Heart + Math = Height

Kalley Ann was 8, in fourth grade and friends with the coolest group in her school. She, Kim, Jeannie and Jody did everything together. An effort that was made easy since they were in the same class together, and basically spent all seven hours at school joined to each other's hips. In class they sat at desks next to each other, lunch at the same table and recess doing whatever single activity they had all agreed on.

It was just an average Tuesday, and they were headed to math. Kalley Ann positioned herself close to Jody, who she liked sitting next to at the math table they shared. Jody was actually worse at math than Kalley Ann, which is not something that many people could be. So, Kalley Ann liked to be in the perfect position to explain something to Jody that she understood but Jody did not. True, those opportunities were rare, and usually her and Jody were just staring at each other with mutually confused looks. But, in those rare moments of clarity on a math problem that was stumping Jody, Kalley Ann’s ability to tutor her friend fed her confidence for weeks.

While the subject of math may not have been Kalley Ann’s favorite and may have caused much stress at home whenever her father tried to explain what he felt were simple concepts to her, it was made slightly better by her teacher, Mr. Martin, who she adored. Like most male teachers in her experience, he was both creative, fun and funny in his lessons, which made the sting of rarely getting taught by a man ache even more.

“Who wants to predict the future today?” Mr. Martin asked with a teasing tone in his voice. Hands shot up all around the classroom. Kalley Ann and Jody were too cool to get sucked in so easily by him. But, then he said, “Not just any future, but your own future?” And that did it, Kalley Ann and Jody looked at each other with excited anticipation on their faces and allowed themselves to break into full smiles and giggles as they thrust their hands in the air.

“Excellent. Then let’s use good ‘ole math to predict how tall each of you will get when you are all grown up,” Mr. Martin said with mad scientist air about him, as he started passing out worksheets for them to use.

A quick look at the worksheet quickly revealed that this was going to be even more fun than merely predicting the future. It was going to entail getting up from their seats and walking around the classroom. Stations had been set up, where they could measure their height and weight. Even better, those stations required a partner to correctly complete the work, which, by default, meant they could talk through this entire assignment to each other. Kalley Ann and Jody struggled to contain their pure joy as they ran to the weighing station. 

Jody jumped on the scale, while Kalley Ann read the instructions from the worksheet, “Ok, record your weight in pounds from the scale. Be exact, and record the number that the needle is pointing to. For example, you may weigh 77 pounds, so don’t record 75 because that is the biggest line and easiest number to read.” They both nodded seriously and looked down expectedly at Jody’s weight. The needle was just above the number 60.

“60 pounds,” Jody declared with confidence.

“No, no, wait, Jody,” Kalley Ann warned as she knelt down and squinted at the moving dial. “Hold still, I need to find the exact number,” she further commanded.

Jody sighed, but did what she was told, and Kalley Ann saw the needle settle on a line that was still above 60.

“It still looks like 60 to me from up here,” Jody informed Kalley Ann.

“I know,” said Kalley Ann smugly, “but that is why you have a partner.” And, she started counting the small tick lines on the dial. “Because down here, you are actually 62 pounds.”

“Cool!” said a boy's voice behind Jody. Frank was looking over Jody’s shoulder at what Kalley Ann was doing and seemed to be impressed by her thoroughness.

Jody, also catching the admiration in his voice, hopped off the scale and announced, “Great! Now it’s my turn to read your weight.”

They quickly switched places. But, this time, because Kalley Ann knew to be very still, the needle settled down much quicker.

“Uh, seems kinda low, Kalley Ann,” Jody announced confusedly. “Do you have both feet down?”

“Yes, of course I do!” retorted Kalley Ann.

“Ok, ok, well then your weight is…..” Jody moved her face within inches of the dial, “49 pounds.”

“Really?” Kalley Ann asked haughtily, “It looks like the line is over 50 from up here. Look again.” And, with that, Kalley Ann shifted her feet and put them in a position where she could push down on them.

“Stop moving around!” Jody said frustrated. “No, you are still 49 pounds, so that is what you need to write down.”

“Yeah, yeah, which means you are done, right? Can someone else go, please!” Frank injected.

Kalley Ann jumped off the scale and was heading toward the height station when Jody reminded her, “Wait, Kalley Ann, we need to record our findings,” and she steered them to an empty table to write down their weights in the proper spot on the worksheet. Kalley Ann appreciated Jody’s show of intelligence in front of everyone, especially since they had only learned about “recording findings” in science last week.

Once they were satisfied they had done a good job of writing their weight information on the worksheet, they headed to the height measurement station, but there was a line. They turned to head to the second height station, but there was a line there too. They sighed in frustration in unison before consulting the worksheet together.

“Look," said Kalley Ann, “pointing at the bulletin board near the entrance to the class. “We are supposed to go there and check our personal data biographies we filled out at the beginning of the year. Remember? It has information on there about our birth weight, and our Mom and Dad’s heights.”

As they made their way through the data collection process, Mr. Martin started calling out instructions for next steps.

“When you have visited all the stations and have all your data written on the worksheet for those parts, return to your tables and fill out the rest of your worksheet on your own,” he explained. “Once each of you has your worksheet completely filled in, then start to work on doing the math to predict your future height.”

Everyone looked up from what they were doing with terrified looks on their faces at his last sentence. But, as usual Mr. Martin delivered his calming smile as he explained, “I will be putting small booklets on each table that will take you step by step through each math equation you need to do to get the correct answer.”

Relief washed over everyone’s faces and he added, “Just raise your hand if you have any questions.”

Kalley Ann finished up at the height station, where they had been one of the last class pairs to finally have a turn. Again, her measured height came in quite a bit lower than Jody’s height. They headed back to their table and carefully added their heights to their worksheets, each looking over the other girl’s worksheet to ensure they had written it down correctly.

Again, it struck Kalley Ann how much lower her height and weight were than Jody’s and that old familiar feeling of dread started in the pit of her stomach. She tried to calm herself by telling herself that her heart had nothing to do with how big she would get when she was all grown up. But, it did little to fend off that nagging feeling.

Kim and Jeannie were ahead of them and had just finished filling out the rest of their worksheet.

“Hurry up guys, we have to wait for you before we can try to do the math,” explained Jeannie.

“Do you know how to do the math?” asked Jody accusingly.

“Well, no,” said Jeanie shyly.

“Well, then why don’t you take a look at the booklet and try to figure out what we need to do next while Kalley Ann and I finish up our worksheets,” she ordered Jeannie and Kim. As they scurried to reach for the booklet Mr. Martin had left on their table, Jody winked at Kalley Ann.

Understanding washed over Kally Ann. As a fellow math-challenged student, Jody was sly in getting other people to do the math work for her. With the comfort of knowing that Jeannie and Kim were going to do the hardest and least fun part of the lesson, Kalley Ann turned back to her worksheet. There she discovered she had very little left to fill in. Only three questions remained and all were simple. She tried to write slowly, so that Jeannie and Kim would have more time to figure out that math part of the lesson. 


Current Age in years and months  ___8 years 7 months ___

Your Birth Order: Oldest, youngest, somewhere in the middle. Kalley Ann circled “Oldest”

How many kids in your family: __3__


Kalley Ann slowly put down her pencil and looked over at Jody, who was also obviously stalling. Kalley Ann could see all the answers on her paper were filled in, but she was still hunched over it and acting like she was working on it. But, Kim had seen Kalley Ann put her pencil down and said, “All done? We at least know the first step that we need to do.”

Some of the math was easy, like adding her parent’s heights together. Some of it inspired groans from Jody and Kalley Ann, like when they had to find the average of those added heights. The real horrors occurred with the If/Then statements: If you were the first born in your family then do this math problem. That’s when the whole group work system that had propelled them so happily through class fell apart, because your friends were doing different math problems based on their birth order.

Fortunately for Kalley Ann and Jody, Kim and Jeannie were not only good at math, but for some reason they liked it. They slowly took them all through the math problems; at times getting frustrated and ripping their worksheets away and doing it for them.

Mr. Martin caught them doing that once, and announced to the class, “Remember, everyone should be doing their own work on their own worksheets. It is up to you in the end if you want to share your height with your friends and classmates now, or if you want them to have to wait until you are in college to find out how tall you will be,” he finished with a chuckle.

Kalley Ann snickered. Of course she was going to tell her friends her future height. She told them everything.

“Ok,” Kim announced, “I’ve finished mine.”

“What is it?” Kalley Ann and Jody asked excitedly. But before Kim could answer….

“Wait! Wait!” Jeannie almost shouted. “Let’s all finish and then tell each other at the same time.”

That’s why Kalley Ann liked Jeannie so much, she was always thinking ahead and making everything they did better. With everyone in agreement, each girl waited patiently when they were done for the others to finish. Finally, Jody declared, “DONE!” and smacked her pencil on the table.

“Ok,” Jeannie began, “let’s go around and each of us say our future height…. But, not too loud. We don’t want others in the class to hear.”

“Five feet, zero inches,” Kim whispered almost like it was a question.

“Five feet, one inch,” Jeannie whispered with a slight tinge of pride in her voice.

“Five feet, five inches,” Jody whispered, sounding a little scared.

And, then all eyes were on Kalley Ann, as she whispered, “Five feet, one inch.”

Jeannie burst into a huge smile, “Height twins!” she declared loudly, forgetting all thoughts of keeping their results from their fellow classmates, and she put her hand up in Kalley Ann’s direction for a high five.

But, Jody started to cry a little, “Guys, mine can’t be right. I am so much taller than the rest of you.”

She grabbed her worksheet and flung it at Kim, “Check my math. It must be wrong!”

This was serious, and the high five evaporated in mid air. Jeannie turned her attention to the worksheet that now lay in front of Kim. They huddled and conferred and nodded everytime they agreed that something was correct. After a few minutes, Kim announced, “It’s good, Jody. It’s right. I think you are just going to be tall.”

“Really? It can’t be. That’s like four inches taller than everyone else!” said Jody, sounding terrified.

“We can ask Mr. Martin to check it, if you…” started Kalley Ann.

“Absolutely not!” whispered Jody in terror. “I don’t want everyone to know I am the only one having problems with this stupid worksheet. I will just wait until I’m all grown up to know. I mean it’s only a couple years away, so it’s not like I have to wait that long.”

They all nodded in agreement and whispered, “True, true” to let her know her reasoning was sound.

And, to make sure they understood the real issue, Jody went on to emphasize, “Which means you can’t tell anybody what height I got. Okay?!”

They all quickly nodded back at her.

“Seriously, no one!” Jody said between gritted teeth, “Not even your families. The last thing I want is Jeannie or Kalley Ann’s little sisters to have big mouths and tell everyone I am going to be a giant when I grow up.”

Kalley Ann’s arm went around Jody in comfort and Kim scooched her chair closer to Jody as she folded Jody’s worksheet into fours and slyly handed it to her under the table. Jody grabbed the paper, crushed it in her hand into a ball and shoved it in her jeans pocket, while nodding thanks to Kim. And then all three looked at Jody with sympathetic eyes until class was dismissed.

Kalley Ann wondered if Jody hated the pity in their eyes as much as she did when people looked at her that way. But, if Kalley Ann was honest, this swapping of places with Jody felt good. For once no one was trying to comfort Kalley Ann, because she physically fit right in with her friends. No, this time it was someone else who was worried that everyone knew something was wrong with them.

Worksheet

Stations:

• Height:
  
  
• Weight:
  
  
• Look at information on "About Us" bulletin board you brought in earlier in the year for: 
  
  
  • Birth weight:
    
    
  • Birth Height/Length:
    
    
  • Moms height:
    
    
  • Dads height:
    
    
    

From your own knowledge:

Current age in years and months:

Are you the first born, last born, or somewhere in the middle?:

How many kids are in your family?: