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By Kyle, January 30, 2009 10:36 am

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Live Blogging is exactly what it sounds like. When a blogger simultaneously blogs about events as they occur in almost real-time. Most notably this occurs at sporting events, music festivals, conferences, and most recently, political events. Today I venture my first attempt at live blogging, a phone call with the California Student Aid Commission.

* 9:33: I dial, and begin to navigate my way through the automatic menu options.

* 9:35: Sweet. I’ve made it through the mess of automaticity. Now I’m on hold till I get to a human being. Yay!

 In the meantime, what’s new with me? Well, aside from teaching and all that goes on with that (planning/grading/etc…), I’m currently embroiled in the planning of a “math intervention course” for next year. The cool part is that I’m essentially part of a team with two of my favorite teachers to design this program. It’s fantastic to work with them on a project that all three of us really believe in and think could be great for our kids next year! The frustrating part is that we’re being “overseen” by an inept administrative component. It appears that making this program actually work will require circumventing the usual chains of command (which should be fun).

* 9:51: I’ve been on hold for the past 16 minutes, so this provides me a good time to blog. Hopefully, I’m not still on hold by the time you’re reading this. Anyway, a bit on The California Student Aid Commission It is the state agency that’s responsible for forgiving my college loans, an agency that seems to require a phone call from me every few months or so to keep them on task. So today’s phone call is just a check-up to make sure they’re still on top of my stuff. Hey, if that’s why they’re not answering their phone (working diligently on my account), I’m cool with it.

Another side project that I’m involved with is the extension of the Hope Change Choices campaign for magnet schools that a colleague of mine and I put together this past December (Posts here, here, and here). We’re expanding it to include charter schools, which are slightly different than magnets, but provide great opportunities for kids.

* 10:10: All of our phone representative are currently helping other customers. Please hold, and your call will be answered in the order it was received. The guy who recorded that should charge royalty fees.

Finally, even though it is only January, I’ve begun thinking about possible going on a short trip this summer with some folks from my church, Mosaic. This is very much still in the “thinking about it / praying about it” stage of things, and my hope is that by simply mentioning it here, it would give me that much more impetus to consider the viability of something of this nature. Time will tell, but we’ll see.

10:22: “Hello?” Someone finally picks up! I give him my name, my info, verify my SS#, and the verdict is…………”We’ve processed your forms but haven’t begun making payments yet. You might want to call back in April.”

Call back in April? Sure, but please get some better “on hold” music.

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By Kyle, January 26, 2009 6:19 pm

Radiohead: Karma Police

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So my roommate and I are playing another 30 minute coffee-shop gig in just over a week and we are not ready. Part of the problem is that we hardly ever see each other. I’ve got a busy enough schedule that keeps me out many nights, and he’s got a girlfriend, so there are sometimes weeks that go by where we don’t see each other. And unfortunately, we don’t have musical telepathy.

What will probably end up happening is what usually happens. We’ll throw a bunch of stuff together the night before, practice it till we’re quite of sick of it, and then rock the joint when we get to the gig. Luckily, the ratio of performance excellence to practice hours is disproportionately high for us. At least when we stick to originals…..(with sincerest apologies to David Bowie, Bob Dylan, and Radiohead, for thus far, managing to mangle some of their masterpieces).

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By Kyle, January 23, 2009 10:22 pm

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So what you probably already knew was that this past Tuesday, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States, not after his Oath of Office, but at precisely noon, that is, during the music played by a string quartet immediately preceding the Oath.

What you may not know is that the String Quartet, playing newly commissioned Air and Simple Gifts by John Williams, was not “playing” at all, but was rather lip-syncing (or is it “bow/keyboard/mouthpiece syncing” in the classical world?) the whole thing. What we all heard on Tuesday was a prerecorded version of the piece and the instrumentalists were simply going through the motions of their respective instruments. The excuse (which, is honestly pretty valid) was that the 30 degree weather in D.C. doesn’t exactly bode well for creating a rich and full sound on instruments usually used to the 70 degree weather of a concert hall (or at least, a California Beach).

I just feel a little bad for Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, who now find themselves in the dubious company of musicians who prior to Tuesday had seemingly nothing in common.

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By Kyle, January 19, 2009 3:48 pm

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Today was the third year I’ve gotten the chance to attend (and second to blog) the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Kingdom Day Parade here in Los Angeles. Although it is a very big parade, it feels very local, as it takes place just a few miles from where I live and teach. I often run into folks I know from my school community at the parade. The high school bands, the local unions, the gospel concert in the park, are some of the things that make this one of the coolest ways to honor a truly great man.

Last year’s blog post about the parade was one of my longest ever, so to spare you all the misery of reading pages of rambling thoughts, I’ve decided to simply record the three most exciting moments of the parade.

#3. Marching what?!?! Most marching bands are pretty straight-forward in their approach: Conductor, color-guard, wind instruments, brass instruments, perhaps an electric bass (should they be feeling a bit saucy), and the percussion team, followed by the drill team. Yet one school today decided to completely rock it out with a marching orchestra! Yep, a marching orchestra, the coolest part of which was clearly this cellist who was able to simultaneously provide the thick low string sound needed, while carrying this incredibly cumbersome instrument.

#2. Giving the bosses a piece of my mind. Last year, LAUSD superintendent Brewer rode in the parade. Less than one year later, he is out of a job, and the current Superintendent Ramon Cortines was nowhere to be found today. However, at one point in the parade, I looked up and to my surprise saw State Superintendent of Education Jack O’Connell riding in the parade. The bosses boss! Not wanting to miss an opportunity to plant seeds with people who can make decisions, I ran up to his car, introduced myself to him as an LAUSD teacher and told him quite simply “We’ve got to end social promotion”. He shook my hand and replied, “I’m with you, but the budget’s a mess”. Unfortunately, he’s right. What perhaps surprised me the most (and what I didn’t realize until after this incident, and thus regret not actually meeting) was the gentleman sitting right in front of Superintendent O’Connell, Dodger legend Maury Wills.

 #1. Deadly Chipmunks. At any parade, the local police and fire department play a large role in both security as well as displaying their own force and (dare I say, gala). Not only are we lucky enough to have the LAPD, as well as the County Sheriffs, but we are also served by the amazing California Highway Patrol (CHP), which spawns both safe drivers and silly television shows. What I did not know before today is that they actually have a mascot, a giant Chipmunk. Now first of all, it’s a little bit freaky that a law enforcement organization has a cute, furry mascot, but what’s perhaps more alarming is that this cute and furry chipmunk was armed. This begs the question of what would it look like if this chipmunk ever had to use his weapon. I’m sure that having a giant Chipmunk mask on your head doesn’t do much for an officer’s aim. Or maybe, just like football players, this officer practices and trains with his chipmunk head on.

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By Kyle, January 17, 2009 1:14 pm

Finally, a three day weekend, and not a moment too soon!

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By Kyle, January 13, 2009 9:04 pm

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Today is day two back at school.

The good news: the first two days of 2009 have brought two of the best days of class all year long! Low achieving students actually participating, working in groups, tackling difficult material (decimals), asking great questions, and the high achieving counterparts learning new and fresh math material that both challenged their academic skills as well as their leadership abilities, which they have thrived at.

The bad news: it took upwards of 5+ hours of prep time and 2+ hours of grading time to make it all happen, which is unfortunately, nowhere even close to being sustainable.

Arrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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By Kyle, January 10, 2009 4:03 pm

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We finally finished our week of professional development which turned out to be about 60% useful, a figure that was surprisingly high.

However, the scare of the week came on Friday afternoon when, whilst helping a colleague upload his grades to our brand new, professionally designed Johnnie Cochran school web site, I came within two clicks of inadvertently erasing the entire web site. Luckily, just as I was about to delete this strange directory of files (which subsequently turned out to be the root file system), I had the presence of mind to perform a simple check which thankfully prevented disaster from occurring. I then took a deep breath. Whew.

However, Friday did end more positively, as I gathered for a nice dinner with the ISSS-LA teachers and the three students who are almost halfway through their first year of private school. We ate dinner at Maggiano’s, this upscale Italian restaurant (ironically, where a former roommate of mine used to work) at The Grove. Our three students told us all about their first semester at their respective schools and it’s very cool to see how much they are loving it! After hearing about their academic courses, I’m very convinced of how rigorous they are, especially given the fact that our two native Spanish speakers are both currently earning B’s in Spanish!

I guess that’s no different than me earning B’s (and maybe C’s) when I took English in high school.

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By Kyle, January 6, 2009 10:20 pm

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I’m back at work! Professional Development has begun already and I’m back full swing into the madness that is LAUSD. Apparently nothing’s really new. Well…..maybe. Our new Superintendent Ramon Cortines is now suggesting that 2,000 new teachers may be laid off mid-year. The good news is that my own job is in no danger whatsoever. The bad news is that many of our new teachers’ jobs might actually be.

I’ve got really mixed feelings about all of this. On the one hand, I admire Cortines’ willingness to make gutsy moves that might be unpopular, something that his predecessor, Admiral Brewer, was unwilling or unable to do. On the other hand, it only makes sense to lay off 2,000 teachers if there is first an at least proportionate scaling back of district bureaucracy (local districts, supervisors, middlemen and women). This is something he’s done before (in 2000 when he was interim Superintendent) and has said recently that he’d do again in the face of California’s massive budget shortfall. Why on earth he would not mention similar bureaucratic cutbacks at the same press conference (or the LA Times failure to report if he did) is beyond me. Here’s an idea: How about instead of laying off new teachers, we lay off bad ones????

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By Kyle, January 3, 2009 11:03 am

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So after a nice hiatus, I’m back to blogging. Yet the year did not start out on such a great note as this morning I became part of a scary statistic. According to some estimates, 2000 people accidentally put their cell phone through the washing machine every day. I’ve now become one of those lucky few.

Anyway, despite my knuckleheadedness, I still move on. Today I discovered a really cool website, called Quizlet which allows users to create flashcards, and practice those flashcards.

Seeing as my kids largely struggle with division, I took it upon myself to create some division flashcards which I hope to get in the habit of using a bit in class, and hopefully encouraging them to use a bit at home.

We’ll see what happens though.