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My classroom frequents many visitors. Given that, I fully expected Ray Cortines, the LAUSD Chief Instructional Officer (the #2 guy in the whole district) to stop by my classroom during his visit to Cochran Middle School today.

Since I knew he was visiting, I briefed my 2nd period class first thing as they walked in that in the event of a visitor (or a whole posse of them), we would simply continue with the lesson and welcome our visitors comments and questions. Second period comes and second period goes. No Cortines. Not that surprising.

Fourth period begins. I brief my 4th period class similarly as we begin our lesson with a few housekeeping announcements.

Not 5 minutes into class, my wall phone rings, with a call from the principal, asking me to come down to his office to join in a meeting with him, our assistant principals, local district 3 administrators, and Cortines. Frustrated at the last minute notice, I agree and then quickly jump straight into the lesson with my kids so they’ll at least know something before my coverage shows up. 3 minutes later, the sub shows up, I give the kids a worksheet (on ratios and proportions…. knowing full well they haven’t had ample opportunity to learn the material) and head downstairs. No Cortines, yet. Slightly more frustrated, I head back upstairs and resume teaching the lesson, during which one of my students gets stung by a bee invading our room from the A/C vents, and another student’s nose erupts in a stream of blood. Instant nurse visits for both of them.

Finally, a second call from the principals office emanates and I’m summoned downstairs to tell our LAUSD Chief Instructional Officer things that he already knows, such as how our math department is attempting to address the learning needs of our kids. Nothing really new. Am I surprised? Not really.

Anyway, back to my classroom for the last 15 minutes of class. Thankfully, my 4th period is a really wonderful group who was very patient with me today, and despite the fact that they received a largely discombobulated lesson (the educational equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine), they learned about real life ratios and proportions very well. We’ll just have to see about how much they remember for tomorrow’s quiz.