Monday morning. January. And its raining.
Year 10 Trigonometry. I can get them to work out the missing angle or calculate the size of the hypotenuse. But can I get them to pronounce “sin” properly, as in “sign”?
Nope.
Class question and answer sessions end up sounding like something from the Spanish Inquisition:
Its sin, sir, SIN
“Correct, my child” I reply like some sort of benign Tomas de Torquemada.
By the end of the lesson I’ve acquiesced, and they’ve got me doing it too. I console myself with the thought that there are no oral exams in maths, no-one but me will every know that they don’t know its pronounced sign and not sin.
I look to the sky, hoping for a sign, or should that be a sin, but all I hear is the bell and my flock depart for pastures new.
And oddly enough, for the rest of the day, I keep catching myself humming this tune.