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By Kyle, August 16, 2007 3:56 pm

As part of our continuing professional development at Cochran Middle School, we were told that on August 16th and 17th, the faculty would spend two days touring neighborhoods in our community, supposedly to learn about the perspectives that our students come to school with. Today’s theme was “The African-American Perspective” (African-Americans make up approximately 25% of our student population). At 8:30am, the faculty boarded two charter buses, and took a drive east along Washington Blvd. through many of the neighborhoods where our students live. We did not venture off the bus.

Our final stop of the morning was St. Elmo Village, a series of residential duplexes and condos that have over the past 40 years have been converted into an interactive arts community, complete with residences, galleries, workshops, and gardens. Founded in the late 60s, by some residents who decided to begin to take some pride and work to beautify their neighborhood, St. Elmo Village educates community members, holds art sales, and welcomes people to come and express their creativity. After touring the grounds, we spent the next hour making “object art”, which essentially were collages of items that would normally be overlooked, but were in this case, converted into art.

Finally, we headed down to Leimert Park, and during our lunch of Caribbean jerk chicken, listened to a local group of jazz musicians as they played and spoke about jazz and the importance of connecting kids with the arts in school.

Anyway, I think everyone had a great time, although it’s hard to completely grasp how this experience has much to do with our students. If we truly wanted the student experience, we should probably focus more on hitting up the Jack-in-the-Box, 7-Eleven (a.k.a. “the liquor store”), all while skateboarding from location to location.

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By Kyle, August 14, 2007 1:43 pm

So apparently over the weekend, my school moved it’s address! Well, I suppose that statement is slightly misleading…What is accurate is that upon returning from my lunch break today, I noticed a completely new street sign demarcating what was formerly “17th St”, with a brand new sign proudly exclaiming our new street name as “Johnnie Cochran Vista”.

Apparently someone forgot to tell the world, since a simple Google Maps search for “Johnnie Cochran Vista, LA, CA” turned up nothing but a list of nearby businesses that included a car dealership, a lawyer’s office, and a chicken and waffles restaurant.

We’ve now changed our school name, changed our school phone number (a week after I had ordered 500 business cards with a now defunct phone number), and now we’ve changed our school street name! What’s next? Our mascot?

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By Kyle, August 13, 2007 11:32 pm

After a very relaxing weekend, today found me in the midst of day 6 of teacher professional development at school. Usually these days are fairly laid back in the sense that I typically just show up at the meetings, listen to what folks have to say, make a note of ideas that I like and mosey on home at 3pm.

Today was exactly the opposite. Instead of being a participant of the three 2-hour “sessions” we had today, I found myself leading/facilitating ALL of them, yes ALL of them, and man it was tiring!

At 8:30 am, I led our department meeting in which we discussed several different options for block scheduling this year, as well as trying to determine a schedule for student computer usage time!

At 10:30, I gave a presentation on blogging (you can check it out here) to a group of teachers who were interested in setting up a classroom blog for the year! This was alot of fun, but pretty exhausting fielding all these questions that I took for granted to come up.

Finally, at 1:30, my assistant principal asked myself and another teacher to facilitate our “house” meeting, due to the fact that he had to go downtown to hire some more folks for the coming year. This went pretty well as well, but after all these hours of being up front, I am very glad to be able to site down tomorrow and enjoy someone else leading professional development!

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By Kyle, August 13, 2007 12:34 am

In an effort to borrow an idea from some of my favorite bloggers, I’ve decided to start a series of blog entries that all have to do with a particular topic. some of you will be interested in my thoughts here, while some of you will be, no doubt, bored out of your mind. What I will do over the next several weeks and months (basically, when I have a chance) is to blog about some of the films that I’ve seen to feature teachers, teaching, or some other applicable aspect of the education profession. Perhaps this is due to my love of teaching, or perhaps my desire to be inspired and motivated as a teacher. Or perhaps this is due to my interest in film, especially now living in Los Angeles. Regardless of your reaction to my posts in this series, it is only fair to lay out my presuppositions (a set of theses, if you will) about teaching and film as we begin.

1. Film is an art. Teaching is a calling.

2. Film is a naturally insufficient medium to capture all the necessary and relevant context to any educational system.

3.  A film’s style (depictive, didactic, motivational, inspirational, documentarial) can be as relevant as its content.

4.  What seems obvious in films is often masked in subtlety in the real world.

5.  The success of a teacher film is measured in the lives of students it (mostly) indirectly affects.

These are some of the basic axioms with which I come to the table, and it’s only fair to acknowledge them at the start. Hopefully, in the next few weeks as I continue this series you will be interested, intrigued, or otherwise affected by my postings here!

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By Kyle, August 10, 2007 9:33 pm

If the title of this post didn’t immediately indicate it, now you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that yes, I am a geek! Oh well. I’ve long since embraced that fact and continue to lavish those around me with it :)

This Monday, I’m in charge of a professional development session for teachers on how to create and manage a blog for their classroom. Instead of creating a typical worksheet, I decided to actually create a blog about blogging (a “meta-blog” for those of my friends who are fans of Douglas Hofstadter)! Right now (Friday night) this seems like a pretty good idea, but we’ll see what happens on Monday. The good news is that the teachers in the training will be able to immediately comment on how the session went. I guess teaching other teachers is one of the things I’ve taken more ownership of at school in the past few years. It’s usually alot of fun to be able to share some things I’ve experienced in my classroom with my colleagues! Anyway, I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend, and another 3 weeks of professional development before the kids come back in September!

By the way, my comments in the preceding paragraph qualify this posting as a Meta-Meta-Blog for those of you keeping score at home!

Geeks: 1 Jocks: 0

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By Kyle, August 10, 2007 8:02 am

Those of you who live in or around Los Angeles may have felt the earthquake we had here late Wednesday night. I doubt it made national news (it barely even made local news), but apparently it was a 4.6 magnitude, which rattled and shook buildings. The epicenter (in Chatsworth) was about located 24 miles northwest of where I live. This quake also woke many residents….that is, many residens except me. Yep, I slept right through this one, snug as a bug!!! This would account for the second earthquake in my life which I have missed (the first being a 2002 5.1 rattler centered in Plattsburgh, NY during which I was at school in Wheaton). One of these days, when California breaks off the mainland and drifts into the sea, I’ll be sure to blog about it.

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By Kyle, August 9, 2007 12:25 pm

In honor of beginning a new school year in just under a month (and at risk of further alienating my already disillusioned readers), I’m starting a new blog. This will mostly serve the same function as my previous blog, but just like my new phone number, has quite a few options and features that I love so much more!!! Thanks again for taking the time to read my blog when you probably could be spending your time doing something much more productive. [For those of you who care, this blog is being published with WordPress, which I have found found even more effective than Google's Blogger].