Sometimes it takes a different approach to get students interested in learning: singing and playing guitar like a street musician in the hallways is just one example.

Math teacher Derek Hamm and English teacher Alan Brooks have made their presence known in the Green Tech hallway this year as they perform songs during passing periods.

Brooks said he started playing his guitar in the morning to “center himself.” Hamm said he started to play his to steal Brooks’ spotlight. Soon they decided to play together in the mornings. Live music in the morning attracted students.

Students began posting videos of Brooks and Hamm on social media to spread word around school about the duo.

“I did not have much expectations from students are far as their reactions, but when I saw that several students had posted it on Twitter and said it made their day better it made me extremely happy and grateful to be part of something that brightened someone’s day,” Hamm said.

Getting students excited about computer languages can also be a hard sell. However, computer science teacher Elizabeth Phillips figured out that one thing most students like is winning awards. This year she started training her students for computer programming competitions, where students have won awards and gained confidence and motivation to learn more.

This gave the students opportunities to compete against other schools and experience a different environment than the classroom to expose them to computer science concepts.

This competition has gotten the students interested in going to other computer programming events and furthering their knowledge in different languages.

“Competing was a totally different experience than just doing computer programming in a classroom.” junior Mariela Marquez said “It was my partner and I’s first time competing against other people but in the end we won 3rd place,” she said.

Stoker posts updates on work they did in class as well as live tweets on class debates from her government class. In response, students will post questions and even discuss current events through the social media platform.

“Ms. Stoker puts notes, videos, and helpful articles on her Twitter page everyday so if students are absent it is easier to catch up just by going to her page,” junior Christina Macias said.

“Her Twitter page is very convenient because most students are on social media so it is easy for the students to the work when they are not at school.”

Brooks also found a way to pique student interest by embracing an online resource that some other teachers shun for having wrong information.

Brooks assigned his English students a project in which they were assigned an incomplete Wikipedia article to research and write. The project required students to conduct their own research and write in a different style format and create academically proper formatted citations for their work.

“It was a difficult project because some of the correct information is hard to find because some of the information is false.” senior Celina Tijerina said.

Junior Nicole Ocampo said she also enjoyed that the project incorporated the use of the new Chromebooks the districtly recently purchased for students.

“Having the Chromebooks helped me a lot because I did not have to stress about it at home,” Ocampo said.

These different approaches that the teachers tried have improved the school for the better, as well as the students approval of the new teachers and their efforts.