required mcpost? not-math box

benny guest (aka yep, he looks like larry bird) has asked us to write a post about a "procedure, routine, rule, or consequence, etc. that has been successful." so, a few words on the not-math box.

in one of the corners of my room, there's a pile of stuff. in that pile you may find textbooks, jackets, binders, personal items, etc. many of these items have been there for most of the year, and i look forward to the end of 4th term when i see what treasures i've inherited. somewhere in that pile of stuff is a blue milk crate, which is my dreaded not-math box - and the center of this procedural black hole.

rule #3 states: "when in math class, do Math." i enforce this rule by confiscating any objects of interest which are patently not math, or are clearly not math in the way that a student needs to be paying attention to my class at a given time. once confiscated, the objects go in the not-math box -a space which has become universally dreaded and often caricatured (students often wanting to put each other - or me - in the not-math box for being silly in some silly way). the not math box is a very potent reminder to stay on task, and seems to have limited a large degree of explicit doing-someone-else's-homework-in-mr.-molina's class. the only reason for the largeness of the not-math pile is the nearly universal inability for students to remember that i'd taken a textbook or note or homework and placed it there. in the slow accumulation next to my white board, a vast witness to the frivolity of academia slowly grows, and festers.