Substitute: Going to School With a Thousand Kids

DAY NINETEEN. Wednesday, May 14, 2014

LASSWELL MIDDLE SCHOOL, EIGHTH-GRADE SCIENCE

SIMPLE MACHINES

BETH CALLED AT 5:50 A.M. to send me to the middle school, where I spent the day urging Mr. Lyall’s eighth-grade science students to fill out several worksheets on simple machines. I read to them from the textbook, and we talked about rakes and baseball bats as levers, and about the reduced friction on the puck in air hockey — all that went okay. But none of the students could do anything with the worksheet’s main word problem: A 600-N box is pushed up a ramp that is 2 m high and 5 m long. The box exerts a force of 300 N. What is the efficiency of the ramp? Some kids plugged numbers into half-remembered formulas and got wrong answers — efficiencies of 200 percent. Many pencils were sharpened. Kimberly, Michelle, and Bethany talked about a vampire show. I was no help, because I’d never learned about newtons. By the third class, I gave up on trying to push the box up the ramp and, after a quick web search, wrote the name of a series of videos on the whiteboard: “10 Brilliant Rube Goldberg Machines.” I tried to explain who Rube Goldberg was, but nobody cared. “GUYS! LOOK UP ‘TEN BRILLIANT RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINES!’ Watch those videos, and be enlightened.”

“Do we have to?” said Katylynn.

“It’s optional,” I said.

Rita was drawing a tattoo on Roslyn’s arm. “Do you want a tattoo?” she asked me.

“No, I want you to look up ‘Ten Brilliant Rube Goldberg Machines.’”

“I hate machines! I’m a girl,” said Rita.

I wrestled a ruler from Shane’s hand. His pills were wearing off.

“What kind of music do you like?” asked Natasha.

About half the class watched the first Rube Goldberg video, in which many items burn and boil and fall and toil in order to turn the page of a newspaper. It reminded me of teaching.

“It makes no sense,” said Aaron. “They broke a laptop just to turn a page of a newspaper.”

I said, “So the question is, is that an efficient machine, or an inefficient machine? Bingo, you’ve learned the lesson.”

More people watched the videos, one by one. They talked about them and laughed and were attentive. “Full screen!” said Roslyn. Even Shane watched them, looking over somebody’s shoulder because his iPad was confiscated. I could hear the clicking sounds of the Rube Goldberg machines emanating from fifteen iPads.

Toward the end of the day, Todd showed me how to make a Chinese firecracker; Aaron told a story about his great-grandfather, who injured his nose while chopping wood; and Ryder said he wanted to be an air force pilot when he grew up. “My dad works at the air force base in Portsmouth. He used to repair the planes. Now he teaches classes.”

What air force plane did he like best?

“F-18 Hornet,” he said. “The Super Hornet. I like how it looks. It’s my dad’s favorite plane. I like the Strike Eagles, too.” He brought out his iPad and scrolled through some beauty shots of Strike Eagle planes in various poses. Then he showed more pictures, scrolling slowly through a Keynote presentation he’d just made for health class. “That’s my family,” he said. “That’s my mom, my dad, my sister, my mom again. These are my friends. That’s my sister swimming. She’s really good. She just needs to practice how her arms go into the water. I like fishing. There’s me two days ago.” He was holding a fishing rod in the picture. “And here’s my quote.” The quote was by Bernard Baruch: Be Who You Are, Say What You Feel. Those Who Mind Don’t Matter, and Those Who Matter Don’t Mind.

I wrote a note for Mr. Lyall. “Dear Mr. Lyall, Many thanks for letting me sub in your class. Classes on Work and Machines went well — some serious confusion over the reverse side of the Work and Power worksheet (“Using Machines”). Kids were good-natured, respectful, funny — Best regards, Nick Baker.”

Day Nineteen was history.