Current Strategies

JILL was born in Holualoa. After changing job opportunities at NYCTF and JET, she works as a creative-arts grant writer and language teacher. She has volunteered at Olomana, Center for Asian Pacific Exchange, Kahuamānoa Press, and Tinfish Press. Her interests include second language studies, quilting as painting, and the poetry of John Ashbery, Susan Schultz, and Linh Dinh. Her work has appeared inHow2, Paradigm, and Tinfish. She edits a small limited-run journal of SPED and ESL poetry and prose.

by Jill Yamasawa

Strategy 1

Mr. K says: "In my classes, especially in the math classes, I use a ticking time-bomb approach. I create a sense of urgency in the room so that way they feel pressure to keep working. They're more alert that way; otherwise you lose them. If you don't create that ticking time bomb, you're dead in the water."

I nod. "It's an interesting idea," I say with a smile, squint my eyes so he can't tell what I'm thinking. I decide to stick with my approach. The students graph football scores and compare player stats after they complete their work. They pencil in the names of the players; copy their pencil marks in black ink; shade in each block; stay within the lines; maintain even color saturation. I remind them it's not for credit. Still they insist on doing the graphs over and over in their free time, holding the colored pencils as paintbrushes.

Strategy 2

"One of the most difficult things to teach is ordering polynomials. To make it more exciting," Mr. K says, "I explain that a variable is like an unknown superpower; a base number is how many military bases you have, and a power is like the number of guns each unknown superpower has; I tell them conventions in math has us ordering polynomials by the number of guns not the number of bases since it's more important to have guns than bases. That really helps them get the hang of it faster."

I ask Mr. K if there is another analogy he thinks would work just as well. He tells me it's best to stick with what they understand. He tells me I should do the same.

I think about what he says. It makes sense, in a way, but not in a way I want to share with my kids. So instead I bring fresh fruit, dried fish, and Japanese candy from Don Quijote and Shirokiya. I use the fruit as bases, the candy as powers, and the fish as constants. We arrange thestatements on the tables and they seem to understand it all right.