Parents always hope they've made a positive impression on their children. So you work to be a good example, in spite of yourself. Then you stop once in awhile and ask what else you might do to be a more positive and memorable person in their eyes.
On a rare occasion the reinforcement comes, and you are not only surprised, but completely amazed. That's good isn't it? Well, it depends on whether their expectations of who and what you are meets your hopes or exceeds your hopes!
So on the latest tickler, I realized I'd obviously done too well in making our youngest son thinking I was a much better math teacher than I might possibly be today. The next few weeks will tell.
Yesterday morning I received a text message from our son telling me his wife was taking Pre-Calc and Math Analysis and was having a little problem understanding some of the concepts. He'd told her his dad was likely better at helping her than he was, so wanted to know if I could arrange to have a little time next week to help?
Well, you just don't tell your kids no when they ask for assistance, right?????
Now let's talk reality. In my younger day I was a math whiz. I got straight A's in every math class I took. While stationed in Puerto Rico I had some spare time after the clean-up of Hurricane Hugo was finished so signed up to teach evening college classes on base. The college asked me to teach math which I did. Additionally, our neighbor's wife and daughter were taking Analytical Mathematics and so I ended up doing tutoring for them for a few weeks as well. Enjoyed both and it went well!
Subsequently, on our return to the States, I signed up to design and teach classes for Silver Lake College in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, a Catholic College. I spent a little over five years doing classes in their evening adult Masters Program. Krieg was in elementary school at that time so he would remember his dad as a college instructor.
So, those of you who are intuitively observant have now tied two events in time together: teaching and tutoring math "after" Hurricane Hugo, and Krieg was in elementary school. That would be September of 1989 and September of 1995. No matter how you look at it and do the "math" that would be either seventeen or twenty-three years ago.
So here we are with a seventy year old mind, being asked to do something that at the most recent was seventeen years ago (teaching) and the oldest was twenty three years ago (tutoring). How on earth does an elementary kid recall you used to do these things at all, let alone well?????
So, tonight, I went online to the Boise Public Library, and did a search for Pre-Calc books in the system. I didn't find the exact one I wanted (Precalculus with Limits), but I did find another and found they also have one of the Scham's series on Pre-Calc. Will pick them up tomorrow on the way back from the Idaho State Historical Society Archives (that's a whole other story) and begin "my" refresher before next week.
Wish me luck getting up to speed after 17/23 years. Just hope I don't destroy those expectations.
