Yo Mista!

I had the incredible opportunity to visit my old high school while I was in Chicago last week.  This was something I was really looking forward to; I was worried I wouldn’t have enough time to cram in a visit. I wanted to not only visit my old teachers, but also to walk around the hallways aimlessly and remember what it was like to be me eight years ago. It still blows my mind that I’ve been out of high school for that long. Okay, fine. The voice of accuracy in my head desperately wants me to clarify how long it’s really been. Technically, I had gone back to visit a few of my teachers shortly after I graduated high school, but I choose not to count that as a “proper” visit as I was still in college and coming back home quite often. It’s not like I was living out of the state as I am now. So it doesn’t count, okay? So Wednesday morning, I walked into the visitor’s entrance at gate 3 and received my visitor’s pass for the day. It was odd because as a student, I neve...

Here's a link to an interesting opinion on the NYT by David Bornstein about a program called Jump that is being used in the classroom to help teach math. Bornstein makes some great points about teaching math, e.g. the importance of confidence and the need for teachers and students to think of math as a ladder rather than a bunch of random skills. I would've liked to read more about the program itself and how it works. I suppose I will wait until Friday when the author will responds to comments and discusses the program in further detail. Okay, back to vacation land. Thanks to Ahsan for the link.

Is it Friday yet? No seriously, is it Friday yet? Next week is spring break for New York City public schools so I'll be on vacation for a solid week and a half. There's something super cool about being in my mid-20s and still having spring break, wouldn't you concur? I bet you'd concur. For spring break, I'm going back to Chicago to see old friends, my brother and just chill the fuck out and reminisce. I haven't been back in nearly two years, so I'm pretty excited. There's something incredibly appealing about going back home and seeing familiar signs, roads, houses, and people. Driving along the same streets you grew up on. Speeding past familiar shops and restaurants, some still carrying on with business as usual. Once I start drifting down memory lane, I find it extremely difficult to return back to consciousness. It's like jumping in a pool and letting yourself slowly sink to the bottom. Fun. What will make this trip even more interesting is...

I guess the title is misleading: today Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Cathleen Black will no longer be New York City Schools Chancellor. Read about it here . For those unfamiliar with the topic, Cathleen Black was a former magazine executive with absolutely no experience in education. She was handpicked by Bloomberg less than five months ago to replace Joel Klein. Her tenure has been marked by a lot of controversy, mostly stemming from her lack of qualifications and knowledge about the education system. Revamping the system is necessary, but I'm not too sure education can be thought of a business model. If I'm selling apple juice, I'm going to pick and choose the best apples and use my machines to turn apples to apple juice. I wouldn't use bad apples to make this juice, or else it would harm my business and reputation. I certainly wouldn't replace my machines if I found bad apples growing on my trees: it's not the machine's fault for the apple going b...

I'm teaching a mini-unit on conversions between units right now in my Algebra classes. This means converting between U.S. units, metric units and conversions between both systems. For example: Mount Everest is 29,028 feet tall, which makes it the tallest mountain in the world. How many miles tall is this? How many inches? For death penalty cases by lethal injection in the United States, criminals are given 5 grams of sodium thiopental. How much is this in kilograms? If you're speeding down the highway in the Dominican Republican at 100 km/hr, how fast are you going in mi/hr? Compare this speed to New York State's highway speed limit of 65 mi/hr. In my limited experience, this seems to be a topic students tend to enjoy and remain interested in because it's more relevant than other topics. Today, I planned on introducing the metric system to my students, who for the most part have never thoroughly learned the system due to this country's obsession with the old ...