"Miss, you don't know how to ride a bike?!?!?"

So, in the spirit of trying to connect exponents to real life, I told my students about my bike and soon to arrive trainer. To my students' credit, I myself didn't know what a trainer was 3 weeks ago (we're not talking personal trainer, we're talking bicycle trainer). I was trying to explain what it was so that I could tie in the exponent thing. I told them that it was a thing I put my bike in so that I could ride it inside. I continue in my attempts and a student asked, "is it a thing that has wheels on both sides and spins?" To which the other students replied, "it's like training wheels?" "Miss, you're older than us and you don't know how to ride a bike?!?" They were all astonishment. I quickly tried to put those fears to rest, and as I stared out into the sea of blank faces I realized that my explanation was seriously lacking. I then attempted to draw a picture. Keep in mind, I'm a math person. I'm a math person who has no business drawing anything that cannot be graphed on a calculator. My picture was of little help, so I turned to charades. By the time we got to the point where I could tie it back to exponential growth there seemed to be a few too many degrees of separation between that and our current topic. (It was supposed to come back to the exponential resistance offered by my trainer of choice. Note to self: leave it out next year.)

In other news, my principal resigned today. What the?!?! It seemed to come from nowhere. Everyone was talking about all the rumors that had been flying around all day. I had heard none of them. I felt a little like Dwight who doesn't participate in the water cooler chat because he brings his own water to work. The truth is my classroom deep in a corner of the west wing of the school. I don't see anyone older than 15 on most days, and my students are not really aware of anything besides themselves. Anyway, I don't really know how this news affects me. One of our APs stepped up to be the interim principal. I guess we'll wait to see what happens.