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Relief is Nigh (dot dot dot)

March 28, 2012
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Relief is Nigh (dot dot dot)

Every year for the past three I have voted against the two-week spring break, but right now that stretch can’t be here too soon or last too long. I’m crabby and ready for a long break. And we haven’t even had any actual bad weather this year at all, like you all in South Dakota and Virginny and places like that… Speaking of… Mrs. M, have you read Downtown Owl? It’s set in a fictional NORTH Dakota town in 1984, and features a noob hs history teacher. There really isn’t much of a plot, but it’s one of those books where you don’t care because the characters are so good. Well, not necessarily “good.” You know what I mean. Is there some sort of rivalry between North and South Dakota? Just wondering… Heather, over in the comments, says I’m brave to bust out Tom Sawyer this year. More like moronical, as my brother used to say. I swear, Mark Twain’s comedy stylings fly right over about half of them, but when I act it out and explain, they’re rolling on the floor. And I know I ain’t that funny. There just isn’t the vocabulary and background knowledge any more. Everything has been

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Uh Oh. (Also Cartoons.)

August 26, 2011
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Woo Hoo! The first week is in the books. You gotta love those three day weeks. First week shtuff: I’m a bit worried. I herded them into the computer lab for the STAR reading test today. (Aside: It’s from the same people who make Accelerated Reader. We still have the old version, not the web-based Renaissance Learning version. We’ll have to go to that next year as we migrate to Windows 7, but for now it’s refreshingly old-school. You don’t even get to use your mouse. ) And the bottom line is that I have more kids reading at a 4-5th grade level or less than ever before. But I also have almost as many kids reading at a “12+” level. So while my mean is about 7-8, the reality is that “teaching to the middle” just ain’t gonna work. I don’t have a whole buncha kids actually at grade level; they’re all way advanced (the few who didn’t get siphoned off to “accelerated”) or well below. D’oh. Also, the boy aced it. I haven’t had a PHS (Post High School) instructional reading level in years. Hard to say at this point if that’s necessarily a great thing. Will he

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Failure Story

April 4, 2011
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Usually I like to highlight my many and various triumphs in the classroom, and offer tips for the unwashed masses; you know, success stories. Let’s call this one a failure story. They say that in science, a failed experiment will teach you as much as one that succeeds, maybe more. Hmmm. Let’s hope so. Every year I try to make sure, even though there’s a definite routine I follow, that I still have room to mix it up and try out new material. (Aside: Believe it or not, I wrastled for awhile about where to put the word that in the previous sentence. Wait, I’m talking to English teachers. Of course you believe it. But try it. Should the word that go after the word sure, or where it ended up–after the second comma?) This year, like always, we have the 600 Words/Week going. And, as always, they need something to do while I check on them every Tuesday. Usually what I have done is give them time to write toward next week’s 600 words, and a list of suggested topics that they can do with what they like: use, mutate, ignore, combine, whatever. I don’t care; just write. This year I

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Christmas Stories

December 22, 2010
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I’m on my 16 day weekend. Sixteen glorious days of sleeping in. They say you can’t bank sleep. “They” are wrong. I do it every weekend and vacation, and draw from the bank during the 183 days of working. I go from getting up at 4:30 AM to about 9:30. For me, that’s the best part of vacations. This year the weather gods are not smiling on us. We have gone from 80 degree days a mere week and a half ago to five straight days of rain. Twelve inches of rain and lakes in my back yard. I haven’t missed  four days in a row of skating in YEARS. You call this vacation? I couldn’t imagine living in places where they get real weather on a regular basis. Anyway, before I go into hibernation and start hitting you with reruns  (“If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you!”), I have a few stories for you. Some of them are even Christmas related, a couple are even mine. (Actually, I started this post last Friday, but…) I usually try to stick with the routine during the  last week before vacation every year. Usually on the last Friday, it’s raining, and

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Shtickmeister!

November 30, 2010
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I’m going to begin by quoting myself. I get to do that because it’s my blog. This one is from fall 2008. 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 do need the distraction. Here’s one from earlier that fall, talking about The Outsiders, chapter two. (I guess, given the name of this blog, I should refer to the novel now and then.) …Then we get to how Cherry can actually open up to Pony, unlike around her “friends”

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Random Featured Post

“There’s already something on the back of mine.” (Also: Racial Harmony.)

It was our first day back in the classroom after 8 days in the library. We were all glad to be back. “Oh, my clicker…how I’ve missed you.” One of them actually said that. OMG. What a day. Full of action, and laugh after laugh. First there was the video. YouTube is blocked in our district. Our head of IST keeps bleating about CIPA and how YouTube doesn’t filter, and…anyway, we can’t use YouTube. But finally, they created a workaround for us. We have to do things from home rather than from school, but it works OK. We find the YouTube video we want to use, and copy the URL. Then we go to the district’s “safe video portal” and paste it in. Then we can approve our own video, and use the safe portal to show it at school. It’s a bit clunky, but it works fine. Yesterday I added a video. I hadn’t even showed it yet, when I got an e-mail from my principal. I have only added a couple of videos before, but both of them were of the nutty variety, rather than the “educational” sort.  One of them is near the top of the most [...]

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

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