Holiday Week is Coming!

One of my Sarahs and I, with pie and the "I love nerds" shirt.  You'll note, however, that it wasn't even close to pi day.  ;-)

And the first holiday is . . . pi day!  3/14 (the first three digits of the number pi) evoked a little "whoop" from me senior year of college at 1:59 (the next three digits of pi) in the afternoon.  I remember that I was in opera workshop class and wearing my "I love nerds" shirt.  :-) 

Pi day was even more useful as a teacher.  In the beginning of my first year teaching at the Christian school, I was duly warned by my students that the previous math teacher had let them bring in pie on pi day!  Even a parent or two asked me if I observed the day during "Back to School Night."  That gave me time to prepare, and now I reminisce. 

 A memory from my old classroom - a circle I drew by hand that came out so well I left it on the board for weeks.  You can also see my students' countdown to my wedding and the caricature of our physics teacher drawn by a talented senior last year.

Today, at school, my calculus and precalculus classes would have had Socratic Seminars on a humorous, fictional article about the state legislature of Louisiana (I think) changing the value of pi to exactly 3.  My algebra 2 and algebra 2 w/trig classes would have had a competition to see who could recite the most digits of pi.  (The prize, of course, was a homemade pie!)  My geometry students would have done a "discovering pi" lab in groups of four.  And there would have been much feasting and a general sugar headache by the end of the day.  :-) 

  

This year, I'm not only not teaching, but pi day is also on the Lord's Day.  Still, I asked John what kind of pie he wanted and, of course, he asked for his favorite, lemon meringue!