Calculus Humor

At my previous school in central Jersey, I taught everything from low level Geometry to Pre-Calculus (but no Calculus). The Calculus courses were all given to two or three established teachers. I became buddies with one of them. Teachers are evaluated by "observations" from administrators where they come in a couple of times per year and watch you teach. (You could be jerking off in class the other 178 days that you don't get observed, in theory, and if nobody complained you'd be ok. I digress.)

Anyway, my buddy would often talk about the times he got observed in his Calculus class, even by our math department head, and would note that it was funny that his observers had no idea what he was talking about.

One day, he said the following to me: "[Our department head] is trying to observe me, when he can't even Chain Rule his ass to his elbow."

(The Chain Rule is one of the most fundamental rules to integrating and differentiating functions, and is used in Calc I and in every level of math beyond that.)

His offhand joke didn't even really make sense, but I found it hilarious and we laughed about it often for years after that.

Now, I've been teaching Calculus for a couple of years now, and gotten observed in Calculus two or three times, each time by former gym teachers turned administrators. Each of them said, essentially, "I had no idea what the hell you were talking about, but it seemed like a good lesson." I laughed about the idea that they, indeed, could also not Chain Rule their asses to their elbows.