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By Kyle, October 30, 2009 1:16 pm

We Are Scientists – Hoppipola

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Thanks again for all the well wishers today as I went to get my lower wisdom teeth pulled (we decided to leave the upper wisdom teeth in for now….I wasn’t willing to be completely unwise).

Everything went incredibly smoothly except for one small scare towards the beginning. The doctor told me he was going to use general anesthesia which would require me having a escort home afterwards [I took the bus today as I figured that driving a car wouldn’t be safe]. Suffice it to say I was a bit perturbed when he told me I could not get the procedure done today without an escort home. After two phone calls to no avail, the doctor returned and made my day. He had asked one of his dental interns to escort me home on the MTA after the procedure, saving me the hassle of having to reschedule the whole thing. Wow! I’m sometimes amazed at the kindness of people. In addition, the procedure was painless (I was unconscious) and there’s a bit of pain right now, due to the swelling/bleeding, but I have Vicodin, which is performing wonderfully right now.

Anyway, I’m gonna eat some food, maybe watch a movie, and then perhaps take a nap a little later. Hope you all have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend!

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By Kyle, October 27, 2009 4:23 pm

Mofobaru – OK Computer in 60 Seconds

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Why take 60 minutes to do what you can do in seconds?, otherwise known as “Thank goodness Windows 7 is finally here!”

So much faster, so much lighter (quite literally) is my new favorite operating system, which gives me yet another excuse for the next several years to have at it with my mac-using friends.

I’m usually not too terribly feisty, but all you mac users out there who are jealous of the new Microsoft OS (which is light years better than Vista), bring it on!!!

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By Kyle, October 24, 2009 1:45 pm

Mötley Crüe – Kickstart My Heart

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A routine Tuesday this week turned slightly sour when my dentist told me it is time to get my lower wisdom teeth removed. To little relief did he assure me that there had been nothing that I could have done to prevent this inevitable moment from coming. Nonetheless, oral surgery has never been one of my favorite happenings in life.

What is it that I hate about going in for dental work? Honestly, it’s not the pain (there is none). It’s not the pressure (they’re very gentle). Rather, the worst part about dental work is the sound. That high pitched, metallic, screaming up my skull into my brain, while even in the midst of routine cleaning is awful. Almost unbearable for me. This is where you, my wonderful readers, come in.

Last time I had serious dental work (they crowned me!), I was allowed to listen to my iPod during the procedure. Unfortunately, the assumedly-relaxing strains of Mozart and Brahms did little to overpower the high pitched whirring of the drills. Thus, your help is solicited.

I need a new Dental Drill Playlist. At least 90 minutes worth of songs that will keep my mind, and my ears, occupied in what I’m going to precociously call “extraction distraction”. And I’m calling on you to submit your best dental distracters to the comments below! I might even offer a prize to the best submission.

For all of you educators out there, here’s the rubric and criteria chart:

1. Song must be loud! What? LOUD! What? I said, LOOOOOUUUUUUUDDD!!!
2. Any genre is acceptable! Feel free to “expand my horizons”!
3. Any time period is also acceptable! While I’m certainly partial to the 60s-80s time period, I’m assuming that each other decade had at least one quality song with the loudness factor.
4. No Dave Matthews Band submissions. Brimer, that means you.
5. Bonus points if you can link to your song on Skreemr.
6. Super Bonus Points if you link, email, share, re-tweet, or whatever it is you do to this point and I get song solicitations from folks I don’t know yet!

Thanks again, all y’all (no, I’m not Southern!) and come this Friday, October 30th, I’ll be ready!!!

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By Kyle, October 20, 2009 9:45 am

Randy Newman – Burn On

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Yesterday our Superintendent decided to get down to the nitty-gritty and actually do something about the dropouts facing LAUSD. So he, and mountains of other district bureaucrats traipsed through the neighborhoods, going door-to-door looking for drop-out and truant kids. While perhaps not the most efficient way to lower the truancy rate (I can just imagine a sleeping-in kid being awoken by the Superintendent of the nation’s second largest school district standing at your door), it certainly speaks volumes to the effect that we actually have a Supe who understands that without action, vision is useless.

So often, we have top-down people telling us what mandates we must accomplish, what goals we must have, and what aspirations we must…..uh…..aspire to. Yet, to paraphrase, the Father of Lies does actually reside in the logistics. It’s only when clear goals and clear steps to attain those goals come together that things can actually be accomplished.

Case in point, we constantly harp on our kids to “do your homework! Do your homework”, but so often, many don’t actually think about the details that it takes to get it done, namely, that they need a time to do their homework (right after school? before bed?), a space to do their homework (at a desk?, a table? a library booth?), and all the materials with them (pencils, papers, books, etc…). It seems so simple it’s crazy, but all of that must be in place for the “goal” of homework completion to occur!

Another case in point, I got word today that a principal at another LAUSD middle school has just mandated that their teacher’s do homeroom intervention (I take partial blame for this). While I certainly don’t have all the facts of this, rest assured that without the details of what this looks like, the endeavor will fail and teachers will be frustrated. You can’t mandate change from above without leaders on the front lines figuring out ways for the rubber to meet the road!

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By Kyle, October 17, 2009 9:19 am

Beta Band – Won

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I have been to two MLB playoff games in my life, both at Dodger Stadium. The first was in the fall of 2006 when, after losing twice to the Mets in New York, the Dodgers came home to finish getting swept in the N.L. Division Series. Being a lifelong Mets fan, I felt my life was slightly in danger that evening. Luckily there was a good turnout of other ex-pat New Yorkers showing up in support of their team. Unfortunately, that was as far as the Mets would get in 2006 (or any year since).

The second playoff game was this past Thursday, when the defending champ Phillies came to town for Game 1 of the NLCS. What should have been a low-scoring affair (Hamels v. Kershaw) turned into a sloppy, poorly pitched outing in which the Phils were somehow able to convert all of their 8 hits into runs, while my “adopted” Dodgers could only score six runs with fourteen hits!

Speaking of adoption, I’ve been getting some grief at work for all-of-a-sudden pulling for the Dodgers. Some folks apparently feel that sports adoption is completely unacceptable. Yet, for those of us who root for teams that eliminate themselves from competition in mid-July, it’s a completely acceptable way to continue on rooting for the great game of baseball. Make no mistake, whenever the Mets play the Dodgers, I cheer full-heartedly for the Mets (even in the inebriated upper-deck, across 20 rows of hecklers). Oh yes. But once their season has ended, I root for the hometown team (and NO, the “Los Angeles Angels” are not the hometown team").

But until April, when the Mets begin their long and solid march towards October of 2010, and hoist their WS trophy above the heads of the crowds celebrating in the parade on 5th Avenue, it’s “Go Blue”!

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By Kyle, October 13, 2009 6:06 pm

MGMT– Kids

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Remember snap bracelets? Or Beanie Babies? Or Pogs??? The aforementioned pieces of tack bring back memories of junior high school, when it was so incredibly important to express one’s individuality by doing whatever everyone else was doing.

Nowadays, the content of fads has most certainly changed, although the underlying motives (and the likely response) have not.

Just a few years ago, my students were into purchasing plastic bags of Kool-Aid powder, and sucking it through one bit-off corner. After a few months of this, our administration banned the bags. Today, I’ve noticed an incredible proliferation of colored, beaded bracelets worn by an increasing number of kids.

Yes, there are certainly urban legends out there regarding the potential subtext of this fashion statement, yet it seems like another desperate attempt to “be cool” and to “fit in”. Simply banning these attempts to be cool, be it snap bracelets (in my day), or colored beaded bracelets today, is not going to eliminate this desire amongst kids. Rather, it should be our mission to make education and learning  “cool”! Case in point. Two years ago I taught a Pre-Algebra class with two of the brightest kids I’ve ever had. Perhaps surprisingly, these two boys were also two of the “coolest” kids in the grade level, and were trend-setters when it came to clothing styles, methods of speech, skateboarding, etc… They also excelled in math, and because being around them was “cool” the classmates in that particular class experienced a desire to likewise excel at mathematics! Up until this day, that period from 2 years ago has remained my top-performing math class ever. Not because of my amazing teaching, but because of the social influence that was made on students when the “cool kids” were also the smart kids.

Recently Wired! Magazine picked up on this, and posited an article which suggests that this is really the key to education reform. Interesting idea. Myself, I just finished reading “The Tipping Point”, which explores social epidemics (and how they spread). This brilliant work suggests that the spread of a social trend (be it bracelets, or the idea that “algebra is awesome!”) is largely dependent upon the individuals that make up the social community in which the idea is spread, as well as the particular roles of certain key individuals. In the education context, it seems that none of these roles would be filled by teachers, but rather by influential students. So then, as educators, we need to be on the forefront in providing leadership opportunities for these key students who will set the pace and the direction of the school. Our job is to identify, train, and inspire them, and they’ll do the rest.

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By Kyle, October 10, 2009 1:21 pm

Ligeti – Lux Aeterna

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Skills: Knowing which buildings in Los Angeles you can actually sneak up onto the roof of and get a-MAZ-ing views of the city. I’ll log this one away as a future potential date location.

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By Kyle, October 7, 2009 4:04 pm

Hujhax – Under Pressure

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Today, was the first day I was not at school. Where was I, you say? Not sick, but rather with two partners in crime, colleagues Rustum and Raul, who, along with myself were invited by our principal to his district principal’s meeting in order to both observe a principal’s meeting and to present our math intervention program Kids Mastering Math to a group of about 70 principals, as well as the district’s Chief Academic Officer, Dr. Judy Elliott. Overall, it went really well, although I must admit how strangely similar a meeting of principals felt to a faculty meeting. They face challenges, unclear mandates, lack of communicative entities, and feel the frustrations of trying to gain the buy-in from their faculty. The biggest frustration about intervention for students is that there’s such a hard time getting faculty buy-in for it. Whenever you mandate something, folks will resist.

And they are absolutely right. Part of the big emphasis we pushed today was that Kids Mastering Math was not mandated on teachers and as a result, got a group of educators who “bought in” to a piece of intervention that could actually make a difference in the lives of kids. Unfortunately, many schools and districts took small successes in intervention a HUGE step too far and mandated it school-wide, which simply won’t work.

Here’s what I hope LAUSD will realize and do:

• LAUSD should not force schools to during-the-day intervention for schools who have continued to show marked improvement. Schools like Berendo, and schools like Virgil, who not only have shown success, but have great leadership models should be allowed to continue improving in the exact way they are right now.
• If LAUSD is going to mandate intervention, allow schools to implement it on a small-scale basis (i.e. across a grade level, or a single content area, or among students with certain scores only), and then expand based on real results! This way, you can get invested teachers to teach it, rather than try to convince an entire faculty that this won’t be another program that they will have to prepare for.

It shouldn’t need to be rocker science. Teacher’s buy-in when they see success and when they really trust the leaders. Start small. Prove your results. Get bigger.

In.

That.

Order.

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By Kyle, October 4, 2009 8:18 pm

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young – Déjà Vu

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Despite being a 6-year “veteran” at school, I’m still fairly young; in fact, young enough to cause some raised eyebrows among some of my elder colleagues who wonder how on earth I came to love the music of their childhood and teenage years, rather than my own.

Other than the fact that The Beatles vs. Gin Blossoms is simply not a fair comparison, it largely had to do with the existence of an LP collection that belonged (and still belongs) to my step-dad, which infused me with a love of the musicality, great song-writing, and sheer power of such groups as the aforementioned Beatles, as well as the Rolling Stones, the Who, Jimi Hendrix Led Zeppelin, and even venturing into the folk-rock worlds of Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and Cat Stevens.

One such group that I learned to enjoy was the cumbersomely self-titled Crosby, Stills, Nash, and (sometimes) Young. As a group that sounded like a strange mix between a jazz-vocal ensemble, a country band, and the Grateful Dead, they truly had a unique sound of their own.

Saturday night, I had the opportunity to see them perform for free at the Greek Theatre, thanks to a ticket giveaway from local NPR/Music station KCRW. [For those of you longtime readers of this blog, you might remember Rocking Out on a School Night, a post from nearly two years ago. Same radio station. Same kind of giveaway.]

Anyway, despite the fact that only 75% of CSNY performed (Neil Young is apparently too cool for these guys now), it was a great show, and even more, the audience surprised me a bit. I fully expected to see nothing but a sea of 50-60 year old boomers who literally grew up with these guys. Yet throughout the venue was a quite large contingent of younger generation folks, including including lots of parents with their teenage kids, who realize that great music is simply timeless.

I wonder if 20-30 years from now, I’ll be taking my kids to see geriatric Coldplay rock it out reminiscently of “The 00s”!

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By Kyle, October 1, 2009 6:09 pm

KISS – Hard Luck Woman

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Disappointed? Definitely.

Should I have known better? Absolutely.

Who’s fault? Mine.

Exhibit A: Eternal hard rock gods, KISS, who’s makeup and power chord-age inspired decades of sonic bliss and great Halloween costumes. A band who’s corpus of work spans nearly three decades, and yet, perhaps surprisingly, prior to yesterday, I had never actually owned any albums by KISS. Hmmm…. Luckily, while in Borders, on the way to Bible study, I happened upon finding “The Very Best of KISS” in the discount rack. And although opportunity knocks but once, there was a definite reason it was in the discount rack. Read on.

Exhibit B: Rod Stewart. So much rock and roll potential….so much of a sellout later on. Mr. Stewart became the epitome of “Adult Contemporary”, whilst causing the near-ruination of the radio airwaves. I do not like Rod Stewart. I never have, I don’t think I ever will. Suffice it to say, that simply not owning any of his works has been a core value of mine since I’ve been into music. There are certain elements of music that should never be reproduced, copied, or derived influence from at all. Ever. Period. Especially if you’re a hard rock band. Especially if your hard rock band dresses up in scary makeup, spitting up fake blood at concerts, and play bass guitars shaped like literal axes.

Yet, what to my horror should I hear on my new KISS album, but the track Hard Luck Woman. As soon as it started, could just feel the cold, heartless, influence, of fellow rasper Stewart. I almost threw up. Don’t believe me? Check it out.

Rod Stewart: Maggie May

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