School buses and math class

I don't know why, but this is one of my Top 25 all-time favorite pictures that I have taken. It's of my youngest son when we found some school buses parked on a school lot in Mason County this past spring. He had not been so close to a bus bearing the IC Corp. brand before. Maybe it's his body language as he takes in this unfamiliar bus line.

(See that Bus 911? A few feet away was Bus 2001. Weird, huh?).

We have a basic rule when we look at buses. No touching. We don't want to do anything that could be interpreted as causing damage. So we look but don't touch.

I was going to write something about the city of Huntington, the proposed occupation tax and other such, but I've been fussing with opinion pages all day. And I need a diversion here before the weekend.


While talking with Adam a few days ago, he wanted me to know that he doesn't like math. That couldn't be right, I thought, considering some of the conversations we have had. The more we talked, the more it became apparent that he likes math. He just doesn't like math class. I tried to explain how math class teaches the tools you need to truly enjoy math itself.

The point of that conversation shows that we as adults can separate the enjoyment of doing something from the drudgery of learning how to do it. I'm not so sure kids can do that, and that may be why so many kids have problems with school.