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By Kyle, February 21, 2008 12:59 pm

I used to hate the news. So it doesn’t really surprise me when my kids have at best a meager knowledge of local, national, and international events. But I was pleasantly surprised when quite a few of my students indicated that they had heard of the US Navy’s shooting down of a spy satellite hurling toward earth. Given the “coolness” of the event, I decided to bring it a little closer to home for my students.

Imagine holding a basketball in your hand, I began. An ambivalent nod of heads permeates throughout the classroom.

Now imagine that your life depended on you throwing that basketball at a school-bus size target. How many of you think you could hit the target. Most of the students quietly raised their hands.

Only imagine that the school bus is moving….how many of you still think you could do it? A few cocky students still have their hands raised.

OK, let’s just say that the school bus is moving at a speed of 17,000 miles per hour. How many of you think you could hit it with the basketball? No more hands.

Oh yeah…I forgot…one more thing….the school bus isn’t 10 feet away, or 100 feet away, or even a mile away. The 17,000 mph school bus is in San Diego. Wide eyes.

And just to make it fun….every time you miss, you have to save up another $10 million dollars to buy a new basketball. Sounds like fun, right?

And with that we transition into something completely different, and begin the day’s lesson…

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By Kyle, January 31, 2008 10:55 pm

Some people think that five days is too long to go without posting. To these people I say, “where’s your blog?” :)

So to summarize the past five days, I’ve been:

• Victorious, due to the solid victory of the Teachers in the “Second bi-monthly Teacher v. Student soccer game”! [Pictured above...some of the teachers, clearly demonstrating their mad math skills].
• Frustrated, given the fact that my PC’s rear hinge has begun cracking, meaning I have to abandon my blazing fast, ultra-superior, super-duper computer for the time being and use a machine that loads internet pages more slowly than I could recite ones and zeros.
• laughing at some of my student’s responses to the Mid-Year Survey that I recently distributed in class. Some of my favorite responses:
  • Question: What is your favorite subject in school?
  • Answer: going home
  • Q: What colleges are you interested in attending?
  • A: Europe for soccer
  • Q: What types of math questions did you find the easiest?
  • A: none i got bored easily and wondered of to my imagination
  • A: like 5times 7 questions like that
  • Q: What types of math questions did you find the most difficult?
  • A: mostly all of them because (someone) didn’t explain it clearly to students
  • Q:How confident did you feel right before you were going to take a quiz?
  • A: as confident as when i’m going to play basketball
• Finally I’m confused, now that I really have no clue who to vote for in Tuesday’s primary. As of yesterday, my candidate of choice had officially thrown in the towel. And, judging by the candidates’ playlists, there’s not much in the way to make this decision any easier.

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By Kyle, January 8, 2008 7:50 pm

Real incidental dialogue that I overheard today in another teacher’s class:

Teacher to student: You’ve played Guitar Hero 3, right?

Student: I don’t play video games no more.

Teacher: What happened?

Student: My report card happened.

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By Kyle, January 7, 2008 6:10 pm

Today was the first day back at school following a 3 week break. Some highlights:

- For the first time in all my years at Cochran, the clocks did not work. When I got to school, all the school clocks said it was 3:20 and we apparently were dismissed at 10:00pm

- One of my students told me he celebrated his birthday at Chuck E. Cheese’s. Who knew that good old Chuck would still be relevant to today’s 14-year-old kids!

- The kept eyeing my new binary clock (pictured) trying to figure out first, what it was, and once they had figured out it was a clock, they spent a while trying to figure out how in the world to actually tell time by it. We’ll see how long it takes me before I teach them how to actually read the thing.

- Finally, I spent my lunch time visiting 6th grade homerooms trying to get them to apply for magnet schools. They weren’t to terribly intrigued until I told them I’d raffle off an iTunes gift card for one winner among all the students who brought the application back. It’s amazing what a little bribery can do.

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By Kyle, January 3, 2008 1:29 pm

“Our goal today is not to learn how to close the achievement gap, but to believe that we can.”

I couldn’t believe my ears, but yes, two hours later I had learned no new strategies, no new techniques, and no new ways to actually accomplish this. But then again, what do I expect, I work for LAUSD.

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By Kyle, January 2, 2008 10:37 am

Maybe I should be paying attention (and not taking pictures). Although I must admit that it’s pretty hard to.

Anyway, today is the first day back to school for professional development. Right now, we are learning (for the 5th time) how to use the Smartboard, which is basically a fancy giant mouse that you can touch with your hand to manipulate.

Anyway, much more to follow…after all, I don’t have much better to do right now :)

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By Kyle, December 8, 2007 6:24 pm

So what in the world am I doing with an out of focus picture on the blog? Hopefully, in less words it will give by its style as well as its content the kind of a whirlwind day I had today!

What you’re looking at is the LAUSD Magnet School Faire, a 4 hour information session held by the district (at UCLA) to give parents and students the opportunity to find out more about magnet schools and the opportunities available within them. The crazy part of working is LAUSD is that while we have perhaps some of the worst schools in the nation, we have arguably some of the best magnet school programs in the nation. And as can certainly be seen in the photo, more parents want their children at attend these schools than is reasonably possibly! So we get to resort to squabbling over a point-lottery system for choosing which kids get into the magnets. Yikes. This is pretty overwhelming for the parents who went with me today, most of whom had no idea what it took to get into a magnet school or what other options are available out there for their kids.

For me, this was the second time I had been to UCLA with students in less than a week! And to prove that I’m getting old, this morning as I greeted students and parents at our arriving bus, I asked each if they had ever been to UCLA before, completely forgetting that some of them had, not 6 days ago!!!!

Anyway, the countdown has begun: only 5 more days of school to go before our 3 week Christmas break, which I’m always ready for and yet is always slightly too long. By about December 31st or so, I’m ready to be back teaching. Let’s just see how much of the concept of slope my students remember come January 7th!

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By Kyle, December 4, 2007 12:06 pm

Yes, so apparently 6 days is the equivalent of “forever” in the blogging word, as I realize that I haven’t posted a thing in nearly a week. But I don’t feel so guilty mostly because my world has been nothing short of “crazy busy” for the past few weeks and it doesn’t look like the end is in sight anytime soon. Luckily it is now officially the Christmas season and I keep trying to remind myself to slow down, take a breath, enjoy this time of year.

Last evening, I had a great chance to go with a group of students to tour UCLA. For many of them, it was the first time that they had gotten the chance to visit UCLA, and for some of them, the first time they had gotten the chance to go to a college campus. Just like my last trip to USC, we started the afternoon with a tour of the campus, and I had to laugh at all of 8th grade boys who were complaining about how much they had to walk, but all of my 8th grade girls were doing just fine! After the tour we headed down to what was the students’ favorite part of the visit: dinner in the all-you-can-eat UCLA dining hall. Judging by their average consumption at dinner I wouldn’t be surprised if five years from now they’re tacking on the “freshman fifty” rather than the “freshman fifteen“. Following dinner, we walked up to the top of the math/sciences building and got to watch a planetarium show. Despite the fact that the stars were simulated, many students remarked as to how beautiful the night sky could be! If only they could see it “for reals” in LA! Some of the questions they asked the grad student who gave us the presentation: “Do you think Pluto should be a planet?”, “What is the brightest star?” “Betelgeuse! That’s me! That’s me!” “Uggggh….. I shouldn’t have eaten so much….what was I thinking!”

Anyway, that was that, and this is this, and my conference period is about to end, so I’ll try to post at least once more this week with all the craziness that will be going on!

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By Kyle, November 5, 2007 4:53 pm

I’m sick. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I do know that it came swiftly last night, and yet somehow I was foolhardy enough to go into school today. Bad idea. 2nd Period was really tough (today was an “even” day with only periods 2, 4, and 6)…my body ached, my focus was lost, and my energy was nowhere in sight (this was a stark difference from my usual classroom antics which sometimes include flailing my arms wildly around while teaching about inequalities). Even though I told my kids that if I looked a bit pale, it’s not just because I’m white, but because I’m under the weather. Anyway, 2nd period came and went and I’m less than convinced that the kids learned what I had hoped.

Anyway, luckily 4th period is my conference period, which is the one period I don’t have a class. I was able to lay out on a nice long couch in the teachers’ lounge and grab a few winks. I was able to do this, but unfortunately, this did little to avail things. By the beginning of lunch (which I skipped) I was seriously contemplating leaving school early and going home. However, I didn’t feel like finding two other teachers to cover a 108 minute class. And for some reason, I had a feeling that my 6th period students would persevere despite their teacher being a walking zombie.

The make an already long story slightly shorter, my 6th period kids came in and I was seated (something I never do) at the front of the class with my PC projected on the screen as well as a wireless mouse, a keyboard, and a bell. For the next 108 minutes, the students did an amazing job of learning the lesson (solving inequalities), working individually, and working in partners as I did not speak a single word out loud for the entire class period. Most of them thought it was fairly interesting to see how a teacher could communicate with them silently for so long, and I was grateful to my kids, for I found myself feeling slightly better by the end of the class period.

Anyway, that’s all for me for now…I’m headed to bed early tonight to recoup and hopefully get back on track with things tomorrow!

P.S. In the meantime, I don’t really know how to feel about Los Angeles’ new acquisition. Joe Torre, the former Yankee manager is coming to the helm with the Dodgers for the next three years. Now if only ownership would put some of that money towards actual talent on the field, the Dodgers might actually get somewhere.

P.P.S. For those of you who are either math geeks, science geeks, or music geeks, the following is a fairly interesting video. Apparently, someone with way too much time on their hands actually wired two Tesla coils to play at different frequencies and in synchronization. The result is an almost baroque-ish in nature rendition of an otherwise very romantic piece!

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By Kyle, October 28, 2007 3:30 pm

Yes, I actually am in this photograph. Luckily, I am not the “math nerd” you see on the left who may be about to meet his demise! Saturday night, a co-worker from Cochran threw a Halloween party at his place in West L.A. I was greeted with characters ranging from sumo wrestlers to pirates to certain California Governors. It was tons of fun and a perfect way to spend a weekend evening now that the daily grind of school has effectively begun. It’s only October and already some students are beginning to show signs of tiresomeness. I guess it probably doesn’t help that on Friday I had a “mandatory” after-school test-prep session for my 6th period honors class! While they are a generally bright bunch of kids, I think that this year’s group of kids may have to work slightly harder than some of last years group of kids!

In the mean time, I have not burned up here in the California fires, although I may be well on my way to getting lung cancer from all the smoke in the air. Lately, it’s been raining a bit which has helped get some of the smoke out of the air. Anyway, it’ll be nice to get things back to normal next week.

Another crazy busy week (which is now the norm for me) looms out in front of me beginning in just a few hours. It’s nice to have this Sunday afternoon a bit free in order to mentally prepare for the battle of this upcoming week. Anyway, looking forward to it!