Shaka!

Does the word "Shaka" mean anything to you, other than the middle of a cool chant? (boom shaka laka). Well, it means much more than that to me, and I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about Shaka... Mrs. Shaka.

"Pliss ga tu chopta fo in yo buke. ...section fo dote two. We weel look at deceemol pwoints een reation ta mooltiples of fo noomda sequences." Shaka walks to the chalk board, picks up a small piece of chalk and begins to etch white scratches all over it. When half the board is covered, she begins her very famous "Diss Means Diss" teaching method. Pointing to one equation (that she has written wrong then re-written twice) she says, "Diss" - then points to another set of numbers - "means diss." That is the start of the next 15 minutes... she continues to point to sets of those white chalky marking (they seriously look like Hebrew to me) and say, "Diss means diss." Periodically she asks, "Doss anyone hoff any questions?" Of course the whole class has questions, but no one says anything. We are all too far lost to catch up now.

So I go to the Student Success Center... which should be named the Student's Who Are Crappy at School... Center. I sit down at a small table surrounded by others like myself - students who are lacking in a certain areas of their education. Behind me a kind girl is teaching a middle-aged man how to open a word document on a computer. I try to ignore them. My tutor, a small Asian man who works part time at a coffee shop opens my book and says, "Let's start at the beginning." Then he points to an equation and says, "Try this one." I have absolutely no idea what the problem means, or even if the book is upside down or not. I tell him that I am lost, and he says, "Well if you can't do this one, you can't do any of these!!" Oh really? This guy's a genius. So I sit there and he tries to explain 8 chapters of math to me in 20 minutes. It works.... poorly. I leave him by saying, "I'll call YOU."

One day in class Shaka was in a good mood. She was laughing at some kids who were saying something funny. One of the girls made some slightly teasing remark to another guy. Shaka said to him, very loudly, "You should smack her in the face!" We all just stared at her. What does that even mean?

On the last day of class, I walked up to hand in my final. I looked at her and said very politely, "Thank you." She looked at me and said, "...OK..." and I walked out. Awkward.

Dear Shaka,

I would like to thank you for making my first semester at NCU so enjoyable. Thank you for understanding me when I came into your office for help. It really helped when you just stared at me for like 5 minutes before I left. I really used that help to improve my mathematics. And thanks for keeping on schedule... like the time there were THREE people waiting outside your office for you and you didn't care... or when you were 10 minutes late for the last class... or that one time when I asked you EVERY DAY for my grade and you kept mumbling something I couldn't understand. Thanks for always keep your homework organized, like the one time I had to re-do an assignment because you lost it. That was really nice. Oh, and thanks for speaking so clearly with nice word pronunciation so that we could all understand that when you said the word "Schot" you meant "Chart" or when you said the word "Propershonit" you meant "proportionate". It was so nice to have a teach who knew how to speak so clearly and eloquently! Thanks also for the fact that I learned absolutely nothing, and that I had to have a team of 3 other people to help me BARELY GET BY with all the assignments.
But thank you most of all, Shaka, for THE B I GOT IN THE CLASS!!! HAHAHAHA!!! I CAN'T FLIPPIN BELIEVE IT I GOT A B IN THE CLASS! AGHHHHHH!!!! YES!!!!

Sincerely,
Jeremy