The Size of Your Dreams by - (best chinese ebook reader TXT) 📕
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Copyright © 2018 by Dave and Chana Mason
All rights reserved.
Have you ever noticed how anal copyrights can be? They’re all like: don’t do this, don’t do that. Don’t copy our book, don’t quote our book, don’t take it into the bathroom.
Well, we wrote this book so people would use it. So feel free to quote it, feel free to teach out of it, and as long as you don’t plan on wiping with it, go ahead and bring this sucker into the bathroom. It’s not called the thinking room for nothing, you know.
So what can’t you do with it? You can’t be a jerk. You can’t claim any of our work is yours. You can’t print up your own copies and cut us out. You can’t copy so much of it that you’re basically repackaging what we’ve done and calling it your own. Simple rule of thumb: if whatever you want to do is going to harm our ability to sell our book, you don’t have our permission to do it. If it’s going to get people excited about the book or improve someone’s life through application of the principles taught here, and you can do it without doing anything that will harm book sales, go for it.
Cover design by the Amazing Juan Hernaz JuanHernaz.com
To our lion-hearted son, Aryeh Lev, who’s joined us every step of the way on this crazy adventure.
The New Math
“What is my goal in taking this class?” Jarod Miller stared at the sheet in his hands, eyebrows shooting up. “What kind of math test is this?”
“I never called it a math test,” Mr. Griffin said.
Trigonometry had been a disaster ever since Mr. Higgs suffered a stroke in late September. They’d transferred as many students as possible into Mrs. Northrup’s class but had to stop when they hit the 30 student limit. During the weeks since, the school shuffled in a stream of substitutes, and most of the remaining students dropped out, leaving just four of us, all seniors. None of us knew where they dug up Mr. Griffin.
Despite there only being four of us left, Jarod moved right past me to the back of the room, because Jarod always sat in the back. His hair still had that just-got-out-of-bed rustle, though it was already fifth period. Stout and muscular, ahe could have been an athlete but gave up sports years ago when he gave up everything else school related. His main workouts now came behind a lawnmower or snow blower.
“Oh no!” Christy Mendez walked in and took a paper. “You’re handing out a test? That’s so unfair.”
“Is there a problem, Christy?”
“You know my name?”
“Yes, I know all of your names.” Mr. Griffin’s piercing blue eyes caught each of ours. I couldn’t help but look away. “Now the problem?”
“You haven’t taught us anything yet.”
“Agreed. This is to make sure we change that.”
Christy mouthed to Jarod, “you’ve got to be kidding me” and eased into the seat next to his. She eyed Mr. Griffin as she pulled her coffee-colored hair into a ponytail. Besides being captain of the girls’ swim team, Christy studied harder than almost anyone. She was sizing up this new guy—she needed trig to get into college.
Darnell Jones lugged himself in, sweaty and winded, just as the bell rang. Jarod liked to joke that Darnell and Billy Jenks were playing a chess match to see who would graduate the fattest, with Billy playing the white pieces, and Darnell, one of only a handful of African Americans in school, playing the black. Darnell squeezed his oversized frame into the desk next to mine and tipped a quick nod in my direction.
“Whatever you call this paper, isn’t the answer obvious?” Jarod asked.
“Is it, Jarod? Perhaps I’ve underestimated you. Today is, after all, my first day teaching. How about you go ahead and fill it out, and we’ll see how obvious it is. Fifteen minutes should be enough.”
Mr. Griffin sat atop one of the student desks, reading off some note cards and mumbling to himself. He was a surprisingly tall figure. Trimly cropped black hair topped his lean face. He wore a raven-black dress shirt and khakis that fell smoothly over his loafers. His legs pumped back and forth, showing off purple polka-dotted socks.
“Not looking good,” Jarod whispered to Christy. “Even I can read without moving my lips.”
It only took me a few seconds to answer the question. When I finished, everyone except Darnell had stopped writing. A moment later, his pencil hit the table as well.
Mr. Griffin was so immersed in his notecards, he didn’t even notice we were all done. “Uh, Mr. Griffin?” I said.
He looked up from his cards. “Yes, Kelvin? Do you need me to clarify the assignment?”
“No. It’s just…. We’re all done.”
“All of you?” He scanned the room. “Already?”
“Well, yeah,” Darnell said. “The question was kind of easy.”
“Was it? Personally, I consider it to be quite difficult. But pass back your papers. Let’s see how you’ve all done.”
Jarod grabbed Christy’s and stretched forward to pass theirs up to me. With three rows of empty chairs between us, I still had to get up to take them. I grabbed Darnell’s on my way back and handed all four to Mr. Griffin.
“Darnell,” Mr. Griffin said, “you wrote that your goal this year is to learn trigonometry. Why is that important to you?
Darnell shrugged. “It’s important stuff to know.”
“Is it? Can you give me one example of how you anticipate using trigonometry later in your life?”
Darnell wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “Uh…”
“Your homework, Darnell, will be to ask your parents what math skills they still use and try to ascertain in what grade they learned them. The answer might surprise you.”
Mr. Griffin turned to my test. “Kelvin, your goal is to learn how to think better. Are you saying that trigonometry is like a game to test your mind?”
“Yeah, sort of,” I said. “It helps you think analytically.”
“And do you believe trigonometry is the most effective tool available for teaching analytical thinking? Do you find that math pushes you to your intellectual limits, Kelvin?”
“Not really. I usually get A’s without trying too hard.”
Jarod scoffed behind me.
“Oh leave him alone, Jarod,” Christy said. “It may not come as easy for me as for Kelvin, but I’m also here to get an A.”
“Indeed,” Mr. Griffin said, “getting an A was what you listed as your goal. Why is that important to you?”
“I need to get a scholarship for college.”
“Come on, Christy,” Jarod said, “if you get a scholarship it’s going to be for your swimming. You’re better off working on your breaststroke.”
“Grades can play a role too, especially at the better schools. Besides, now that coach is gone, I doubt my times will improve any.”
“And you, Jarod?” Mr. Griffin said. “Care to share with the class what you wrote?”
“I’m here for one reason and one reason only. To graduate. I need one more math credit before they’ll let me out of this place.”
“So your goal in this class is just to get through it?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, it’s nice to know that each of you has such low expectations,” Mr. Griffin said. “That certainly takes pressure off me. I expect we can achieve most of that quite easily.”
Low expectations? Collectively we’d said that we wanted to learn the subject matter, strengthen our thinking abilities, get good grades, and fulfill our educational requirements. What else were we in school for? I raised my hand, but didn’t wait to be called on before saying, “What about you, Mr. Griffin? You seem unimpressed with our goals for the class. What are yours?”
“I’m glad you asked, Kelvin.” Mr. Griffin picked up a notecard from his desk and read:
My goal for my trigonometry class is to instill in my students a glimpse of the greatness they have within them and to provide tools to help them succeed in life: emotionally, physically, spiritually, and financially.
“What the…” Jarod mumbled so quietly I couldn’t hear the rest of his words.
Darnell said, “Isn’t one of your goals to teach us math?”
“Oh right, I should probably add that.” Mr. Griffin grabbed a pen and wrote below his other goals. He then read out:
And get all students to master the State approved curriculum for this class.
At this point, we were speechless. Mr. Griffin passed back our papers. “You all filled these out quite quickly the first time. Take the rest of today’s class and tonight to rethink your answers. That will be your homework. Darnell, remember you have an additional assignment, to check with your parents regarding the math they use in their lives.”
* * *
My 12-year-old sister Megan dragged her feet across the floor as she came in for dinner. Random strings of dirty-blond hair fluttered out of her braid.
“Everything okay at school, sweetie?” Mom placed her hand on Megan’s shoulder, but she slunk out of reach.
“It was fine.” My sister slid into her chair.
Mom served us chicken, peas, and mashed potatoes. I got a double serving of the mash, my favorite.
She turned to me. “How about you? How was school?”
“Fine. We finally got a new math teacher,” I said, before shoving a forkful of chicken into my mouth.
“So perhaps you’ll be able to learn trig this year, after all.”
“Maybe,” I mumbled.
“You don’t like him?”
“I dunno. He’s kinda weird. I still wish I was in calculus this year.”
“This again?” My father asked, glancing up from his research study. It was his fault that I was in trig this year rather than in calculus. When the rest of the advanced math class had gone on to trig last year, he insisted that I take Stats instead. “Statistics are key to understanding data, and data is everywhere. A recent study by the New England Journal of Medicine showed that 5 out of 4 doctors don’t understand basic statistics, and they’re supposed to be scientists.” Dad grinned at his own joke. “You’ll thank me for it one day.”
I wasn’t feeling too thankful at the moment, but I kept my mouth shut. As a neurobiology professor, Dad used statistics all the time in his work, so I couldn’t deny their value. But had I taken trig with the rest of my class I could be in calculus now with a normal teacher, rather than stuck with Mr. Griffin.
“How is the new teacher weird?” Mom always broke in with a change of subject when Dad and I got to arguing.
“I dunno, Mom, just weird, okay?”
My mom, as usual, let the subject drop. Megan piped in, “Weird like you, maybe?”
“Shut up, Megan.”
I was more curious about this new teacher than I let on to my family. That night I quickly worked through my homework for my other subjects, then dived into math. I didn’t spend any time thinking over Mr. Griffin’s idiotic question, though. No math teacher showed up the first day of class and forgot he was supposed to be teaching us math. There was something strange about this guy, and I intended to find out what it was.
The problem was, Griffin wasn’t such an uncommon name, and teachers weren’t known to leave deep digital footprints. Still, one of my counselors at Hacker Camp used to say that with enough skill and perseverance, you could find information on anyone. I’d been programming since before I could ride a bike, so no issue with
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