Mixed Numbers —Teacher  Short stories

G’day, this is ‘Mixed Numbers’.

My name is Richard Rees and, as many will recognise from my salutation, I am an Australian.

My career as a high school mathematics teacher commenced at Hay War Memorial High School. Hay is a small outback town situated in western New South Wales in an area known as the Riverina. Several years later my wife and I, together with our three children, moved to a large coastal city in the Hunter Region where I continued to teach mathematics at Cardiff High School.

At present, I live on the east coast of Australia north of Coffs Harbour. My home is situated on small acreage, surrounded by kangaroos and kookaburras.

The title, “Mixed Numbers”, is a play on words. Elementary students of mathematics may recall a mixed number is a combination of a whole number and a fraction. The word “number” is also an informal term for a person with particular characteristics as used in the statement, “he’s a loud number” or “she’s an untidy number”.

Mixed Numbers, therefore, refers to the myriad of students who have crossed my path and enriched my life as a mathematics teacher.

My classroom stories are written as students and incidents come to mind. For this reason, they are not in any chronological order.

The drawings, which accompany the short stories, were produced on my iPad. Each one contains six errors. I decided on six because, in number theory, six is a perfect number.

Many of my online stories are universal. The desire of teachers to share their expertise is not the prerogative of any country, creed or social class. So too the aspirations of their charges, to develop their knowledge, independence and individuality, knows no boundaries.

Recently, I have been engrossed—and that’s an understatement—with my Blake-E project. Now, after a creative writing course, a wrestling match with five software packages, countless weeks of paper-craft experiments and attempts to master the finer points of WordPress and HTML, THE DOMINO CAPER,  THE ALPHABET CAPER, and THE BILLY-BUCK CAPER have been released on AMAZON KINDLE. These books are, in many ways, an extension of my classroom career.

May all who enter this portal recall treasured classmates, care-free school days and supportive teachers.

Look somewhere else for someone who can follow you in your researches about numbers. For my part, I confess that they are far beyond me, and I am competent only to admire them.

Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher.