This post fulfills my posting requirement for Tina Cardone's "Day in the Life" project. It is for the special day "Last Day of School."
8:10 -- I arrive at the first of my two schools. Second period is the first of two advanced classes.
Like yesterday, the regular teacher has set up a ten-point assignment where students must watch a video on the Food Truck competition and then answer a question. But there are two problems here -- the first, as we've seen yesterday, the sound doesn't work on the video. The other problem is that the video is 40 minutes long (a one-hour show minus commercials), but it's a minimum day -- so classes are less than 40 minutes long today.
I solve both problems at once -- I watch the video before school, then summarize it for the students so that they can answer the question. The competition takes place in St. Louis before moving to Chicago. The winning team turns out to be Pho-nomenal, the first ever all-female team champions on the show. Many students are disappointed -- especially the boys, who were hoping that the all-male Waffle Love team would win.
After yesterday's arguments in this class, today I use a motivating trick similar to the one I used during tutorial yesterday -- each time five more students submit the assignment, I sing a song. This class earns three songs, since just over 15 students complete the assignment.
As for the main song for today, I've finally updated my "No Scrubs" (from TLC) parody. Recall that my first parody of this song contained a certain disparaging word that I no longer use in class (and I don't even want to post that word on the blog any longer). Instead, the new song is called "No Zeroes" -- after all, I'm trying to get the students to submit the assignment in order to avoid getting a 0/10 score:
And is also known as a buster
Always talkin' about what he wants
So (no)
I don't want your number (no)
I don't want to INTERVIEW you and (no)
I don't want YOUR RESUME (no)
I don't want none of your time and (no)
I don't want no ZERO
A ZERO is a GRADE that can't get no JOB from me
Hanging out the passenger side
Of his best friend's ride
Trying to GET HIRED BY me
I don't want no ZERO
A ZERO is a GRADE that can't get no JOB from me
Hanging out the passenger side
Of his best friend's ride
Trying to GET HIRED BY me
'CAUSE his MATH is kinda weak
And I know that he cannot approach me
'Cause I'm lookin' like class and he's lookin' like trash
WHEN HE DOESN'T KNOW BASIC MATH
So (no) (to Chorus)
A ZERO is a GRADE that can't get no JOB from me (original TLC line: "A scrub is a guy...")
In other words, I'm not calling a student a "zero" or any disparaging term -- I'm calling their grade or score a zero. This should avoid the problems I had with the previous song.
8:45 -- Second period leaves and fourth period arrives. This is the first of two regular classes.
This class didn't meet yesterday due to the seventh grade activity, and so these students are behind the second period class. Nevertheless, this class catches up due to the song incentive, and so they also get three songs today.
After the "No Scrubs" parody, I let the students choose the other two songs. For some reason, each class ends up choosing "The Big March," even though it's well past the month of March.
9:20 -- Fourth period leaves. It is time for me to depart to the second school, my long-term school. As it turns out, this school has a late start minimum day (similar to the monthly minimum days that we had from October to December on the blog). This school hasn't even started yet. Thus I have a much longer travel break than usual.
During the longer break, I decide to provide a gift for graduating eighth graders. Yesterday I sang the eighth grade graduation song "Nothing's Gonna Stop the Love of Friends" from the old TV show Ghostwriter, and so I give the eighth graders the same gift that the graduates receive on the TV show -- a new pen. In addition, I hand out the usual candy. I do this right outside of my old classroom -- in between second and third periods, since both of these are Math 8 classes.
10:55 -- Third period arrives at my long-term school. This is the second of two regular cooking classes.
At this school the sound system is working, but there's still not much time for the whole video. And so I play only the last 15 minutes of the video for them, and then I leave them time to complete the work and earn the songs.
11:30 -- Third period ends for snack break.
11:40 -- Fourth period arrives. This is the second of two advanced cooking classes.
This class is tough, because the regular teacher specifically mentioned noon as the deadline for all assignments to be submitted. Thus I play the first 15 minutes of the video, leaving them five minutes to type a couple of sentences before the deadline. I don't take attendance until the clock reaches noon.
This group is the hardest-working of all, as it's the only one to reach 20 students and four songs. Since there's only a few minutes left after taking attendance to perform these songs, I start with "No Zeroes," followed by two of my quicker songs. Then I let the students choose the last song -- and of course, this group chooses "The Big March" yet again.
12:10 -- Fourth period leaves and fifth period arrives. This is the ASB class.
There is one more end-of-the-year activity for ASB to do -- a clap-out for the eighth graders. The younger ASB students visit all eighth grade classes to lead them out to the field. I walk to the field with the ASB eighth graders, who join the rest of their agemates.
Then all of the students walk from the field to the street, with Grades 6-7 clapping along the way. I follow the graduates and sing "Nothing's Gonna Stop the Love of Friends" again.
Once the eighth graders make it to the street, they can go home. But there are still ten minutes or so left in class, I return to the ASB room with the Grades 6-7 ASB kids. I finally take their attendance, and then I round out the day with some more songs. I return to the main songs that I've been performing today, "No Zeroes" and "The Big March." For the last verse of this song, I sing the lines:
And in some ways, this pandemic school year was felt like a Big March the entire year.
12:45 -- Fifth period leaves, thus ending my day of teaching,
2:00 -- The actual graduation ceremony begins. It's a drive-through ceremony -- for the next three hours, students and their families drive past the school. They take a grab bag, then proceed over to an area where the student can get out of the car to have a picture taken. They can return tomorrow to pick up these pictures.
I'm not obligated to stay for the ceremony, but I voluntarily watch the first hour for two reasons. The first is that I did teach some of these eighth graders from late September to early January, so I do have some connection to them. And the second is because I missed watching the eighth graders graduate at the old charter school four years ago. This takes us directly into the reflection part of this post.
In many ways, I think of this long-term subbing position as the completion of the year I taught at the old charter school. The length of time I spent at both schools is close to a full school year. And we can count all the minimum day posts (including today's) as part of the Tina Cardone challenge that I started that year -- the monthly posts plus the special day "Last Day of School."
I'm not quite sure what the graduation ceremony and last day of school would have looked like exactly at the old charter. I know that the final week of school was a special "Week of Service" -- which turned out to be having the students help pack away classroom materials to prepare from the move from our co-located school (sharing with a district elementary school) to our own building.
The graduation was on the Friday before that "Week of Service." I know that the eighth graders went on a field trip to Magic Mountain after the ceremony. Today's school ordinarily has a grad trip to Knott's Berry Farm, but that was cancelled due to the pandemic. It was replaced by yesterday's day of outdoor activities and games on the field.
I didn't see much of these activities, since I had to spend most of the day inside the classroom to supervise the seventh graders. It's likely that I would've had to do the same at the old charter school -- our charter was small without a lot of extra classified staff, and so someone would've had to watch Grades 6-7 while the eighth graders are enjoying their final week. In particular, I might have been cocooned in the classroom during the ceremony, and may not have been able to go to Magic Mountain.
Perhaps at the very least, the charter would have had something similar to today's clap-out, so that the Grades 6-7 kids and I could have seen some part of the celebration. And I could have seen the eighth graders at some point during the day so I could congratulate them.
All of this is, of course, describing what would have happened if I'd completed that school year. Given that in reality I didn't complete the year, I could have just attended the ceremony on my own -- then I wouldn't have had to worry about supervising Grades 6-7 since I was no longer an employee. After the ceremony, I found out that my predecessor teacher had attended the graduation -- and if he was there, then surely I could have been there.
So this is part of the reason that I wanted to watch today's ceremony -- I still feel guilty about not seeing my charter eighth graders graduate. In some ways, being there today makes up a little for my not being there four years ago.
Those eighth graders, of course, are now seniors who have their high school graduation. I have no idea where they are -- they might be at LAUSD high schools, or perhaps charter high schools (as they obviously attended a charter middle school). There's no way for me to know and find out. It would really make up for my absence four years ago if I could attend the graduations of some of those students, but I don't know where any of them are now.
Today is Sevenday on the Eleven Calendar:
Resolution #7: We sing to help us learn math.
Well, I definitely sing today -- there's no need to repeat which songs I performed.
Today on her Daily Epsilon on Math 2021, Rebecca Rapoport writes:
What is the ratio of the area of the outer hexagon to the area of the inner hexagon?
(Here are givens from the graph: The sides of the outer hexagon are all 7. The region between the two hexagons is divided into six right triangles, each with a congruent acute angle, and the side opposite the acute angles are all sides of the outer hexagon, namely 7.)
There are several ways to approach this problem. One way is to note that the six given congruent angles are all exterior angles of the inner hexagon. Since the exterior angles of a convex polygon add up to 360, each angle is 60, and so the six right triangles are all 30-60-90 triangles. This is enough to conclude that both hexagons are in fact regular hexagons.
The specific side length of 7 is irrelevant. Instead, we think in terms of 30-60-90, where those 7's are the sides opposite the 60. Each side of the inner hexagon is equal to the hypotenuse of the triangle (which is 2/sqrt(3) times the given side, which is a long leg) minus the short leg of the triangle (which is 1/sqrt(3) times the given side), so it's 1/sqrt(3) times the given side.
So each side of the outer hexagon is sqrt(3) times each side of the inner hexagon. By the Fundamental Theorem of Similarity, the area of the outer is sqrt(3)^2 times that of the inner hexagon. Therefore the desired area ratio is 3 -- and of course, today's date is the third.
I usually end my Day 180 post with my plans for next year. Well, here's one thing -- I don't plan to keep all three of my subbing districts. While subs often work in two districts, three is rare -- I only added the third district because they hired me as a long-term sub. But as of now, I haven't decided which two districts to keep.
And so my usual discussion about next year's blog calendar holidays and quirks is dropped. I don't know which districts I'm working in next year, so I can't say which calendar I'll follow on the blog.
The blog is now in summer mode. My first summer post will be next week at some point.
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