Middle-L Listserv

Classroom as Casino

April 22, 2012
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Let’s just get to it. I’ve been itchin’ to talk about a few items, but I ain’t had time lately. (My dad’s actual 75th birthday, a new quarter starting–the final one; only 38 days to go, not that I’m counting or anything–the catch-up after a long break, and etc.) Go. Item One: The classroom as casino. As I said in my previous post, the big to-do (which seems to have passed) on the middle-L listserv turned me on to some new ideas and made me rethink some things. Mr. Lee, the young charter school whippersnapper has a couple of self-published books on LuLu.com. One of them is called, The Happiest Place on Earth: 7 Powerful and Proven Ways to Engage Students. His book was not one of the sources of ideas of which I speak. But he did give me some material for this here blog, so for that I am grateful. First of all, I live in the happiest place in the country, and since Mr. Lee teaches in California, his first claim is logically invalid, but anyway… I read the freebie sample pages, and he starts with a letter from a former student, one he says was “historically

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Drama

April 16, 2012
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I hope you all are now loyal MiddleL subscribers now, what with all the action happening these days. And as always on the MiddleL list, I have picked up a more than a few ideas that I am actually going to use out of all this drama. Even from people I wouldn’t usually find myself agreeing with.  Here’s a “previously on” for those who ain’t in. In this corner we have a young whippersnapper of a teacher who obviously takes his job seriously and is good at it, but comes off a tad self-righteous. He has the point of view that we can measure intelligence and learning, and while our current tests may be a bit lacking, high-stakes testing is not inherently bad. He comes from a charter school sort of background and has about 10 years on the job. His name is Mr. Lee. And in the other corner, we have the current MiddleL champeen, Marion Brady, who says that our whole discussion about education is being dictated by corporations who have no interest in actually reforming a broken system that is outdated and unsuited to a modern 21st century society. He believes that out current method of assessing student

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Vacation Books

April 5, 2012
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Vacation Books

Can you tell I’m on vacation? I got up at 9:15 this morning… Usual time: 4:55. I went to bed at 1:00… Usual time: 10:00.  I have read several books. I am sore from doing “honeydos” for the past several days. I have taken 5.5 naps in five days, and had to make my own lunch for the same amount of time. There have been a lot of potato chips involved. The books: Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. Set in a dystopian near-future where everyone spends most of their time in in giant internet-based virtual world called the Oasis, it follows the adventures (1st person) of a high school kid as he competes with the whole world to find the Easter egg hidden by the world’s creator/programmer. The finder inherits the guys trillions and controls the virtual world. Lots of ’80s pop culture references, so if you’re a child of the ’80s… My boy was born in 1999, and he loved it. The Wrecking Crew, by Kent Hartman. The book’s subtitle says it best: “The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Best Kept Secret.” Did you know that the Beach Boys didn’t do anything but sing on the records? That Glen Campbell

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Guest Artist: Advice for Teaching Middle School

August 28, 2010
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Here’s another plug for the Middle-L e-mail listserv. As I have said before, I am a big fan. I have also previously posted some great op-ed pieces written by Marion Brady, who is a big contributor to the list. Go subscribe now, I’ll wait. OK. This is an example of the kind of great stuff you can find on Middle-L. A new subscriber wrote asking for advice on teaching middle school. She was showered with great ideas. One of my fave responses came from Megan Jones. She has some great advice, that is so in line with my own philosophies of teaching junior high (sorry, middle school), that I had to reprint it here. Thanks, Megan. (Of course, being the know-it-all that I am, I have to offer my own commentary.) I teach middle school language arts (grades 6 and 7) and absolutely love it! Middle schoolers are a tough, but rewarding group to work with.  Some tips that have been helpful for teaching Middle school age students (learned from other teachers and trial and error) are the following: 1. Be real and yourself: students at that age are extremely self conscious and a person who is comfortable with who they are is an

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Guest Artist: Marion Brady

April 25, 2010
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Here I go again, beating the drum for joining the Middle-L listserv. And once more, I’m linking to a Marion Brady article. I’ve also talked about Marion before. Here’s his latest article, at Truthout.org, about this whole “accountability”  issue that’s become the central feature of our educational system. He makes the point that today’s standardized tests that supposedly hold us teachers accountable really just test short term memory and “second-hand knowledge.” We seem to be over a barrel. To maintain educational quality, we need to monitor and measure performance. But learner qualities and capabilities most deserving of being evaluated are far too complex for our crude tests to monitor. Fortunately, the barrel is of our own making, and can be rolled aside. Philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, in his 1916 Presidential Address to the Mathematical Association of England, pointed the way. “The secondhandedness of the learned world,” he said, “is the secret of its mediocrity.” When kids are merely trying to remember something read in a textbook or heard in teacher talk, they’re in the secondhand-knowledge business. When they’re figuring out how to make sense of something complicated and important that can be seen and touched, they’re in the

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Random Featured Post

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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