Life Goes On

So first of all, how is school? Yesterday was fantastic, today dragged. The funny thing is, I changed my plans for yesterday (the first day of school) at almost the last minute, while my plans for today had been sitting around for weeks. Anyway, we've discussed What It Takes To Be Good At Math, which was amazing--out of 25 groups of four (100 students), only one group shared something like "knowing your basic skills and being able to do problems fast." Most groups said things like "work hard," "listen," "work as a team," "determination," "patience," and my favorite: "Don't be embarrassed when you don't know stuff. Ask questions." Wow! I'm looking forward to referring to that for the rest of the year. Another big thing I'll get to pull on is group roles. I'm using Team Captain, Facilitator, Recorder/Reporter, and Resource Manager, and I got the whole middle school (six or seven teachers) on board! The other teachers are great, and I can already tell that they're doing fantastic things to make these roles really useful across our classes.

Um, what else. We played a Silent Board Game, where I make up rules for the game and the students have to figure out what they are. Without talking. Hahaha. I was very impressed by them as risk-takers; I had hardly any trouble getting people to come up and guess the outputs for my inputs. This is such a huge asset for students to have, that willingness to just put themselves out there. One girl even brought Green Eggs and Ham into my START class (a fun reading class at the beginning of each day, stands for Students and Teachers Reading Together). She read a well-selected passage to connect the story to the risk-taking we discussed in math. (The Cat in the Hat or somebody keeps refusing to even try green eggs and ham--will not eat them in a box, will not eat them with a fox--but in the end, Sam (I am) convinces him to have a taste, and he likes them a lot.)

Right. That's enough for school. Oh, the photo is from Capture the Flag, one of the many activities enjoyed by all at the overnight retreat for all middle schoolers last week.

Here's a photo of Chinatown, where Patrick and I went last Sunday. Picked up some cheap slippers, a cute jar with a panda climbing into it to put my pens in, and some groceries. And lucky bamboo, which Patrick loves and which doesn't need much sun. Had a huge lunch, too. I discovered that the cold thing I love, the round slices made of soy sheets with mushrooms in the middle, that's the only vegetarian part of the dish with the jellyfish and the ham and stuff, is called "Vegetarian Shanghai Chicken." Strange.

Chinatown is also host to a small museum of the history of Chinese in the Midwest. Maybe one day we'll go there.

Hotel Rwanda

After holding on to it for about two weeks, Patrick and I finally watched Hotel Rwanda.

This comes at an interesting time. I have just been working on a Theory of Not Watching the News, which is sort of a spin-off of a satirical piece written by Leszek Kolakowski called, "The General Theory of Not-Gardening: A major contribution to social anthropology, ontology, moral philosophy, psychology, sociology, political theory, and many other fields of scientific investigation." The preface: "Those who hate gardening need a theory. Not to garden without a theory is a shallow, unworthy way of life. ... The alternative to not-gardening without a theory is to garden. However, it is much easier to have a theory than actually to garden."

Recently, my Theory of Not Watching the News (this includes news on the television as well as other media, such as print and internet news) was greatly enhanced by something I heard on the non-news radio, via the internet, in a piece from 2002 by Ira Glass, the host of the wonderful NPR show This American Life. He was sharing some of his thoughts on journalism. What follows is a brief excerpt.

"... and I think unintentionally, because of the super-serious aesthetic of the news, it’s like all humor and surprise and pleasure and a sense of discovery are totally removed from the real news part of the newscast. And what that does is, this part of broadcasting which is pretending to capture the world, it’s like it’s saying, it's saying, this is a world, by accident almost--It describes a world where there is no pleasure, and surprise, and joy, and curiosity, most of the time."

Ira expresses so well the problem (or one of the principal problems, at least) that I have had with the news ever since I started trying to take it really seriously. Or maybe not, maybe he just provides me with the theoretical justification for my very real aversion for the news. The news makes the world look like a horrible place and makes me feel like I am powerless to make it better; I reject the notion that the world is horrible and that I have no agency to change it; I must not watch the news. Q.E.D.

Last night, Isabel was over, and I asked her what she'd been reading. She brought up her own sense of obligation to read the news, as an educated person and as a citizen in a democracy and so forth. Unrelatedly, we'd been talking about the Prisoner's Dilemma and various forms of it. It doesn't matter if you aren't familiar with this problem; the basic idea is that the people in it can choose to be either cooperators or defectors, and they each get a certain prize (fewer years in prison, or money, or whatever) depending not only on their own choice, but also on the choices of the others. Anyway, I was struck by Douglas Hofstadter's definition of defection: "A defection is an action such that, if everyone did it, things would clearly be worse (for everyone) than if everyone refrained from doing it, and yet which tempts everyone, since if only one individual (or a sufficiently small number) did it while others refrained, life would be sweeter for that individual (or select group)." Examples, given by Hofstadter: 1) Loudly wafting your music through the entire neighborhood; 2) Not worrying about speeding through a 4-way stop sign, figuring that the people going crosswise will stop anyway; 3) Not being concerned about driving a car everywhere, figuring that there's no point in making a sacrifice when other people will just continue to guzzle gas anyway; 4) Not devoting time or energy to pressing global issues such as the arms race [the book was published in the mid-80s], famine, pollution, diminishing resources, and so on, saying, "Oh, of course I'm very concerned--but there's nothing one person can do."

Excuse me for jumping around. I'm writing as I think, but I have faith that things will come together in some way by the end. I think the general idea at this point is that Not Watching the News, with a theory or without, makes me something of a defector. This may not be the general case, I haven't really thought about it, but in my case, I am quite aware that I don't watch the news because on some level, I accept that I can do nothing. So why bother. The news is always so upsetting.

Hotel Rwanda, if it should be classified as journalism, is not the kind Ira Glass described in my excerpt. The film does an excellent job of showing that even in the most terrible situations, when the gross majority of what is happening reflects humanity at its worst, there is hope, dignity, surprise and even joy.

But still I feel powerless.

A purely hypothetical question: If one is truly powerless, is it less moral to choose to be blind to injustices and atrocities than to face them?

Forget about that, because the question is hypothetical and as such, relatively useless. I respond to myself: No one is ever truly powerless. Least of all you.

In the short term, I am. I am convinced that nothing I could have done would have altered any detail of what happened and happens in Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, or Washington. And yet ... apathy breeds apathy. Those who would make a positive difference in this world need support, not just money and signatures but emotional support, because the work is hard. We, I have to get over the feeling that I will always lose on every issue and focus instead on building a culture of support. If it didn't make me feel like a self-help book, I would remark that feeling powerful is being powerful.

If I'm not convinced of that, I at least believe this: feeling powerless is being powerless. It's empirically proven. And hermetically sealed. (What does that even mean?? Why is it printed on my tea bags?? -Don't try to answer that)

But "building a culture of support" or whatever I just said sounds lame in the face of genocide.

So I still feel totally conflicted. Powerful, or powerless? To watch the news, or not to watch the news? To cooperate, or to defect? Powerful, or ? ... And when is enough enough??

Holla back, y'all.

Settling In

So here's a picture of our apartment. The number did end up to be 1B; at first we wanted to try to get a different unit (it wasn't cleaned very well, and Patrick wanted to try to get a greener view), but we finally decided that we should just get comfortable. The leasing agency did get us a new refrigerator and $100 for our cleaning troubles, and that was nice.

I'm liking the apartment a lot. The kitchen and bathroom are kind of small, but the other rooms are spacious, and there are beautiful hardwood floors everywhere. (We put your rug down in the dining room, Auntie Noreen. It makes so much difference!! Thank you!!) We got a bunch of plants from Patrick's mom and from yard sales, and some light green curtains with a floral print, so the view is green enough. I'd love to have a cat, too, but we aren't allowed to have pets, and I also worry that we'd get the wrong cat, one that would love to scratch everything, and pee everywhere, and be very upset about being cooped up in an apartment. So no kitty right now. Maybe later. But then there's also the worry that a cat would get Patrick's allergies up, so maybe never.

Went to a White Sox game last week. It was a lot of fun--at least, the first 9 innings were. The Twins tied the game in the top of the ninth, and it took another seven innings for the Sox to lose, 9 to 4!!! We left at the bottom of the 12th. It was a good time anyway, hanging out with the other YWLCS faculty. The seats were pretty good, too; even though we were pretty high up, the stadium (formerly Cominsky, now Cellular One or something like that) seating is practically vertical, so it feels like you're right on top of the field.

I like the faculty a lot, and the benefit of these two weeks--even though I don't feel extremely ready for students--has been to get to know the staff and really begin to feel like a part of the organization, something that never quite happened for me at the school where I was student teaching last year.

Finally saw some students today! We had a registration BBQ, which was hot and hectic, but the parents and students themselves (a whole lot of women! men, where were you? thank you to those fathers who did come, although I doubt you're reading my blog) really impressed me by how sweet and friendly they were. (Of course, about half the enrolling students didn't come at all.) Anyway, I'm looking forward to actually getting into the school year, even though I haven't written all my outcomes and aims and goals and objectives (as the school actually requires for each class).

I guess I'll go work on that now ... bye!

Happy Birthday to You ...

Only slightly belated, a tribute to my dear old dad. Complete with a photo from the Graduate School of Business at the U of C, which we visited after seeing the Frank Lloyd Wright- designed Robie House across the street. Supposedly, the GSB lifts the style of the Robie House on the north side (which faces the house), and the style of the neo-Gothic Rockefeller Chapel in the "winter garden," where this photo was taken. A picture of a guy I look up to, looking up.

Happy 35th birthday, Dad.

At Last!

Finally got DSL yesterday! It's still not as fast as good old Stanford internet, but it's much better than dial-up. Thank you, Patrick, for setting it up. To begin with, here's Patrick jumping on bubble wrap. That was probably on Wednesday, before we took our 38 boxes to FedEx. We left on Saturday morning ...


Day 1: We drove out of California, through northern Nevada (which was pretty boring, I have to say), and into Salt Lake City just as the sun was setting. I was impressed by how big it was--but I was disappointed that the Salt Palace wasn't really made of salt (it's just a normal conference center). We visited Temple Square on Sunday before taking off.

Got to Yellowstone in the evening, set up camp, and went for a swim in Lewis Lake. It was cold, with pokey rocks on the bottom, but it was very clean! It felt good after sitting in the car all day, too. After that, we went to see the hot spot around Old Faithful. Walked around the boardwalk, chatted with other visitors, and saw Old Faithful erupt.

The next day, we hung around Yellowstone some more. Saw the huge, 300-foot Lower Falls, and the river winding through Yellowstone Canyon. Lots of bison, too. It rained and even hailed, but we didn't mind that much. The mudpots were really smelly, though! We drove on, getting no service and free pizza at a very busy Pizza Hut in Cody, Wyoming.

South Dakota was an exciting state. Made the obligatory stop at Mount Rushmore, which was sort of mind-boggling, then discovered Badlands National Park, which was a surreal and gorgeous combination of prairie (so much grass! and groundhogs!) and sudden gorges full of mud mountains. We walked along the weird fossil trail and saw the sunset.

The Mitchell Corn Palace ("It's a-maize-ing!") was another South Dakota treasure. The whole building is covered with gigantic corn mosaics. We stopped for lunch and experienced the first in a series of vomit spottings. Stoicly, he (the vomiter, an elderly gentleman) turned to his wife and commented on a shop display: "Hey, $6.75! That's a pretty good price for a T-shirt!"

We got to Mount Vernon, IA, that same day. It was a good break; we'd gotten really sick of driving, and our charming car pastimes (for example, listening to Richard Russo read some of his short stories and learning Portuguese and Mandarin from language CDs) had gotten really old. In Mount Vernon, we had dinner with Patrick's mom, Mary, and took a short walk around the town before bed. The next morning, we went to Palisades Kepler, a nice local park, then drove to Chicago! I'll describe that more in my next post ...

Dear Readers ...

Hello from Chicago! We arrived last Thursday and have been spending the last few days putting our apartment together. Dad was here for the weekend and was a big help.

I'll post again soon with pictures and details about our trip and our new home. Maybe when our DSL gets connected. (I'm on a dial-up connection for now, which is actually faster than I thought it would be, but still very sluggish with images.)

Here's an outline of the account you have to look forward to:
Salt Lake City, Utah; Yellowstone National Park, Mount Rushmore, and the Badlands of South Dakota; Mitchell, South Dakota; Mount Vernon, Iowa; and lots and lots of Chicago, Illinois.

Time to grocery shop!

More summer!

Went to the beach yesterday for the first time in ages. Drove down Highway 84 through the beautiful redwoods to the coast, then drove south on 1 until we found the sun.

Getting a lot of sun lately. Spent last weekend in shorts and a t-shirt at Disneyland. I was pretty impressed! The old attractions (Pirates of the Caribbean, the Disneyland Railroad, Space Mountain, the Jungle Cruise) were as fun as ever, and the new stuff was awesome.

What impressed me the most was in California Adventure, which I didn't want to even bother with at first. Most of the attractions there have sort of a carnival feel, nothing that overwhelms you with glitz or branding. Yet the roller coaster had so much unexpected punch! And there was something special about the ride that spins you around on a swing (or maybe it was just the way the ride operator talked ... "Aw wight, Bumbobees! Weady, set, go!!"). The "Soaring Over California" attraction was definitely something else, though. The seats glide through the air, while fans and little spritzes of scent give you the distinct feeling that you're flying over the forests, fields, and oceans shown on the most amazing screen I've ever seen. It was bowl-shaped, so even when I looked straight down, there was no indication that I was in a theater; I saw the tops of trees, waves, whatever was being projected ahead of me. Then there were the fireworks. Really, really well orchestrated with music and themes to match attractions at the park. I didn't expect much out of this trip, but it turned out to be almost worth the $70/ticket.

It was great to see Jarrett, too, and that made the whole trip worthwhile. It reminded me of the time we went to Alcatraz and saw another side of Matthew (the criminal side!!). Jarrett led us all around the park, filling us on in all kinds of details about park history, guiding us to the things we wanted to see, and getting us lots of discounts. :) It was really wonderful.

I'd like to thank you for reading my blog. And I'd like to thank my legs for always supporting me. And my arms for always being by my side. And my fingers and toes--I've always been able to count on them. (Lines from our guide on the Jungle Cruise, always campy, and always fun.)

Summer

It's finally here! I'm done with every responsibility until August (except for all the moving stuff). My week teaching summer school was hard; three-and-a-half hour classes were a bit much for me and the students, I didn't have much of a curriculum (so I was making stuff up again, which never comes out that well), and managing the boisterous ones continued to be a challenge.

I've been spending some time as a visitor in other people's summer school classrooms, and I really like that. Maybe Uncle Dennis' hint was in the right direction, and I'll soon be back in school. The classroom is a really rich environment for research; there's so much to observe. What are the teachers doing? What are the students doing? On a social level? On a mathematical level? What's working, what's not, and why?

I am looking forward to Chicago, though, and teaching there.

I should attach some photos of my parents' kitchen. But I don't have any yet. I'll work on that. The remodel was a huge improvement! The whole space is much more sunny and welcoming. I was home last weekend on July 3. Had a little fall while biking in the morning with Dad and Patrick, but seems no major damage was done. I scraped my knee, and there's a big bruise on my leg, but nothing that won't heal. What's really amazing, though, is my head. I guess I didn't break my fall very well with my hands, because my face hit the ground kind of hard; there's a huge scratch on my sunglasses, and a couple of little cuts on my lip--and bits of asphalt ground into my front teeth. I went to the dentist (good old Uncle Anson, what will we do without you in Chicago??), and he x-rayed it and checked for fractures. Didn't see any problems (whew) but said I should come back in a couple of weeks to have the tooth cleaned. ;)

Speaking of July 3, July 4 was pretty neat. Had a picnic with some friends, then came back to the apartment and since we're on the 8th floor, we could actually see really good fireworks from our balcony. At one point, we were watching fireworks in three different locations, all at once.

I saw Batman Begins a little while ago. It was a lot better than the latest Star Wars. But I didn't enjoy either of those movies as much as Russell Peters (thanks, Mike) or the campy Kung Fu Hustle that was made even more enjoyable by the non-subtitled admonishment before the movie (which I got from my dad on two clearly bootlegged discs) to refrain from illegal copying of this very good film (the speech ended with a yell of "Zui hao dianying!!! Yeah!").

Happy day.

Oh, I Know ...

what I wanted to write about earlier.

I had lunch today with Julian, who was in the STEP math cohort with me. It was very, very strange to think that this was some kind of goodbye. I'm still in total denial that the people I know best will be far away for years to come. I really didn't say goodbye properly; as our paths forked, I called out, "See ya, Julian," as though it were September, when we saw each other practically every day in class and STEP was just beginning.

On the one hand, I hope that modern technology--email, telephone, blogs--will make the distance seem short. But on the other, I don't completely trust those things, and I have a weird sense that I'm robbing everyone of sincere moments in which I feel and express my appreciation of our relationships.

So if you see me between now and July, don't let me do that to you! I don't know how to say goodbye, though, so you'll have to teach me ...

Boxes

are what my apartment is full of. Mom, Dad, Auntie Nancy and Uncle John came up last weekend, and it's a good thing they didn't wait any longer. The bookshelves are gone now, and there are piles of books on the floor, on the table, and in boxes all along the walls. It looks bare, but at the same time very cluttered. I really should tidy up, but everything in a transitional sort of phase; nothing can really be put away, because there's nothing to put it away in (furniture keeps getting up and leaving), but it's too soon to pack a lot of stuff. Boo.

Summer school is swimming along. I'm doing a lot of pressing for explanations, yet I don't feel like I'm really pressing for deep conceptual understanding--and we're just doing proportions, which aren't that difficult to grasp. Part of it is the timing; I think our pacing is right in terms of the number of days we've actually spent, but we have three and a half hours of class every day, so maybe we should be going faster through the material. But it takes time to absorb concepts, and more hours per day doesn't really speed that process ... at least, it doesn't seem to. Plus, things don't go totally smoothly. Students are still getting used to working in groups and stuff like that. For the most part, I think they're doing a good job--but not everyone shares that opinion. In their journals, the students seem reasonably happy with their groups, and in conversations I've had, they do say that they're learning things, which is confirmed by my informal assessments of their classwork. But a parent volunteer stepped into class today to announce a missing wallet, and when I saw her after school in the copy room, she said, "So, you have all the freshmen? ... um, is it always that disruptive?" Apparently, she is used to seeing the rigidity of her daughter's current school (which is Catholic). It was pretty noisy, though. It's hard to manage a class of 30+ students. I could be doing more to make my expectations clearer, though. Targeted retaining during the break and after school, for example. I should be doing a lot more of that. Did some today at break, and it was very productive. It's a weird situation, though; two more days, and I'm out of there! So I'm investing all this energy in setting up expectations just so I can leave. Well, not true, it will help the next teacher, I hope, and it will help the students while I have them. But it's so easy to be selfish and just let things slide for two more days. In any case, I'm learning a lot about classroom management. I'm starting to understand some of the things Deborah told me last year.

I'm starting to develop relationships with a bunch of the students. I feel goofy about this, too, since I'll be leaving so soon. One of them reminds me strongly of a girl in my class last year. Exuberant, popular, such potential for leadership--combined with a desire to be cool, to be accepted and adored. Sometimes a great leader, sometimes a horrible distraction. Troubled in her personal life, too. One of her friends just died in a car crash.

I think that's all I have to say for now.

OK, listen up. I am leaving the Bay Area at the end of July. Patrick's last day teaching will be July 22, and we hope to be ready to take off shortly after. So now you know.

iExcitement

I got a new computer today. It has, among other things, the capability to burn DVDs. Thanks, graduation-gift-givers! Just in the nick of time, too. My old laptop has been crashing a lot lately, and I spent at least an hour on online chat with HP support this afternoon. Boo.

So, the new computer is an iBook. 14" screen, definitely much lighter than the 15" HP I've been using. 1.33 GHz processor (whatever that means), 256 MB of RAM, 60 G hard drive. It has twice as much storage space as my old laptop. But it's about the same speed. Maybe I'll go to Best Buy or something and pick up some more RAM this weekend. It would be really nice to have a faster machine to deal with photos and stuff.

I'm still figuring out a lot of conversions from PC to Mac, and I'm not happy about that. I was pretty satisfied with the way my PC handled itself, besides all the crashing. Clearly, I have a ways to go before I can join the die-hard Mac fan club. One thing that is really cool, though, is this game that came with the computer. It's called "Nanosaur 2: The Hatchling." The year is 4022. Humans long ago took dinosaur DNA and created some super-smart dinosaurs, but then humans went extinct, and the dinosaur gene pool was suffering from serious inbreeding, so the super-smart dinosaurs sent one of their own back in time to gather eggs that could then be hatched in the future. The graphics are crazy; apparently, if you have 3D glasses, you can play in 3D.

I graduated!

Last Sunday, the University finally recognized my five years here. It was hot! Here I am with Caroline, one of my best friends (how will we get along without each other next year??), in a goofy shot ... she has a big red balloon on her head, and well, my hair is doing this funny flippy thing ...

The leis are from Hawaii, thanks to Auntie Donna and Goong-goong Herb. Aren't they pretty!

Our blue velvet hoods (you can sort of see them around our necks) are for the School of Education.

Hooray! I graduated!

Graduation!

Nuculer family at graduation, June 12, 2005

Thanks for the schnazzy photos, Uncle Darryl! There are more online at ofoto.com. Let me know if you want me to send you a link to the album, everybody ... I'm not sure how to do it without going through their site.

Crazyland

After failing to buy a new computer (I think I'm going to switch to Mac!) on Friday, Patrick and I decided to just wander around campus a little bit, and we stumbled into the Cactus Garden. It used to be Leland Stanford's private garden, according to another visitor; apparently, old Leland told his minions to go around the southwestern US and northern Mexico collecting cacti, and they filled up a whole train with what they found and shipped it back to Stanford.

As you might expect, a cactus garden is a crazy place. So crazy, in fact, that I made Patrick return with me today to photograph this soon-to-be-thousands-of-miles-away treasure. It's like a Lewis Carroll creation. Here is a gigantic cactus flower full of bees.

Last Days of School

I had my last day of school on Thursday. We spent the final ten minutes taking pictures, which everyone got really excited about. One suggestion to myself for next year, however, is to photograph the boys first. It was hard to rally them again after the girls had their group photo, but I'm sure the girls would never have let me get away without taking their picture at least a dozen times.

There are actually two days of school left (Monday and Tuesday, who knows why), but my future employer (if they ever get me the contract!) is sending me to a math conference in Monterey. I'm looking forward to it, actually. The seminars will be very small (less than 15 people in each section), and hopefully very useful, and Monterey is so pretty.

The final project that my students submitted was a packet of four problems. One of the problems was about linear relationships; a hypothetical Jose in is a cookie-eating contest, and students have to chart how many cookies he's eating each minute. Question #3 asked: "Why are some of the numbers in your table negative? What was happening with Jose and the cookies during those minutes?" Some of the responses:

"He had already finished and was waiting for time to run out." -Kristin
"Because Jose had finished before the 10 minutes were done, he was chillin' like a villin'" -Felicia
"I think he finished his cookies and ate extra ones." -Dennis and Jesus
"I think he threw up his cookies." -D and Roy

Am I Naive?

There's a new book out called Death By A Thousand Cuts. Patrick wrote about it on his blog and linked to a thought-provoking and apparently thorough review. The book is about the repeal of the estate tax, which will cost almost $300 billion over the next ten years. Yes, that's billion with a b, as in 1,000 times a million. The tax only affected the richest 0.3% (yes, that's less than 1%) of Americans. How could this tax on the rich be repealed, when money is constantly being refused for social programs that impact millions of Americans, like education and medical care?

The answer is yes, I am naive. But these kinds of things really make me worry about either the way our "leaders" are misleading us or the way our values must be screwed up if we are happy to follow along. In this case, it looks like a serious issue of misrepresentation and special-interest spin; somehow, the supporters of the repeal were able to convince everyone that the tax was unjust (because it's just so wrong to tax billionaires more than the average person) and that the tax would hurt them personally (since the average person stands to inherit an estate worth more than $3.5 million, right?).

Is my blog getting boring? I hope the information is understandable ... and I hope it makes you mad. I find it extremely difficult to care about these policies; they'll get made whether I care or not, and I'm powerless to change them. And yet ... what is the meaning of words like democracy, liberty, justice? If we don't care enough to even pay attention, how can we keep our country's promise alive? If it isn't our job to do that, whose job is it?

Babies

Here's my littlest cousin, Ian, reading What Makes It Go? with my mom. His vocabulary is growing fast. Soon he won't be the littlest any more! Congratulations, Auntie Therese and Uncle Dennis!!

Race and Percents

My Classroom

Lately, I've been working on percents with my 7th graders. What is a percent, how are percents and fractions related, how can figure out what 10% of a number is, etc. The way my team has been teaching this unit has been mathematically interesting, trying to get students to make a lot of connections between pictures and symbols and different methods, but I've been looking for other ways to make it engaging for students who don't really care about math. One thing I really wanted to do was get into some demographic statistics, so I've been putting together some activities along the way to do this. One day last week, we looked at global wealth distribution: What does it mean that the richest 5th of the world's people has 83% of the world's wealth, and what percent would each 5th have if the wealth were distributed evenly? Yesterday, we looked at the student body of our school by race and calculated how many teachers out of 50 would be Latino, white, Asian, African American, Pacific Islander, and "other" if the faculty was racially the same as the student body.

Today, we moved the desks out of their usual formation (5 groups of 4 desks each) and into a big circle. My central question was: Is it important to you to have teachers of your own race? Of different races? Why?

I brought in a rain stick to be our "talking stick" ("If you don't have it, don't talk"), and we passed it around the circle. I was really happy that the mere fact of having to hold the stick to pass it seemed to get a higher percentage of students talking than the typical "raise your hand if you wanna say something." The participation was still uneven, though, and I had moments where I was like, "Oh dear, the white girls and the black kids are dominating again, and Maria is looking at me like she would rather die than be here." I have no idea how I could have brought Maria, a frequently withdrawn Latina student, in. It didn't help that her two close friends were both absent today; she must have felt really isolated. In her letter at the end of the discussion, she wrote: "Today I learned 0%," and something to the effect of, "I don't think it's important what race teachers are as long as they teach GOOD here." (I had instructed students to write one paragraph starting with "Today I learned ..." using percents, and another paragraph starting with "I think it's (un)important ...")

Anyway, most of the students participated and were really engaged in the conversation. I was somewhat surprised by the uniformity of their responses: almost everyone said that they thought it was important to have teachers from different races so that they could learn from their different backgrounds, and then when I refocused on the question of whether it would be important to have teachers from their same race, everyone said, in different ways, that they did think it was important. Reasons? -Shared languages other than English for help on academic work and communicating with family, shared holidays, and shared background experiences that might make it easier to talk about personal stuff. One girl (white) also mentioned that it would be important to have teachers of your own race because they wouldn't be racist toward you. (No one mentioned having educational role models)

So then we looked at the actual racial characteristics of the faculty. Everyone seemed to interpret the data basically correctly. We passed the stick around again, and people commented on what they thought should be different. The basic consensus was that the faculty should reflect the diversity of the student body much better than it does. A few students wanted to know why there were so many white teachers (85% of faculty vs. 36% of students), but we didn't discuss it.

To wrap up, I gave students the option of writing a letter (Maria's is described above) to me or to the assistant principal, who has a bit of power in the hiring process. Most of them seemed really into it. We didn't get to finish; hopefully, it will still be fresh enough after the long weekend for them to keep going on Tuesday. I'm thinking that it would be neat to have the assistant principal come in and talk to the class, to show his appreciation of their letters and to address the question of why there aren't more teachers of color. It would great if he would also encourage the students to become teachers so that students like themselves in the future would get to learn from a more diverse faculty. I think he would do it. I have to talk to him about the whole thing.

Anyway, it was a good activity. The class stayed calm and the atmosphere stayed pretty respectful and safe, which I was worried about and which might not always be ideal (we learn from controversy and conflict, etc.) but which was really important for this first discussion. I was really impressed by students' ideas and how they expressed them, and I'm glad they got that chance to think about this issue, say what they thought, and hear what others were thinking. Deborah (my cooperating teacher) also suggested that it might have been nice for students of color to hear white students saying that they valued diversity.

I haven't enjoyed a discussion with my class this much in a while. Getting this kind of stimulation from students is why I'm in teaching to begin with, and sometimes it happens with math ... but it's so important to me to get beyond the numbers and into the world.