Elementary Ed Stole My Brain

This morning I was restocking the bin of oatmeal packets on my counter, and I noticed that there are 12 packets in a box of plain oatmeal and 10 packets in a box of strawberry oatmeal. My first thought was a word problem: How many boxes of each would you need to buy in order to have the same number of packets of each flavor?

My second thought was that most of the students I see would be able to do this problem if it came up in vivo but would totally screw it up on a test.

Then I remembered that I don't teach that class anymore and that I really don't need to think about such things.