Today I intercepted the following love letter written during class by one of my algebra students.

The letter’s contents, which follow remind my of the confused nature of what it means to be in middle school:

Ten twenty sixx two-thousand and nine <3

2 the love of my life <3

From this one dudee!

Hehe well babe Im bored ass Hell! Ima tell you how much I love you, which is a shitt load! yet again Im going to apoligize babe Im sorry for being a bitch to you and taking your candy HeHe <3 I love you much and always will forever and ever I will never stop or nobody can stop me babe you mean more than my life to me you have no idea I always will love and care about you babe I always want you to be happy no matter what my love for you grows each second hehe babe I wana be with you forever and ever byess. I love you! <3

K**** I love you baby!

P.S. Sorry for hand…

….at this point I intercepted the love letter and, after a quick read and not so good a job covering my laughter at it’s contents, continued to teach the lesson on multiplying monomials.

I know, I know….that’s not how you pronounce it (phonetically “Ron”), but after years of mispronouncing the title of this epic Kurosawa film, I finally got around to actually seeing it, this past Saturday, during a rainy Los Angeles afternoon. It’s usually this time of year that we can’t really decide if it’s still winter, or whether it might actually be spring.

My students find themselves much in the same dilemma. Some days are fantastic where they ask great questions, show immensely high degrees of intuition, effort, and drive. Other days, like the soggy March rain that comes out of nowhere, seem to suggest otherwise.

Yet, spring is around the corner, and although I’m sure I don’t appreciate it’s coming as much as my Northeast readers certainly do, it’s great to be able to walk outside without a jacket, to breathe the smell of the freshly mown lawn, and to be able to begin trash talking baseball with some of my colleagues.

Bring it on…

Ah, the fun of using an LCD projector. It’s even more fun when I wear a white shirt to go along with it. My kids always get a kick out of the fact that as I teach, it often looks like I am wearing a just-created math shirt.

What’s even cooler is that I use what’s called an “airliner slate” to actually “write” on the displayed notebook page. Essentially, it’s a Bluetooth plastic slate that translates plastic-pen movements on its surface into colored pen strokes on my projected computer screen.

For a prize of 100 points (which currently have no redeemable value), be the first commenter to correctly identify what the abbreviation “T.P.” stands for. [Hint: There should be enough clues on the rest of my shirt, and on the board behind me to figure this one out].

….holy cow…

…body crashing….

My next email to Superintendent Cortines:

Dear Mr. Cortines,

Please consider reinstating “naptime” at the secondary level. I’m sure that negotiations with UTLA will proceed quickly, as this is an issue that the entire educational community is will to stand (or at least sit) for.

Thank you…

……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….

When I was a kid, I watched the Olympics every two years with my family. Barcelona, Lillehammer, Atlanta, Nagano, I watched both winter games and summer games with joyful expectation.

This year, I did not end up watching the Vancouver Olympics at all, and I’m trying to track down the gradual decline of my interest in the Olympics in general over the last decade. Several theories abound, such as the fact that not owning a television makes it difficult for one to watch sporting events. Or perhaps it’s that NBC’s programming technique of broadcasting 40 seconds of hockey, followed by 94 seconds of downhill slalom, following by 17 seconds of curling, followed by 67 seconds of ice dancing is quite literally making America come down with national ADHD. Or perhaps it’s that I’m more excited about slightly more interesting international sporting event coming this summer, World Cup 2010. I suppose it also has to do with the fact that neither my colleagues, nor my students give much of a rip about the Olympics in comparison with the global fútbol tournament occurring this summer in South Africa. Four years ago, I remember getting text message updates of games and relaying the information on to my students who very much cared about the results.

What’s even crazier is that my 8th graders from Germany’s 2006 World Cup are now graduating seniors with the South Africa 2010 World Cup! These guys will be seniors in 2014, when the World Cup is in Brazil! Wow, how time flies!

-Robert Rauschenberg.

It’s Friday, and my Outlook task list says that it’s that time again for a blog post. Unfortunately, I’ve been so busy this week that I can’t even begin to mentally wrap my mind around what would be worth blogging about, a disease that I’m terming“writer’s blog”.

I wonder if the artists above suffered similarly.

This past Sunday afternoon I played racquetball for the first time, and having a blast, have made a minor commitment to try to get a bit back into shape. Now trust me, I know that setting the bar too high will only lead to utter frustration and failure, so I’m starting small, with short runs of less than two miles. The nice thing is that even a brief 10-20 minute run is quite invigorating and creates a nice transition between ending work in the afternoon and starting my evening.

We’ll see if I can just keep the motivation to keep doing it. Nothing big, just starting small, and hopefully on my way to having more energy throughout the day. [Plus it gives me a good chance to catch up on some awesome podcasts.]

  This is the parking lot at The Grove. One of the downsides of statistics is that they put into full focus the reality of situations that can only be described as abysmal.

Yet, the TFA naïveté within me says there is hope in the midst of even the most dire situation.

At Cochran, the statistics say the situation is dire. Kids enter each grade far below grade level, and somehow expected to turn around instantaneously and make marked improvement towards the top (after all, it’s a race now). Many kids do, in fact, make improvements, albeit not miraculous, and some kids simply do not. One often wonders what one can reasonably hope for.

In my parking situation, I pushed forward onto Level 3 (notice “FULL”), and began the trek around the sardine-packed level. Yet somehow, out of the blue, the convergence of my “coming”, paired with someone else’s “leaving” did, in fact, open up a parking space, and roughly 45 seconds after snapping the above photograph (don’t worry….at least I wasn’t talking or texting while driving), I was walking out of my vehicle on the way out of the structure. In the midst of impossibility, the possible became reality.

In the midst of impossibility at Cochran, I think of C****, a former student who stopped by last week to get help filling out her FAFSA application; I think of A****, an 8th grader who last year seemed to make a weekly trip to the Dean’s office, now is the leading participant and moving faster than anyone else in her Algebra class; I think of K*******, who already a stellar student, has really upped her game to take on more leadership and meta-meta-service to other students at our school.

Hope in the midst of impossibility? Sure. Is it predictable? Never.

Go drive around some full parking lots and see for yourself.

Yesterday was President’s Day. In honor of the day, I thought briefly to myself “Gee, I’m glad our President is hard at work today”, and then proceeded to enjoy a fantastic day that included, among other things, a trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or better known by locals as LACMA.

Now, when you walk into an art museum as utterly huge as LACMA, you are tempted to simply walk around, at a leisurely pace, taking in the paintings on the walls. Most folks, I observed, spent approximately 5 – 10 seconds at each particular piece before moving to the next one.

Yet,  when you do this (and believe me, I’ve done it), you find yourself very quickly suffering from visual ADD, as the museum suddenly become a checklist of token images to cross off, rather than a collection of pieces of expression, communication, and at times, beauty. I realized yesterday that to go through the museum at anything faster than a glacial pace would be analogous to purchasing a brand new CD, and only listening to the first 10 seconds of each track.

My experiment went something like this. Instead of walking from piece to piece, I decided to only take in one piece per room, a decision which allowed me to then stand in front of a piece for between 5 – 10 minutes.

The results? After getting over the initial “30 second hump” in which your mind says “Why are you still here….you’ve seen it all”, I started to notice more detail as it appeared in colors, shapes, themes, motifs, and after 5 – 10 minutes, even emotions.  Holy Bouncing Bananas Batman! This was amazing! For the rest of the afternoon, I really looked at perhaps 5 – 10 pieces in total, but those pieces were truly worth the trip there.

Do have patience, patience, patience, because when you do, absolutely amazing things can appear!

Explore your city! Last evening, my friend Carl and I drove down to Compton to try this BBQ shack that we’d both heard about in a local paper.

While I would not normally drive 30 minutes for BBQ, I must say that this BBQ was simply sublime. Bludso’s is, in fact, perhaps the best barbecue I’ve tasted here in LA (even in the face of stiff competition from such notables as Tasty-Q, and Phillip’s).

Simply oozing with tenderness and Texas hot sauce, the ribs we enjoyed were exactly what one needs at the end of a long week!

In the dining area (imagine a 15’ x 5’ hallway with barstools), Carl (who is also a teacher, albeit at a different LA middle school) and I were talking about our respective kids and how they were doing. After about 5 minutes of conversation an African American woman, perhaps in her mid to late 30s, who had been sitting nearby leaned over and asked us if we worked for Compton Unified. No, we replied, we both worked for LA Unified, their larger, northern neighbor.

Then, perhaps wondering what in the world would bring to white boys down to the heart of Compton/LA, she abrasively asked us, “So, do you teach for America”?

It’s likely that only my TFA readers will completely understand and relate to the sarcasm inherent in that question. It turns out that this lady has been an elementary school teacher in Compton for the last 12 years and has likely seen her fair share of starry-eyed, slightly arrogant, savior-type, young “teachers” pass through the hallways of her Compton school, only to abruptly leave after a pair of short and dramatic years.

We assured her that yes, some TFA teachers do, in fact, stay at their schools or in education for the long-haul (we were both living proof), yet that did nothing to alleviate the frustration on her end of members of the cult organization that Carl and I have previously belonged to.

As she waited for her order to arrive, we eventually were able to have a pleasant conversation, about what elementary grades she likes teaching (3rd grade), what kids are like at that age (you can actually teach them content), and how good the barbeque was. Her order finally arrived, and she left, wishing us a great year, yet somehow seemingly, still doubtful of our intentions.

As Carl and I refocused our efforts on the mac & cheese now staring us in the face, we both reflected on the complexities of building trust in a school, and even in a city.

Do go out and explore new places of your city! Totally worth it!