St. Mel’s

Old School (St. Mel’s)

October 15, 2008
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Is there a today’s equivalent of the old Mutt and Jeff duo? SpongeBob and Patrick? What do you call a dynamic duo of 7th grade boys? These are the kind that drive you batty, but there’s just something about them that makes it hard to get mad at them. Like Ponyboy describes Two-Bit. But they are exasperating at times. Sometimes the class beats me to shushing one or both of them. “Would you just be quiet?” “True that.” Oh yes, they’re those guys. I should move them both (they ended up next to each other because of my early-year, alphabetical seating chart), and I probably will soon, but somehow, their banter is rather amusing most of the time. Most of the time. Let’s call them (after an old comic book I have on the wall), Milk and Cheese – Dairy Products Gone Bad. M and C were bugging the other day, and I was pulling out some of my old-guy-isms. I’m a big fan of expressions like “Dagnabbit” and “Kids Today…” and “No Dice (Cheese Slice).” “Don’t make me get out of this chair. I’m going to have to go old school Catholic school on you guys.” “You mean like

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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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