The Giver

Parental Units

November 19, 2009
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Remember the Coneheads? From the old Saturday Night Live when John Belushi was still alive? I have referred to my parents (and all parents) as “parental units” (PU’s) ever since 1977. Dad is PPU – Paternal Parental Unit, and Mom is MPU. Other expressions I still use which I stole from the Coneheads include: family unit, consume mass quantities, and proceed human. Obviously, that’s where Lois Lowry got the expression “family unit.” The other day, in my girls’ club class (20 girls/7 boys), we were laughing about that expression; family unit. I mentioned that I, even today, call my parents my PU’s. Haha and so forth. So today, one girl raises her hand during our Giver Q/A session and says that she told her parents over dinner about our discussion that day. I guess her little sister (I think she said she was four, but I’ll get back to you on that) really liked the sound of “parental units.” “And now that’s all she’ll call my mom and dad; parental units.” “That’s so great.” “Well, the problem is that once she gets a phrase or something like that stuck in her head, she’s like addicted to it. And she’ll keep

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The “Stirrings” (Again)

November 18, 2009
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It is sooo much fun making 7th graders uncomfortable and embarrassed. Is that mean? When the kids accuse me of being mean I tell them I get paid extra for being that way. “The meaner I am, the fatter the paycheck.” “Nuh uh!” I didn’t think kids said that any more. But I don’t think making them say “eew” or “gross” or making them do the uncomfortable/embarrassed squirm instead of the I’m-so-hyper-I-can’t-cope squirm is being mean. Besides, when you have 7th graders reading chapter 5 of The Giver, well now you have what the military calls a “target rich environment.” This year’s bunch was kind of cute about it, actually. After the previous night’s reading assignment, I hold a Q and A session before the reading quiz. I tell them I will answer any and all questions they have about whatever they don’t get. “I don’t get it,” is not a question. I also won’t answer, “What happened in chapter __?” Sometimes the sessions get a little free-wheeling, and each one takes on the characteristics of that class period. But this year, more than the past couple of years I have taught this book, there were waaay more kids with

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“-isms” (Also: mucous)

November 29, 2008
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“-isms” (Also: mucous)

All this sleeping in this week is making me a little laggy… When we were talking about idiosyncrasies and -isms the other day, one of the kids brought up the fact that I have a lot of “Mr. Coward-isms.” Point well taken. Examples follow. (Some of them already have their own entries.) 1. MYOB – Mind your own business. Although it’s usually said “bidness.” The initials (a staple of Dear Abby advice back in the day) are always present on one or more whiteboards in my room. When we read Tom Sawyer, it changes to TTYOB – Tend to your OWN bidness, as Aunt Polly tells Jim. As I tell the kids, “You have enough trouble doing that.” Other variations include, “Is this your conversation?” and “I wasn’t talking to you.” 2. The Quiet Stick 3. The Raffle King 4. Clickers 5. “Save it for circle time.” – Seventh graders always want to share (except when you want them to, or about what you want them to). They like to take the discussion off-track. I like a detour now and then, but…when they start wanting to share stories and “this happened to my friend” and… Well, I’m not big on

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“…flopping around at the end of the rope.”

November 19, 2008
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They say that the longer you teach at a particular grade level, the more you start to resemble a student at that grade level. In my case, I was already there when I started. Some who know me say that I’m barely out of junior high myself. (My wife pegs me from 13-16, depending…) So it’s easy for me to see how easy it is for my students to drift a bit. And certain things fascinate them, so I should know better than to even open certain doors. But, of course… Yesterday, we were debriefing after chapter 19, where The Giver makes Jonas watch his “father” release the lighter of the two identical twins. (Aside: I have a set of twins this year – one year I had 3 sets – and they have been great sports about us joking about releasing one of them. In fact, their birthweights are nearly identical to the ones in the book, with the same separation. One of them we now call “Little Guy.”) They were appalled by what Jonas witnessed. They couldn’t cope. We talked about China’s one child policy, and how many times only boys were “allowed to be born.” We talked

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

November 14, 2008
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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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Random Featured Post

Twits

I just read a webnews headline that read: “Twitter is the New CNN.” Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket? If Mr. Coward were to “tweet” his way through a typical day period (which is about as likely as, oh let’s see, Hell freezing over is too cliche, how about…Bill Gates going broke.) 8:21- the homies r screaming since vp said hand over your heart 4 the pledge – oh the pain! I left the door open: some poor late kid in the hall looks alarmed 8:22- I gotta put a switch on the speaker: more drivel from some underprepared kid talking 2 close 2 the mic…sounds like the bus station back in the day 8:26- blue slip. since it doesn’t say NOW, I set it next 2 the Popple…probly forget it later 8:30- finally!! “share” time is over and we can start – don’t remind me that I told Vero she could share first tomorrow about something she will have forgotten by then if we’re lucky 8:32- checking vocab hw, 1/4 not holding…”why is my grade so low?” it ain’t rocket science people 8:38- correcting warm up…let one of them try to write on the shmartboard …you [...]

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

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