Everything is relative

This is from one of my 5th grade groups today and I found it very nice, I hope you like it.

We were working with decimal numbers and I was trying to emphasize the importance of expressing the actions in an accurate way- the link between action and its expression is quite an issue at this age, weather the action is done by them or required from them.
So, I was trying to make them say we place the comma 1 position more to the left or to the right instead of to the end (or beginning) of the number. I told them a funny true story about one student who was so used to place the comma more "towards the door" or "towards the window", that he could not solve the exercises at home because the door and the window were not in the same directions. So, I said, we must refer to left and right, because they are not relative, therefore we will always be precise.

Then, I prepared to go further with the lesson and asked: can someone please wipe the first blackboard? as they have 2 boards in the room. And they asked: which one is the first?
I found this brilliant, especially for 11 year olds. :)

"Another kind of book"

There is an old Math teacher (actually, a whole family of teachers) who makes the best known exercise book for Secondary School Maths. The book is unofficially called "The Chicken"because it has a duckling on the cover, regardless of the level of the class, year after year. It's a good book: revised and adapted each year, no errors, costless, easy to handle, diversified. They bring it directly to schools and they are nice and reliable.
Well, this old teacher brought us a gift. He published, on his own expense, a book dedicated to teachers that has the same cover with the duckling and the title of the post. Inside there are poems, short real stories, epigrams related to teaching. Each one has a motto in Latin (a dictum) and the same final line: "The rest? The rest is silence."
He offered a book, with a few handwritten lines, to each teacher he has collaborated with.
Only a confirmed and incurable idealistic person can teach for a lifetime.
The rest is silence.

World Teachers' Day

http://5oct.org/index.php/en/index

Teaching

A doctor was walking in a park and saw one old lady sitting on a bench smoking. He said:
"It's impossible not to notice the happiness on your face. What is your secret?"
She replied:
"I am a teacher, I stay up until 2 am, designing curricula and teaching situations, I wake up at 6 am to arrive on time at work.
I don't practice any sports, have no fun and no social life. At week-ends, I work on to review learning strategies for my students, make assessment, develop teaching materials, and on holidays too, I don't eat breakfast, lunch and dinner because I haven't any time.
I am always stressed because of reforms in education, documentation deadlines and inspectors' visits .
The doctor replied:
"It's amazing! I can not believe. How old are you? "
" 34, "replied the old lady.

Still, after 24 years, I fall in love every autumn. I'm a desperate case, I guess. Any cure for this?