Pain.

I’m back, baby. (Though not officially.) Also: RaffleKing Jr.

April 2, 2009
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I’m back, baby. (Though not officially.) Also: RaffleKing Jr.

I think my sad, tragic tale of woe is nearly over. Recap: Last Sunday, a palm branch fell from 20 feet up (while I was trimming the tree), and impaled my left hand with three spikes. The pic below illustrates what I mean by spikes. That is not me, but those spikes are dead-ringers for the ones in my hand. I pulled out two very similar to C and a portion of one more, labeled A, right after it happened. What I didn’t know was that a piece (“B”) was still in there. Until Thursday, when the swelling went down enough to notice. Last Thursday, the Doc in the Box pulled part B out of the back of my hand. After four days. Every day since then I’ve had a hole in my hand swabbed out  (rather forcefully), and packed with gauze. I was supposed to see the hand specialist yesterday, but got bumped by somebody else’s emergency surgery.  Ditto today. And now the gauze has come out, and hole’s closed up, and it looks sorta almost normal. But I’m supposed to actually see the specialist tomorrow to make sure. But I’m feeling pretty good, and I have some new

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What if they…? (The Gas Effect.)

March 27, 2009
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What if they…? (The Gas Effect.)

The hand is better. I’m not The Craw any more. (I hope the vintage Get Smart reference doesn’t date me too much.) It’s not all the way better, I still don’t have use of my most important finger for bicycling in traffic, and I still can’t actually pick up much of anything with it, but I can sort of type again. Thursday, the Doc in the Box guy pulled an inch-long palm frond spike out of the back of my hand. It went in from (my) palm side. On Sunday. Now I have to go back every day for him to root around in the hole he dug, cleaning it up. Anyway, I think I have enough feeling back that I can tell you about this one. We finished Charlotte, and we’re on to my second favorite (obviously this blog’s namesake is #1) part of the year, the Ray Bradbury section. I love blowing their minds. I always start with the classic, “A Sound of Thunder.” As I  tell the kids, this is probably the most ripped-off time travel story of all time. You know, that’s where that silly movie, The Butterfly Effect,  got its name? They made a straight

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Ouch!

March 23, 2009
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I know I’m lagging. Even though I am an old-school hunt-and-peck typist, I can get moving pretty quickly when I ‘m rolling along, and I usually use at least 6 or 7 fingers, if not all. However… A few days ago I was pulling down old fronds from the giant palm tree (20-30 feet high) in my back yard. It had been dumping big fronds in piles, and it almost buried my bike one day last week. So, I was getting the remnants when one big frond let loose and fell toward me from 20 feet up. I deflected it with my left hand, and it left a couple of spikes in my palm (haha – get it?) which I pulled out. (One was over an inch long!) Every time I get poked, even a little, by one of those things, there is always some annoying swelling. Well this time, the impact and the depth must have done something different. My left hand is about twice its normal size. Typing, skating (I can’t even fit the hand into my wrist guard), and worst of all, drumming and guitar playing, are all pretty much out for a few days. I’m typing

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Random Featured Post

Quizzes for Dummies?

A few years ago, while we were reading Outsiders aloud, I was about to give them my usual “reading check” type quiz to make sure they were following along, thinking about what we’d talked about, connecting the literary terms to the examples in the book, etc. I can’t quite remember what my inspiration was (probably just to throw them for a loop like I like to do), but I decided to let them “cheat.” My quizzes on the books and stories we read are always open book, but this time I told them they could take the quiz, not only open book, but “open mouth.” I told them they could talk about the questions and answers as much as they want in any way they want, and decide however they want to, which of the answers to choose. “You can share what you know…or not. You can decide whether to heed the wisdom of the group…or not. You just can’t lie. You can’t knowingly tell everyone the wrong answer on purpose.” One class that day came up with the name Quiz for Dummies. The rest of the periods thought that was a little “mean,” so we’ve stuck with Open Mouth. [...]

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

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  • 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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