It's nice to have friends

Our Problem of the Day this morning read as follows:

Mister Teacher scored 148 points playing basketball. His friend scored 99 points playing basketball. How many more points did Mister Teacher score?

When solving a problem such as this, my kids know that they need to draw a picture to show what is happening in the story. This can be done by putting the large numbers into circles and either putting the circles into a box to show that they are being put together, or by drawing an arrow from one number to the next to show that something is being taken away. The kids are also supposed to label the circles with something that will make them stand apart.

So for the circle with the number 148 in it, the kids wrote, "Mister Teacher" above it. But instead of writing, "friend" above the 99 point circle, several of my kids called me over to ask, "Instead of writing 'friend,' can we write 'Ed U Cater?'"

Ed is of course a fellow teacher at my school. Obviously these kids recognize that he and I are friends.

Now if they would only realize that Mrs. Math and I are NOT married to each other...