Cursing Students

Today, the first day of the two-day Texas High School Project (THSP) mathematics conference here in Dallas, Texas, our presenter, Robert Knittle (University Park Campus School, Worcester, Massachusetts) read to us the children's illustrated book "Math Curse" (1995, Viking Press)  written by Jon Scieska and illustrated by Lane Smith.

Here's the book's plot according to Wikipedia: "The book, which is told by a nameless female student, begins with a seemingly innocent statement by her math teacher- "you know, almost everything in life can be considered a math problem." The next morning, the heroine finds herself thinking of the time she needs to get up along the lines of algebra. Next comes the mathematical school of probability, followed by charts and statistics. As the narrator slowly turns into a "math zombie", everything in her life is transformed into a problem. A class treat of cupcakes becomes a study in fractions, while a trip to the store turns into a problem of money. Finally, she is left painstakingly calculating how many minutes of "math madness" will be in her life now that she is a "mathematical lunatic." Her sister asks her what her problem is, and she responds, "365 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes." Finally, she collapses on her bed, and dreams that she is trapped in a blackboard-room covered in math problems. Armed with only a piece of chalk, she must escape-and she manages to do just that by breaking the chalk in half, because "two halves make a whole." She escapes through this "whole", and awakens the next morning with the ability to solve any problem. Her curse is broken...until the next day, when her science teacher mentions that in life, everything can be viewed as a science experiment."

After the book reading, we were asked to write how we "curse" our students.

In my table, there were two gentlemen whose responses caught my interest.

Gustavo Alvarado (Cotton Valley Early College High School in El Paso, TX) wrote: "Everything in your daily lives is a function."

Andrew Waxman (Mission Early College High School, El Paso, TX) wrote: "Life is (full of) word problems."

I didn't understand the question then, so my response was totally off. But now that I do, I say that I "curse" my students by telling them, "Finding something difficult to do means that you are about to learn something new."

How do you "curse" your students?