poll

The Long and Short of It

February 27, 2012
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All of us who have taught junior high for any length of time realize that one must have, in almost equal measure, the opposing qualities of the patience of Job (alert: Biblical reference) and the short, random fuse of of a steroided up cage fighter. Of course I exaggerate. Wink wink, nudge nudge. But you all know what I mean. You have to be able to say the same thing 20 or 30 time or more per day, and not act like it (too much). You have to be able to not go all Sr. Enda on them, and as a retired colleague of mine used to sweetly and unironically say, reteach the behavior. Again. Without screaming. You have to be able to answer the same question three times within five minutes…at least five times a day. Your tolerance for external stimuli and extraneous noise has to be exceptionally high. You have to actually like them…or at least find them entertaining. The kids, that is. Not to mention the job itself. And yet… You must also call them on everything from gum chewing to dress code to poking the person closest just because (s)he’s the person closest. And not just

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E-Reader Survey

August 29, 2010
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I posted earlier this month about reading books on my Palm. I bought several e-books this summer, and I really like being able to carry around a whole buncha books in the palm of my hand (pun intended). So here’s a survey, dear readers. I haven’t used the survey plug-in in quite a while, and I am very interested in whether you guys have embraced the e-book thang. I’ll be back after you’re done. One more thing before I turn in. The other day I posted about my wife replacing my busted smell phone. I forgot to say how stoked I am to now have a dummy, a phone I can stash near at hand and, and when/if one of them makes the fatal mistake of taking hers out, I can (with a little practice and a little audience distraction) deftly switch hers out for mine, and dramatically hurl it across the room to explode in a million pieces against my cinder block walls. Or perhaps I could  repeatedly whack it with my stick, like the city of Springfield whacked on snakes on Whacking Day. I have threatened to do so many times, and actually did chuck one (it survived

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Career Opportunities II (Also, homework.)

March 19, 2009
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Career Opportunities II (Also, homework.)

The votes are in, and have been tabulated. No, this isn’t about the homework poll. Although, thanks to those of you who have taken the trouble to contribute. I know all that clicking is sort of wearing. (Hello Erica B! Of course I remember you!) I’ll leave it active for a while, and see how many responses I can collect. So far — OK, I guess this is about the homework poll now — I have been surprised by the fact that about a quarter of you give 5-7 minutes or less homework per night. I have always taken (more than) my fair share of the kids’ homework time. Like I tell them, “There are two subjects you have to pass in order to move on to 8th grade: math and English. And, you’ll notice which one is capitalized.” I figure I should get at least 20 minutes/4 days a week out of them. I was also surprised by the small percentage assigned to grammar and mechanics practice. Until I realized, that now that I have changed our “Pink Sheets” (grammar and mechanics worksheet/lessons) from homework to our new PSP’s (Pink Sheet Pairs, where they work together on the sheets,

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Homework Poll

March 15, 2009
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Our district is asking us how much homework we give. I think they’ve had some parent complaints about the homework load. I used to scoff, and still do to a certain extent, at the complaints of “hours of homework devouring our family life.” But my son is a 4th grader in the district (his school is right down the street), and there are nights when I too question the amount of homework assigned. We do call my boy The Pokey Puppy because he does tend to take forever doing anything, but… So I have a new polling widget I want to test, AND I want to see what other people are doing. So, here we go…and thanks.

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Random Featured Post

“Do you love me?” (Also: Weird “Week”)

Wotta “week.” Considering how tired I am, I can’t believe it was only a three-day week – for some reason we had a 4-day weekend for Veterans’ day. And I done clean forgot that I was supposed to give the “District Benchmark Test #1″ (that’s a whole ‘nother post) by Friday. So we spent Wednesday darkening ovals to generate data for the district, AND there was a “multi-media” assembly that, amid the rock and rap, touted the beauty of trust and honesty (also: don’t do those things which I obviously can’t mention, because ads for them started appearing here). AND, yesterday was “parent visitation day.” Whole lotta scare quotes today too. Usually I get a pretty good turnout for these parent visitation days (it sounds like a Catholic holiday). Our previous principal (our present principal is an FNG, both to the job of principal AND to our school) instituted these as a sort of PR for parents. Many parents of ms’ers are more than a little leery of sending their little angels to the big bad junior high. (You should have seen the reaction a few years ago when the district proposed making our school 6-8. OMG. You’d have thought [...]

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

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