Moving Day

Starting today, I can be found here. I'll be updating a little more (hopefully) and adding some focus. See you soon.

Wow

I'm unfortunately just beginning to pay the appropriate amount of attention to education reform, so I will leave the commentary to the experts. I'm linking to this post without comment. Eduwonk writes

Here’s a proposed bill in Maine:

“A salary of a teacher may not be based upon the measurable performance or productivity of the teacher or a student of the teacher.”

Gosh, why would anyone be reticent about investing a lot of public money in a system like that? Now I don’t know anyone who thinks a teacher’s entire salary should be based on outcomes, but some how about some component? A little? A tiny bit? None? Seriously?

Lowboy

Just started Lowboy by John Wray.

Have Your Cake and Eat it Too

Today is officially Pi Day, although we celebrated at school yesterday. Before I started teaching I never would have believed an 8th grader could recite 300 digits of Pi. Yesterday afternoon "J" proved me wrong. I also didn't think I would ever "celebrate" Pi Day but, sure enough, I did.

As part of our "celebration" of Pi Day, the student in each advisory that memorized the most digits won the opportunity to throw a pie at their (favorite) teacher. At least that's what I am telling myself. I am a 32 year old male first year 6th and 8th grade teacher in an inner-city school who runs a pretty tight ship. I didn't stand a chance. And sure enough, I didn't even make it through the 6th grade. It was a humbling and hilarious moment. I can still smell the cheap whipped cream in my beard. Thank god for the teacher happy hour last night.

The Stuff That Keeps Me Up at Night

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you this public service announcement:

It's not education, it's not history, it's this. By far, Simon's piece is the best thing I have read in a long time about the media dying. I stole this from the great Fredeeky.

Now back to your show...

Plan B

Last week's This American Life reminded me why I started blogging in the first place - to document my thoughts, reactions, and observations during this first year in the classroom. I'm going to spend the next few months doing just that.

Naturally, this brings me to last week. On Thursday, I accompanied 20 7th and 8th graders to the Alvin Alley American Dance Theater in Midtown Manhattan. As a charter school, we have an amazing network of supporters. This trip was arranged by the Robin Hood Foundation and a lot of employees from Burberry helped out. It was an incredible afternoon and watching our students give 100% in the dance studio was well worth the trip into Manhattan.

On Friday, I joined our 5th grade writing teacher ice skating in Prospect Park with 10 "VIPs" from the 5th grade. It's incredible spending time with students I don't teach. The difference between an 8th grader (and even 6th) and a 5th grader is palpable. 8th graders are a little too cool for school, whereas 5th graders couldn't be happier hanging with a teacher after school, falling on the ice, and just be kids all afternoon.

Finally, Friday night I played in a tennis tournament supporting scholarships for kids to play tennis in Prospect Park. It's a great cause and one I hope to write more about in the future.

I should mention that before Thursday I had never taken a dance class in my entire life, and before Friday I had never been on ice skates. So yes, my life is a lot different these days.

Excess

I'm not an art critic, I don't have any degrees in the subject, and my knowledge is pretty much limited to a few survey classes in college and a lot of trips to museums. That said, I caught the preview of the Martin Kippenberger retrospective at MOMA this weekend. Kind of loved a lot of it. One highlight was the installation the Happy End of Franz Kafka's Amerika. Images and an explanation won't do it justice.

Snow Day pt. 1

As previously mentioned, my life is a lot different these days. Even though it didn't happen until March 2, we finally received that wonderful gift from the DOE known as the "snow day." Huge windfall. To celebrate, I am blogging, writing lesson plans, reading, and drinking a lot of coffee.


Here's a jam I came across today on a blog I hadn't read before:

The Thermals - Now I Can See

but they came, and when they'd finally made it here

I'm not completely sure how I feel about this article, but it is worth the read. I'm in no rush to hang out with Darnielle, but I will admit I tend to go for days only listening to the mountain goats. He writes incredible depictions of almost any type of situation - the bible, history, relationships, etc...... That's about all I am going to say. His story is also fascinating.

By the time Darnielle graduated from high school, he was using heroin and later crystal meth. Eventually, a therapist told him he might find a salve for his own pain in helping others. He started taking classes to become a psychiatric-nurse technician and found work at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, California. “It’s not that complicated,” Darnielle says. “My favorite movies are gory horror films. I love Faulkner. I wanted to see the most painful things possible. Maybe it was to see people worse off than me, but a lot of it was just to see how many bullets I could eat.”

Revised 3/3/09 - I think this raises some important points. I'll leave it at that. For now.

Imaginary Presidents

On a lighter note, thanks to Kottke for this retrospective of the imaginary Presidency of Al Gore.

And why did he pressure the universally admired Fed chairman Alan Greenspan to step down early in 2002? Replacing him with that old warhorse Paul Volcker was a nasty surprise, especially when Volcker choked off a promising housing boom in 2002 and imposed old, outdated regulations on lenders. Some properties lost as much as 8% of their value that year. Now housing prices are rising really slowly, and GDP barely grew by 3% this year.

Happy President's Day

While many of us enjoy the day off and golf, bowl, or spend time with our families, please take a minute to think about why we have this day off. It's a big year for Presidential History, but I really loved this post looking back at our first president's trip across the Delaware. And this post about the painting getting a new frame.

A lot different

I get asked at least once a week just how much different is my life as a teacher different than mine as a lawyer? Someday I will come up with a comprehensive list (that will continue to evolve), but for now suffice it to say, that a year ago my week of vacation in February would have been spent on conference calls, checking my blackberry, and angering everyone I was on vacation with. Now, it's pretty much just what you see here (which is a story for another time).

"These were called breadlines."

It's Sunday night and I'm grading papers - specifically an essay exam from last week on the Great Depression. Due to the recent push for the state ELA exam I feel like my 8th graders are really at the top of their game right now when writing. Of course there are still hilarious (or disappointing) syntax problems, but a lot of students are writing great thesis statements, accurately using specific details to support their arguments, and just writing better.

That said, there are three problems I encounter perpetually: (1) inability/refusal to follow directions; (2) the "pile on," whereby a large number of seemingly arbitrary facts are grouped together in hopes of answering a question; and (3) "the blur," where issues and time periods are blended together and dumped onto a page - references to the Industrial Revolution in the midst of answering a question about the causes of the Great Depression.

Oh, and as you probably guessed the photo is by Dorothea Lange, 1940 near Bakersfield, CA.

A long way to go

I plan on blogging a lot more about my first year teaching in Room 507, but thoughts like this have crossed my mind a lot this year. It's funny to think that by Gladwell's theory, I was about 2 years past being an "expert" lawyer when I quit.

Small Change

I don't know why, but small stories like this make me feel good (even better) about the election.

The Mysterious Mixer

I realize this wasn't intended to be a music blog, but I discovered bitorrent this weekend and have been in heaven. Before the Animal Collective show last week, they were playing some pretty incredible dub that I didn't recognize and Shazam really let me down. In what can only be described as divine intervention, the Village Voice actually mentioned the song in the review. How that happened, I don't know. But anyway, I now know who Bullwackie (aka Lloyd Barnes, The Mysterious Mixer, etc...) is. I'm having trouble finding stuff and I haven't figured out how to upload my own, so enjoy these.

Now if he can just hit some more bombs...

Fielder and the Brewers agree to a two year deal.

Take a Walk Out in the Light Drizzle

I recently caught (insert hyperbole here) Animal Collective at the Bowery Ballroom, the day after the release of their 9th and most "accessible" album, Merriweather Post Pavilion. Enough has been written and said about it - it's great. And the show was great, although I couldn't help but feel that a lot of the chaos from their old shows was missing. I used to walk away from an AC show somewhat disappointed that I didn't recognize more of the material, but only because the performances were even more amazing than the albums. I also couldn't help thinking that the crowd loving My Girls wouldn't be as thrilled during We Tigers. This is a great version of the later from the Malta Festival in 2007.

Going to Gambier

I'm kind of excited about these shows. As much as I love recent Mountain Goats tours, nothing beats the solo shows.

From John:

We're going to stand alone onstage and play our guitars and sing old songs & new, and then we'll probably play together. We are going to sit side by side with our acoustic guitars like two out of the five guys on the Five Man Acoustical Jam album, only with fewer Tesla songs. Because the whole point of playing an acoustic guitar is not to unplug. It's to get raw and draw blood.

Although this isn't a music blog (I'll leave that to the professionals), it is named after a tMG song, which I'll probably write more about later. I won't be going to Gambier, but I will be attending the NYC show, part of the Wordless Music Series.

Plan

I'm not completely sure what the purpose of starting a blog at this point is, as there seem to be plenty on the Internets these days. That said, I am hoping to learn HTML, waste time, and maybe retire early .

Web Presence

Starts here.