A Great Big Bunch Of Whiney Babies.

Okay. I teach 6th grade math and in the school district that I work in 6th grade is still in the elementary building. This has been this way since I was in school and I don' t see it changing anytime soon.

One of the biggest complaints I have is that the kids this year are overly whiny. I don't handle whiny very well, especially at this age. For example, we've been studying algebra and variables. I had a question on the morning work that read something like this: "Jack found that the the base of the triangle he just drew was 4 cm. The height of the triangle was 3 cm. What is the area of Jack's triangle?"

Now, the students have a Mathematics chart that contains information that the state thinks would be helpful in solving problems, but not necessarily something that they should memorize right now. On this chart is the formula for area of a triangle (A = bh/2 or 1/2 the base times the height). All they have to do is plug in the numbers for the variables: b= 4, h = 3.

But NOOOOOOOO. All I get is this: "But Mrs. Huuuuuffffman. We haven't stuuuuuuudied area of a triangle yetttttttt." My response (after counting to 10) is: "I understand we haven't, but we have studied algebra and formulas. Now get to work."

They're really smart kids, don't get me wrong, but they've been given way too much information. Apparently whining has helped them in the past, but boy just wait until they get to junior high.