Graduate School and Starting at Keokuk

 Monday, December 7, 2020

A day that will live in infamy

*****

Last week, I started to look at my teaching experiences and how I had changed my teaching over the years.  I’m continuing that this week.

First, going back to graduate school and then to the Keokuk School District.

When I went to West Grant, I had in my mind that I would get a master’s degree.  So, with two great years there, I went back to Winona State University in Winona Minnesota to work on a Master’s in Mathematics Education.  

Two quick comments:  I had been away from serious study for two years, and I’ll say I had gotten ‘soft’ in my math skills, and graduate-level mathematics is hard!!!

In my undergraduate math program, I took Calculus I, II, and III.  But, for Calculus III (judgment coming), I didn’t think I learned much.  The teacher was a one-year temp and we (the class) just kind of covered the top layer.  That made graduate real analysis real hard.  Graduate math is almost all abstract and theoretical.  It is my considered opinion that advanced mathematical concepts were all developed by the time the mathematician was 30 years old or younger.  

I enjoyed the graduate statistics and took a couple of computing courses (it was the “Department of Math and Computer Science” at that time).  Actually, I walked away from the computer courses saying “that was interesting, but not for me” (little did I know).

I was a dorm director and a graduate assistant in math, so it cost me little to get my master’s degree.  This was 1972-1973 and times were really changing.  I was dorm director for Prentice Hall which was a twin to Lucas Hall. (Quite a change from seven years before when I was a freshman. Women's dorms had a nine p.m. curfew, and, of course, men were not welcome in women's residences except for a couple of times a semester for open houses.  I was in Prentice Hall which was three-and-one-half floors for men and one-half floor for women (total of four floors).  Yes, in theory, a man could open a door and walk through the co-ed wing (or visa versa).  During the fall semester, things went well.  I did want to date and maybe find a girl to fulfill the American Dream, but my co-ed floor had mostly sophomores and I was 25 when I went back to graduate school, so nineteen and twenty-year-old girls were just not too attractive to me.  

Spring semester came, and there was a new girl on my co-ed wing.  She had done her student teaching in math during the fall semester and was returning to finish off her degree.  Almost by nature, we were pushed together, and dated, and fell in love.  I was the graduate assistant who graded statistics papers by the undergraduates and I graded her papers.  She learned that I was a good tutor for her for that course.  

I was back as an active “Big Man on campus” - as I was the Graduate Senator on the Student Senate; back into my fraternity, as well as a graduate assistant and dorm director.  

Six dorm memories

-. (The statute of limitations is well over on this). On Friday and Saturday nights when the guys came in drunk, somebody would think it was a good prank to trip the fire alarm. Emptying the dorm at 2:00 a.m. (when the bars closed downtown) wasn't much fun - especially when we suspected it was a prank. The staff and I debated what to do. We could put some phosphorene dust on the fire alarm and then check for who had the dust. I found (the illegal) a method - turn the fire alarm off about 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday night and turn it back on in the morning!!! By November after there were no more late-night alarms, I turned it back on again!!

-.  On a very cold night the 3A wing decided it was so cold, they could open the windows on both ends of the long hallway, and put some water on the floor and get ice - for ice skating!!  (It wasn’t that cold guys!!!)

-. There was a room on the 4B wing that always smiled like burning leaves!! (And, I had an idea what that aroma was!!)

-. My room was on the 1A wing and under the 2A women’s wing.  The two girls on the second floor were friends of mine and tried to get to me by bounding steel balls on their floor (aka - my ceiling) 

-. Next to my room was the room of Wayne Peterson and Larry Johnson - fraternity brothers of mine.  Although alcohol was not allowed in dorm rooms, I was welcomed to go next door and have a brew.

-. My girlfriend (later wife) was in a double room with a sophomore nursing student.  There were about four times during the semester when my girlfriend would go to the restroom (in the center of the hall) and the roommate would go out and lock the door, so my girlfriend had to have me come unlock her door.  (Or at least that was the story.  I’m not sure if she ‘caught’ me or I ‘caught’ her.  

We both graduated that spring (my parents got to meet her family).  By Thanksgiving after graduation, we were engaged!!

*****

But, as compared to my first job at West Grant, one application, one phone call, and one job.  I started to apply for several math teaching positions.  I interviewed in Camanche, Iowa, and walked away from the interview ‘knowing’ I had the position. (I didn’t get it).  I interviewed at Mt. Prospect Illinois, a Chicago suburb - and didn’t get it.  I interviewed at another Iowa location and didn’t get it.  It was August, school started in a few weeks and I didn’t have a job.

The standard process in Iowa was to put teaching positions in the Des Moines Register.  About the first of August, I saw an opening at Keokuk Iowa for a math teacher.  I applied and got the job.

Keokuk was also on the Mississippi River. It was “barely” in Iowa.  The “normal” Iowa border was a straight line between Iowa and Missouri, but as that boundary reached the Des Moines river, the boundary followed the river.  So there is a little triangle on the southeast tip of Iowa bounded by the Mississippi River and the Des Moines River as it runs into the Mississippi.  

The Mississippi at Keokuk had rapids and had been dammed up with a lock-and-dam to allow for barge traffic on the river.  But, before the dam, steamers could reach this point but not go farther north.  So, Keokuk had some different architecture and attitudes.

This was a diverse community - at least economically.  There were factories - originally powered by hydroelectricity from the dam - and the owners and managers of those factories; and the poor of the community - who worked in those factories.  There was a sizable black minority and a fairly rich community.  

As the “last on the staff” on the five-person math teaching staff, I was assigned two sections of general math, a section of consumer math, and two sections of algebra I.  Of these, the general math was by far the hardest.  It seemed like many of the students were just in school until they reached 16 years old and could drop out.  And, even some of the older (in consumer math) were supposedly mandated to be in school by court order.  (Not the same as in West Grant) 

I tried to teach general math in a traditional ‘lock-step’ manner and it didn’t work well, so I tried an individual approach with modules they had to complete.  This was 1973-1974 and on a worksheet, one student came to my desk with all of the ‘answers’ about five minutes after getting the worksheet.  And, all answers were wrong!!!  I asked how he could give all of these division problems wrong and found he had a new four-function calculator and when dividing 43 into 773, he put 43 into his calculator and pressed the divide key and then entered 773 and got the wrong answer!!! 

I had one student who stole a record from my file cabinet.  On noon hall duty, I found three boys at the least used hallway smoking marijuana and I escorted them to the principal’s office.  I somehow learned to be more of a disciplinarian (not my best attribute) and even got assigned being the mentor for the after school detention period.

More tomorrow!!!

LOVE WINS!!!

HUGS!!!

Karen