Fixing for a Change

I was in an accident more than a week ago. The parts to fix my car finally came in so I dropped off my car this morning. My loaner is a buick. There's nothing wrong with it, but in the 2 months since I bought my new car, I got used to driving a new car. The buick has more than 120,000 miles on it. It goes, but not with as much pep as I want. So, no drag racing for me for at least a week.

In the middle of geometry class today the (new) principal came over the speaker and announced, "Students you have five minutes to get to your 4 period class." What?! The bell had not rung. The students looked at me for guidance. We were half way through a problem (Special angles formed by a transversal and two parallel lines) and they were actually following along. Except for the dozen sleeping, class was going well. The problem is that I really didn't know what was happening. My clock runs slow so every day I have to figure out what the calculation of the day will be. Today's calculation was to subtract 10 minutes from the minute hand and add 5 hours to the hour hand. Perhaps my calculation was wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. Plus, this weekend was daylight savings time, so it's very likely that the bell schedule would be messed up. And it is not uncommon (read: common) for the principal to be confused by the bell schedule and clocks.

In an instant I had to figure out what mistakes were most likely to have been made. The bells, the principal, or the clocks. I chose the wrong one and told my students they had better hurry up to their next class. Half of them were out of their seats before I reconsidered my decision and relized that the most probable mistake would have been made by the principal. So I ended up chasing my students out into the hall to shepherd them back to their seats. I had ten minutes left in class, but it was pretty much a lost cause.

There are many things wrong with my school. Blame can be shared by students, teachers, parents, and administration. But today is a fine example of how the little mistakes add up too. A mistake by the principal should not have upset my class. But because I have to consider the unreliable clocks and bell system we lost the real focus. Parallel lines and corresponding angles.