M A Y 0 3
Out of all the archives, I'm not entirely sure why May 2003 stuck out for you to click on, but who am I to judge? Luckily, we've got crazy posts galore. Don ran into Andrew after an interview. Dave announced that the final 5 TFA chapters were coming soon. Mike wrote a highly entertaining tirade about music, monkeys, the Matrix and middle school. Dave wrote about seeing The Matrix: Reloaded before opening night. Jeff gave us a few interesting links, including the addictive Isketch and the hilarious Fat Star Wars Kid. Andrew graduated from JMU, much to his surprise. Jeff rocked the house with his thoughts on the X-Men sequel, a Foo Fighters Internet Broadcast and being scared by The Exorcist. Dave also wrote Chapter 3 in the TFA Chronicles. By all means, enjoy, it is safe to eat.
randomness at its finest...
So...It's Wednesday around 1pm and I'm sitting in the Crystal City Food Court eating lunch with 5 other coworkers and I hear a strangely familiar voice saying,"Eh, DonnieG5!!" I crane my neck, and yes, ladies and gentlemen, its the one and only infamous pal of good friend ron jomp, save votre, and it doesnt matter buttons... andrew wine werner. Accompanied by Mr. Werner (Will Ferrell) Roo informs me that he has an interview with the US Patent & Trade Office at 3pm and he and his pops are grabbing some lunch prior to the interview. When asked what dining facility he would select, the fateful response came... Taco Bell. So Andrew, I hope your interview went excellent and you received a job offer, and on a related note, I hope you didn't poop your pants. Jeff is having a party at his house on Saturday, June 7th and I am officially inviting everyone with Internet access. Slater.
"A Whiter Shade of Pale" (Procol Harum)
Wednesday, May 28 at 10:40 AM
Three-Day Weekend
Hope everyone had a good Memorial Day holiday. Not much new to report other than Jinsoo visiting me this past weekend and Jen and Blair coming up this weekend. Coming up (probably on June 16) I'll begin writing the last five "Dave's TFA Chronicles" and post a new one each Monday. They're going to be the longest stories written on this site so far, but I'm putting a lot of time into them for several reasons. I mean, the main function of this site, the reason it was made, has been to keep in contact with the Okay Samurai extended family and our circle of friends, but we get most of our traffic from search engines, the video game and repeat visitors. I want there to be a firsthand account of a TFA experience as a resource for people who are interested in the program. I want to tell the full story to my friends who have only gotten bits and pieces from e-mails or phone calls. I want to remember the school year and the kids and write it all down. Someone told me at the beginning of this school year, "you're going to be one of those people that writes a book after your two years." I'll be writing an online short story after one year, so that will have to do.
The site may be down for a few days since our website host is going out of business. I'm in the process of switching things over to an Atlanta-based company, but just a heads up if you get a blank screen for the next week or so.
Monday, May 26 at 5:39 PM
Music, Matrix, Monkeys and Middle School Madness
So Dave, Andrew and I took a trip to the Guitar Center yesterday because they were having a sale. Nick (the infamous arm-licking roommate) had called from his trip to Ohio and said that he heard on the radio that you could get 10 pairs of sticks and a cymbal for 29 bucks. Yeah right. So we went anyway, just to see, and lo and behold, Nick wasn't kidding. The sticks are guitar center sticks, but they're pretty good. The cymbal is a Wuhan 12 inch China. The quality is... well, let me put it this way, when you get a cymbal for about 12 bucks, what do you expect? When we tried it out, Andrew's comment was, "it sounds like it's made from recycled tin cans." Luckily, that's exactly the sound I was looking for. Among the other purchases, I bought a double bass pedal. It's pretty great, since I've always had slow feet, this may help me out a lot, once I get accustomed to moving my left foot around and using it on off-beats. Dave also bought some kind of wire that hooks his keyboard up directly to his computer. Be prepared for audio craziness the likes of which you've only heard in the Zelda theme or on a Wutang Killer Bees album!
The highlight of the trip was probably in the parking lot. These two women in an SUV called out and asked if we'd seen the Matrix Reloaded. They had DVDs of it, apparently. Andrew bought one for $10. Turns out someone took a video camera into the movie and taped the film, then burned it on DVD. Very funny. Dave is looking at venues this week for us to play, and you may see us down on the harbor this summer, much to my girlfriend's chagrin.
The best TV show out right now is American Idol. In fact, it's the only one I watch. Thankfully, they finally kicked off the annoying marine. Even my own tone-deaf ears could pick up his gaffes, and he looked like a dying water buffalo when he danced. Kimberly, Ruben and Clay far outstripped him in all categories. Now that it's down to just Ruben and Clay, I can't decide who I want to win. They're both great, although I think Simon is right. Clay should be on broadway. Not a bad singing career to have either...
The Video Game of the moment is Monkey Balls 2 on Gamecube. Dave and I have been playing quite a bit. There's a story mode, which is apparently translated from the Japanese. It's ridiculously funny, and I'm not quite sure what the story has to do with the actual game. But the highlight of the game is the multiplayer vs. mode. There're six multiplayer games you can unlock, the best are Monkey Dogfight in which you fly your monkey around in this glider thing and try to shoot down the others with missiles, and monkey tennis. If you have several friends who you like to play video games with (and perhaps imbibe with), then this game could provide a number of hours of entertainment.
On school notes, things in my classroom have been getting better, while the overall sixth grade situation is getting worse. I've gotten two of my classes under control all of the time, and the other two most of the time. It looks like a percentage somewhere higher than 60% of my students will pass my class for the year, which seems abysmal, but it is about the average for the district. Last year, 40,000 kids either failed outright or had to go to summer school, out of 105,000 in the district. Believe it, those numbers are right. The thing I'm proud of is that I have lowered my standards very little from the beginning of the year, and the 60% of my children have raised themselves to meet my standards. Unfortunately, I'm extremely disappointed by the other 40%. I feel that I've failed them. Next year though, I won't settle for less than 80%...
The thing about my school and district that bothers me the most is a lack of backup for the teachers. Things in my classroom have been getting better, but there are still huge problems. For instance, I was punched by a student a couple weeks ago - I was the second teacher he's hit. He was proposed to be expelled, and the district sent him back to our school. Then, last week, I had sent a kid to the principal's office three times that day, and he was yelling at me across the classroom and refused to leave. I didn't know what to do to get him out, so I stooped to a level I shouldn't have to stoop to, and made fun of him. He threatened to "beat the s**t out of me," and screamed racial epithets at me in the hall. He was suspended for a couple days. A couple months ago, a young female teacher quit because a student had threatened her life, TWICE. He was suspended for a couple days and came right back. I asked around, and the other teachers said that nothing will ever really happen unless a teacher files charges against the student. So instead of the district handling discipline and supporting the teachers, it's expected that adults file charges against children. That's great. I'm thinking about writing a letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun about the district allowing a dangerous and violent atmosphere to fester in the schools. Teachers have to be extremely agressive to get kids to simply learn, and we have to sink to a lower level a civility to do it. I never wanted to talk the way I talk to sixth graders, and it's wuite upsetting to feel guilty every day when you come home. Unbelievable. But at least things are getting better in my classroom. That's all I can really control, and I'm satisfied with the progress. Next year, since I know how to start out, I don't think it'll be like this, and for that I'm very thankful...
On a less serious note, check out Monkey Balls 2. You'll be psyched...
Sunday, May 18 at 11:21 AM
holy crap that was freakin' awesome
I saw The Matrix Reloaded on Wednesday night at 10PM at The Senator in Baltimore. Around the country, the studio decided to have about 2,000 Wednesday night shows prior to the official Thursday opening. Four 6th grade teachers ranging from 24-48 joined me as we waited in a line that wrapped around the building. Many people were dressed as Agents or Neo; as expected, there were a lot of nerds with loud philosophical theories about the Matrix. So we said things like "Wait...this is a sequel?" and "I think that Bill and Ted guy is in this" to make them mad. As for the movie, which most of you have probably seen by now, it rocked. The Neo vs. 100 Agent Smiths fight surpasses most climactic kung-fu movie battles. You take Yuen Woo Ping, arguably the most famous name for fight choreography in Hong Kong cinema, and train Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving for 2 months specifically for this one fight scene. Add in slow-motion, bullet-time, a weapon, flying and a seemingly endless onslaught of enemies, and you get an exciting, creative melee. Flying has never been cooler either. And the freeway scene - woah. Apparently it's opening up in IMAX around here soon, so I'll definitely be seeing it again.
Saturday, May 17 at 10:02 AM
iSketch
not sure what this is all about since i've only looked at it for like 2 minutes, but apparently it's like an online pictionary game you can play with people on the internet. check it out!
iSketch
over and out -jeff
Friday, May 16 at 7:14 AM
FAT KID + STAR WARS + SPECIAL EFFECTS = HILARIOUS
hello everyone. i'm sure some of you hip cats have already seen this, but just in case you haven't, it is time for you to see it. so, this kid likes darth maul, and he has a stick and he likes to act like he knows how to do the moves, etc...the first link in this link will show you the original video of him showing off his best jedi stuff, and the second one, someone remixed it and added the light saber effects and music to make it look a little more cinematic. i highly suggest that you watch both of them in their entirety. Enjoy!
http://web.gwax.com/swk
-Jeff
Tuesday, May 13 at 10:19 AM
this was the vehicle, these were the people
So apparently I don't have to go back to school again... ever. That's kind of nice. After graduation I'm going to be heading down to the Outer Banks for a little OBXtreme action for a week with my roomates. While I'm down there I'm sure we'll all catch the Matrix Reloaded and hopefully Lizzy Maguire if there's time. Saw X2 the other day, loved it. I always liked playing as Nightcrawler in that old arcade game so it was nice to see him in there. After the week in the sun I'm actually going to stay in Harrisonburg for a month or two while I finish up my research from the past few years. Hopefully by the time that's all taken care of I'll have a job to go to. Well I've got to go play golf now and then possibly fall asleep watching a movie before hitting the bars tonight. Out like a trout. -Andrew"Power of Love" Huey Lewis and the News, "Breakout" Foo Fighters, "Binary" Brave Saint Saturn
Thursday, May 8 at 11:49 AM
a better hookup than jvan zebari
I hear you, Edward Split. A teacher at my school got tickets for the 6th grade teachers to see the 10 PM show of Matrix Reloaded on May 15; the final trailer is absolutely incredible. And while you're at it, check out the new Mario Kart game...
[EDIT 8:14:22 PM, 5.7.03] Oh wait, actually we have tickets for Wednesday the 14th, the day before it comes out. Mr. Hopkins, you're the man now dawg.
Monday, May 5 at 1:39 PM
X2
So, my roommate and I ventured out on this partly cloudy sunday afternoon to watch X2. The movie season has snuck up on me, and I must say this was a great movie to start out the season. I am mostly focused on the new Matrix movie, so this movie was pushed to the back of my memory for lack of an excuse. I found X2 to be much more violent (which was good) and more to the point than the first movie because it didn't have to educate everyone that hadn't been exposed to the x-men before. So happy viewing, and here's the rating, on a 100 pt. scale as always:
[X2 - 87] over and out, -jeffBackground Music: "Something to Talk About" Badly Drawn Boy, "Rose Room" Charlie Christian.
at 6:55 AM
Dave's Teach For America Chronicles / Chapter Three: The New York Institute
Two yellow school buses picked us up early Monday morning to take us to C.I.S. 22, the middle school assigned to us for teaching in the Bronx. The first of our five weeks in New York consisted of intense training inside vacant classrooms. The hundred-some-odd Teach For America corps members were divided into six groups, each led by a CMA ("Corps Member Advisor"). Nick was in my CMA group, as were quite a few other Baltimore corps members. Our team was led by a TFA veteran named John White, a fellow UVA grad who had been teaching in New Jersey.
Any success that I can claim as a teacher has to be attributed to John White. His enthusiasm, creativity, and leadership were personality traits that I constantly tried to emulate over the five weeks of training and through out my year of teaching. By the end of New York, a few people noted how similar I had become to John (I was "Little John"). This is the John who told us a story (and he'd probably kill me if he knew I was writing this) about being so frustrated with his class that he walked out and came back in with a grocery bag over his head. About his failed "wheel of consequences" discipline system. About his imaginative idea to use paper remote controls to teach parts of speech. He always carried a clipboard around (the "tool of the visionary" as he put it), constantly spinning it around in his hand; to this day, my clipboard never leaves my side while I'm in the classroom.
The first week rushed by, and I started to become saturated with all things teaching. Lesson plans, reading strategies, gradebooks, bathroom procedures, diversity awareness and discipline systems were always on my mind. We would bounce back and forth between workshops and end the day reviewing and discussing it all with John. To say this was a crash course is an understatement, but everything was presented extremely well and I learned so much in that first week. At the end of the week, we were assigned in groups of four to classrooms. We would spend the next four weeks here, teaching real kids in real summer school and giving them real grades. No animatronic or virtual test classroom here. We were thrown into Mrs. Henry's classroom at the end of the second floor hallway, given a few textbooks and materials, and learned firsthand about how to teach. My group consisted of another Baltimore guy, Kendall, and two girls headed to California, Sara and Allison. We would usually teach for 90 minutes by ourselves, but we worked together as a group for most activities outside of the classroom.
Donnell was a kid who read on a second grade level in the 6th grade. He showed up less than half of the time and liked to sleep, but we could have great video game conversations. Nereida was a 6th grader in summer school for her poor math scores. She was talkative and liked to draw me pictures of the cartoon character Tweety. Orlando and Luis loved baseball and were native Spanish speakers; 12-year-old Orlando told us how proud he was working as a bag boy at a grocery store to make some money for his family. Our classroom of 12 students had enough to motivate me for the rest of the year. After a workshop on the importance of parent interaction, I gave Nereida's mother a call to tell her how well her daughter was progressing. Tears were audible on the other line. "Thank you. No teacher has ever called home before. She's so smart, I'm so proud of her, thank you so much." That phone call will stick with me forever. It's the day that I learned how much responsibility a teacher has to help his or her students succeed in life. The job suddenly became a hundred times more important.
So the teaching and learning part of the TFA institute was stressful and challenging, but we still managed to have a great time through it all. We had a crazy bus driver named Ruben who spoke little English except for "Vamanos!", which is exactly what he yelled when he raced the other bus home one day and cut off an ambulance to do so. On the last day of school, he stopped by an open fire hydrant that kids were playing in and everyone in the bus ran through the water and got squirted by water guns. These kids had tried to hit our bus with water every day, and they couldn't believe it when their daily target stopped in the middle of the street and unloaded dozens of teachers. Ruben has become a legend with the Baltimore TFA corps ("Were you on the bus the time Ruben ran five red lights?"). I managed to get to Times Square more than once, spending most of my time in the giant Toys R Us. I danced to Nsync's "Bye Bye Bye" at a bar and watched Nick con people with card tricks. Jasmine flew in to visit one weekend while my soon-to-be-roommates Nick, Mike, and Tammer drove to Baltimore and called with the good news of finding a house. I drew comics for our TFA school newspaper. The Baltimore corps became extremely tight during this time, mainly because we were familiar with each other from our pre-induction. Baltimore teachers claimed a local bar called "The Jolly Tinker" as our own, and we were known to frequent the place two or three times a week. I could go on and tell you tales about every night, especially how Nick had a knack for getting people mad at him, but maybe those stories are better left untold.
I was also determined to start a prank war with the other regions, although no one ever fought back. Based on a prank I had seen at UVA, I made hundreds of copies of a flyer for someone selling their Playstation 2 video game system for $50 because "institute was taking up too much time." Then I put a completely random California corps member's phone number on it and plastered them all over Fordham. When I tried calling the number a few days after the prank, I got a message with a slightly irritated voice saying "If you're calling about the PS2, it's gone - we sold it pretty quickly." Nick and I prank-called dozens of people. Kate and I made a fake TFA merchandise website and put the URL in everybody's mailboxes. Very few people ever found out that I was behind everything, but I felt that a good old-fashioned prank war would help brighten spirits.
So I was a little surprised when our TFA school director, Parag Joshi, asked to see me one morning. He asked if I knew anything about corps members getting prank calls from someone claiming to be a "CMD - Corps Member Detective." I said yeah, that was me. He said the office had received several complaints about how TFA was accusing people of things like stealing school supplies, and how it made TFA as an organization look bad. I understood his point, not believing that anyone could have taken these calls seriously. Parag then asked if there was anything else I would like to tell him, a knowing look in his eyes as he scribbled down some notes on a yellow legal pad. I caved and confessed to everything. Parag shook his head and told me that he was disappointed and expected more from me. Unsure of what my consequence would be, I braced for the worst. Parag said he wanted an apology letter in his hands the next day, which would then be copied and put in each corps member's mailbox. I walked back in my classroom, head down, when Kendall told me to turn around. I did, and saw Parag laughing as hard as he could through the window in the door. The biggest prank of the institute had been pulled on me - it was all a set-up. I think I ran outside and gave Parag a huge hug.
As institute winded down, I was ready to go home. I wanted my own classroom and was excited to implement everything that I had learned. Truly, I walked out as a different person. Teach For America did about a good a job as possible with preparing us for what lay ahead. Sara and I found a plastic yellow clipboard that our CMA group signed and gave to John on the last day - the "golden clipboard." Parag asked me to give a speech at our school the last day, so I somehow tied in the prank war to teaching. Finally, in an outdoor talent show of sorts, I played guitar and sang about TFA over songs like Complicated, Hot in Herre, Without Me and Straight Up. As I rode the train back with my friend Aileen, my tired mind tried to remember how much was packed in during those five weeks, from Nereida's supposed crush on me to some great one-on-one conversations with John. New York faded behind me, and my thoughts turned to how I was going to decorate my classroom in Baltimore. The first day of school was less than a month away.
(Dave's TFA Chronicles are eight short stories about Dave's job as a Language Arts teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools from 2002 to 2003. Read the other chapters: one two three four five six seven eight)
Sunday, May 4 at 10:51 AM
Foo Fighters Live Internet Broadcast
Hey everyone, just thought i'd put some shameless self (and by self i mean the company i work for) promotion out on our blogger. If you are a lucky AOL subscriber, you can sign on tonight at 10:00 PM and watch a live foo fighters concert being broadcast over the internet only on AOL for Broadband. I'll be watching it. That is all. -Jeff"Times Like These (acoustic)" Foo Fighters
Thursday, May 1 at 2:33 PM
Okay Samurai Multimedia is Dave Werner's personal site. I'm currently working at Minor Studios in San Francisco. Thanks for visiting! (more...)
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