Monthly Archives: September 2009

Dot Dot Dot (Also: 4.7 miles!)

September 18, 2009
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Back in the day, the San Francisco Chronicle had a columnist named Herb Caen. With the exception of eight years or so in the 50′s when he jumped ship for the Examiner, he wrote a daily column for the Chronicle from the 30′s until he died in 1997. He’s the one that invented the word beatnik. He called what he did “3 dot journalism.” As you know, because you followed the convenient link provided above, he called it that because his column was usually just a long series of short comments or news items or intimations of coming news items, broken up by a series of ellipses. (Good extra credit question: “What is the punctuation we usually refer to as dotdotdot really called?” ) It finally dawned on me today that that is where Twitter stole their idea from. (D’oh! Sentence ending with a preposition!) Good Tweeters (it’s really difficult for me to even type that “word”) are channeling the spirit of Herb Caen. I haven’t done any research, (I did use to read his column fairly regularly), but I would bet that in at least one or more columns he wrote about what he had for lunch. Also where

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#*$@!

September 15, 2009
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I hate cilantro. Whenever I eat Mexican food, I always have to say, “No cilantro, por favor.” To me it tastes like soap. (I just mistyped that sopa, which means soup. Ha! ) And that soapy taste in my mouth flashes me back to getting my mouth washed out with soap as a kid, for “bad” language. Yes, not just the nuns were old school, so was Mom. I have never agreed with the old saw about profanity being an easy way out for people with no vocabulary. Let me just say here, that using some off-color language now and then is one of the great privileges of being an adult, if you’re good at it. (Another one is saying NO!) When I first started teaching, I really had to watch myself. That’s when I started saying “shtuff” for stuff. It kept me from saying…well, you know. And when I string it out, saying it slowly, I still see a lot of them do double takes. Aside: And every year, when I use it in writing in sentences on the board, they always want to call me for a mistake. No dice. “I wasn’t trying to spell stuff, I was

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“But he’s been working so hard.”

September 13, 2009
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Dagnabbit. I did it again. You’d think after all these years, I might know better. But they say that the longer you teach one grade, the more you become like the students that you teach. Anyway… I posted grades online too early. Again. Every year, since I’ve been been posting grades online (1999), I’ve had an internal conflict (literary term!) about when to post them. Two weeks in? Three weeks? Later? From the git go? It seems there’s a fine line between posting too late: “Why didn’t I hear about this sooner?!” and too early: “OMGOMGOMG! She’s never had  a grade like that before! We need a conference!” (This because, out of maybe 5 grades, one of them is a zero.) Pretty much every year, I go too early, and this year was no exception. More than a dozen e-mails by Saturday, after posting grades on Wednesday. All of them of the OMG variety. Also, a lot of this: “But she’s been trying so hard.” Many kids and parents still have to be disabused (isn’t that a great word?) of the notion that effort is part of the grade. I put a token effort factor into the KBAR response rubric

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Snnkkkttt! (Also: Adjectives)

September 10, 2009
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Snnkkkttt! (Also: Adjectives)

Finally! I get to bust out the switchcomb. The groove is back. We finally had enough time to get a good start today. I managed not to accidentally show the switchblade comb too early, so it was a beauty when I clicked it open as I read the line… “The medium-sized blonde took a knife from his back pocket and flipped open the blade.” (I can’t believe I can quote that from memory – how close did I come? Well actually, I think I can believe it.) Snnkkktt! That’s the comic-book style representation of something metallic clicking into place. Like when Wolverine’s claws pop out. Snnkkktt! Like when a Soc flicks open his switchblade. When I flicked open my switchblade comb, they were so engrossed already that some of them actually jumped. “Don’t do that to me!” One girl actually said that. Teachable moment, as they say. “You didn’t even really know what that was, but it scared the heck out of you didn’t it? Mine’s a comb, but the sound is pretty similar, and that sound would’ve sent chills down Pony’s spine too. Ominous.” Snnkkktt. We’ve also been working on adjectives. Which means a lot of “Unpack Your Adjectives.”

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No-Brainer

September 9, 2009
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No-Brainer

And so it begins (again). We finally got to start reading The Outsiders today. The way things have been going so far this year, I still haven’t found my groove. We didn’t even get to the book’s hook – Ponyboy getting jumped.  But to continue the fishing metaphor, getting seventh-graders hooked on this book is like chumming for sharks; just dump it in the water and they’ll come swarming. It’s something about the voice of Ponyboy. Other novels with teenage protagonists or narrators may get the details right, but Susan Hinton’s voice just rings true. It’s almost as if they can tell it’s really a teenager telling the story, even as they are shocked when I tell them it really is. So on our first day with the novel, I barely had time to show them who Paul Newman was, talk about 1st person narrators, and read up to “…since Mom and Dad were killed in an auto wreck…” before we ran out of time. I usually like to stop on the first day at the line “Need a haircut greaser?” But it didn’t matter; they were still walking out the door saying things like, “Great book!” and “I can’t

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Random Featured Post

True That.

We had an open mouth quiz on chapter 8 today. One class has several boys who have a new phrase they’re trying out. Personally, I sort of like it. 4) On p127, we get an example of what seems to be foreshadowing. What is it? a) When Two-Bit says that Darry will kill him if Pony’s really sick. b) When Two-Bit says Darry could be a Soc. c) When Pony says he has a helpless feeling. d) When Two-Bit calls Pony chicken. e) When Pony says he’ll be well by tonight. “OK, number four. What’s foreshadowing?” The class takes care of that one for me. Most of them laugh, and one says, “I was wrong.” (Pony’s line at the end of chapter three, and a beauty example for them of foreshadowing.) “Oh yeah. Ok, so it’s C, right?” “True that.” “Number six. Darry, I mean Dally (they always mix up those names), right?” “True that.” (me, doing some “refocusing” of a gentleman off to the side) “‘Clark,’ could you focus your comments on the questions? Open mouth only applies if that mouth is talking about the questions.” “True that.” “And I think we’re done with that line, for today at [...]

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Mr. Coward has been teaching on the beautiful central coast of California since 1989.

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