The Teacher in the Math Book
The bell rang. It was second period at St. Paul School in Scranton on a warm September morning in 1991. My homeroom of 24 seventh-graders got up out of their seats and headed to their next class. Another group of seventh- graders entered the room and took their places for the day’s lesson in English grammar.
St. Paul’s has had a long history of excellence in both the classroom and on the basketball court, and also has some pretty notable alumni (a vice president and a U.S. senator, to name two), as well as doctors, lawyers, and owners of businesses throughout Lackawanna and surrounding counties. That year I’d accepted a position as a 7th-8th grade English teacher at the school only because I couldn’t find a full-time elementary job in Luzerne County and I had tired of teaching in everyone else’s classroom but my own. Two boys approached me before sitting down, holding their paper bag-covered math books out in front of me.
They were pointing to a photograph on page 10. “Mr. Webb, is this you?” they asked almost
simultaneously. I was sure the answer would be no, but I took hold of one of the books and examined the picture anyway. The rest of the class sat quietly as I looked it over, waiting for what I would say.
The lesson in the book was “Estimating Sums and Differences.” In the upper right-hand quadrant of the first page was a photograph of a young man in a suit sifting through LP record albums (you know, the old-fashioned kind your grandma used to play). Another photo of a calculator seemed to float over the bottom left-hand portion of the picture. I read the word problem at the top of the page:
Tim Griffin manages a large record store. On Friday the store sold 376 records. On Saturday, 519 records were sold. Tim uses a calculator to add the two numbers. Which sum seems more reasonable?
I looked at the photo again. This “Tim Griffin” character did look a little bit like me, but I knew it wasn’t me because I was certain that I wasn’t in a math book. So I handed the book back to the student and said, “Sorry, but that’s not me. It looks a little bit like me, but it’s not. Now please sit down and let’s get started with the lesson.”
There. I’d settled it. Until the next day, when the same pair of students approached me with the same page opened in their books. I knowingly glanced at it for a few seconds from behind my desk, shook my head, and pointed to their empty desks. “Again, guys, not me. Have a seat.” They shook their heads and sat down, absolutely certain that they were right, but feeling powerless that they could do anything about it.
The following day, they came to class even more assertive about their claim, and they had backup. Two more students stood behind them with their own math books, ready to open, and they were all saying the same thing.
“Mr. Webb, this has to be you. It looks just like you.Take another look, please!” one of them insisted. So I did. I assigned them a page to complete in the workbook as I studied the photograph more closely.
First, I checked the publishing date of the book itself. It was copyrighted 1985 by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, while the photograph was taken in 1982. That would have made me 16 when this picture was taken.
Quickly I flipped back to page 10 and pondered an interesting development. I remembered having a suit jacket just like the one the young man in the photograph was wearing. It was tan, and had the same cut design at the bottom as the one I’d worn at the time. The setting looked familiar, too. It looked like the old Book and Record Mart in downtown Wilkes-Barre, where I often visited as a boy after classes let out at Bishop Hoban High School, the school from which I graduated in 1984. It made me think. I studied the photo even more closely.
It really did look like the Book and Record Mart. Now, could that really be me? I searched for a disqualifier. I wanted to find something – anything – that would be proof it wasn’t yours truly they were looking at, like a foreign birthmark on this imposter kid, or a sign or a poster that could indicate the photo was taken in some other state or country that I’d never been to. That would show them, I thought.
Then I saw it. In the top right hand corner of the photograph I saw the evidence that proved it once and for all. Right there, in plain view and looking through record albums in the store’s polka section, was a woman who looked absolutely, positively like my mother.
Yes, my mother.
It was her. I was sure of it. I certainly knew my own mom, I thought. The hair perm was the same. So was the way she stood. Those were her glasses, too. And she was wearing the same gray top she wore in those days.
This changed everything!
“Wait a minute! That is me!” I called out, bolting to attention behind my desk.
“I told you!” erupted one of the boys as he too stood up in his place, the chair sliding back from the force. “What changed your mind?”
“It must be me,” I answered. “The woman in the background is definitely my mom. Nobody can look like me and have a mother that looks just like mine. This is so bizarre.”
“Mr. Webb’s mommy likes to polka!” someone yelled. It was getting chaotic now. They were all calling things out from their seats.
“Mr. Webb is famous!”
“Look at that afro! What a head of hair you used to have!”
“Yeah, he’s a fro-man.”
“Mr. Griffin, sell me some records!”
“They didn’t even tell you that you were in a book!” “I can’t believe it!”
“We’ll be your lawyers!”
"We'll be your agents!"
“We’ll get you money for this!”
I was dizzy at that point. Incredulous, I sat down and faced the realization that could no longer be denied. I was in a math book. And the kicker is that I never would have found out if I hadn’t gone on to become a teacher in a school that was still using the same book. What were the odds of that happening?
When the ruckus finally died down, and the class was attending to their assignment, I wrote down the book’s information, including photo credits, publication date, and all the places it was published. The list was impressive: Menlo Park, California. Reading, Massachusetts. London, England. Amsterdam, Netherlands. Don Mills, Ontario.Sydney, Australia.
Wow, that was a lot of places. I wondered how many people had seen that photograph, and I hoped that someone could help me figure out how this happened.
Later that day, my mother had some of the answers when I told her the whole story.
“Oh, yes. I remember that day,” she said. “You were looking at records, and I was near the door. A man came in and asked me if it was okay if he took some pictures. I said it was fine, go ahead. I didn’t think anything of it, really.”
It was fine, go ahead. That was the authorization to take my picture and put it in a math book that was used in countless junior high classrooms around the world. Not exactly legal consent, I would say.
“You mean, you didn’t sign anything?” I asked her, my mouth agape.
“Nope.”
In the weeks and months ahead, I did a little research and found out that, despite the publisher’s lack of legal permissions, there wasn’t much I could do about it because of the length of time that had passed. One person said that maybe I could ask for a certain percentage of future book sales, but since that edition was now outdated (as were LP record albums!), there probably wouldn’t be any more sales from that point on. But, in the end, I did get anything out of it? Anything at all?
Sure, I did.
I scored a funny story about an unlikely event that I can share with others, and a copy of the seventh-grade math book to prove it.
c. 2016 by Dave Webb
adapted from the book, Mr. Nomad: Tales of a Traveling Teacher
Publishers Weekly review of Mr. Nomad from November, 2016:
Children’s book writer Webb (the Slinky Inkermann series) calls himself “Mr. Nomad” because he has taught “for nearly thirty years at ten schools in three states.” A former journalist now living in Pennsylvania, Webb has written an enjoyable and enlightening book—“part educational memoir and part resource for teachers”—describing the range of experiences he has had and the lessons that he has learned. Any teacher from grammar to high school will be able to relate to what Webb describes. Whether at a larger urban school or a smaller regional school, Webb lives by his belief that “kids are kids, no matter where you go.” As a substitute teacher, Webb has to decide how badly he needs the money to accept “what in all honesty might turn out to be a terribly stressful day.” Having to deal with the events of 9/11, Webb was confronted with the question of how schools can react to tragedy: “We were a mini-universe trying to cope and reassure ourselves that everything was going to be okay, especially in our little patch of the world.” And while he struggles with realizing that “you may never really know how kids turn out after you’re through with them,” he never loses sight of the main goal that he feels all teachers should have with all students: being “as sympathetic and caring as you can be, and for as long as you have them in your class.”
The bell rang. It was second period at St. Paul School in Scranton on a warm September morning in 1991. My homeroom of 24 seventh-graders got up out of their seats and headed to their next class. Another group of seventh- graders entered the room and took their places for the day’s lesson in English grammar.
St. Paul’s has had a long history of excellence in both the classroom and on the basketball court, and also has some pretty notable alumni (a vice president and a U.S. senator, to name two), as well as doctors, lawyers, and owners of businesses throughout Lackawanna and surrounding counties. That year I’d accepted a position as a 7th-8th grade English teacher at the school only because I couldn’t find a full-time elementary job in Luzerne County and I had tired of teaching in everyone else’s classroom but my own. Two boys approached me before sitting down, holding their paper bag-covered math books out in front of me.
They were pointing to a photograph on page 10. “Mr. Webb, is this you?” they asked almost
simultaneously. I was sure the answer would be no, but I took hold of one of the books and examined the picture anyway. The rest of the class sat quietly as I looked it over, waiting for what I would say.
The lesson in the book was “Estimating Sums and Differences.” In the upper right-hand quadrant of the first page was a photograph of a young man in a suit sifting through LP record albums (you know, the old-fashioned kind your grandma used to play). Another photo of a calculator seemed to float over the bottom left-hand portion of the picture. I read the word problem at the top of the page:
Tim Griffin manages a large record store. On Friday the store sold 376 records. On Saturday, 519 records were sold. Tim uses a calculator to add the two numbers. Which sum seems more reasonable?
I looked at the photo again. This “Tim Griffin” character did look a little bit like me, but I knew it wasn’t me because I was certain that I wasn’t in a math book. So I handed the book back to the student and said, “Sorry, but that’s not me. It looks a little bit like me, but it’s not. Now please sit down and let’s get started with the lesson.”
There. I’d settled it. Until the next day, when the same pair of students approached me with the same page opened in their books. I knowingly glanced at it for a few seconds from behind my desk, shook my head, and pointed to their empty desks. “Again, guys, not me. Have a seat.” They shook their heads and sat down, absolutely certain that they were right, but feeling powerless that they could do anything about it.
The following day, they came to class even more assertive about their claim, and they had backup. Two more students stood behind them with their own math books, ready to open, and they were all saying the same thing.
“Mr. Webb, this has to be you. It looks just like you.Take another look, please!” one of them insisted. So I did. I assigned them a page to complete in the workbook as I studied the photograph more closely.
First, I checked the publishing date of the book itself. It was copyrighted 1985 by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, while the photograph was taken in 1982. That would have made me 16 when this picture was taken.
Quickly I flipped back to page 10 and pondered an interesting development. I remembered having a suit jacket just like the one the young man in the photograph was wearing. It was tan, and had the same cut design at the bottom as the one I’d worn at the time. The setting looked familiar, too. It looked like the old Book and Record Mart in downtown Wilkes-Barre, where I often visited as a boy after classes let out at Bishop Hoban High School, the school from which I graduated in 1984. It made me think. I studied the photo even more closely.
It really did look like the Book and Record Mart. Now, could that really be me? I searched for a disqualifier. I wanted to find something – anything – that would be proof it wasn’t yours truly they were looking at, like a foreign birthmark on this imposter kid, or a sign or a poster that could indicate the photo was taken in some other state or country that I’d never been to. That would show them, I thought.
Then I saw it. In the top right hand corner of the photograph I saw the evidence that proved it once and for all. Right there, in plain view and looking through record albums in the store’s polka section, was a woman who looked absolutely, positively like my mother.
Yes, my mother.
It was her. I was sure of it. I certainly knew my own mom, I thought. The hair perm was the same. So was the way she stood. Those were her glasses, too. And she was wearing the same gray top she wore in those days.
This changed everything!
“Wait a minute! That is me!” I called out, bolting to attention behind my desk.
“I told you!” erupted one of the boys as he too stood up in his place, the chair sliding back from the force. “What changed your mind?”
“It must be me,” I answered. “The woman in the background is definitely my mom. Nobody can look like me and have a mother that looks just like mine. This is so bizarre.”
“Mr. Webb’s mommy likes to polka!” someone yelled. It was getting chaotic now. They were all calling things out from their seats.
“Mr. Webb is famous!”
“Look at that afro! What a head of hair you used to have!”
“Yeah, he’s a fro-man.”
“Mr. Griffin, sell me some records!”
“They didn’t even tell you that you were in a book!” “I can’t believe it!”
“We’ll be your lawyers!”
"We'll be your agents!"
“We’ll get you money for this!”
I was dizzy at that point. Incredulous, I sat down and faced the realization that could no longer be denied. I was in a math book. And the kicker is that I never would have found out if I hadn’t gone on to become a teacher in a school that was still using the same book. What were the odds of that happening?
When the ruckus finally died down, and the class was attending to their assignment, I wrote down the book’s information, including photo credits, publication date, and all the places it was published. The list was impressive: Menlo Park, California. Reading, Massachusetts. London, England. Amsterdam, Netherlands. Don Mills, Ontario.Sydney, Australia.
Wow, that was a lot of places. I wondered how many people had seen that photograph, and I hoped that someone could help me figure out how this happened.
Later that day, my mother had some of the answers when I told her the whole story.
“Oh, yes. I remember that day,” she said. “You were looking at records, and I was near the door. A man came in and asked me if it was okay if he took some pictures. I said it was fine, go ahead. I didn’t think anything of it, really.”
It was fine, go ahead. That was the authorization to take my picture and put it in a math book that was used in countless junior high classrooms around the world. Not exactly legal consent, I would say.
“You mean, you didn’t sign anything?” I asked her, my mouth agape.
“Nope.”
In the weeks and months ahead, I did a little research and found out that, despite the publisher’s lack of legal permissions, there wasn’t much I could do about it because of the length of time that had passed. One person said that maybe I could ask for a certain percentage of future book sales, but since that edition was now outdated (as were LP record albums!), there probably wouldn’t be any more sales from that point on. But, in the end, I did get anything out of it? Anything at all?
Sure, I did.
I scored a funny story about an unlikely event that I can share with others, and a copy of the seventh-grade math book to prove it.
c. 2016 by Dave Webb
adapted from the book, Mr. Nomad: Tales of a Traveling Teacher
Publishers Weekly review of Mr. Nomad from November, 2016:
Children’s book writer Webb (the Slinky Inkermann series) calls himself “Mr. Nomad” because he has taught “for nearly thirty years at ten schools in three states.” A former journalist now living in Pennsylvania, Webb has written an enjoyable and enlightening book—“part educational memoir and part resource for teachers”—describing the range of experiences he has had and the lessons that he has learned. Any teacher from grammar to high school will be able to relate to what Webb describes. Whether at a larger urban school or a smaller regional school, Webb lives by his belief that “kids are kids, no matter where you go.” As a substitute teacher, Webb has to decide how badly he needs the money to accept “what in all honesty might turn out to be a terribly stressful day.” Having to deal with the events of 9/11, Webb was confronted with the question of how schools can react to tragedy: “We were a mini-universe trying to cope and reassure ourselves that everything was going to be okay, especially in our little patch of the world.” And while he struggles with realizing that “you may never really know how kids turn out after you’re through with them,” he never loses sight of the main goal that he feels all teachers should have with all students: being “as sympathetic and caring as you can be, and for as long as you have them in your class.”