TV

The One-Eyed God

September 15, 2010
By

Survivor returns tonight, so I gotta make this quick. I’m going to  direct you to my Confession of a TVaholic post from last fall, bust out my current top ten TV shows, load the dishwasher, and hit the couch for some Jeff Probst and the over 40′s vs the 30 and unders. I haven’t done a top ten list yet on this blog. Back when I was in junior high, we obsessed over top ten lists: TV shows (Six Million Dollah Man was number one for a whole year), movies, Sr. Enda-losing-her-temper moments, baseball players, after-school snacks, you name it, we rated it. It got to be too much work for me (Good Times or Happy Days?), and I pretty much stopped doing it by the time I was in 9th grade, but I had a friend in high school who keeps it up to this day. We call him Holt’s Almanac. So here are my current top ten TV shows. To save time and deliberation, it is in no particular order. I’m not sure why I’m sharing, but anyway… just consider this a junk food post. House - As I have posted before, a few students have seen a little

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Confession

September 29, 2009
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Regular readers of this blog (I think there are a couple of you) know that I did the Catholic school version of junior high; first through eighth grades at one school. I had a nun for a teacher six of those eight years. And I just realized today at lunch — Monday is chicken and mashed potatoes day…mmmmm…taters — that I didn’t have a male teacher until ninth grade. Then, all of a sudden, I have a math teacher who has me “by the short hair” and an English teacher who throws erasers at us if we turn our heads away from him. Dunno what that might mean, but I do know that a lot more of today’s kids need a father-type figure in their lives. Who has them by the short hair, so to speak. Anyway, we were “introduced” to the idea of confession in second grade. I’m sorry if I’m offending anyone, but even then,  I was like..Hello? I don’t think I’m going to go tell a stranger all the bad things I did, or even THOUGHT about doing. Not exactly the way the second-grade mind works. Or seventh-grade. Or… Especially if you had brothers like mine.  I

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Random Featured Post

Three-Word Phrases

Seventh graders “communicate” mostly in three-word phrases. If the phrase isn’t really only three words long, they can usually pare it down. “What’d I miss?” It sounds like  “Wuddeyemiss.” And it always comes right as you’re starting class. Raise your hand if you have had this happen in the past week. Past three days? Today? AAAAAARGH.  They want 54 stellar, well-planned and executed minutes of instruction summarized for them in 30 seconds as the class bustles in.  What did you miss? “Absolutely nothing. You might as well take the rest of the year off. CHECK THE WEB PAGE! COME BACK AT BREAK!” “Oh yeah. I forgot.” LOL (These days, they’re getting it down to three-letter phrases.) “What’s my grade?” This one is usually from the kid whose grade is in the bottom 15% , and s/he finally turned something in, and wants immediate gratification. And it always happens right in the middle of something else, something totally unrelated.  Yesterday we were talking about how Charlotte is finally seeing Captain Jaggery for what he really is. (Aside: If you haven’t read The True Adventures of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, I highly recommend it. I picked it up a few years ago [...]

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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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