Yo Mista!

A colleague recently sent me this song (via this blog post), and I couldn't stop laughing. Enjoy.

An old friend of mine recently shared this video with me on Facebook, which I thought was pretty hilarious. An inner city high school substitute teacher takes attendance at his new placement: an all-white suburban science classroom. While there are some obvious problems with the stereotypes this skit plays to, there are definitely some truths I could also appreciate. The substitute clearly didn't need any particular "strategy" to win over these students, who were all prepared and ready to go in the science classroom. The entire class is already seated by the time the bell rings. Some students even have their lab goggles on and many have a notebook open ready to begin writing. To me, that is hilarious - if I were in that situation, I would probably have so much free time at the end of my classes, who knows maybe I would teach two classes in one period!

When I was in high school, I knew how to cheat. And if I wanted to cheat, I could get away with it. Back then, I learned how to program words, equations, and complete paragraphs into my TI-83 graphing calculator. The "A-student" cheaters were the ones who didn't get caught. We had developed effective methods with minimal risk. For example, writing out an entire essay lightly on notebook paper the night before and simply retracing our pre-written essay during test time. We would strategically position ourselves next to those who might be marginally better than us during an exam we knew for sure we couldn't ace ourselves. But this new seating assignment wouldn't occur on test day - that's too suspicious. The new seating arrangement would take place weeks before the exam. The list goes on. Some educators may disagree with me on this (from an ethics perspective), but I believe the art of cheating properly requires strategy, intelligence, and intrinsic motiva...

There's something about blowing my kids' minds that makes me feel pretty awesome. What makes me feel even more awesome (if possible)? Finding out that my kids are teaching each other my tricks and lessons outside of class time. That's a special feeling. Warm and gooey. At a transfer high school, such as the one I teach at, the skill levels of students vary significantly. A student with fifth grade math skills could be sitting directly right next to a student with eleventh grade math skills in my Algebra class. With that kind of variety, it's very important I provide some side-challenges to the students bored out of their minds with my class, particularly those who passed the NY State Regents Examinations and just need the class credit to move on. So last week as a side-challenge, I brought a calculator over to Jamie, a new student sitting in the front row and said, "Okay, once you finish the problems on the board, figure out how I did this." I showed he...

As a teacher, I have no fucking idea what the day is going to bring me. I usually expect something good, bad, funny, and a pile of shit all together at least once everyday. What I didn't ever expect was this: getting accused of being a member of a secret organization that's plotting to take over the world. Beyond shock though, I felt sorry. I felt sorry my kids had to equate me with some ridiculous conspiracy theory to justify their own trajectory in life. During some free time in class, several students were grouped around a classroom computer. They had finished their work and so I rewarded them by allowing them to do whatever they want. It's a nice and easy system that works. "Make time to waste time" - something I believe in and preach. As I walked around collecting papers and tidying up my classroom, I noticed my students looking up Illuminati articles, researching Illuminati symbols and reading articles and gossip columns that accuse incredibly rich...

This was too funny not to repost. Obviously, 3.14 is a simple approximation for pi. Here's pi to million digits. Memorize that for the quiz on Friday, bitch.