College or a Gang

I arrived this morning to discover that Mark is no longer in charge of Mrs. Boubel's advisory, but her son Travis Boubel is. He was a part-time sub and PE teacher for KIPP and I guess he joined the staff full time starting today. I observed Joyce in block 1 and I can not tell enough how wonderful a teacher she is. She has it all; managing skills, strong relationship with students, and great teaching abilites. Today's lesson was about degrees of angles. Before beginning the class, Mrs. Boubel drew the students' attention to a note on the board that read "College and gangs can never be in the same place." I guess seven students were expelled over the weekend due to gang activity and graffiti in the bathrooms. Mrs. Boubel asked some students who went on the field trip if they saw any gang members or graffiti at the university they visited. Of course they answered no and Mrs. Boubel just reiterated the fact that they have a decision to make about being in a gang or going to college. She pointed out that they work way to hard to join a gang. I love these little life lessons! For the first part of her lesson she introduced the right angle and asked students where right angles were found in the real world. From there she talked about 180 and 360 degree rotations relating it to moves on a skateboard and introduced the three ways to make an angle which include a wedge, two sides meeting at a vertex, and rotation. The students worked with partners on their classwork about the degrees of rotations and different ways to make an angle. For the twenty minutes before 5th grade math started, I observed band class. 6th grade is separated by their band instrument, so there are only four instruments and the group stays the same all day. For example, 30 students play the trumpet and travel together from math to non-fiction studies, to language arts, and then to band. Then I observed 5th grade math review their TAKS packet and work on turning fractions into decimals. After lunch, I offered to help Mrs. Quintinilla by grading spelling tests. I did that while observing Joyce teach her last class of math. For the end of the day, I went to 8th grade tutoring to discover the format of the class had been changed. Instead of math tutoring, students were only in the class from 3-4 and they would be learning how to play games such as dominoes and scrabble. Today we learned how to play dominoes and the period was relaxed and enjoyable.