CLAD

CTEL in SF Part III

July 3, 2009
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(Ok. I’m lagging. It IS summer after all. But I told myself I’d try to  stay in the groove for the summer, and post (kinda) regularly; there are people who teach on a different schedule, and right now aren’t able to  go camping for a week at beautiful Refugio Beach. And they might like some new material now and then. Though if we don’t stop the Terminator from closing our state parks, nobody will be camping anywhere.) Anyway, my last post left me holed up at the Holiday Inn in San Francisco, the day after the last day of school, studying for the CTEL. Early Saturday morning, I got to the test site at beautiful Mission High School and snaked a beauty off-street (free) parking spot. I was there an hour before reporting time, so I ate my muffin, drank my green iced tea from my clear plastic jug (no labels; could be used for cheating), and hung out in the cafeteria where they herded all of us after checking for cell phones and “any device with an on/off switch.” I half-read the misspelled posters touting the nutrition and energy that come from eating vegetables in season, grooved on the

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CTEL H-E-Double Toothpicks

June 4, 2009
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CTEL H-E-Double Toothpicks

This week and next, while beauty by definition, are going to be a bit more hectic than usual. I am plowing through research papers. (I caught my first big plagiarist of the year – he took one of the free samples from one of those research paper mills on the net. He used to have an A…) Plus, the dreaded CTEL test (which certifies those of us without a CLAD - if you don’t teach in California, follow the links) is the next day after the last work day, and obviously I haven’t studied. I’m up to chapter 4 in the book that supposedly covers what’s on the test, but…  My plan is to take a shot at all three parts (7 hours or some such) and see what happens. There’s another round of testing in the fall, and I can take another, better informed shot at it if I fail this time. Our district has been offering classes to prepare. BUT THE PEOPLE TEACHING THE CLASSES HAVE NEVER TAKEN THE TEST! How silly is that? The classes span hours and hours after school and on weekends. BUT THE PEOPLE TEACHING THE CLASSES HAVE NEVER TAKEN THE TEST! The classes

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Random Featured Post

You Gotta Have a Shtick (or a stick).

One of the things I like to say about teaching junior high is down at the bottom of this page in the footer. You’re too lazy to scroll, aren’t you? Fine. “Five shows a day, 180 days a year.” And there aren’t many crowds tougher than 7th graders. “This is boring.” The worst of all sins. Most of us who teach junior high have a shtick. A role we play, some isms we like to use again and again. Idiosyncrasies we play up for entertainment/attention value (oh the sharing I get when we talk about that word idiosyncrasy during “Monsters are Due on Maple Street“). The key is to make the shtick such a natural part of the classroom routine, that it doesn’t distract too much. Well, sometimes we need the distraction. There’s the Raffle King. There’s the Timer. There are the clickers. The Cage. Mental Floss. Nutty videos. MYOB. All of these are stalwart features of my classroom shtick. And as of a few years ago, there’s also the Quiet Stick. (four or five years ago – me visiting another teacher’s classroom before school) “Leenie! What the shiggy are you doing? Where’d you get this, and WHY ARE YOU [...]

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

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