Jefferson High School teacher Paul Oliverio, wearing his "MATH HURTS" T-shirt, gave the signal to hit the boombox sitting at the rear of the classroom.
As the rhythmic rant of a too-cool rapper, backed by pounding bass and drums, began to fill Room 312, smiles crept out on the faces of his captive audience.
But wait--this wasn't Ice Cube, Ice-T or Dr. Dre. This was . . . oh noooo!
"PYTHAGO-RAP!!!"
That's Pythago as in Pythagorean theorem, the ancient, all-important geometric principle about right triangles--and bane of many a modern 10th-grader.
The bigger shock, however, wasn't the message. It was the messenger.
That rapper spitting out lines about "additude," altitude and hypotenuse was none other than Oliverio, a fact that when revealed, caused some students to clutch their chests and gasp, "That was you?"
What possessed this 25-year classroom veteran, known to students and colleagues alike as a stern taskmaster, to hip-hop where few math teachers have dared to venture?
Oliverio does not believe in coddling students. Nor does he think that all good teaching must be swashbuckling entertainment. "My purpose is not to make you feel better," he said. "My purpose is to make you smarter. Because once you're smarter, you're going to feel better."
Nonetheless, he said he sees no harm in making learning fun. Attitude, not aptitude, he believes, is the chief reason many kids perform badly in math.
"I have many examples of gang kids who could just as easily get an F as a B," said the Burbank resident, who has taught at Jefferson, an inner-city Los Angeles school, for nine years. "They get an F, not because they don't understand it, but because they don't want to."
Administrators say he is on the right track.
"In mathematics, young people feel they don't want to be there-- it's boring, they don't see the relevance to their own lives," said Principal Virginia Preciado. "Sometimes we need to be very creative and get kids excited about concepts that seem irrelevant to them. Mr. Oliverio is very excited about getting kids to see mathematics in a fun way."
In Pythago-rap, Oliverio combines the math message with a bit of history, as well as music. The rap leads students through a proof of the Pythagorean theorem discovered by James A. Garfield 120 years ago, shortly before he became the 20th president of the United States.
