grades

mrC’s 7th Grade Report Card

November 17, 2011
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mrC’s 7th Grade Report Card

Of course my parental units also had to visit for my fittieth. (I tell the kids that as a certified English teacher, I have a license to make up and misuse words. Most of them believe it.)  And here’s Mom sporting my 7th grade report card from the school year 1973-1974. So let’s deconstruct this “artifact.”   First it comes in one of those tight-fitting envelopes with the little curved notches in the top for ease of sliding the card out. Mom didn’t spring for a yearbook that year, so the envelope has a bunch of signatures and a couple of “see ya next year’s.” It’s also signed by Dean Martin, right above my best friend’s signature. I don’t remember Deano hanging out at Mel’s. I think that’s the logo for the diocese. We were the Saints, but we didn’t have a logo. 1. Old school typewriting, typed by our school secretary (mom of a classmate, and as scary as the nuns). St. Mel was St. Patrick’s cousin. 2. Dunno why the COWARD is in all caps. She does that on the inside too. Now, let’s look inside. 1. There’s that all caps thing again. Must be intentional. 2. Knowledge of Religion. Catholicism from

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“Until you have kids here.” (Not already?!)

May 19, 2010
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In my annual Back to School Night spiel to parents I always talk about what a Disneyland we have here. I worked for two years in da hood before I landed this job, and I’ll be here forever. “Like I say to the kids, ‘I’ll be here until you have kids here.’” I’ve been saying it for years (17), but I thought I still had a quite a few years before it actually started happening. (Our Mrs. G has been there for awhile.) But the other day, a kid (not one of mine) came up to me in the quad and said, “Do you remember a kid named ‘Carl Mayer’?” “I’ve actually had two. Which one are you talking about? The one from way long ago, or maybe, five or six years ago?” “Way back in the day.” “Ok. That was maybe ’94 or ’95? I don’t know. So? Don’t tell me you’re another cousin or something.” “He’s my dad.” Well then. I did the math. It turns out it was ’94 when I had Carl, so he became a dad at 16. Hrrrm. In a related incident…I was finally starting to clean out one of my old file cabinets.

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Grandma’s Hose

March 17, 2010
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Just a little circle-time sharing… One of my classes just loves to share. I keep telling them I don’t care, but…they keep sharing anyway… I’ve had to institute the “WTP?” rule. What’s the point? “Last night, I ate Chinese food.” “Thanks for sharing. And the point is…?” “Ummm. I thought the Kung Pao chicken was tasty. But it was realllly hot.” “Still waiting…” “Ummm. The point is…if you eat Chinese food, you should probably order Kung Pao chicken, but make sure it’s not too hot.” sigh. But every now and then, they share too much, even for them.  One period a day has an extra 10 minutes for school bidness and handing out paperwork and etc. Any extra time, they want to spend sharing. A while back, during “circle time,” we were talking about nicknames. “I have a nickname for pretty much every one of you.” “What’s mine?” “You don’t want to know.” “I hate nicknames. In elementary school they called me Pi_ er Diaper.” (I swear, I still can’t even type it without cracking up. That just rolls off the tongue.) After everyone in the room had expired from laughing continuously for five minutes, I managed to say, “You

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528. (Do the Math II.)

September 30, 2009
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The volume of e-mail from parents this year has been unprecedented. Dunno what’s different this year. Actually, I think I just figured it out. PowerCheese. Sorry, PowerGrade. I finally made the switch after being a Making the Grade fan for years. Our school bought a site license years ago, before the current IST dictatorship, and they gave us free upgrades for life! (We also had to take things to the superintendent to keep the right to keep using MtG when the district made the switch to Powerschool/Powergrade. Oh, that was ugly.) Anyway, with MtG, our site has been posting grades online for years. I made the switch because they finally upgraded the software to a point where it was (barely) good enough. And with IST wiping our computers every year, and then (grudgingly) giving us an outdated version of MtG on the network, and since we can’t download at school, it’s a pain to get everything working again in the fall. So I went to the dark side. I started last year for the second semester, so this is the first year I have gone with PG from the beginning. It’s a clunky, fairly lame gradebook program, whose main virtue

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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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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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