Calculus

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Andrew walked into his classroom and smiled. This was it, his first day at Blue Ridge. He was excited to meet his students and begin getting to know them. He wanted to be able to connect with his students. He grabbed a blue Expo marker from the tray in front of the board and began to print neatly:

Calculus

Mr. Everett

Welcome students!

He waited patiently for the students to file in. He was already trying to think of a way he could enter a shameless plug to get students to join choir. He had found that choir and music was an excellent method to work out emotions. As he waited at his desk a thought came to him. He walked back to the board and printed a problem.

Differentiate: y = 3sin(z) - 4cos(z)

If you had had a year of calculus, the problem would be easy, but he knew that unless the students had studied ahead they wouldn't be able to work the problem. His point in the whole exercise was to illustrate to the students that if they put forth effort, by the end of the class the students would be able to figure out the problem. On a larger scale, to show them that they could accomplish things if they worked hard at them. 

@anna
@mandolingirl
Becca Walsh
@rhythm
@spidey
@samanthal
@samie

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Everleigh walked into the calculus class and had a seat in one of the desks towards the back. She always sat towards the back, better to not attract attention. Attention was nearly always bad. She noticed the teacher at the desk. He was wearing black rimmed glasses and had shortish sandy brown hair. He looked nice enough, unlike her reining instructor who kind of scared her a little bit. She glance at the board and read the words that were printed there. The font was too terrible, better than most male teachers she had had. Beneath the welcoming words was a calculus problem.

She pulled a piece of paper and a mechanical pencil out of her bag. She copied the problem down on the paper. At her old school she had been pretty good at math, no genius, but pretty good. She always managed to get by with an "A". She even liked the trig problems. They seemed like a puzzle to her, and she liked puzzles. People were like puzzles too, and they were one of the things she liked to figure out the most.

She tried working the problem. She tried rearranging the numbers, switching signs, pretty much everything she knew how to do already, but she couldn't figure it out. She stared tub born and frustrated at the paper. Though many people wouldn't guess she was competitive by her shy, sweet, reserved attitude, she actually very competitive with intellectual things and often set high goals for herself.

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Jason entered his calculus class with a smile, hoping that it would be a bit more interesting than last year's pre-calculus class. There was already one classmate present, a brown-haired girl who appeared to be around his age. While normally Jason would make an effort to at least say 'hello', he didn't care much for sitting in the back of the class. And besides, the girl looked like she was burning holes in her paper, and he didn't really feel like turning that gaze onto himself, even if it was only for a second.

After setting down his backpack and taking out a fresh notebook and two sharpened pencils, Jason allowed himself to look around the classroom. The teacher already seemed much better than last year; friendly and intelligent looking rather than snippety and half-deaf. The brown-blond teenager fully intended to give the problem written on the board a good try, but he didn't even know where to start. Sure, he recognized the sine and cosine, but differentiate? That was a different story. He was beginning to realize why the girl had looked so frustrated. Well, I won't gain anything by crossing out a whole page of attempts, best to wait for Mr. Everett to explain. He reasoned silently, letting his mind wander as he waited for the rest of his class to show up. Before long, his page had a line of music set in the treble clef heading his scribbles.

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Sam walked into calculus with a better attitude than she had for her other academic classes. Math had always been her favorite class, as it was the only one that she could bear to listen to for an hour. While she was walking, she dug through her bag to make sure that she had a calculator to work with, which she did, and her phone as well. As long as she had her phone, the calculator wouldn't be necessary but she didn't know how keen the new teacher would be with students having their phones out.

She entered the classroom with a smile on her face and she gave a courteous nod to Mr. Everett then found herself a seat towards the middle. Her eyes wandered to the board, making her let out a small laugh. Yeah, sure. There was no way she had any idea what that even meant, though she saw several familiar terms. Sine and cosine were nothing new to her and she knew the technical term for differentiating so all that was left was to see what went where.

She pulled out her notebook, pencil, and calculator then gave the board one more look. With combination of calculator work and some mental math, she worked on finding an answer, though it was most likely going to be wrong.