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By Kyle, May 29, 2009 3:16 pm

Alice Cooper – School’s Out For Summer

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Education is going crazy out here in Los Angeles. The district actually just put out a bulletin yesterday cancelling summer school for elementary and middle schools!

While students may be rejoicing in the moment, there will be some reckoning to do when as 8th graders they don’t have enough credits to culminate into high school. That will be exciting, but don’t worry, I’m sure the district will change the rules again just to ensure that mediocrity continues to be passed on through the grade levels, and ultimately the generations of students we pretend that we serve.

Anyway, a bit of Friday fun! I’m actually in this photo (taken May 15th at the UTLA rally)! A.J. Duffy, our less-than-strategic union president is attempting to rev up the crowd. See if you can find me! Here’s a hint…..it’s awfully sunny, and just to prove how smart I was, I decided not to wear sunglasses!

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By Kyle, May 26, 2009 3:01 pm

Jackson Browne: Running On Empty

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So Monday was the marathon here in Los Angeles, an event that I witnessed for the very first time this year, positioned above one of the surface street bridges that crosses Venice Blvd., under which the marathoners directly passed! There were 3 folks I was specifically looking for, a TFA buddy and two friends from Mosaic.

You’d never realize just how difficult it is to spot individuals in a marathon involving thousands….sort of like a real-life “Where’s Waldo?”.  Anyway, I was able to spot my first buddy, Carl, from a distance and thus was able to cheer him on a bit. Later, it was my friend Anthony who spotted me, and called out just as he passed under the bridge. And finally, I never even saw my other friend, who must have been wearing his invisible cloak as he ran the marathon.

Maybe some year I’ll run it.

Hah!

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By Kyle, May 23, 2009 9:29 am

Philip Glass: from Orange Mountain Music Archive: Closing

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Finally, it’s a long weekend, and one that is not filled to the brim with any trainings, meetings, or otherwise time-consuming ventures.

Perhaps some volleyball, perhaps some biking, perhaps a movie, who knows? Definitely catching up on some reading that I’ve been missing just doing, but hopefully getting one final chance to relax and catch up before the final 4 weeks of the school year!

Oh yeah, and I’d better find something nice to do on Monday, when the Los Angeles Marathon completely surrounds where I live, making it impossible to get out (to the beach, to the mountains, wherever…)! Arggggghhhhh!!!!

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By Kyle, May 20, 2009 6:39 am

The Beatles – When I’m Sixty-Four

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Be forewarned. This is a geeky post. And on that note, I’ve got to say I’m more than a little disappointed at the utter lack of birthday gifts and cards I received this past Sunday. None. Zero. Where are you people? Seriously?

Well, to be perfectly honest, this past Sunday (May 17, 2009) came and went without so much as a flicker of awareness of the milestone I had reached, the knowledge of which only arrived Monday morning as I explored a new quantitative search engine, Wolfram Alpha. As it turns out, this past Sunday, I turned exactly 10,000 days old (the picture below is the screenshot I took Monday morning).

I’ve got to say that at first I was excited, but then was a little bit floored at the following realization. Measuring in powers of ten, I’ve officially entered the very last phase of my life! 10^0 marked my first diaversary, 10^1 came quickly after when I was scarecely more than a week old, followed three months later with 10^2. During my final year of being an only child (September 25, 1984) I celebrated my first 1000 (10^3) days in utter ignorance. An enormously huge gap then began and ended Sunday, as I passed the 10^4 = 10 000 day mark!

But this celebration (or lack thereof) is bittersweet, knowing that it is unlikely that I will survive until the next exponential milestone, 10^5 = 100 000 days old. Let’s see, I wonder if on October 15, 2255 (when I am a sprite 273 years old) the Cubs will be wrapping up their first World Series championship in over 300 years.

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By Kyle, May 17, 2009 8:42 am

Public Enemy – Fight the Power

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Let me introduce you to Mr. Luong (the one in the white t-shirt), the new history teacher and union rep at our school (we share the same kids), being arrested this past Friday. In the eyes of our 7th graders, he’s now amazingly cool!

Let’s see if I can accurately follow the chain of events that led up to this (a little lesson in civics):

* California enter budget nightmare.

* LAUSD cuts teachers

* Our union calls for a one-day strike (this past Friday) to protest

* LAUSD goes to court and gets a judge to issue an injunction, preventing such a walkout

* Our wonderful union called upon some of it’s volunteers to engage in some civil disobedience downtown at district headquarters, which led to the arrest of 39 of them (including Mr. Luong).

* After school, myself and 30 other colleagues headed downtown for a rally at the headquarters of the district, and soon after Mr. Luong was released and joined us!

I took this photo on the left of a few of my colleagues who are getting pink slipped due to economics. These are GREAT teachers and it would suck to lose them next year.

Now I fully support the idea of a union, but here’s the awful reality: even if the union gets what we want (LAUSD cutting bureaucratic positions rather than teacher positions), all those fired bureaucrats get first dibs on classroom positions, effectively bumping out these new teachers anyway. Since we have a union contract that is based 100% on seniority (and 0% on effectiveness with students) all that we’re doing at the protests can’t really amount to much when it comes to kids. And until our Union, our district, whomever, is willing to admit that, and implement a fair, and effective policy to ensure that quality teachers have job security (rather than simply those with longevity), this district will go nowhere.

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By Kyle, May 14, 2009 5:15 pm

Bodies of Water – Dear Boy

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So even if our students aren’t demonstrating incredible amounts of aptitude on didactic academic exams, they certainly do display a large amount of creativity. Such was the case today with Mr. Roeder’s 8th graders (who took their exam with him in my classroom), after which I found the above artifact.

I’m not sure which I’m more impressed with, the chiaroscuro, the metacognitive language editing, or the fact that the author knows how to both spell and abbreviate (but not tell what day it is).

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By Kyle, May 9, 2009 10:50 am

Gustav Holst: The Planets – Jupiter

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  Work hard….play hard. That’s pretty much my modus operandi. And thank goodness, because “playing hard” got to consist of watching the Lakers win a wonderfully solid game last evening against Houston, followed by catching the new reboot of Star Trek with my roommate and some of his acting/writing buddies. Very surprised at how much I liked it, especially given the abysmal track record of the post-Shatner Star Trek film era. Especially entertaining was my new favorite character, Leonard “Bones” McCoy, who, while persistently bold and loyal, brings it all back to reality with a witty dash of cynicism.

Anyway, it was nice to relax a bit after a long week, which was especially boring as we prepare the kids to take their infamous California Standards Tests next week. The kids are tired, and ready to be done, as are many of our teachers.

On a different front, our district has managed to find itself at the center of much media this past week, for better or for worse (well,….actually it’s mostly for worse).

First, we can’t seem to fire any bad teachers. The other side of that coin is our wonderful union, who promotes the status quo in this regard by defending these bad teachers. Our union is staging a one day strike this Friday. I’ll take some photos and post them here. Furthering this dilemma, is the fact that in the midst of all this frustration, many god and qualified teachers finally opt out of the district and go work for charter schools! It seems to be working really well, or so reports The New Yorker in an article about Los Angeles charter organization, Green Dot (which my roommate currently works for). Finally, we had a front page Times article today about LAUSD’s failure to deal with not merely inept teachers, but potentially dangerous ones as well.

Wow. Gives me lots of hope…

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By Kyle, May 5, 2009 8:34 pm

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By Kyle, May 2, 2009 2:20 pm

What’s this??????

Yes, oh yes! It’s exactly what you think it is. Finally, actual physical (well…..digital) proof that I actually play music a little bit out here in Los Angeles. So last night, my roommate Ken and I played a coffeehouse in Venice. Lots of fun, five tracks, and best of all, they recorded it for all of posterity to enjoy!

It turns out the guy running sound didn’t do that great a job throwing it all together (i.e. the balance is quite a bit off, especially in the first couple songs), but Ken and I are both pretty pleased at the general outcome!

After listening, we definitely know some areas that we can further work on to improve (if you’re a musician, you’ll hear them too), yet the whole experience was a real confidence booster, and we’re definitely gonna do this some more!

Enjoy!

• Salty Tears:

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• When All the Lights Go Out:

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• Quiet In the Morning:

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• Crazy Love:

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• You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away:

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