Week 4: Getting Back Into Shape

Being gone for NASA for four days really killed my momentum coming back to work on Monday. Before I left for NASA, I was consistently teaching one period a day sometimes two periods depending on the lesson. On Monday, I had planned with Julie in advance that I would teach 7th hour Math Analysis, but nothing else. That day I felt like a deadweight in the classroom because I didn't exactly know where the other subjects were at except for Math Analysis. The entire day I felt like I was just watching Julie run around the classroom trying to help students while I was seating at my desk frantically trying to wrap my head around what the students were learning. It's hard to help students when you don't know what they are currently working on. Worst of all, Julie asked me to pass back graded work and I realized that I forgot a lot of my students' names! Again, I was super useless...

Once 7th period arrived, things got better (i.e., I was finally useful). I taught my lesson which was over multiplying matrices. It was a very simple and plain lesson, nonetheless, majority of the students were engaged in the discussion and seemed to understand what was going on. Before the day ended, Julie shows me what topics were going to be cover for the next day which I reply that I was okay with teaching any of them, which somehow Julie ends up interpreting that I was okay with teaching all of them. In other words, I accidentally told Julie that I could teach three periods for THREE DIFFERENT LESSONS (2nd-hour "Factoring/Critical Points", 3rd-hour "Geometric Series Test", 5th-hour "Logistic Differential Equations")! I knew if I just told Julie that I didn't want to do that many classes then she would have understood, but a part me wanted to see if I could really handle teaching three different concepts in one day. This was also a good chance to reconnect with my students again. 

I will say prepping for three different lessons was stressful, but it was mainly because I was nervous to teach them all. To my surprise, teaching three lessons in one day wasn't too bad. Overall, the lessons went okay. If I messed up on a problem, the students would quickly catch my mistakes before I went any further which meant they were paying attention! The students will often ask a lot of questions and some of the discussions that are formed give me a chance to explain the mathematics more in-depth. Best of all, Julie got SO MUCH GRADING DONE during the time I was teaching which is not only good for her but also for the students! I am starting to notice my part in the classroom and it's a great feeling to know that I can help out my students and Julie.

For the rest of the week, I decided to teach for 2 to 3 periods a day. I definitely feel a lot more comfortable being in front of a class after teaching these past few days. I know last week I said I would be working the InTasc Standard over "Content Knowledge," but I feel like this week I improved more on my standards for "Learner Differences." Since I have been teaching more classes, I am starting to get to know my students' personality traits. For instance, I notice that Seth (my student) often sits and just stares at his paper. When I walked by and asked him if he needed help he replied no, and so I walked away. Afterwards, Julie walks up to his desk and instead of asking Seth if he needs help, Julie just start helping him with the problem he was staring at. When I tell Julie about this, she explains to me that Seth is on a 504 plan and often times just needs someone to help him refocus or push him in the right direction.  Now that I know this, I am always aware of when Seth starts staring at his paper which is my queue that I need to walk over and see what I can do to help him. 

Next week, I am hoping to work on the standard "Application of Content." I am going to be teaching Geometric/Arthemtic Sequences for my unit, thus, I would like to bring in real life examples that might help students understand the concepts better. 

Week 3 - "Mr. Alonso, how do I improve my grade?"

a. The most surprising (and exciting, and exhausting) thing from this week was on Thursday when my teacher informed me that he would not be coming in because his son woke up very sick. He asked me if I could handle covering the lesson on 45-45-90 triangles for all of the Geometry classes, as well as catching up one hour on a couple of problems they missed from the previous day. I told him that I would be glad to do so. By the end of the day, I was more tired than I had been in a long time, but that feeling was tempered by the sense of reward I got from knowing I taught my first full day of classes.
b. One of my goals was to improve my understanding of an inquiry based lesson, so this week I got to see the fruit of all the labor my students put into their projects, and give them the opportunity to make corrections on their work after receiving feedback. The project went in as a test grade, and many students were not happy with their grades. My teacher made me the person they consulted about improvements. I asked them to actually do any missing parts (the most basic way to improve their grade) and, if they had done part of it, I asked them to go back and reflect on their work, writing a self-critique and explaining the applicable math concepts in more depth. Anyone who wanted to improve their grade had to submit a few sentences of reflection/math work in writing. I have graded all of the ones that have been turned in. My teacher and I had some interesting conversations on evaluation and grading of students, since this was not a typical test or quiz. We agreed that, in order to reward the effort of each student, we would not allow one person to turn in reflection paragraphs for the entire group, but rather we would only add points for the student who did the work.
c. I would like to continue improving my instructional strategies for this week. I think that I have some pretty  good ideas for lessons on paper, but putting them into action in the classroom is an entirely different thing. Some students have shown a bit of resistance to the activities I have offered them because they have not done it before in this class or other math classes. I also ran into the issue of assuming they knew how to rationalize a denominator, but I had to help several students with this in the middle of a lesson. To resolve these issues, I will try to implement and explain group activities more clearly so that students understand what to do, and I will be mindful that some students do not know or remember all the prior knowledge necessary for Geometry.

Dreamland Burning:
Text-to-self: I am really enjoying reading this book because I was born and raised in Tulsa. There are so many places that I have been to and things I have done that are in this book, particularly in Rowan's narration because of the chronological setting. One thing in particular that struck me was the description of her run down Riverside, with the Arkansas River on her left and Riverside Drive on her right. Also a cross-country runner in high school, I used to run that same area, and I know the statue of that large cat catching a bird very well (but clearly not well enough to recall the species of either the bird or cat as was written in the book :) ). I have also been to the Guthrie Green many times and several other places in the book.
Text-to-world: I think this book does an excellent job of depicting the tension between the past and the present. I can see how students would relate to Rowan and then see how history connects to where they are now and the importance of learning it, especially history that has been hidden for such a long time. Basically, the text is a lesson on the importance of learning about the past, both its successes and its mistakes (though I suspect in this case it is all about the mistakes, which I don't have a problem with at all - it is clearly about what is arguably the biggest blunder in Oklahoma's history).
Text-to-text: I used to read these baseball books when I was in elementary school, in which the protagonist would acquire a baseball card, look at it or something (I can't recall how exactly it worked) and then be transported back to that time for the majority of the book. He would then meet the player and experience his life and times. The back-and-forth narration from past to present reminds me of those books, where the narrator traveled through time throughout the series. One of the books in that series that touches on racism is called Jackie and Me, where the main character meets and befriends Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play Major League Baseball. The book addresses the struggles that Jackie faced, and the white protagonist learned important lessons about racism and the difficulties faced by people of color in this country.

This week, I got to observe and grade everyone's project presentations on Monday and Tuesday. It was honestly pretty boring after a while, because 98% of the students simply read from their slides verbatim. Their material was often fascinating, but their delivery needs some serious work - that's okay, though because, as Mr. Barnhardt informed me, they are just now starting out speaking in front of people. I graded them well on their presentations for the most part, not taking off points for style or delivery but instead making a note of it in everyone's comments, which were otherwise positive and encouraging. As referred to above, we decided to give groups the opportunity to make up points missed on their projects. I was impressed with the effort and persistence of many of the students in earning points back. We began chapter 8 on right triangles - we covered geometric mean, the Pythagorean theorem (I taught these to 5th hour, the class I have taken over for now), and special triangles.
Next week, we are planning to cover sine, cosine, and tangent (2-3 days), take a quiz (midweek, about halfway through the chapter), and begin reviewing for the test, which will likely be the following week. I would like to lead a more creative lesson next week and get the students a bit more engaged. I find that almost all of them seem to be motivated by their grade, and some of them are barely motivated at all. I haven't found any students who (at least not obviously) really enjoy math. My goal for this week is to find at least some students who like math, and to show uninterested or unmotivated students something about math that is fun and engaging, even if it is not directly related to what we plan to cover.

Reward > Struggle

WOW! What a week! As many of you know, I had a very intense week last week and felt some INTENSE pressure about the coming week (this week). Well, I made it out alive and it was everything I expected, and everything I didn’t expect in one. Monday and Tuesday were my official pre-assessment days. Wednesday was supposed to be a discovery lesson. Thursday was supposed to be an activity that would solidify their discovery from Wednesday. Finally, Friday was supposed to be a graded assignment. Although this week did not go as planned AT ALL, it ended SO well.

Monday went as planned and I was able to keep the students engaged the entire time and got some pretty awesome feedback.

Tuesday, we finished the pre-assessment by presenting their Trig Vocab Mind Maps and once again was able to get a ton of invaluable feedback. I realized how many people need to be completely re-taught the Trig Ratios.

Wednesday was supposed to be the discovery lesson day. I had planned to get through an entire discovery activity, do a commit and toss, discuss the commit and toss results, conclude that the ratios of the sides of right triangles are important, give those ratios names, talk about the reciprocals, and complete a Trig Boat exit ticket that I stole from Cacey. This did not happen. We only got through HALF of the discovery activity, some people got to write their hypotheses for the commit and toss, and obviously the closing exit ticket. I had to make some tough calls Wednesday evening as to how I would proceed. I was conflicted, for sure. I wanted the students to be able to have a blast with the puzzle activity that literally took me hours but I had to reevaluate my priorities and realize that I have actual human brains in my hands right now and I need to cater to their needs, not my plans.

So, I shifted everything back one day and decided to build some more scaffolding into Thursday so that maybe they would be able to do the fun puzzle that literally took me hours on Friday. Once again, this did not happen. Thursday went –ok­–. I was able to finish the commit and toss activity, but the discussion was rushed and not as productive as I had hoped. We also were able to conclude as a class that the ratios are useful to us and name them, I scaffolded the class maybe a bit too much through the reciprocals (although now I think it didn’t hinder them at all since they understand the basic 3 ratios pretty well), and we did another Trig Boat exit ticket. At the end of this day I was feeling pretty down. I did not think that the lesson ended very smoothly and I feel like I could have done better if I had more time–alas, I did not. After talking with Telannia, we decided that the students were not ready for the activity, that literally took me hours, yet. I pitched an idea to her about doing a practice (not graded) assignment on Friday instead of focusing on the activity, you know the one that literally took me hours. She agreed that that plan sounded best and off I went creating a worksheet that totally was not fun. Thursday evening was my hardest night. I realized that sometimes the students need discovery AND practice in order to solidify their conceptual understanding (and eventually use it in application situations).

From this realization, I made it my goal to make Friday as engaging as possible even though the students were just doing a practice worksheet where they found Sin(A), Cos(A), Tan(A), Csc(A), Sec(A), Cot(A), and all the same for angle B for three different triangles. I opened the class by answering some of their silly questions from the day before. “Is the earth flat?”, “Do you have any pets?”, “How old are you?”, “Do you go to college?”, “What kind of foundation do you wear?”, and “What is your favorite food?”. All of which I was able to get either a standing ovation for my response or a resounding group chuckle–SCORE. By this point, I am pretty close with these students so I am comfortable enough to joke with them and give some freedom. So, after I revealed that I would like some fried chicken for my birthday in September, I introduced the day’s task. I said something along the lines of, “Okay, we need practice [to which everyone agreed]. You have your handouts and everyone in this room to help you figure out your life right now, but there are a few things you need to know: One-You have to ask 3 classmates to help you before you ask me, once 3 of you are confused, that’s when you ask me to come over and guide you to your solution. Two-You don’t have to do this assignment, however if you fully complete it by the end of the day, I will give you 10 bonus points on the graded assignment on Monday. If you don’t think you need to practice this stuff and don’t want the bonus, you can come get this fun activity that literally took me hours to make. You can also do the activity after you are finished, if you wish.” *cue another standing ovation because they never get bonus points, but they also never try very hard to finish the practice assignments–WIN* The students were communicating mathematically ALL HOUR, working together ALL HOUR, and students who never do anything in that class, actually did the work. In fact, there is one girl in that class who hasn’t initiated a conversation with Telannia or I the entire semester up until Wednesday. She asked me 5 questions today. I am so proud. I don’t know what it was that made her so engaged, but I hope I continue to make it happen. In the end, I had 12 out of 26 students get the 10 bonus points, and I am still on cloud nine.

Overall, this week was tough, but honestly, I am just excited to see all of my students on Monday and struggle again through next week.

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Dreamland Burning~ Text-to-self: My entire life, I have been an incredibly empathetic person. It has been the backbone and the downfall of many relationships (friends, family, and significant other). So, reading this book is challenging for me because I feel everything so deeply. My experiences as a white person do not compare to the experiences exemplified by the people of color in this book or in my life. However, as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I am able to draw many parallels between how my friends of color feel and are treated. The magnitude of the impact of our struggles are vastly different, of course. You can visually see that my friend is Black, but you can’t visually see that I am gay (most of the time). So, there are definitely many areas that I truly cannot understand (and vice versa), but also many areas that I have also genuinely felt.

Text-to-world: Similarly to the aforementioned answer, this book beautifully reveals the sexuality of an asexual character, which is f—ing AWESOME. You don’t get more real-world-application than that! What an amazing way to shine light on such an underrepresented and underappreciated group of individuals.

Text-to-text: I hate to admit this, but I don’t think reading is fun. I get WAY too invested and always fall into a book depression after I am finished reading something, so I don’t really have a good response to this prompt. I do remember, however, my EDS class at OU being exceptionally in tune with this book (someone should tell the instructors that they should have their students read this). That class didn’t necessarily change my view points on anything, because I am super progressive as is, but (like this book) it provided me with countless resources and ideas of how to better integrate social justice into my future classroom.

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Goals and stuff: I WAS successful in planning and teaching my lessons this week AND I have everyone’s names memorized (see last weeks goals). In fact, today a student asked, “How do you know us already?”, to which I lovingly and jokingly replied, “Well, when you care about people, you tend to remember their names,” she laughed.

For next week, I want to focus on my lesson planning still, but also be more prepared for the changes that I saw this week. Standards wise, I am going to stick with number 3. I want to continue to emphasize on and encourage positive social interaction and mathematical communication. Also, next week I WANT TO DO MY FREAKING ACTIVTY THAT I LITERALLY SPENT HOURS ON.

Week 3 - Regression

Dreamland Burning questions:

Text-to-self: This book makes me think a lot about the privileges I have, and how I can never really know what some of my students are going through because I have never lived through it. It’s a completely different thing to hear about and help someone through their struggles than it is to actually go through it. Text-to-world: Obviously, one of the most prevalent issues in this book is racism. Although it may look a little different today than it did during the race riots, racism is still very much a part of society. From a teacher’s perspective, this is something we will have to navigate in and out of schools so that our students are protected. Text-to-text: I’m not much of a reader, and I can’t think of any thing to relate this to besides To Kill A Mockingbird (which I haven’t read in about ten years), so I’m going to use this last one to relate to the classroom. In class this week when I was talking to some of the social studies interns I thought a lot about how to have these controversial conversations with students in a math classroom, and I think it is important to model our instruction so that we are not necessarily avoiding issues as they come up, but learning from them. This could take the form of learning what literature or history students are learning in their other classes and creating an integrated lesson based on that so that we could have those discussions.

Math teaching stuff:

I’m alternating between visiting a geometry class and an algebra class, and this week I was in algebra. The algebra class I’m visiting is that teacher’s worst hour, and no matter what discipline techniques she tries the students are still disrespectful, don’t follow directions, and don’t do their work. I’ve tried giving her suggestions based on what I’ve seen other teachers do throughout my internship so far and in my previous field experiences, and she said she’s already tried most of them. It is kind of discouraging to watch her class, because I can tell she is trying so hard but at the same time she is obviously fed up with how the students are acting. The other teachers who have watched that class before have said that if they had to teach that class they would probably quit teaching. Yikes.

On Wednesday I taught a trig lesson over solving triangles using Law of Cosines. When I tried to explain a technical issue in mixing this method with the Law of Sines method they learned last week, I immediately started losing the students. It was kind of a wreck, because no matter how I tried to explain what was going on the students weren’t getting it. Eventually I asked my co-teacher for help explaining it, and he said I had to figure it out. I realize I’m going to have to navigate situations like that when I’m a teacher, and make decisions about how to explain complex topics and when to move on, but I was teaching one of his lessons instead of one of mine so I was already not that confident about how I was teaching the lesson. After a few more minutes he tried explaining it to the students and they still didn’t get it, so we just moved on and told them to stick with one method of solving triangles instead of mixing methods so that they would not run into the technical issue, which is probably what I should’ve done in the first place. After class he told me that whenever he has situations like that he gives himself a set amount of time to explain what the students don’t understand, and if they don’t get it by the end of that time he moves on. I’ve also been having trouble getting the calculus class I teach to be engaged and answer questions while I’m lecturing (again, I’m still teaching my cooperating teacher’s lessons). I work problems through them by asking questions and having them explain how to solve them. The students seem bored and not willing to participate, and they also seem annoyed that I’m asking them how they would solve the problems instead of me solving them for them, but if they don’t ask and answer questions then I won’t know what their level of understanding is.

I would love to say that I've been improving steadily, but that is really not the case, hence my title this week. I think I have gotten much better at my time management, and I’ve also gotten a bit better at being more comfortable in the classroom. The pre-calculus and trig students regularly ask me questions when they are doing their assignments in class, so it has been helpful for me to know that the students are more comfortable with having me help them with their work. However, I still have issues when I am lecturing with being nervous about executing the lesson properly, observing students’ progress and understanding, and actually getting students to participate, but hopefully I can alleviate that when I have more control over what is being taught and how I’m teaching it.

Next week I am going to be teaching my own lessons in the pre-calculus classes, and in two weeks I am going to start teaching my own calculus lessons. The semester plan that I originally worked out with my teacher is about a month off schedule for the calculus classes, so I’ll be teaching my unit and possibly my 2 weeks a lot sooner than I thought I would be. I want to work on Standard 3: Learner Environments and Standard 5: Application of Content because I think focusing on these and working on some new strategies to engage my students will help me overall to be a better teacher.

Week 3 - Planning Units is Time Consuming

Starting with my week, ending with Dreamland Burning. 

This past week started very abruptly. I received a call at 7am from my co-teacher saying that she is throwing up and she can't make it in. She then proceeded to ask me if I would prefer we try to find a sub or teachers to cover each class or if we shouldn't bother. I told her that I wanted to try to be completely on my own (its gonna have to happen at some point right?). So I gave her to okay to abandon me and that's the story of y very first day being a real teacher. I was nervous that the students would act differently/more wild/harder to control/won't listen/ etc. with my co-teacher not in the room. I always had an underlying fear that the only reason the kids ever listened to me was because my oc-teacher was also in the room. I am happy to announce that they are just as insane with or without my co-teacher in the room. Meaning, I was able to control them since I knew what to expect (since they were the same as always). Coincidentally that day was a review day for their exam the following day so I just had to go through the exam review with them, and I did bookwork with Algebra (since it was way too last minute to try to teach full on lesson). I think Monday went really well considering I was alone, but dang, I was scared. Also, during 8th hour (definitely the loudest and craziest class), the head principle walked in to observe me (I'm assuming to see how I can handle the wildest class). Luckily everything went well while he was observing, which is lucky since I had no idea he was watching me. I was busy answering questions/keeping students on track/etc., so I didn't even notice when he walked in. 

That was a fun/scary day, but I'm glad it happened. In other news, I start my unit on Monday. Lesson one is gonna take 2 days and lesson 2 is gonna take 3 days, with lessons 3 and 4 taking another week and a half. What sucks about this timeline is that we have two assembly's AND two field trips scheduled during the two and half to three weeks that it will take me to complete my unit. Hopefully this won't through me off too bad, but hey! I guess I should start getting used to normal teacher distractions (like assembly's and field trips). I feel pretty prepared for the first two lessons of my unit but not so much for the last 2 lessons, but I'm hoping to become more confident with those as I start to devote more time to them. 

other shocking events of the week include: 

• got to sit in on an IEP meeting with the special needs student, parent, and the whole team
• the administration is slowly talking to me more often and inquiring more and more about my life
• a student of ours tested out of special needs so we had a pretty stacked party the next day (in the very small skills class that that student is in)
• I overheard students talking about me when they thought I couldn't hear and it was all good stuff
• I got to watch how each class period solves stuff differently (it was super cool to see 8th hour solve ratios but getting unit rates while 1st and 3rd only did it with proportions) 
• student came in screaming curse words during skills class, we immediately cleared the room and let her vent (this is unlike this student). Glad I got to watch that get handled because I wouldn't have known what to do if I were alone 
• got to watch my co-teacher handle an issue of a students' sexuality (sensitive subject), she did so well in fact that this student came back up to my co-teacher after school, crying and hugging her saying, "thank you so much for earlier today, I needed it." 
• I administered my pre-assessment, it was pretty cool watching them take an assessment that I wrote 

Dreamland Burning: 

text-to-self: one of the biggest things I struggle with on a daily basis is not being able to truly and completely understanding what other people of color have gone/are going through. It frustrated/upsets/aggravates me to no end that I want nothing more to understand and mediate while also knowing that I can never understand what people of color must go through on a daily basis. I can never 100% understand white privilege because of the subconscious privilege I get every single day (because of the color of my skin). I love that this book allows me to hear conversations between young people of color as well at the thoughts that these kids are having everyday in regards to white privilege and the injustice they see everyday because of their skin alone. 

text-to-world: I know I'm choosing the obvious answer here but the biggest relation from the book to the world is the issue of racism. We (especially as teachers) witness, deal with, mediate (to the best of our ability), and teach against racism. This book deals with racism from the past and racism in the present and the highlights the concerning parallels between racism throughout the centuries. This relates to our world in every way. 

text-to-text: this book remind me of The Color Purple because of the type of world all the characters are trapped in, our world. The characters in both books relate the injustice they receive because of the color of their skin to the injustice in the world and society. In addition, both main characters (Rowan and Celie) seem to have become obedient to the injustice, having learned that you must do what it takes to get by. Celie learns not to disobey men, always say yes to white men, and always do what you're told (a more explicit obedience). While Rowan has (consciously or subconsciously) conformed to our current society and in doing so has even lost some of the struggle that people of color are facing in the world today (as evident in her conversations with James).  Rowan is obedient in her conformity of what our society expects of a well-off young woman of color - to not question the injustice. In Rowans case specifically, she has even begun to ignore said injustice, and luckily, is reminded by a loyal friend. 

Week 3: Grading Is Hard (Updated)

Part I:

This week was a short week because I am in Houston for the Space Education Exploration Conference from Tuesday to Saturday (as well as Alexis)! On Monday, the BC Calculus classes (1st and 5th hour) were taking their exam over integrals, thus, I had the opportunity to grade an exam that I partially taught. For me, grading these exams were more meaningful now because I felt more invested in the students' performance. As I was grading the exam the thing that frustrated me the most was that some students would make silly mistakes that what they would easily catch when they worked on their problems in class. When I graded the calculus class for 1st period, it was really hard for me to stay consistent when I was grading the free response questions. This wasn't because that I held favoritism towards students, but rather because students' answers could be really unexpected or weird sometimes which made it difficult to determine how many points should a student receive. As for 5th hour, the grading process was much faster for me because I had pretty much seen all the types of answers that could crop up and established a way of judging those answers. I think that grading these exams let me get more experience in judging whether students understood the general concepts rather than judging them for their final answers for each problem and getting punished for small mistakes. For instance, some students knew how to take the integral but didn't remember how to use long division or synthetic division. Thus, the integral they simplified would be incorrect but the process they took to integrate was correct. This experience made me ask myself the question "What do I want my students to understand and be able to do by the end of this unit?" This helped me refine my focus on the standards that Julie and I had targeted in the beginning of the unit. I did end up holding less weight over previous concepts students had missed (the small mistakes). I did add reminders and notes on their exams for students to look over. Looking at these common mistakes, I know what I need to add to future lessons to remind my students of previous concepts.

For next week, I want to focus on "Content Knowledge" since I will be teaching matrices and I have never taught that concept before. I am currently working on the practice problems that students will be working on for matrices. Afterwards, I will need to plan out the lessons to figure out the target concepts that I want to cover. 

Part II

James's personality really stood out for me. James has an interest in social justice and immigration reform, and he even does ESL tutoring at the library on Saturdays. James seems to be the kind of person who is very passionate about helping the people his community, especially, helping out the underdogs, and I can definitely understand the importance of lending out a hand to the people around us. My first teaching job was working with Sooner Upward Bound as a pre-calculus teacher assistant. That job gave me the opportunity to help out students from urban schools. Working with students made me realize some of the struggles that some students go through but it also made me realize the skills (i.e., tutoring mathematics) that I have could help out these students. As much as I love learning mathematics, I love giving mathematics more than anything in the world.  

James mentions about how Eduardo (a person he tutors) who is taken advantage of because he is an illegal immigrant. This part in the book really hit home for me because I remember the stories that my mother would tell me during the days when she was in the process of getting a citizenship, so she only had a green card which still made it hard for her to find a good job. My mother worked in a jeans factory where sometimes her salaries were cut even lower (even though they were barely paying her already) for the same amount of work she always did. In today society, I don't think much has changed. If there are ways to cut corners, then there are going to people who will take advantage of that.

This book deals with similar social issues as "Hidden Figures." For instance, the boy who tries to buy a Victrola could not get a receipt because he was African American. In Hidden Figures, a lot of Katherine Johnson's work was not recognized because her name was removed when her work was published. Katherine faced even harder discrimination because she was not only African American but she is also a woman.