February 22, 2001: Local teacher surprises class with appearance by tony
Students at balboa high school came to class thursday expecting to catch up on their sleep, finish homework assignments from last night, and take long notes about stoichiometry.

Instead roger, their instructor, sprang on them a surprise visitor: tony. Tony came to class to talk about information technology, but ended up plugging his website to a class of open minded youth.

The presentation didn't stop all of them from sleeping, but did provide the basis for a new story, cowritten by the class. Tony's teaching session, part of the san francisco school volunteers' engineering day, also provided some valuable lessons on what tony does.

The first lesson involved learning how to get the attention of mass media and then maximize the result. One student, kevin, used the treasure island experiment as free advertising for his candy sales drive for the balboa school baseball team, the buccaneers. The team wants to buy a new bat. The one they are using has the bottom falling off, and the kids are get splinters when they play.

Ben is also selling: he's selling coupons for candy, to pay for braces. The ymca is supporting the project, which ensures the next generation of kids will also need dental work, and require a new generation of fundraisers.

Darrell sells one hand drumsticks for left handed players, and maricel sells hot chocolate and cup-o-noodles to finance the 2002 prom. Maricel is a junior, but the senior class is so poor they've conscripted the junior class to help them pay for the event.

Ben and khoi, communication arts students, and henry, alex and max, who are information technology and multimedia students, already have some web experience, and do javascript. They were not blown away with tony's.

Erik is in an advanced law academy group, where he meets with lawyers, learns how to sue people in mock trials and familiarizes himself with the inside of courtrooms and how he'll deal with defense attorneys once he graduates.

A section of the class is part of the balboa, downtown and galileo high schools' wilderness arts literacy collaborative. The walc group takes kids on field trips to nature parks and farms, where they plant trees, pull weeds, confiscate weed, milk goats and generally bond. They're headed to mclaren park later today.

It was interesting to return to high school, this time doing most of the talking. Special thanks to my company for letting me off work to go teach, and to roger and his third period chemistry class, who mostly paid attention and delivered ideas for the story as we wrote it in class. They also shot the pictures for the story. Photos with gold borders can be clicked on to view the full picture.

More information about high school, chemistry, the ymca and volunteering: