TCU to join the Big East

Apparently after all of the postulating, the worst case scenario has come true for Big East basketball simultaneously with the best case scenario for Big East football, TCU is joining the league in all sports. By adding TCU and having Villanova move up from FCS, the Big East will have 10 teams in football, making it a more legitimately sized league. I still think the Big East should look to add some football only schools (UCF, Houston, or ECU) to get it up to 12 because with 12 schools there would be significantly more league security, the opportunity for a championship game, and some other very large TV markets for its next television rights contract, but that may be difficult to pull off. Regardless of how good this move is for the football side of the league, trips out to Fort Worth for schools like Seton Hall, Providence, and St. John's will seem a little silly (yet all of this also begs the question of why DePaul was added back in 2005...). It will be interesting to see how this all plays out...

Homeroom Challenge Closing Ceremony

Right after the "Fly on the Wall" challenge, we transitioned into the Closing Ceremony. As a part of this, there were a total of four individual awards handed out (to work out that one person from each grade got an individual award). The awards were "Best Dressed" - for the best costume from Book Character Dress-Up Day, "Most Photogenic", "Most Memorable Moment", and "Most Team Spirit."

It goes without saying that Hanif won "Most Photogenic" and also fitting that this is an amazing picture :) A sign that the Homeroom Challenge was successful in bringing the classes together and increasing overall school spirit was that 6th grade Hanif got the loudest cheers during the closing ceremony :)

So as I've made abundantly clear throughout all the posts on the Homeroom Challenge, 9B worked extremely well together and this is Tania, Calisha and Eca helping me hold up the spoils of our victory :) (and explanation for what is on my head. The homeroom teacher of the winning class was the wear a golden motorbike helmet with tassels on top designed to look like a Roman General. I, naturally, decided to keep it on)
Total Bro.

Eca got most memorable moment for his domination in Island Hopping and ingenuity during the Marshmallow Challenge. Bro. Also, when Eca went up to the stage to get his award, he decided to jump through the frame... and fell off the stage. Very fitting for "Most Memorable Moment" award.

Left to Right: Rayhan, Eca, Arsyan.

The classy pic (pun intended) of 9B.

9B gone wild! Left to Right: Janis, Erik, Dika, Abi, Rayhan, Eca, Arsyan, Nadine, Calisha, Dimy, Natasha, Karinta, Tania and kneeling are me and Nada (who from this picture still looks traumatized from being the "fly") Not pictured: Syafi

Fly on the Wall

"Fly on the Wall" was the last event of the Homeroom Challenge because it was the most anticipated. The rules were that you had 5 minutes to use 3 rolls of duct tape to secure one member of your class to the wall. The "fly" that stayed up the longest won.
Albert was the "fly" for 9A and shown here was the general strategy for most teams, our strategy (once again noticed by Eca) to come later...

8B thought it was necessary to secure Dipra's head to the wall... :)

This was the other fly that stayed up the longest.

So now on the 9B (can you tell my bias? :) lol) Initially we were in the "first heat" because there were only 5 spots to tape people to the walls and there are 10 classes. About a minute into the taping process, Eca noticed there were some nails sticking out of the wall just above Nada. Consequently, we used the nails to create a sling to support under her arm-pits. Most flies fell between 20 and 50 seconds up on the wall with the 3rd place fly falling at 1:40. The picture below is of Nada 4 minutes in. In watching it, I was convinced Nada would stay up until the nails came out (and at the four minute mark you could see they were showing signs of stress) and so in the interest of getting the second heat started Matt called for Nada to get pulled down.

After the first heat, the rule that you couldn't use any nails or other aspects of the wall was added for "fairness," and so I told 9B that I would proud that they had re-written the rules, it was like the invention of the forward pass in football :)

However, the ingenuity of 9B was not appreciated by all and there was talk of our class getting disqualified. Like I said in other posts, throughout the Homeroom Challenge I gave my full support to student-driven ideas while offering minimal input, but at word of this I did speak up to Matt and the principal that it would be exceedingly unfair to 9B because they didn't violate any of the previously stipulated rules and it would send a terrible message to the kids that intellectual progress could be stunted if it created an "unfair advantage" as determined by the powers at be. Well, the argument for entrepreneurialism at least allowed us to reach a compromise where 9B would do it again, but this time without use of nails. Since some of my students weren't exactly pleased with this compromise, I decided to take a significantly more active role in the second taping to ensure that Nada would be able to stay up for at least 1:40.

The second time around, even without using the nails, Nada stayed up for over 4 minutes again and was taken down before she fell down. This experience has been a good lesson in how to respond to seemingly unfair adversity though I don't think Nada's skin appreciated it :)

You have to show your team spirit for your homeroom:

Bro.

Black Friday in Indonesia

Black Friday did not have a noticeable affect on the stores in Indonesia :) I did put it as the "date" on the board today and used it to explain a little bit more about American culture, though I may have gone a little too far by having Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas is You" as the background music during the 'Warm Up' :) The kids are prepping for semester finals which makes me feel almost like I'm back in a college mindset. I'm also very excited to return to the States and hopefully see as many of y'all as possible! Nanti

Marshmallow Challenge

This is another sixth grader who is friends with Hanif and his excitement for this event exemplifies how awesome the entirety of the homeroom challenge was in getting students excited about being in school and working together to achieve great things. Back in August I had done this challenge with some of my classes, but wasn't able to find marshmallows and so we put Tim Tams on the top. Tim Tams are heavier than marshmallows and from that experience my students learned the most complicated aspect of this challenge, supporting the weight on top. Additionally, in preparation for this challenge while some students were preparing for later events (such as the Book Cover design or Door Decoration), others worked on creating a model tower and experimenting with different design elements.

This is the general design for our tower on the day of the event. My only contribution was the best way to create a strong base (the triad coming from each leg and supporting the other two) while the general design, ideas to increase height, and further supports were all student generated during our practice session.

Intricacies of working with thin spaghetti demanded many hands to support and secure the tower (principle builders were Natasha, Arsyan, Eca, Eric and Dika- see working below while the 10th grade supervisor, Kiki, regulates - though never mounted up!)

Great action shot of Eca doing his thing.

My favorite picture from the event and potentially from the challenge overall. I love the sheer joy in the faces of the builders with the success of their tower, notably Dika and Natasha.

Measuring the winning tower. Notice the support brace that Eca implemented in the middle of the challenge when he noticed the marshmallow was listing to one side, pure genius and the reason the tower ended up standing and becoming the tallest (hence why I tried to contribute as little as possible so that student inspiration would be the highlight!)

Telephone

This was one of the earlier events in the Homeroom Challenge. It was a normal game of telephone where the "goal" was to "accurately" pass messages through the entire class as fast as possible. Every error between the message at the end of the line with what the 10th graders provided was a 5 second penalty for up to five errors. Consequently, 9B talked it over and realized that since the messages were going to be tongue twisters, that it would be faster to just pass along one word of the message and accept the 25 second penalty. There were a total of 5 messages to pass and even with 125 penalty seconds we still won by over 5 minutes...LAWYERED! lol

The 10th Grade facilitators are ready to start the telephones!


Hanif, the 6th grader who won most photogenic of the week (for pictures exactly like this one:)!), with both sixth grade teachers, Dennis and Cris


Grades 8 and 9 ready for it to begin.


9B ready for it to begin...well almost, Abi's not quite ready...or is he meditating on our strategy?

Book Character Dress Up Day

Even though this was close to a month ago, I just got the pictures from the Homeroom Challenge activities from Matt today and thus want to share!

This is my with my homeroom (the potential for greatness in the homeroom challenge as evidenced by our 100% participation rate in costumes including two sumo wrestlers...though I'm not sure what book that was from... :) lol)

I love the next picture because of how much of a bro Eca is. He reminds me a lot of myself (because who else would look off like that during a picture while being dressed up like Sherlock Holmes...actually, that's more bro than I would be. Props. Additionally, the pose reminds me a lot of the family pictures sans Evan Brown, great success!)

From left to right: Tania, Natasha, Eca, and Nada

Eric and Daniel, just walking down the hallway (two of the best costumes from the day, plus as a big fan of 'The Three Musketeers' I thoroughly enjoyed Eric's choice)

And lastly (due to the internet connection and Blogger it takes awhile for these pics to load)...it's too cute that they're dating:

Lee and Sherine (and I also really enjoy Lee's expression in this picture...another bro)