Daily Archives: September 30, 2010

Hank v. Prince Redux (Also: Miracle Nap)

September 30, 2010
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Hank v. Prince Redux (Also: Miracle Nap)

The heatwave finally broke, and we finally reached Outsiders chapter 4. Pretty much every year about the third week of September or so, we get a heatwave around these parts. This year was no different. Well maybe a little. For one, the heat was almost a week later than usual. Secondly, it was the hottest stretch in a loooong time. 107. 111. 110. 107. Something like that; I lost track. I LOVE hot weather, but this was giving Vegas in July a run for its money. And we average 68-75 pretty much year round. Even in winter. The kids were dying. And those that weren’t dying were working the dress code. Hard. Anyway, I’ve been illing a bit for the last couple days, and we had an assembly during the last period of the day, which happens to be my prep. So I pawned my slaves off to other teachers, and went home early to take a nap. I am a big fan of naps. The kids always think I’m joking when I say that when they’re finished with the Friday test, they can, “doodle, Trackword, read, or put your head down on your desk and go nigh nigh.” “Really? We can sleep?” “If

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Oh Raffle King, Oh Raffle King…

(Sung — way off key, and sort of warbley — to the tune of “Oh Christmas Tree.”) I guess we need to talk about the King. On Wednesdays, after we go over the vocabulary homework, and discuss the words, I give them a vocabulary pretest. If they ace it (100%), they are exempt from the vocabulary portion of the Friday test. I used to have one of them flip a coin to decide whether or not I let them use their “cheat sheet” — the homework page we just went over and corrected — on the pretest. What they don’t believe when I tell them — even though it’s true — is that, on average, their scores on the pretest are lower when they use the cheat sheets, and fewer of them get an exemption. But they like to think it’s a security blanket, so I play along. Then I discovered the King. I would give you the URL of his creator’s web site, but he has some other, shall we say, inappropriate shtuff. (You can do a Google search if you really want to check it out.) So I took the liberty of “cloning” the King. If you click [...]

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

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