My sub in my class today was not actually a teacher, I don't think. He was a math prof or instructor at the university. So somehow he started talking to some of my more "advanced" students about some interesting math topics related to the concept of infinity, such as the mobius strip, irrational and rational numbers, pi, etc. One of my students looks up and me and says, "Hey, why don't you teach us this?!" And as I was sitting there, thinking about it, my sub answered for me: "It's not in the curriculum."
And I thought to myself, geez, is that my best answer?!
No, technically my best answer would have been, "Even though I have a great collaborating teacher, I don't think she'd be too wild about me going off on tangents talking about things that won't help you for next year and I'm just trying to make it through each and every single day and trying to find fun stuff like this that could amuse both you advanced students and my weaker students is going to be a bitch." But even that just seems weak.
So I've decided that I'm going to try, maybe next week, maybe after spring break, but I'm going to try and stick to my promise: make this math classroom a culture of wonder, making math fun and relevant.
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