NationStates Jolt Archive

Something I've noticed over the years, and felt like sharing with NSG.

Simply put, math teachers dont get sick. Ever.
In my entire educational 'career', I cannot recall a single case of a math teacher needing a substitute.
Ever.
I may be forgetting something, of course, but, it seems that, in general, math teachers are crazily healthy individuals.
Is this some sort of conspiracy? Has the International Math Teachers Union for World Domination developed some sort of cure-all antibiotic which renders them immune to disease?

Seriously. As a person who has a strong dislike of math and seeks to avoid it at every possible turn, this situation annoys me. Why is it that my other three instructors are sick and/or MIA on the same day, and yet my math teacher is fine and, in fact, rather cheerful?

To avoid accusations of blogitization...
What are NSG's experiences with this? Does this phenominon extend overseas? Come on, EuroGeneralites. And the Japanalites. And all the other assorted -ilites.

I had a math teacher in grade 12 who had been away sick. :D

That blows holes in your theory! Take that crackpot theory! :)

actually its more because they don't earn as much as other teachers and so must work twice as hard (heard this from an art teacher mind you)

My math teacher never gets sick. The problem is that the other teachers try to devide by zero.

I'm a math teacher who subbed for one of my colleagues (she had EIGHT O'CLOCK classes, gack!) when she was out for a week, two weeks, then three weeks... She did give me a very nice card afterward saying she knew this was above and beyond.

My math teacher is sick all the time.

Don't remember a math teacher getting sick. However I had English teachers and my Spanish teachers sick all the time.

Japanalites.

I approve of this word.

Hmm, I don't remember any of my math teachers being sick. But one was on maternity leave for the last quarter of the year, and then I think another one was gone for a week or so for jury duty. But then again my other teachers are rarely ever out sick themselves. Sometimes they'll be gone like if their husband had surgery or their daughter was going to be having a baby halfway across the country and they wanted to be there or their child was ill, or something like that, but I can't remember one of them just being sick...

Math is the stain on humanity that we must wipe away with the Mr.Clean of Freedom.

I hate math.

Math is the stain on humanity that we must wipe away with the Mr.Clean of Freedom.

I hate math.

pie are squared

I have had the same math teacher three years in a row (because he taught about half of all the math courses at our school, not because I failed it two times) and he never missed one day. Not one. Oh, and he is in his 70s. You'd think someone that old would get sick all the time, but he never did. He never missed a day. Never.

They do not get sick because they know the only universal language.

They don't get sick because they interact as little with other people, especially students, as humanly possible. There's a reason kindergarten teachers are always sick.

That, or math teachers are robots.

pie are squared

No it's not, it's round

No it's not, it's round

No, it's cylindrical.

HA! and they said geometry would never help me in the real world, well who's laughing now.

I used to teach Maths and I've been off-sick for a few days. Not as many as I would have liked.
Reason?

The substitute teacher who would be taking over my class, were I off sick, is extremely likely to have even less idea about maths than the addled brain dimwits, sorry students, I was teaching.
Thus, if I felt like the dreaded lurgy coming on necessitating a day's rest, in order to do this I'd have to spend a good couple of hours the evening before at school making up all sorts of lengthy sodding worksheets, with a mastersheet that has the answers, designed to take an entire lesson to complete. For every single class the following day. I couldn't just leave a note detailing which section of the textbook I wanted the students to do, as every section needs explanation - and if the subbie turned out to be a home Ec teacher (or heaven forbid, a PE teacher!), the idea of them explaining maths was just too much.
It was such a pain in the arse that it really wasn't worth it. It was easier to just drag myself into school and teach. It really was.


Ohh...the last year I taught there was bliss. The maths HOD retired the previous year (after 45 years teaching there! :eek:) but made herself available for substituting for us maths teachers. If I was feeling poorly I could call her up, ask her if she was free, tell her what topic I'm teaching for each class and where we were up to and that was it. She did everything for there.
Of course for the next few days I then had to put up with my classes going on about what a great teacher she was and why can't I be as good? But it was worth the hassling to have that blessed day off mid-week. Oh my yes.

I had a math teacher who sometimes didn't come to school, I think when it was her birthday. But she wasn't sick.

Something I've noticed over the years, and felt like sharing with NSG.

Simply put, math teachers dont get sick. Ever.
In my entire educational 'career', I cannot recall a single case of a math teacher needing a substitute.
Ever.
I may be forgetting something, of course, but, it seems that, in general, math teachers are crazily healthy individuals.
Is this some sort of conspiracy? Has the International Math Teachers Union for World Domination developed some sort of cure-all antibiotic which renders them immune to disease?

Seriously. As a person who has a strong dislike of math and seeks to avoid it at every possible turn, this situation annoys me. Why is it that my other three instructors are sick and/or MIA on the same day, and yet my math teacher is fine and, in fact, rather cheerful?

To avoid accusations of blogitization...
What are NSG's experiences with this? Does this phenominon extend overseas? Come on, EuroGeneralites. And the Japanalites. And all the other assorted -ilites.

Our math teacher is the sickest in the school...

My friends had a Math Class where the teacher was out for an entire year, and they had multiple substitutes and all had an easy pass...

I was so Envious :gundge:

Yeah, my math teachers rarely got sick. It seemed like foreign language teachers got sick the most.

actually its more because they don't earn as much as other teachers and so must work twice as hard (heard this from an art teacher mind you)

O_O

Um, no.

My Chem/Physics teacher never used one of his sick days. He's been there 40 years or so. Oh, he's been out once or twice for professional development or whatever (which he hated), and I might be off one day because I do believe he used a sick day when his mother went to the hospital, but aside from that, I'm dead serious. He had more than 6 school years of sick days saved up, which he couldn't possibly use and wouldn't be fully compensated for.

My math teacher was sick of us by the end of the year. (If that counts)

pie are squared

No it's not, it's round

Only sometimes; sometimes pie are squared.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1233/1083278360_868cd3fe6e.jpg

My Chem/Physics teacher never used one of his sick days. He's been there 40 years or so. Oh, he's been out once or twice for professional development or whatever (which he hated), and I might be off one day because I do believe he used a sick day when his mother went to the hospital, but aside from that, I'm dead serious. He had more than 6 school years of sick days saved up, which he couldn't possibly use and wouldn't be fully compensated for.

Yeah, but both my parents are retired teachers, and while you don't get compensated for all of them, those banked sick days do add up to a considerable amount of money at retirement.

No it's not, it's round
Click Stand;13654933']No, it's cylindrical.

Pies are a myth concocted by the Liberal Media, the pie is a lie.

actually its more because they don't earn as much as other teachers and so must work twice as hard (heard this from an art teacher mind you)
And this (^) is why Art teachers should not - nay, cannot - teach Maths.

My maths teacher unfortunately miscalculated the right angle to take a curb with his bike and fell off it so that he broke multiple bones in his body and couldn't teach for the remainder of the school year (rumors are he also failed to correctly calculate the amount of alcohol one should consume before embarking on a lengthy bike ride home, but meh).

This would have been to my great delight had it not been my final semester at school and maths one of the two subjects I had to take my six-hour-long graduation exam in - we received no substitute, but were told to practice independent learning.

My maths teacher unfortunately miscalculated the right angle to take a curb with his bike and fell off it so that he broke multiple bones in his body and couldn't teach for the remainder of the school year (rumors are he also failed to correctly calculate the amount of alcohol one should consume before embarking on a lengthy bike ride home, but meh).

This would have been to my great delight had it not been my final semester at school and maths one of the two subjects I had to take my six-hour-long graduation exam in - we received no substitute, but were told to practice independent learning.

Awww, that's lame. Boo school, boo...

My maths teacher unfortunately miscalculated the right angle to take a curb with his bike .
How can you miscalculate a right-angle? It's always going to be 90 degrees no matter what.

Does this phenominon extend overseas? Come on, EuroGeneralites. And the Japanalites. And all the other assorted -ilites.
In Japan, tis a wee bit different. The teachers DO get sick (Trust me on this, the flu and colds make their rounds through the staff room with depressing regularity), they just keep showing up for class. Yup, it's an insperation to see your co-worker looking like he got the bad end of a 12 round fight with Mike Tyson, coughing up a lung into his mask, slowly gather himself up, take three tries to get his books, and creep out the door to his class, wobbling slightly when struct by passing motes of dust.

And then you realize as you start to get a stuffy nose and sore throat, that you can't take any time off either after seeing that!

Humor aside, one time half my junior high school was out with the flu and the school nurse threatened all of us teachers if we DARED to show up at work if we got it... we took the threat a bit less seriously than we might have, given that the nurse herself was obviously also suffering from the flu and managed to come to school anyway.

When you mention it, it is actually true. And that's true here, in Eastern Europe. And when i think about it then in university also lecturers of Statistics and Econometrics never got sick.

I think that's great. Maths is the one of the greatest humanity achievements, and it is critically important that everybody studies them as much as possible. And they are fun.

Probably it's some kind of god's blessing for maths teachers for keeping human kind out of darkness?!

I think a lot of it is the math teachers have more pressure because students face much more rigorous standardized testing in math. where as if an english teacher misses something he/she can just not test over it.

Simply put, math teachers dont get sick. Ever.

They do.

All the maths teachers I had were borderline alcoholics, so they probably felt rough all the time anyway and were just used to it. I don't really remember any teachers taking time off sick.

Real math teachers never get sick.

The bastards.

Applying Occam's Razor the simplest expanation of this phenomenon is that in the future machines take over and enslave human kind. In order to prevent a human uprising robots have been sent back in time disguised as maths teachers - a perfect cover for them.

In Japan, tis a wee bit different. The teachers DO get sick (Trust me on this, the flu and colds make their rounds through the staff room with depressing regularity), they just keep showing up for class. Yup, it's an insperation to see your co-worker looking like he got the bad end of a 12 round fight with Mike Tyson, coughing up a lung into his mask, slowly gather himself up, take three tries to get his books, and creep out the door to his class, wobbling slightly when struct by passing motes of dust.

And then you realize as you start to get a stuffy nose and sore throat, that you can't take any time off either after seeing that!
Same here in HK. It's presented as a loss-of-face to take time off work. Some principals are right total assholes about it too. I've heard some truly disgusting horror stories concerning the way principals here have treated their teachers.

Also, because sucking up and gaining/losing face is soooo important here (and no doubt Japan), the easiest way to look good is to ensure everyone looks bad. So as soon as a local teacher takes a day off due to illness, you just know there'll be a line of teachers outside the principal's office gleefully waiting to inform the principal said sick teacher is probably faking it, that the sick teacher obviously doesn't care as much about teaching as them and reminding the principal about the time they dragged themselves off their deathbed and staggered into work.
It's the same reasoning behind why the local teachers stay behind at school until 7 or 8 o'clock every weeknight. First to leave is tarred with the, "slack, doesn't care enough about their job to stay" brush.

Something I've noticed over the years, and felt like sharing with NSG.

Simply put, math teachers dont get sick. Ever.
In my entire educational 'career', I cannot recall a single case of a math teacher needing a substitute.
Ever.
I may be forgetting something, of course, but, it seems that, in general, math teachers are crazily healthy individuals.
Is this some sort of conspiracy? Has the International Math Teachers Union for World Domination developed some sort of cure-all antibiotic which renders them immune to disease?

Seriously. As a person who has a strong dislike of math and seeks to avoid it at every possible turn, this situation annoys me. Why is it that my other three instructors are sick and/or MIA on the same day, and yet my math teacher is fine and, in fact, rather cheerful?

To avoid accusations of blogitization...
What are NSG's experiences with this? Does this phenominon extend overseas? Come on, EuroGeneralites. And the Japanalites. And all the other assorted -ilites.

Subjective experiance type o thing. When I was at school in the early 80's many of my maths teachers had to be replased by substitutes.

My old Maths teacher (can`t remember what year) was very ill. He had a bone and muscle desease (again can`t remember exactly what they were) and he had destroyed his knee cap when he was playing cricket when he was a kid. As a result, he was constantly having to go back into hospital for surgery and check-ups.

I never get sick and I love math! Actually I none of my High school teachers got sick all that often.

Math is the stain on humanity that we must wipe away with the Mr.Clean of Freedom.

I hate math.
Math hates you.

How can you miscalculate a right-angle? It's always going to be 90 degrees no matter what.

It's easy for you to say that when sitting in front of a computer, all sober and probably in a nicely lit room, but curious things happen when you're on your bike, drunk off your ass and on an unknown road..

i hate MATHS (im british)

Math hates you.

Good.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/certainty.png

Credits to www.xkcd.com.

In Soviet Russia, sick teachers never get math!