Algebra

I kinda surprised some folks yesterday in our faculty meeting. It's true that I am the sorta person who does more listening than talking, and at work, I kinda keep to myself because I am too focused on work to really think about socializing. So, I think that perhaps people don't really know the real me and have a false idea that I am just sweet and pretty and not much else. So here is where the surprise comes in. Our assistant principal was leading a math session and gave us a problem that involved finding the prices of several pieces of fruit. The fruit combinations and totals were given, so the task was to find the price of the individual pieces of fruit. My first approach was to assign all the fruit a variable and solve the problem algebraically. It was just linear algebra, so it was easy enough to solve and plug and solve some more... So, the fact that I approached the task this way blew away the ladies I was sitting with, whom then asked me why I was teaching first grade, and when I then demonstrated my solution to the entire staff, I was applauded! It made me smile to think I surprised some folks who probably were thinking, "Who'd of thought that Miss Downey had that card up her sleeve?" I wonder if they'd force me to teach 5th grade or higher if they also knew that I got an A in calculus too!