Not By Half

The last few weeks of August are a little tricky for Park Place's After School Fun (ASF) ministry. The ASF ministration is primarily staffed by AU students but there is a period at the beginning and ending of the school year in which the Anderson Community Schools (ACS) are in session and Anderson University is not. For those few weeks ASF responsibilities are fielded by volunteers who couldn't come up with a reasonable excuse to not help out. Sadly, I found myself in this very situation yesterday afternoon.

Some of you may remember that I begrudgingly participated in ASF for an entire semester as a part of my practicum for a pastoral care class I was taking at the time. While there is no doubt that working with kids (K-5th grade) is a discipline best left to surly childminding professionals from central Bulgaria, there is even less doubt that working with kids can more often than not lead to very amusing exchanges.

As I have mentioned before, the structure of a typical ASF day begins at about 3:30 when the students are collected off of the bus, herded into their respective classrooms, fed a low-quality snack of high fructose corn syrup and red 40, and then told to sit down and shut up. After all this has mostly taken place, the ASF staffers make the rounds by checking on each student and making sure that their homework is being done.

As I was making my own rounds yesterday, a student named Brayden scuttled over to me, grabbed my arm, and proudly informed me that he had but one assignment for the day. I smiled at him and told him that I thought that was very nice for him to only have assignment and asked if he would he like any help with it. He warmly accepted and so I sat down next to him and he produced the worksheet that was to be completed, slapped it on the table, and grinned up at me hopefully.

The assignment was a word problem that suggested that a student council had been selling candy bars to raise money and that 350 candy bars had been sold in total. The candy bars were sold for $1 a piece 50¢ of which was profit. The questions were, how much money was collected for all the candy bars? and how much of that was profit?

"OK, so the first thing we need to do is figure out how much money we collected. We sold 350 candy bars for $1 a piece. How much money is that?"

Brayden paused and gave me a thoughtful look which quickly gave way to excitement. "350!"

"Haha, yes that's right. And if we made 50¢ profit on every candy bar sold, how would we figure out how much profit we made in all?"

"I need a calculator."

"Mm. I don't think we need a calculator for this one; let's just think about it for a minute. If I have 50¢ and you have 50¢, how much do we have altogether?"

"50¢!"

"Well, no, if you and I added all our money together how much money would we have? If you had 50¢ and I had 50¢?"

"$1.25?"

"Um. Not quite. Listen, let's say we have a delicious pie and I cut that pie into two pieces. I give you a piece and I take a piece. How much of the pie do you have? Do you have a third of it?"

 Brayden regarded me pensively. "Yes."

"Um, no, if you had a third of it, that would suggest I cut it into three pieces, not just two. What word do we use when something has only two pieces that are the same size?"

"A third."

"No, remember, that means three pieces. What means two?"

"I don't know."

"Half."

Brayden gave me an empty look.

"Do you know what 'half' means, Brayden?"

"I have never heard that word before in my life."

"Brayden, I don't think that's true."

"No, it's true! I'm real dumb, there are a lot of words I don't know!"

"You're not dumb."

An indignant Brayden gestured to a little girl at another table. "Taylor! Am I dumb!?"

"Yes." responded Taylor matter-of-factly.

Brayden folded his arms across his chest and shot me a smug look. "See?"

-Ryan