Forget That

Forget That

Jamyria

“You know what? I quit, Mr. Muse, I ain’t doing this.”

That’s what I said, and I looked straight at him as I said it, not knowing whether to smile or not, not knowing what was the right way to handle it so he wasn’t fussing at me.

I could see him looking at the rest of the class, how they all immediately got started on the problem. Da’Vonne and Bailey, I can’t stand them, they all in each other’s face, working together. So is Ayden L. and Aiden J. Even Gavyn and Kelsey were trying it, and I knew they didn’t know nothing. My real problem was instead of joining together with a partner when Mr. Muse said to, I just sat there. Whoops.

Mr. Muse

I don’t drink coffee or alcohol or take any recreational drugs so I get my highs in a variety of other ways, and that day, one high was that Trey was absent because it usually makes life in the classroom easier and more functional because I’m not dealing with a small meaty mass of dysfunction. But looking at everyone working but Jamyria made my arm want to extend out and find that boy and pull him to the desk right beside her. Because if he couldn’t be here, I guess I would have to do.

Jamyria

Mr. Muse squeezed into a desk by me.

“Looks like there’s not enough partners for you,” he said.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I didn’t notice that. I can’t do the problem now, right?”

“You know it don’t work like that.” He tapped the math worksheet. “Let’s read over things and see what do we know.”

There was a pause for a bit, then Mr. Muse said, “You know when I say, ‘Let’s read’, I mean, You read.”

I read: “Will read 15 more pages than Marcy. Marcy read 38 pages. The book is 82 pages long.”

Mr. Muse said, “This is a two step word problem. What do they want us to find out for the first step?”

I looked at the question on the first part. “How many pages did Will read?” I said.

Mr. Muse said, “Okay, so let’s go over what we know again. How many pages did Will read?”

“Fifteen,” I said.

Mr. Muse asked, “Are you sure?”

“You can’t see it, Mr. Muse, it says it right there,” I said.

“Turn your eyes on and look at what it says.”

I reread and said, “Ohhhh.”

“Read it out loud,” Mr. Muse said.

“Will read 15 more pages than Marcy.”

“So how many pages did Will read?”

“Fifteen more.”

“Is that an exact, firm number?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Okay, then,” Mr. Muse said, rubbing his chin. “So, if that’s not an exact firm number for Will, we have to make it that way to solve the first part of our word problem. Will read 15 more pages than who?”

“Marcy. She read 38 pages,” I said, happy to jump ahead for once.

“You know that we draw pictures to help model what’s going on with our problems. What’s a model we’ve been using lately that shows us how we can add more to numbers?”

“Why I gotta be psychic now, Mr. Muse?”

“It is what it is, Jamyria. What do we use?”

I thought about it. “A tape diagram!”

“Right,” Mr. Muse said. “So draw it.”

I drew one piece of tape with 15 written on it and another piece of tape with 38 written together with it.

“What are you doing with those numbers?” Mr. Muse asked.

“Adding,” I said. “Will read 53 pages. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I can’t do that,” Mr. Muse said. “But you tell me this: how many more pages does Will need to read to finish the book? That is the last part of this problem.”

“You’re dirty, Mr. Muse, you’re dirty. I gotcha, though.”

Mr. Muse asked, “What do you know?”

“What I don’t know is why they doing all this book reading in this math problem. It’s almost time for summer break, they need to chill with all that.”

“Focus. What do you know?”

I looked at Mr. Muse. I could tell he was getting just a little mad so it was time to stop playing.

“Ummmmmmmmmmmm. What did I do? Got it. Yeah, Will has 53 pages.”

“You gotta figure out how many more pages Will needs to finish the book. What do you know about the book?”

“That book’s 82 pages long! Nobody’s reading that book,” I said.

Mr. Muse asked, “What has to happen?”

“Will has to get from 53 pages to 82 pages. I gotta figure out how many more pages he reads to finish the book,” I said. “I’m tired just thinking about it.”

“We’re almost home, let’s keep going.”

“It’s a half-day, today?” I asked, hopefully.

“That’s a saying, girl. It means we’re almost there, we’re almost finished. Think of two ways you can solve this.”

I thought. “I can count on or subtract. Counting on’s easier.”

“Count, baby, count,” Mr. Muse said.

I counted 29 more pages that Will needed. “Do Will need 29 more?” I asked.

“Hallelujah, we are done,” Mr. Muse said.

I started booming out a familiar ‘Dora The Explorer’ beat.

Then I said, “We did it, we did it we did it, Yeah! Lo hicimos, we did it!”

I added, “We solved this stupid math problem, yeah we got it straight, yes we did it, we did it!”

My classmates started singing the remixed Dora song, “Big Back, Big Back! Big Back, Big Back!”

Mr. Muse took a look at them, jumping and dancing around, slapping each other on the back of the head, talking about each other’s mamas, throwing balled up math worksheets and paper airplanes and he smiled a big smile, actually one of those big, scary teacher smiles and he said, “All of ya’ll Bamas sit ya’ll behinds down!”

We all sat down and put our heads down to be cute. I love my class.