Monthly Archives: October 2009

Nature or Nurture? Intriguing Question.

October 26, 2009
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The first quarter ends Thursday. It’s one of those so-quick-yet-so-long kind of things. The first quarter is over already, but we’re still working on The Outsiders. And I think the neediness of this year’s bunch is starting wear me down. I swear, it seems like the average age this year is about 7. Jeez Louise, I don’t know how elementary school teachers do it. Maybe the fact that they have 1/5 as many kids makes it worth it. But not even the tasty prospect of not having to learn all those names would make it worth it to me to have to…what’s the vocab word we just had? Nurture. I just can’t keep up with all the nurturing this crowd needs this year. Some examples: Half of them (well, not exactly half, but you know what I mean) still don’t put their names on the paper. The other half just put the first name. I have 3 Hollies, 4 Alexes (Alexi?) (from both sexes)…I have 2 Averies (Averys?) for Pete’s sake! They have no idea how ironic (and another -onic adjective) it is to, in the same period, not have the vocabulary homework, AND ask if “you have any extra

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Guest Speaker: False Assumptions

October 24, 2009
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Previously I have posted about the Middle-L e-mail listserv. I am again recommending it, especially for newer teachers, and those interested in education policy and the “big picture.” As I said before, sometimes you’ll go days without seeing anything new, but all you have to do is introduce yourself, and ask questions, and you’ll get answers and suggestions from some pretty intelligent and talented people. One of those people is Marion Brady. In fact, he’s the main reason I’m still a subscriber. Just Google “Marion Brady” and you’ll see why. He just had a column printed in the Washington Post that, as usual, hits the nail(s) on the head. I won’t reprint the whole thing here (even though Marion wouldn’t mind – he just wants the ideas out there), because I think you should also read the commentary after. Here are some choice excerpts. False Assumption 1: America’s teachers deserve most of the blame for decades of flat school performance. Other factors affecting learning—language problems, hunger, stress, mass media exposure, transience, cultural differences, a sense of hopelessness, and so on and on—are minor and can be overcome by well-qualified teachers. To teacher protests that they’re scapegoats taking the blame for

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Sunny

October 23, 2009
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I have one class that has 20 girls and only 7 boys in it. Obviously this class has a different dynamic, as they say, from my other classes… (Grammar Tip: I just backspaced, and changed “different…than” to “different…from.” It’s “larger than,” and “different from.” It’s kind of the same as… If you’re old enough to remember cigarette ads on TV, you’ll recall, “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.” It was criticized in those grammar-respecting days as being incorrect. It should be, “Winston tastes good AS as cigarette should.” Then Winston followed with ads that sang, “Whattaya want? Good grammar or good taste?” Ah those were the halcyon days of TV. And I still think S. E. Hinton named Dally after the ciggie brand.) In that class, there is one girl whom I’m thinking will turn up here again (and again — actually, I’m guessing that most of my “seventh grade behavior” posts this year will involve this class or girl one way or another), so we’ll name her now.  “Sunny.” Sunny seems almost physically incapable of being unhappy. Unfortunately, she seems also incapable of keeping her mouth shut. She’s sort of like the female, seventh grade equivalent of Two-Bit.

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The Scream

October 19, 2009
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“Somebody in my PE class asked me if I was in Mr. Coward’s home base, and I asked him why he wanted to know. He said that he hears us scream every morning at the beginning of first period.” Suddenly half the class has a story to tell about people who have asked them about the Scream.  Since my classroom is in a solid, cinderblock and concrete building (during every disaster drill, I talk about how we’re in one of the safest places in the school), I figured that only the immediate neighbors could hear us, but I’ve been laggy about shutting the door in the mornings lately. So it seems that our daily Scream is getting a wider audience. It started as  a joke, as these things sometimes do. Every morning, either the principal or the VP gets on the intercom and leads us in the flag salute. Sometime (s)he also reads the bulletin that we’re already done reading, but that’s another matter. The problem is that neither of them uses a verb when they tell us to show our respect for the flag by placing our hands over our hearts. They shorten the phrase to… “Hand over your

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Guest Artist: Creating Memorable Characters (Also: Chapter 6 rerun.)

October 14, 2009
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Guest Artist: Creating Memorable Characters (Also: Chapter 6 rerun.)

You can tell Susan Hinton was young when she wrote The Outsiders. Even as I read it aloud for the 60somethingth time (and still laugh and tear up), I see the repetitions and the plot holes and the shmaltz. But I don’t care, and neither do the kids. It’s the characters she created that bring the book to life. They are realistic, sympathetic characters who represent all the things that kids feel. They can see parts of themselves in various aspects of Pony (loner, spacey, high expectations for him that he has trouble living up to), Johnny (pushed around, bullied, but protected by the gang – sort of the runt of the litter), Dally (rebellious and angry, impetuous, loyal, confident), Soda (blessed with charisma, but not school-smart), Darry (the provider, the rock, but still unsure of how to play his new role as parent), Two-Bit (immature, yet wise and funny), Cherry (trapped by her image, unsure of who the real Cherry is), and so forth. (Boy howdy, as Pony would say, that was one heck of a sentence.) So I like to remind the kids of this as we read the book. It’s really all about the characters. Steve Martin,

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Random Featured Post

Best Faux Pas Ever. (Glad it wasn’t me.)

(Friday Flashback – Last Year) “Mrs. G” has been teaching in our district for over 40 years. She’s been at our school since it opened in 1980. She’s taught English, art, social studies, music, and much more. She is literally an immovable object, and doesn’t need to rise from her chair to strike fear (well, not exactly fear any more, but…) into 8th graders’ hearts. She doesn’t care what people (parents, admins, other teachers) think of her, and speaks her mind whether it’s “appropriate” or not. She currently teaches 8th grade US history, and has been going toe to toe with a particularly pesky student I had last year. Now, this “Steve” sends me e-mails about how the posts he’s reading in the discussion forums on our Moodle don’t have enough thought behind them, and he has a real brain. But he’s a loud-mouthed pain in the rear, whose parents it seems, are wrapped around his finger. I was probably the only teacher he got along with…until Mrs. G. He’s still a pain, and though, like me she recognizes and likes the Steve underneath, she’s not afeared of giving what she gets. So… Food is not allowed in our classooms. [...]

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

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