Just had a student from last year text me asking if I could help him with trigonometry, which doesn’t make any Goddamn sense to me because freshmen who just took Algebra 1 shouldn’t be looking at trig yet, and also because holy shit have I forgotten everything I ever knew about trigonometry. I have a hazy memory of the sohcahtoa mnemonic but only the vaguest idea of what it actually means, and I absolutely cannot give you even the sloppiest description of what is going on in that graph above.

The interesting thing about me ending up as a math teacher is that I took literally no math at all in college– my SAT scores exempted me from the classes everyone had to take and then none of my majors required any additional math– and I was not, despite those test scores, especially good at math in high school either. I tell my Algebra kids every year that when I was in high school I got a D in the class that I’m teaching them now. I could probably muddle my way through teaching Geometry or (maybe) Algebra II by staying a couple of weeks ahead of the kids; I enjoyed Geometry in high school quite a lot and I figure if I can handle teaching Algebra I, I can handle teaching Algebra II. But trig is gone, and calculus was never there to begin with; the second I had a college acceptance letter in my hand I dropped the class and never looked back.

Or, at least, didn’t look back for years. I am currently sorta looking back, and have actually spent some time over the last few days musing over the idea of taking a couple of college math classes to try and regain trig and calculus so that I can get licensure to teach high school. I don’t really know if I actually want high school licensure after 20 years of teaching middle school, but I’ve been thinking about it. One thing for sure, though; I sure as hell can’t do it now.