my contribution to the Convention of Mathematical Flavors – check it out!

Every teacher has tics. I don’t mean facial twitches (though a few rowdy, beloved classes have driven me there). I mean teaching tics: instincts, fallbacks, go-to-moves. The habitual ways that we frame questions, or receive answers, or structure lessons. I’m now going to recount one of my tics—one that crops up, for better or worse, in every grade, on every topic, in rain or in sun or in humidity so damnable that my sweat is sweating.

The tic of “give me.”

Give me six different triangles whose area is 10 cm². Give me a pair of functions so that f(g(x)) is always bigger than g(f(x)). Give me five data points so the mean, median, and mode are all different. Give me, give me, give me…

Am I selfish, asking for so much? Am I self