has stretched on into infinity. The days are short and simple, she helps me, I also help her, but not as much. We live very high up in a building, and I eat something there isn't a word for. Sometimes it tastes like salt, sometimes pennies, sometimes cinnamon. She invented it, said it was the way to ward off disease. My joints stopped aching, whereas in the fall they creaked whenever I moved, so I believe her.

She spends the long nights reading next to me, and every time I open my eyes- a sort of reverse blink- she is finishing another chapter in one of those heavy textbooks. She is learning so much. 

"How long have we been here?" I asked her, wondering how many hours I'd been sleeping in a nest of destroyed office chair cushions.

"It'll be a month tomorrow," she tells me. "How are you feeling?"

I stared at her, unable to form words. She stared back, not coldly, but not with sympathy either. Finally, I ventured to answer. "I'm… confused. How has it been a month?"

She bookmarks a worn copy of Advances in Renewables (4th ed.), to come closer. "You've been sleeping a lot lately."

"Oh." I still wasn't quite getting it. "Why? I mean- why am I… I don't remember changing my sleep schedule."

She finally softened a bit. "Remember in the summer, where I was spending 15 hours a day locked in a box? Not that I blame you- it was the best we could do at the time- this is sort of like that. I've been making the most of this season, staying awake 20 hours at a time, but that requires rather a lot of energy. Namely, yours. You haven't been awake for more than 4 hours a day this week."

"Oh," I repeated myself, feeling my body tilt with vertigo when I sat up from the nest. "Is that…?" I wanted to say healthy, but that would be a rude question. All blood loss is unhealthy, after all. "That level of, uh- that can't be good for my lifespan, if I'm knocked out from blood loss…" I stared at nothing, scrabbling through the basic math, while single digits slipped through my fingers, "...20 hours a day. Wouldn't I remember going into shock?" Aside from the instinctive terror of the first minute or so, feeding only became truly unbearable if she took far too much. We'd done experiments, at the hospital, after she'd cleared it out from the zombie infestation. I'd agreed at the time, but the instinct to fight seemingly-certain doom had been strong. There had been a deep bruise across my chest where she'd held me still- it'd looked like one of those seatbelt burns from a serious car crash.

"That's not what's happening, I wouldn't do that to you for no reason," she insisted. "This is different. I-" she stuttered, a rare event. "I started giving you something, to help you. You were constantly bored because you couldn't see without sunlight and you hated the food and you made so much noise when I was trying to think… one of the pharmacies was really well stocked… so I tried to make it better for you. I tried to make it harder to notice the things that made you upset."

I was… I should have been horrified, clearly. It was exactly what I'd been too afraid to think about in the spring: she'd lock me up as a mindless blood-keg. I had a hard time working up the energy to fear her. And damn if she wasn't good at seeming like the good guy.

"It's nothing harmful, really, nothing even all that strong, just a first-generation antihistamine, over-the-counter, it just helps you sleep more, that's all," she explained breathlessly.

"How much?"

"Any time you ate, I've been giving you two capsules in your food. Sometimes, if you were waking up and I didn't want to be distracted, I'd just put them in your mouth before you were all the way awake."

Something was seriously wrong. "That's a lot of pills," I said vaguely.

"I know, but I didn't want to risk using something stronger."

--

Day 347:

"How long have we been here?"

"3 days," she answered quietly.

I blinked at her, about to argue, but decided she must be right.

"I had the strangest dream."

"Eat, then you can tell me all about it," she said, pushing a bowl of something at me. She was engrossed in an intimidatingly thick manual about wind turbine construction.

"Sort of a nightmare, actually," I mumbled between bites. 

She hummed in acknowledgement.

Something hard had been mixed in, but I didn't bother picking it out to inspect it. Probably vegetable marrow or crushed Tums or some other odd supplement she decided would be necessary. It was the least I could do to follow the diet she wanted me to have. She was, after all, the breadwinner. I just happened to be the bread.