J U N E 0 4
Dave and Andrew go to Disneyworld with their family. Concrete World 2.0 is launched. Interview with Matthew Burtner. Okaysamurai.com becomes five years old. Ferenczy leaves Baltimore City schools. Stories of neighborhood games and chemistry class.
The Untimely Rhetoric of Topher Grace
I called Andrew's new apartment couch home during this past cuh-razy weekend. We drove up to Baltimore on Friday night to see Mike, Tammer and Charlie (Nick is in New York to train new TFA recruits). Andrew and I brought our guitars along, so we rawked a few songs with Ferenczy before celebrating the last day of school at Ropewalk. Then it was back to DC after breakfast at Zeus' Cafe (french toast with artery-clogging amounts of butter). Don had a great cookout party on Saturday night - nobody grills cheeseburgers quite like DonnieG5. Sunday called for lots of Atari 7800 action, where we destroyed our old scores in games like Robotron: 2084 and Food Fight (levels 79 and 125 respectively). We caught Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 that night, and although it was sometimes confusing to follow and not as good as Bowling For Columbine, it's definitely worth seeing. Vacation isn't over yet...following Jeff Chin's footsteps, I'm leaving for Boston to spend a day recording and mixing with Eric Espiritu. Lots of gracias to Matt Mixmaster McKenna for sending a slew of songs to use for the okaysamurai movies - a new installment is coming next Monday. I'm out like white pants after Labor Day.
Monday, June 28 at 8:24 PM
Why I'm leaving Baltimore City Public Schools
Today was my last day as a sixth grade science teacher at West Baltimore Middle School. It's a day of introspection, because as ecstatic as I am that I'm finished with the hardest job I ever had, I also will miss some aspects of the job, such as the feeling of accomplishment I got when a kid finally, after 700 tries, got something I was trying to teach. I'll also miss my two favorite students ever. I gave them both my address in case they wanted to write letters, but I didn't get their contact info, because a teacher sending you unsolicited letters is just creepy. So hopefully they'll write. That would be nice.
This is the letter I attached to my "Exit Interview" form that I had to fill out because I won't be a teacher next year. My principal was already angry because he saw my exit interview form. I thoroughly enjoyed that, because he is a complete (fill in any expletive you find useful). He's the worst boss I ever worked for. I think he'll be even more angry when he sees this letter that I sent to human resources.
Basically, the exit interview form consists of a series of questions asking why you're leaving the school system. Question 2 asks: "Reason for Leaving" and then there are three boxes to check: "Another Job," "Salary Enhancement," and "Enhanced benefits." And that's it! As if these are the only reasons one could consider leaving Baltimore City Public Schools! All one has to do is peruse Dave's (Linden's?) TFA Chronicles to know better than that...
Anyway, I was told when I showed it to some teachers, that it was dead-on and I should send it to the Baltimore Sun, Mayor O'Malley, the School System Superintendent, etc... So here's what I wrote, it gives a pretty good picture of why I'll be starting an OK Samurai Killa Bees faction in Pittsburgh next year. Just for information, IST means department head, if a student has an IEP it means he or she is a special education student, inclusion is the policy where special education students are mainstreamed in the regualr ed. clasroom, and BCPSS stands for Baltimore City Public Schools...
Exit Interview Questionnaire - Additional Comments
Michael Ferenczy - West Baltimore Middle School #80
I want to make it clear that my decision to leave Baltimore City Schools was not influenced by the possibility of a better job, salary advancement or enhanced benefits. It appears by question number 2 that the district thinks those are the only possible reasons for leaving. My decision to leave was based entirely on my experiences in the Baltimore City Public School System. I would have left the system after this year even if I didn't have another job at all.
I came to the BCPSS through Teach for America. I wanted to educate children in an under-funded school system. Before I started teaching, I thought I would be one of the few teachers who cared about student achievement, that most of the teachers in the district were burned out or never cared in the first place. What I found was a staff full of energetic, committed, and enthusiastic teachers, who brave the idiocy of BCPSS to try to reach children who have already been failed by a system that either does not care about the students, or is too incompetent to educate them.
When I came to the BCPSS, I had no idea that there would be such bungling management. Despite the best efforts of teachers, our endeavors to educate children are thwarted at every turn by inept administrators, lack of discipline caused by poor policies, and a complete lack of parental involvement or support.
In two years at West Baltimore Middle School I have been observed in my classroom five times. Four of these observations were formal observations by my vice-principal. Once in two years, my IST observed my class for half of a period, then left, with no constructive criticism. Through conversations with colleagues, I have learned that this is the way first-year teachers are treated throughout the system. There is no support for any teachers, even for the inexperienced teachers who need the most help. It's surprising that any first-year teachers decide to stay.
In addition, my principal is a verbally abusive boss. He regularly comes on the intercom to scream at teachers who have displeased him. For example, he called unnamed teachers "cowards" and said that they "don't care about children" on the full-school intercom because someone called the union. He berates staff in front of other staff members and students, and has cursed at students. One look at the daily staff memos "From the Principal's Desk" would be enough to understand the constant negativity of our principal. Despite all this, however, I haven't been completely unhappy with my principal, because he keeps the school in some semblance of order, and I have heard horror stories of far worse principals. It is a sad testament to a school system that I have considered myself lucky to have a man like him as my boss.
But no principal can keep order in a school system where children are allowed to act as they please, with few consequences. I have been assaulted by five students in two years, all the result of trying to keep them from assaulting other students. Two girls punched me repeatedly in the back, and they each received four days of "separation." During my second week as a teacher two boys punched me in the head, broke my glasses, and left me with a headache. They were each suspended three days, and not a single administrator asked whether I was ok or not. A different boy punched me in the crotch because, he said, "(I) shouldn't have gotten in the way." The boy he claimed he was trying to hit was ten feet behind me. I was the second teacher he assaulted. He had punched a female teacher in the jaw earlier in the year, and said the same thing to her. When WBMS tried to expel him, the school district sent him back. This year, I saw him hitting a girl in the hallway, and I told him he shouldn't hit people. He told me, "Why not? I hit you last year and you didn't do anything." The district has obviously sent a clear message to him, and to countless other students that assault, even of teachers, will go unpunished. This is not an anomaly. I know at least five teachers who have been assaulted in the past year. If the district continues to ignore teacher safety, there will be a multimillion-dollar lawsuit from a teacher's family when someone is injured badly enough.
And violence against teachers is only the tip of the iceberg. Good teachers with good classroom management are lucky to spend only 25% of their class time on behavior. Students cannot learn in the environment caused by the school systems policies, no matter how hard the teachers try to educate them.
IEP students deserve special mention because they have been given a free pass to do whatever they want. A student asked this year, "How did he pass?" Another student replied, "He's got one of those IEPs." I asked him if he knew what that meant. He said, "Yeah, it means that if his parents want him to pass, he gets to pass." This mentality has destroyed the inclusion model. The students know that they will be passed through no matter what, and that they can get away with any misbehavior. The noble intent and theoretical advantages of the inclusion system have been lost because of the lack of accountability of students for their behavior.
And it isn't only IEP students who are simply shuffled through the system. I have been told countless times, that a student won't do any work because "I didn't do anything last year and I still passed." The district has claimed that social promotion is a thing of the past, but it is actually a thing of the here and now. A student who missed 100 days this year is passing because of the district's ludicrous policy of passing anyone who failed once before. The damage that these policies are doing to children make me sick to my stomach.
I am leaving the Baltimore City Public School System because I can no longer force myself to be a part of a monetarily and morally bankrupt system that destroys children's potential, fails to educate them, and then tries to appear as if it's "making progress." It makes me sick to come to work every day and watch what happens to a group of children who started off the school year so eager to learn and so well-behaved. As they learned that the district didn't care about their education, and as they learned that they could get away with virtually everything short of murder, they lost their enthusiasm and entered a state of indifference. So, it is because my conscience can no longer allow me to be a part of this terrible school system, and because my soul cannot bear to see the destruction of so many more young lives, and for no other reason, that I am leaving Baltimore City Public Schools.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My principal only saw the first part of the questionaire, he hasn't even seen this letter yet, and he was already angry. I sent this letter to human resources, because I didn't want to deal with him exploding on my last say when I wanted to hang out with the five kids who have been coming to school the last week. Anyway, this letter may seem negative, but my two years have not been all bad. I think I positively affected quite a few young lives, and I know I was a memorable teacher for several of my students. I got a proficient (the highest rating) on my end of the year teacher evaluation by my vice-principal, which was one of my goals for the year. I just hope someone has the guts and power to come in an change the BCPSS, because the children deserve better...
Friday, June 25 at 12:43 PM
W Is Tungsten
Dodgeball is the funniest movie I've seen since Zoolander, and follows a similar formula of ridiculous situations and several great cameos. Everyone left the theater with a smile on their face. It's perfect mindless summer entertainment. Now here's another nostalgic high school story.
In the fall of 1996, Fairfax County Public Schools made a decision they would later regret: putting David and Andrew Werner in the same class - Chemistry with Mrs. McElveen. This recipe for disaster also included our best friends (Don Simpson and Lucas Salzman), future Okay Samurai bassist Jeff Chin, and a plethora of nerds. Where do I begin?
Slug of the Day. The year began with Mrs. McElveen explaining her discipline system, which included the "slug of the day" - a rubber banana slug that sat at your desk if you misbehaved. Andrew got it on the first day. And the next. He would ask for it. In fact, Andrew got the banana slug so many times that Mrs. McElveen started punishing him by NOT giving him the slug.
Substitute Snowball Fight. Half the class managed to conceal and bring snowballs to the room during one memorable substitute day. Icy projectiles flew across rows of desks every time the teacher turned her back. I hid mine under a baseball hat on my desk but waited too long to attack. A puddle starting forming around my hat. The teacher noticed this and even made some joke about how I would catch a cold if I wore my hat, but she had no idea I was hiding three snowballs underneath it. At the next chance, I unloaded them at the other side of the room - specifically at Leland Manning.
Leland Pays Up. Speaking of Leland, one day Andrew pretended that he had Leland's test, crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage. Leland leapt over the desks to stop him, crushing Pamela DeGuia's glasses on the way over. Mrs. McElveen assured Pamela that Leland would pay for the damages caused by his wild behavior. The "test" was a blank sheet of paper.
The Test Is Not On!. After a two-hour snow delay, Mrs. McElveen wrote "The Test Is On!" on her board for incoming students to see, just in case they thought the late start would postpone things. Andrew snuck in and added a "NOT" in there, which later made Mrs. McElveen delve into a furious speech about integrity and consciences - but she never found out who was behind it.
Wake Up, Tony. During one particularly long lecture, a nerd named Tony fell asleep. Some kids thought it would be funny to throw paper to wake him up. As looseleaf crumbled in their corner, I took my shoe off and chucked it across the classroom, nailing Tony cleanly in the head. His neighbor quickly recovered the shoe and passed it to Andrew on the other side of the room. The best part was that everyone saw me do it except Mrs. McElveen. Hey, I was just trying to help the kid stay awake and learn.
"GET OUT!" A paper airplane was making its way around the class one day. It got to Tony, who attempted to throw it at Don. In one fluid motion, Don grabbed Andrew's binder, jumped out of his seat, smacked the airplane to the ground and yelled "GET OUT!", cutting off Mrs. McElveen in mid-sentence. Don couldn't stop laughing when she yelled at him.
The Rest. The four of us were always together in lab groups, usually taking great care to intentionally spill water everywhere as an excuse to clean up instead of returning to our desks. We wore safety goggles for every experiment and even during some written tests. I explained some chemical property in class by jumping up to a window and hiding behind the venetian blinds. Andrew always mispronounced beral pipet because it drove Mrs. McElveen crazy. One plump substitute always ate cake during class, and we swore she used the bunsen burners to heat it up. If we ever had to change seats because of our behavior, we simply rotated between the four of us. I once lied for ten minutes straight about owning a kayak to some student on the crew team. Don spent an entire class period trying to hit a nerd with pieces of his candy necklace, finally plastering him in the forehead right before the bell rang.
Not surprisingly, Mrs. McElveen retired the next year. But even through all the daily trouble, she actually liked having us as students - our definition of "bad behavior" was pretty tame compared to some other students. I tracked her down the next year to write a college recommendation letter. When she safely handed over the sealed envelope a few weeks later, I confessed everything that she missed. She thought the shoe-throwing incident was justified, and vaguely remembered someone telling her about the substitute snowball fight. That was the first and last class the Werner brothers took together.
Thursday, June 24 at 2:06 PM
#41 Was Pin Elimination
Like most suburban kids, we created several original neighborhood outdoor games growing up. Andrew and I made a checklist of about 50 games that we taped to the wall inside our garage, so sometimes we would just pick a random number and play that game. Trio and Goonies were slight variations of the same game - one person hid three "golden" frisbees outside while everyone else locked themselves inside someone's garage until he was finished. Because the street was lava (obviously), you had to find ways to get across from yard to yard - wagons and skateboards did the trick, as did plastic baseball bases that you could throw out as stepping stones. After hiding the treasures, the solo person occasionally became a monster that you fought with nerf balls and plastic baseball bats. The game ended when all three frisbees were discovered and returned safely to the garage.
Straying from David and Andrew's awesome game checklist was a bad idea, as our younger neighbor so eloquently proved. In the challenging Oktorokto Dodo, the first person to say "Oktorokto Dodo" won. In the short-lived Candy Bar, you yelled out a brand of candy, and our neighbor would yell out how many points you got based on if he liked it or not (hint: Rollo was worth a million).
But no game came close to Tron. The premise was simple: you ran around trying to throw frisbees at your opponents' legs. Getting hit meant you were out, where you sat on the sidelines until someone won by eliminating the remaining players. The winner began the next game by standing in the center of everyone else and saying "Tron up", to which everyone raised their frisbees in the air before the action started up again with a "Tron Down, Tron On". Deflecting, curving, and leaping over frisbees led to some fast-paced melees. Once you threw your frisbee, there was great strategy in trying to retrieve it. It was the most physically demanding of our games, so hypochondriac cries of headaches and cramps were commonplace. But several years of cul de sac championships and word of the game spreading to other local neighborhoods made Tron the most famous game of Schoolhouse Woods Court.
Flips on the trampoline, great food, a 56k internet connection, catching up on sleep, video games and Full House reruns - it's good to be home. Sarah beat Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on the Gamecube tonight, and Andrew and I tried out all of the new characters and battle modes in Bomberman Jetters. Puss In Boots steals the show in Shrek 2, which has some creative twists that keep the story fresh and hilarious. X2 and The Hulk are both above-average comic book movie adaptations. The special features on both DVDs are worth watching - the level of detail Hollywood gives to creating a soundstage set or special effect is insane. Don came over on Sunday and played Concrete World 2 for about an hour and a half. Try staying on the map screen for 30 seconds...
Monday, June 21 at 9:38 PM
David's Food
I ran an imaginary restaurant as a kid called "David's Food". The mascot/logo was a smiling salad bowl filled with a smiling fork, spoon, tomato and leaf of lettuce. When relatives visited for dinner, I made construction paper menus and took drink orders (later expansions of Andrew's Ice Cream and Sarah's Cafe caught on as well). Trademarks of David's Food were the designer napkins - plain paper napkins that we drew magic marker puzzles and cartoons on. Andrew and I would take huge stacks and draw a month's worth of napkins in one sitting. Some were interactive, like trying to wipe spaghetti sauce residue from your mouth onto cartoon aliens. By shuffling the napkin pile before returning it to its top shelf basket, Mom would distribute the napkins randomly before meals. It was always a nice surprise a week later to get a cool napkin that you forgot you drew.
The June issue of Wired has an cool article about Pixar - it does a good job at pinpointing where the industry stands today with feature animation. And design kids should check out 3jorn for a sweet source of daily inspiration.
Friday, June 18 at 12:36 AM
Three Down, Five To Go
Critiques went well Tuesday night, considering I had so few deliverables this quarter (not enough to warrant a new Shoot). Sifr magazine received the best response, and Concrete World went great in a separate electronic critique (it helps when Brian Turner is judging). The celebration afterwards was up to the usual standards - you can't go wrong ending the quarter with 4AM Waffle House hash browns. I'll be back in Burke for the next two weeks, working on projects like the demo, a new portfolio, and Concrete World 3. I'm also looking forward to hanging out with the samurai at Don's party next weekend - possible grounds for the next okaysamurai.com movie?
Not sure why, but something clicked today. (Cue sentimental Full House music). During last year in Baltimore, I never felt like I was completely myself...have you ever had that feeling before? Going through the motions, only to lie down at night staring at a stucco ceiling thinking about how you're changing into a person you don't want to become (i.e. a jaded, egotistical, all-aboard-the-complain-train middle school teacher). The freedom of grad school has let me regress back into the imaginative worlds of childhood while simultaneously progressing forward by challenging that creativity in new experiences. At risk of making no sense whatsoever, this is the most Dave-like I've ever felt.
Wednesday, June 16 at 9:49 PM
okaysamurai.com: five years old
Today marks the second anniversary of this journal, but a recent trip to the Internet Archives brought up a better reason for celebration. The first incarnation of this site was actually created on April 17, 1999, so today we celebrate five years online. These are some of the best moments from the past five years.
The first realization that I could make a website. The free hosting site Angelfire seemed so cool. A cheesy, spinning, animated globe marked the top of one huge page of text called "Second Nature Online". It had band member information, a link to our offsite music, one sample Second Nature comic and a ridiculously pointless section called "Acorn McDoogle's Hidden Alcove" where a squirrel supposedly answered fan mail (which, needless to say, was mostly fake). The band and the comic gave me excuses to make promotional websites and learn HTML.
The VRML Treehouse. Cybertown was and still is a 3D world where you buy virtual homes and furniture, as well as talking with other community members from around the world. The first person I met was named PsYcHo_BoB, who hacked into the system and made me a virtual millionaire. My snow_crash character became one of the richest people in the city, which prompted me to learn how to make my own 3D worlds. I learned VRML (virtual reality modeling language) and changed part of the site into a 3D treehouse. You directed a character around and clicked on objects that took you to the 2D parts of the site. This was my first creative online endeavor; attempting a different type of navigation system.
News posts. In 2001, we started posting our band news and concerts in a weblog-like system, which eventually evolved into the journal. I thought that putting a random picture and nonsensical headline with each entry would draw (trick) people into reading. The format stuck.
Second Nature World. This 3D VRML video game tied into a storyline in the Second Nature comic strip, and was circulated throughout the dying VRML community. Getting mentioned on a Russian VRML site and being referenced in a California student's term paper made me realize the potential global reach of the site.
The Teach For America Chronicles. Eight chapters about my experiences at Northeast Middle School let my friends and family know what I was going through during the most difficult year of my life, and started a steady flow of email feedback and questions from current teachers and TFA recruits. I still maintain that TFA is a strong organization and don't regret my time with them; challenges define our lives.
Moving To Atlanta. Portfolio Center provided new excuses to add content to okaysamurai.com, and gave me a major creative boost in general. The site has really picked up since enrolling.
Connections with friends. I think that running a website is like having your own international television station. Personal websites are slowly losing their nerdy stigma and becoming mainstream. I wish that everyone had a site, whether you use it to share 73.8 photos of your dog, vent about the cute girl/guy who doesn't notice you in class, or simply post your resume. The limits are constricted only by your imagination. The friendships built, kept, and rekindled from this site are the sole factor behind continuing it. I'm able to share school projects through photos and daily adventures through writing and movies - things a phone call or letter can't convey as well. The email responses, ranging from past girlfriends to potential employers, are always nice surprises.
Thank you to everyone who regularly visits this site, especially those few who have been with us since the beginning. If Katy McHale, Mary-Claire Leftwich or Jimmy Scanlon still visit this site, please let me know what you're up to!
Thursday, June 10 at 11:06 PM
Matthew Burtner OKSMM Interview
The Matthew Burtner Interview is up today, and he's got my vote for one of the coolest jobs on the planet. You'll also see the magazine cover and spreads for my Publication and Art Direction class, which were the reasons behind conducting this interview. Matthew was by far my favorite teacher at UVA, and the way he changed my perception of sound has crossed over into other realms like art and design. The interview is perfectly timed as well - Matthew has a new CD out (which I'll review here in a couple of weeks), and the original Concrete World was created as a final cumulative project for two of Matthew's classes.
Speaking of Concrete World, I am humbled and overwhelmed by the positive response version 2.0 has received. I submitted it to Newgrounds yesterday, which is a popular Flash portal - chances are you've been directed there before to see popular cartoons like the "Xiao Xiao" stick figure kung-fu or infamous "All Your Base Are Belong To Us". Over a thousand people played CW2 yesterday on Newgrounds alone, and it was well-received by the community. Some of the comments people left made my day:
"That is an amazingly made game. The idea is so original that I can't believe that someone could come up with it. It's an amazing game and the music was simply incredible."
"That was just so magical. This is like one of the best [expletive] games I've ever played. You so gotta make more of these, man. I think u have just created a NEW kind of game."
"I actually got some really cool sounding songs going on, and I felt proud."
"Very original and well done. I look forward to your future submissions."
Thanks to everyone for the feedback - I read all of your responses and have been motivated to start concepting on Concrete World 3 after critique week.
Tuesday, June 8 at 11:12 PM
Mix Limestone, Clay and Shale; Add Gypsum
Concrete World 2.0, the final project for my Introductory Flash class, goes live today. A mix between video games and a loop stations, CW2 has three levels where clicking on certain objects triggers audio clips. You can play with two general strategies; clicking everything quickly will produce a soundscape of dissonant timbres that sound pretty cool sometimes. But by discovering and clicking with the intrinsic tempo of a world, you can sync sounds to play together and create harmonies. Some sounds are harder to click than others, and some sounds aren't always in plain view. Each world infinitely loops its animations at different intervals, providing a unique experience every time you play. You'll probably come across familiar themes and characters in your compositions, and maybe even find a secret level.
This was a heckuva fun project to put together, because even though Flash was entirely new to me, pulling from past experiences with Mario Paint and VRML helped to smooth the learning curve. Adding interaction to multimedia seems to make things more enjoyable. I'm daydreaming about Choose-Your-Own-Adventure movies, hip hop and vocals in Concrete World 3, and cartoons in the vein of Homestar Runner (which was originally created in Mario Paint!). Because to me, "interactive media" is just a sophisticated way to say "video games".
Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban is incredible. It was my least favorite book but probably my favorite movie of the series. I'd go see it again just to catch everything I missed in the background paintings. The Dementors couldn't have been realized better, and Buckbeak's birdlike motions were rendered remarkably well. No matter how exciting your life is, it's easy to leave a Harry Potter movie or book and feel like you're missing something. So you pretend that baking soda is Floo Powder and spinach is Gillyweed, then everyone looks at you like you're insane, and reality snaps back in.
Monday, June 7 at 3:15 PM
HP3 and Not-So-Smarty Jones
This is Andrew and Sarah reporting right after viewing the latest Harry Potter movie and the Belmont. Much like the last two movies, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is awesome. Buckbeak the Hippogriff finally gets some much anticipated screen time and the world is a better place because of it. The movie stays true to the book and the pace builds until the exciting conclusion. We don't want to give the end of the movie away, but about two hours into the film Neville Longbottom explodes. Guess he won't be coming back for the fourth Harry Potter.
So Smarty Jones lost. Didn't see that one coming. We were both yelling and screaming as Birdstone came around at the end of the race to win. I guess Sarah shouldn't have bet her life savings on Smarty... Better get another paper route if you want to go to college.
Boo Calgary, go Lightning.
Saturday, June 5 at 4:14 PM
A Lesson in Pronouns
Quick update. Catching Harry Potter tonight. Meeting with a PC book club on Sunday. Flash animated music game will be finished and put online by the end of next week. Coming back to Burke for the last two weeks of June. Getting Final Cut Express to make better movies. Rachel Garcia getting married to longtime boyfriend Coire. Sick; ran out of kleenex so using recycled napkins that disentegrate like dandelions upon impact. Two-year okaysamurai.com anniversary next Friday, celebrating by putting bricks on abandoned car accelerators, shooting down open freeways. Old TFA roommates almost done with school. Go Flames.
Thursday, June 3 at 10:19 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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