As I circulated around the room the lyrics from a Notorious B.I.G. song kept playing in my head, “Somebody got to die!”
That sounds harsh, but its my truth. We couldn’t continue like this, its had gone on long enough.
No, this isn’t the beginning of my mystery novel, it’s actually my thoughts as I circulated watching my students engage in a Desk Hop activity. I learned about Desk Hop from a blog I read several years ago, I wish I could cite it but I cannot remember the blog:-/. At any rate, students went from desk to desk answering questions involving percent increase and percent decrease. Some were fairly simple while others required a bit more reasoning. However, the reasoning was stunted with one phrase. One phrase that cause them all to stop thinking in their tracks and wave the white flag of surrender, paralyzed in their positions. I can’t possible walk them through the thought process forever. That’s when I devised a plan to get away with murder.
It was easy, I just did it. I killed “I don’t get it”. We had a funeral for it so that the kids would have time to mourn the lost of their old friend, which I referred to as their frenemy. Many of them called me a murderer as they “wept loudly”.
Lucky for us “I don’t get it” is survived by “Here’s what I know… Here’s what I don’t know…” As students became acquainted with their new friends they began to realized when they identified what they knew, developing a plan was easier than “I don’t get it” let off to be.
Rest in peace “I don’t get it”. I for one will not miss you!
Elementary Teacher in Middle School 
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[…] Have you experienced that struggle? A student who has beautiful thinking on their paper and you want them to share with the class, but when the student has the floor, they say, “I can’t explain it” or “I don’t know how to explain it”. The phrase that always sent chills down my spine was “I don’t get it (period)”. Knowing there had to be a better why to life in the math classroom, I once murdered “I don’t get it“. […]
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