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Sometimes being a teacher is not the easiest job in the world.  Although I love my job and I love the interaction with the kids, it can be extremely tiring and to be all smiles the whole day is not always possible, but kids usually like me, and it is not that I am buddy- buddy with them, but I think I talk to them on a level that they understand. I also try and explain things in a simple way with real life examples so  that THEY can understand better, without using all the fancy terminology.

It's all about understanding something right?   

At the beginning of a new term I usually try and ease my way into the work and let my students get more relaxed before we start on the "heavier" work.  I also like to give a little backround information about the topics we start with so that learners have a better idea of exactly why and what they are learning.  

On this specific day I had the whole lesson planned out.  Pythagoras was the main topic but before we were going to learn how the Pythagorean theorem works, I wanted to "spoil" them with a little bit of exciting information of just how crazy Pythagoras actually were. 

Let me share some information here to show you exactly what we talked about:

Crazy facts about Pythagoras that you might NOT have known.  

• Pythagoras was not only a Mathematician, but also a spiritual leader ( I always say he was the leader of a cult)
• He had followers in this "cult" that worshiped numbers. He taught his followers that the world was ruled by numbers and every time they solved a new mathematical theorem they had a whole ceremony and thank the gods by sacrificing an ox. 
• The Greeks hated him and they even chased him out of town and burned down his house. 
• They had a fascination with the number ten and believe that it was a sacred number! This was their sacred symbol called the Tetractys. It was a triangle with ten points and it looked like this.  

                     

                     Photo credit: Jossifresco 

• If you wanted to become a Pythagorean, you had to swear by Pythagoras himself and to the holy triangle! The Pythagorean's had to pray if they saw this sacred symbol and this is the prayer that they had to say:

“Bless us, divine number thou who generated gods and men!” they would say. “For the divine  number begins with the profound, pure unity until it comes to the holy four; then it begets the mother of all, the all-comprising,  all-bounding, the firstborn, the never-swerving, the never-tiring holy ten, the key holder of all.” 

• The Pythagorean's were vegetarians and they were in no way ever allowed to eat beans although Pythagoras apparently ate them himself.  The reason for this bean idea, remains unknown but I found this which made the most sense to me.

Beans were anciently used in casting votes by balloting, the white beans  for affirmative and the black ones negative. When Pythagoras said to  his disciples, "Abstain from beans," he had no reference to them as an  article of diet, for he ate them himself. What he did mean, and what his  immediate followers already understood, was that they should abstain  from the intrigues of politics as being antagonistic to a philosopher's  pursuits.      

                  

We had quite a long class discussion and the students enjoyed this lesson tremendously.  Who thought that you could have so much fun in the Maths class?? 

The period was nearly over and there was about 8 minutes left before they had to leave to go to the next class.  I thought that this was a brilliant opportunity to show them a video about Pythagoras, and because I am such an advanced YouTube user I typed in the following into the search bar: 

PYTHAGORAS....

Hmm, literally hundreds of videos jumped up on the screen... I scrolled down and decided to choose this specific one as it was short enough to finish in the time limit:  Three Minute Philosophy: Pythagoras 

BAM! That is where the proverbial sh*t hit the fan!(Watch the video!)

                               

This was clearly NOT the video I thought it was, and I stopped this with a very red face and the grade eight students looking at me with wide open eyes....

                              

Ever since that day, I have chosen my videos much more carefully and I literally watch a video twice to make sure it is safe for kids to watch. 

If you want to learn more about Pythagoras, please read through these links.  Very interesting indeed!

References:

https://www.famousscientists.org/pythagoras/ 

http://listverse.com/2017/04/26/10-strange-facts-about-pythagoras-mathematician-and-cult-leader/

http://www.softschools.com/facts/scientists/pythagoras_facts/821/

http://primaryfacts.com/3296/pythagoras-facts-and-information/

As many of you know I am one of the co-creators or the steemiteducation account.  We are both very passionate about teaching and we recently received some amazing support from curie. I would like to urge everyone to read our latest post and even if you are not a teacher you can take part in our new venture called Steemhomework!

Here is the link: Everything that you need to know is in the post. Please join us there! 

https://steemit.com/steemiteducation/@steemiteducation/steemiteducation-is-now-giving-out-homework-for-rewards-if-you-want-a-piece-of-the-pie-you-have-to-read-this-post-day-82