More New Shtuff

August 25, 2008
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Tomorrow’s a “teacher work day.” The kids start Tuesday. I have actually been trying to get into the groove a little earlier this year…

I revamped my class expectations sheet(.pdf) this year. I had sort of gotten into a rut each year of basically changing the year (or maybe a cosmetic change or two) and that’s about it.  I decided there was too much fluff.  I added a more complete list of novels, I rewrote the intro section and highlighted some of the technology we use, I included the late work policy (finally! duh!), and I added the KBAR FAQ.

Speaking of FAQ’s. I added some to my web page this year. I finally got tired of answering the same questions over and over (hmmm you’d think I would learn faster than my seventh graders), especially the ones about late work and extra credit. (The pickle recipe is the best ever!)

Anyway, I will emphasize these pages at Back to School Night, and with any luck, answer fewer questions this year.

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“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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