One more random thought. I had a dream the other night that we received a letter in the mail from my old school in Oregon. They were offering me a $25k raise (which would almost double the salary I get here in WI), throw in an additional $5k to pay for moving expenses and help us find a house similar to the one we sold before moving back here if we would come back next year.
The guy they hired to replace me quit after two weeks. They moved the 7-9 math teacher up to teaching my classes, and the kids say he doesn’t really understand the stuff – which I believe because it was tough going to ask him if I was doing a problem correctly when I wasn’t getting the answer the (sometimes faulty) answer key didn’t have. I’d have to reteach him things sometimes before we’d put our heads together. Nothing against him, you don’t need to remember precalculus to teach combining like terms for 25 years. 🙂 I’ve had a couple of my former students reach out for help in the past few months… I guess that was weighing on my mind.
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