As a first-year teacher, I had two lesson preparations: geometry and eighth-grade mathematics. For the most part, the students in my geometry classes were considered to be college prep and were highly motivated. Alas, the students in my eighth-grade mathematics classes ranged from those just waiting to turn 18 so they could drop out of school to students just trying to eke out one of the three mathematics credits they would need to graduate.

I will never forget my fourth block eighth-grade class. There were twenty-two students -- twenty boys and two girls -- and the class was held in a typing class. Yes, the typewriters were on the students' desks and the eighth graders were supposed to be mature enough not to touch them while doing the math work I wanted them to do.

Besides the aforementioned issues, this fifty-two-minute class was split by lunch, meaning we had twenty-six minutes prior to the lunch bell ringing; then twenty-six minutes after, more or less. More or less because the boys normally returned arguing over who had won the basketball game; who made the best slam dunk; and/or who blocked the most shots while they played during lunch. It only took me a month to get them to help me to turn this information into real-life word problems. I let the two girls act as cheerleaders to get them into the swing of things.

It did not take me a month, however, to realize the bulk of my class were the victims of social promotion. Most of them could not perform the four basic operations with whole numbers, much less with fractions and decimals. As a result, the failure rate amongst this group was well over seventy-five percent. No one in that room found that acceptable, especially this young first-year teacher. After the first set of progress reports went out (about halfway through the six-week grading period) I promised I would develop a plan for them to both learn some mathematics they did not know if they would come into class -- both halves -- and work with me.

They agreed to give me a chance.