CPS

Clicker Issues

September 20, 2010
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I just don’t know what to make of this year’s bunch. At first, they were looking good, mainly because they were NOT the ones from last year. Oh baby, I’m glad that crowd has moved on (well most of them anyway), and now the crabby eighth grade teachers actually have something to be crabby about. Hey wait a minute! I’m one of those eighth grade teachers this year. (I keep forgetting that, eighth grade or no, they are still very much in junior high. But they try to remind me almost daily that they can be just as out to lunch and gluey as seventh graders. But with attitude.) The seventh grade noobs were still looking good as I was checking out our new subscription to DataDirector, and their state test scores. Less than 20% below proficient, as defined by the state. The year before, that number was closer to 30%. Ok so far. They all had a planner on opening day. Oh yeah. We gave those out on that first day this year. Well, all but two of them still have it now. The sit and stare phase lasted much longer than usual, which is usually a sign of

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Workshop?

February 19, 2010
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Sometimes when you’re milking a joke for more laughs, it’s easy to, well, go a bit further than you intended… I think this one might haunt me for awhile. The CPS clickers have a feature where if a question has, for example, only two choices (as in a T/F question), and the kid clicks a choice beyond A or B, the screen shows a red X for that kid, indicating that (s)he has clicked something that is not one of the choices. Now remember, seventh graders are the epitome of the expression, “monkey see, monkey do.” Once one of them starts “red x’ing,”  more than half the class is at it. (Attention EInstruction: make it a feature that every time, after the first couple, a kid gets the red X, it makes the answer incorrect. Maybe even have some sort of thing where it takes a point away for every red X?) For some of them it’s their “thing,” so once they’re done, the screen is a sea of flashing red X’s. (There are also kids, who when they’re finished early, have races to see who can click from one to the end more quickly.) Over the course of time,

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Everybody’s Special Now. (EInstruction Rules!)

February 18, 2010
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I’ve had my clickers for three years, and I use them almost every day, and they’re starting to show their age. This year’s crowd also seems to be dropping them a whole lot more (“Ten cents!“), and I still haven’t replaced any of the batteries, so I guess it’s sort of a miracle they’re working at all. With the constant dropping, the batteries have been shaking loose more often, and that means I have to hear the plaintive, “My cliiiiiiicker doesn’t wooooooooork.” “Sounds like operator error to me. Bring it here…” And I have to use my little jeweler’s screwdriver to take off the battery cover, and adjust the batteries back into place. Over the past few months, the threads have been stripping on some of the battery covers, making the battery problem worse, and thus there have been more clicker “issues” and more whining. So I called EInstruction and asked if they could just send me some battery covers and screws. I could have my servants service all the injured clickers, and we’d be back in business for minimal cost. The service rep put me on hold for a few minutes. When she returned, she tells me that those

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Near Catastrophe

January 7, 2010
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Today I came much closer to a catastrophic tech failure than I’m used to. And it happened live in class. Now, as my loyal readers may have guessed, I don’t have many tech failures, beyond finicky overhead bulbs and such. (In fact, I get to play the Fonz quite a bit with my overhead. It must have a loose connection to the bulb, because if I’m a bit too forceful in my pointing with my pen, the bulb goes out. So then I whack it a certain way on the side, and it works again. I bat about .900 with the restoring whack, and I give the thumbs up, but none of them know who the Fonz was. They are still slightly awed in their seventh grade way. It’s even better when I do the backside kick to my class computer – it’s on the floor under my center table – to quiet the occasionally noisy cooling fan. They love that one. ) First, I am mostly religious about backing up data. My CPS databases are on a flash drive which is backed up to my space on the school server (which is supposedly backed up nightly) and every now and then

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Playing God (Part One)

December 16, 2009
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Playing God (Part One)

I’m out of action for family bidness tomorrow and Friday, so today was my last day of 2009.  I accidentally leaked the info early to one period, (the girls’ club) so they brought snacks today and sorta forced me into a “party” of sorts. I have never been able to resist a good snickerdoodle, or two, or ten. So that meant that I had to shorten things up in the other periods too…so it was sort of a nutty day today. But in the 2 1/2 days I had to work with this week… (Aside: I’m breaking a perfect record of never having showed a movie in class, ever in 20 years. But this time I’m having the sub roll the cheesy Outsiders movie tomorrow and Friday while I’m gone. They’ve been begging for weeks, and I’ve been telling them to “wake up” from the dream, but this will be my little Christmas present to them.) …we did a little Giver epilogue and what-have-you. Yesterday, we discussed a few “literary” type questions. #4. The denouement (resolution) of  The Giver is when Jonas slides down the hill on the sled with Gabriel.  a) True  b) False Trick Question! FALSE! There is

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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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Recent Comments

  • mrC commented on It’s Go Time!@Sarah-Most excellent! Keep up the good work, and don't let any of them talk you out of it. Glad to hear your kids recognize the value too. Fight the good fight!
  • Mrs. M~ commented on Illin’Feel better soon! There is nothing worse than being at school and trying to be "on" when you feel like death.
  • Sarah commented on It’s Go Time!I just came across your blog...I am a second year teacher and I am currently reading The Outsiders aloud to my seventh graders. I read it to them last year, too. I catch a lot of criticism for reading it to them...but they LOVE to have me read to them. I actually had a group
  • joan commented on Illin’I'm on day two of out-with-the-crud. I needed the rest. Hope you're in tip top shape by Monday!
  • mrC commented on “The Sub Used One of Your Sticks!”That one oughta be strung up like they used to do to horse thieves.
  • Heather commented on “The Sub Used One of Your Sticks!”The last sub I had left no note at all and broke the arm of my spinny chair by leaning back in it so far that he fell in the floor. The kids all said he was the best sub ever. I politely asked the school secretary to never have him sub in
  • mrC commented on The Future of Space Travel@Heather: Gawd I hate that. I think I even posted about it awhile back. @Kelli: This reminds me of high school. I went to a Jesuit high school (all boys) and for our Friday football rallies, we would import cheerleaders from other schools to be a part of the rally. And the girls would always begin
  • Heather commented on The Future of Space TravelMy eighth graders just have the habit of prefacing every question with, "I have a question." And announcing "I'm done" when they complete an assignment.
  • Kelli commented on The Future of Space TravelIs it bad that I sometimes start my stories with "Okay, so...."...? I guess the kids have rubbed off on me. Sigh.
  • Kelli commented on Blogging the Scoring Session (Part I)Ugh! Been there. I have been to those "Scoring and Rubric" type meetings in two different states now... Not fun, and not entirely informative, either.
  • Meg commented on No Groove Yet (Also: The Giver and No Homework Returns)There was a district I student taught in that hand the no fail policy. I child could not be held back a grade, even if they did absolutely nothing the whole year, until they were in high school. It took most of the middle schoolers about 3 seconds to realize they didn't have
  • Kelli commented on No Groove Yet (Also: The Giver and No Homework Returns)You know, that whole "no-zero" policy goes hand-in-hand with the "no-failure" or "no-retention" policy, and my school district is a definite contributor to this madness. I can understand the desire to stop giving zeros and MAKE the kids do the work (giving countless opportunities until successful), but I have been in a situation where
  • commented on Obligatory Santa VideoWe have an unofficial "no zero" policy. It takes a little extra effort on the teacher's part to get all of the students to complete their assignments but we have made it work. The thing that was most helpful was instituting a "homework detention" that is separate from discipline detention. If a

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