That time I got rejected three times on the same day!

Chapter 18

The initial beating had hurt like hell, and I was still limping, but my body recovered quickly. By the time I was in front of class 7-B I felt fine. I checked my wristwatch; it was now 12:04pm. I had missed most of Mr.William's class and lunch break was about to start at 12:20pm. I knocked on the door before entering. Every kid in the class was watching me.

"Welcome back Henry. How did it go?"

He was probably referring to the interview with Mr.King.

"Good sir."

"That's good. Please take a seat. I'll be with you in a moment."

Every head was tracking me, like I was a ghost, recently returned from the dead. The desks in the class were arranged into groups of four. My desk was standing alone, but there were no groups of three in the class. I remembered that we had an odd number of kids. I limped to my desk and sat down. I was tired, real tired. All I wanted to do was sleep. I lay down on my arm and closed my eyes.

"Hey man. Dude, hey!" someone was whispering.

I looked up and saw that an olive skinned kid had moved his chair closer to my desk. I didn't remember his name. I didn't really know any of kids in my class. He stuck out his hand.

"I heard what you did man, breaking that gringo's hand. He deserved it."

I took his hand and we shook.

"I haven't introduced myself," he said. "Lorenzo Santiago. Encantado de conocerte."

"Henry Knight," I said. "Excuse me, but what does gringo and encantado de – what you said, mean?"

He pointed his finger at me.

"Oo, Henry Knight. Strong name. Good name." He leaned in closer. "Gringo is white boy; I call all these cabrons gringos."

Then he sat back again.

"'Encantado de conocerte' is pleased to meet you in Spanish. I like my language and culture, so I use it all the time. These cab—," he cut himself off. "These chico want us to talk like them. I say, screw thaat maate."

His best impersonation of an Australian accent was a horrible mash when mixed with his strong Spanish accent. Mr.William's was heading our way.

Lorenzo leaned in again.

"I like you. That cabron whose hand you broke had it coming. We should hang out at lunch."

He held his fist up, looking at it and nodding.

"Punch it man."

I tapped his fist with my own just as Mr.William's arrived.

"Shouldn't you be working Lorenzo?"

The Spaniard returned to his desk with a flourish.

"Si senor."

Mr.William's grabbed an empty chair and sat down facing me.

His eyes were scanning the cuts on my face.

"You okay Henry?" he said.

I nodded.

"Yes sir."

"Listen, I'm not really interested about what happened and I don't want to cause you any more stress. If you have any trouble, or need someone to talk to, Mrs.Fredriks and I are here to help."

"Thanks sir," I replied.

He stood up again.

"Listen up everyone, Henry asked me a very interesting question this morning, so for the last 15 minutes of the class I am going to try and explain something to you."

The class groaned. Mr.William's returned to the front of the class. He picked up a blackboard marker and drew a circle.

"Henry asked me about fractions and proportions. I have always wondered why kids like you just don't get it, and I might have figured out why."

He drew a line through the circle.

"Adults like me learned fractions and proportions procedurally. What that means is," he drew more lines through the circle. First it was split into two parts, then four, and then eight, "that when I think of fractions I think of a pie or a pizza getting cut into little pieces. When I think of percentages, I simply convert decimals into fractions and vice versa using the procedure I have memorized since childhood."

Mr.Williams started filling the whiteboard with numbers and fractions. On one side he wrote 0.1 all the way up to 1.0.

"0.1 is 10%, or 1 over 10, or 1 part of a pizza with 10 slices. To me, and every other procedurally taught adult, this makes perfect sense, and it is hard for us to comprehend why this doesn't make sense for kids like you."

He walked over to his bag and pulled out a packet of M&M's, candy coated chocolate buttons.

"Gather around everyone," he said.

The class crowded around one desk. I stood up, pain coursing through my shins.

Mr.Williams opened the packet and dropped the chocolate buttons onto the table.

"What is division? Can anyone tell me?"

One of the girls raised her hand.

"Ms.Jones?"

The girl spoke with authority.

"Division is an arithmetic operation where the dividend is divided by the divisor which results in the quotient sir."

"Textbook answer," Mr.Williams said. "Does anyone know a synonym for divide?"

Another kid put up his hand.

"Mr. Larsen?"

"Separate and segment sir."

"Very good."

Mr.Williams separated 10 chocolate buttons from the heap.

"What is 10 divided by 5?"

The class answered in unison.

"Two!"

"Very good," he said. "Lorenzo, can you divide those 10 M&M's by 5 please?"

Lorenzo stepped up to the table and made two groups of five chocolate buttons.

"How many groups do we have?"

"Two!" the class cried again.

Mr.Williams pushed the buttons back into a group of 10.

"Henry, could you please sort the 10 M&M's into 5 equally sized groups."

I limped forward to the table and sorted the chocolate buttons. There were now five groups of two.

"How many M&M's in each group?"

"Two!" the class said again.

Mr.Williams put the chocolate buttons back into a heap, but removed five of them.

"What's 5 divided by 10?"

Silence. Everyone was looking at the five chocolate buttons trying to figure it out.

"Henry, please sort the 5 M&M's into 10 equally sized groups."

I looked at the buttons and scratched my head. So, I had five buttons, and I wanted to make 10 equally sized groups...

"Sir, I need to cut them in half."

He was grinning.

"And if you did that, how many would be in each group?"

I looked down at the buttons, visualizing them cut in half.

"One half of an M&M sir."

"So, what is 5 divided by 10?"

"One over two?" I ventured.

"And in decimal form?"

One divided by two...

"0.5?"

I looked back down at the buttons. It was like a flower unfurling in my mind. I got it. I saw the buttons and the groups. I saw the operations. I really got it. A wide grin spread across my face.