Going Platinum.

I am now a recording artist with a whopping 25 albums sold given out for free.

These are the multiplication songs that I wrote for my students. I am an awful singer, but we don't have enough time do all of this in class, and so I'm going to send it home and have them learn the songs on their own.

• 3's (to "You Belong with Me" by Taylor Swift)
• 4's (to "Baby" by Justin Bieber)
• 6's (to "Mad" by Ne-Yo)
• 7's (to "Billionaire" by Travie McCoy)
• 8's (to "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus)
• 9's (to "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz)
• 12's (to "California Gurls" by Katy Perry)

Here are the lyrics. The state song on there is something else I was doing with the kids. No, I didn't write that. It's actually good.

I'm not a big fan of the 7's song. Please don't laugh. Fingers crossed that this works for the kids. Hopefully I'll be able to upload a couple videos of the kids singing the 3's and 4's.

One Nice Thing.

I complain a lot about being away from home. I've made a ring countdown thing for days until I get back to California for Thanksgiving break. But, one thing that I have noticed is that the colors here in the fall are just amazing. That is definitely one thing that I appreciate about the East coast.

Irony.

Went to the Rally to Restore Sanity in DC yesterday. It was pretty insane. I hope people appreciated the irony.

Nothing Thoughtful.

Some funny stuff happened on Friday:

• Someone from TFA came in to take a picture of my classroom. The kids were taking a test, and it had already taken a little while to settle them down. Just when they were getting into their groove, the office called to tell me she had arrived, disrupting the class twice, and so they started to get antsy. Then someone came to the door and opened it, but didn't walk in, which made the kids start to yell, "Who's that? Who's there? The door is open!" Other students started to walk through the hall, which added even more noise to the class (we don't have real walls). Then, the TFA lady walked in, and the boys lost it. "That girl is HOT!" We got through the test, though.
• A girl raised her hand to ask a question. The boy sitting next to her turned to look and recoiled in horror. "MR. LYU! Why do girls grow hair under their arms?!?!?" "Uh... come talk to me after class and I can explain it to you."
• I told the class that if anyone can beat me at a 60-problem multiplication facts timed test, I will pay him or her $5. If I beat a challenger, they have to do two multiplication worksheets. After school, I got seven challengers. They called me a cheater because there's no way anyone can do them that fast. Yeah. I'm schooling 9 year-olds at multiplication. I feel so cool.

On a related note, when we took our first timed test at the beginning of the year, a girl in my class got ONE in two minutes. Friday, she got 29 in two minutes!

Poverty in the Classroom.

It's sometimes difficult to hold students accountable for their work when it's so glaringly obvious what they have to deal with at home.

One of my students missed over two weeks of school because she didn't have a place to live. The school gave her a free backpack and school supplies because that's what they do for kids who are categorized as homeless.

Two kids in my class are wearing clothes that probably haven't been washed in a month. One comes in every day with wet clothes that were hung out to dry in the basement the night before.

Driving through the neighborhood to drop off some kids, I saw that many houses had no windows or blinds. It stormed a couple of weeks ago.

I expect all the kids to have their homework done every night, and to come prepared and ready to learn every morning. If they can't do it at home, they do it with me after school. Yes, I know some people in other countries have it much worse. But still... why does ANY kid have to go through that?

Allen.

It's official. Allen withdrew from the school today. He is no longer in our class, and no longer at our school.

My New Haircut.

As part of a reading contest, since my students read 100 books as a class before my co-teacher and I read 25, I had to shave my head.

In conclusion, I have a funny-shaped head.