Election

September 21, 2011
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The boy seems to be liking middle school so far. The adjustment has been smooth, and he seems to have things under control and then some. Not like a lot of my kids. Wait a minute. I just mistyped kids as mids… hmmm, I might like that. Anyway, the boy seems to be acing middle school so… Wait again. His mom is over there making faces, and she’s all, “Duh.” “What?” “Let’s see. He has his dad for two periods, he has his 6th grade teacher for one period (yes, his 6th grade teacher last year is back here at the junior high, so we dialed him in), he has another friend of the family in whose pool he has swum for another period. So he already knows four of his six teachers. Plus his father makes sure he’s first in line for lunch and showed him the ins and outs with the lunch ladies…” (Aside: If my class before lunch is good, we always leave for lunch one minute early, because I like to be first in line. If they’re bad, only I leave for lunch. The rest of the yahoos sit until I have piled up my tray,

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It’s Go Time!

September 19, 2011
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Whoa baby, this is fun. The comments area has had a bit of controversy about my thing for reading Outsiders (or anything we read in class) aloud to my seventh graders. We got people saying they don’t like to be read to, we got people saying the book is predictable and Ponyboy annoying,  and that as far as I can tell, they find being read aloud to beneath them. OK. It’s only really two people and me. But still, it gives me an opportunity to climb back up on my soapbox. (When will that metaphor go away? Answer: When people like me stop using it because we’re tired of explaining it to the young ‘uns.) I guess it’s all in the delivery. I Googled “reading aloud research middle school” just now. (Here’s another one of my Asides: I swear I invented that word. Google as verb that is. I have proof…well, sort of: Hi Mr. Coward! I was in your 7th grade English class around the year 2000 or 2001 and now I’m about to graduate college. My little sister is now a student at Laguna and I told her that you were a great teacher and that you showed

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Please Explain This Phenomenon

September 15, 2011
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Please Explain This Phenomenon

  Update: The standing girl from yesterday finished day two today. She mixed it up a bit with some one foot for about ten minutes here and there. She said she doesn’t do it in other classes. Hmmm. Clue one. She said she will do it again tomorrow.  Inspired another kid in that class to stand. He only lasted about 25 minutes. We’re working on verbs now. We have watched “Verb! That’s What’s Happening” at least four times… (Aside: When I was a high school wrestler back in the 70′s, our assistant coach was a body builder. He was runner up Mr. California–he lost to our former governor out here in California–but he did win Best Arms. Needless to say, he mocked all of us mercilessly if we couldn’t lift a stack of weights taller than he was. But  I filled the 90 pound spot on the team, and could actually benchpress my weight…which was some sort of line for him. So I got mocked a bit less. Unless I took off my shirt. But every time he competed, we got our revenge. He would spend the week before a competition buffing up and ripping as he called it. By the

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A New Breed

September 14, 2011
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Gotta make this short; Survivor returns tonight. Last year’s crew of kids was, I have to say, a bit vanilla. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, but they didn’t make for good blog fodder. This crowd is a whole ‘nother pack o’ dogs. I think this year is going to be fun to read about, if not live through. First I have more “astronauts” than ever before. These are the kids who spend most of their time on Planet Janet or Planet Charles or just randomly wandering the cosmos. My thumbs got sore from snapping my fingers like a hypnotist all the time, so the Stick has been in heavy use as a focusing aid early this year. I think I’m up to 10 miles a day patrolling the aisles and whacking and helping and cajoling and REMINDING. (That’s would be waaaay up from  typical 4.7 miles a day.) Now I think I have a whole new breed on my hands. I don’t even have a name for this one yet, because it’s so new–at least to me. One year I even had a girl who was prone to mini seizures, and would drop in the middle of  class and twitch on

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What’s This Dang Blog supposed to Be About Anyway?

September 12, 2011
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So far this year has been the year of weird schedules. Late start schedule for “faculty collaboration.” That’s on Mondays. Two extended second period schedules for tours of the school and to drill the school handbook. (Luckily, with a second period prep, I was able to avoid the ugliness.) Extended Homie Base Schedule for the fire and lockdown drill. Last week it was 45 (instead of 35) minute lunch schedule all week long after the Monday holiday. This was to reward them for increasing our API by the required amount. (The possibility of which isn’t any better than a crapshoot from year to year. But we can pat ourselves on the back and pretend that our “increased focus” on testing last year was the reason we jumped so much. Actually a crapshoot is a better bet than our test scores going up every year, especially if you bet Don’t Pass.) I’m thinking test scores went up either because we taught them such mad erasing skills or because we walked around and hounded them so much to try their best. Also the incoming seventh graders played no part in the test score increase, but they’re not complaining about the extra ten minutes. Anyway,

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What I Did Instead of Work I Should Have Been Doing

September 11, 2011
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This one will be short, because I’m going to bed early. It was a rough weekend. The wife went out of town this weekend, leaving the boy and I to our own devices. We went to the climbing gym, and were literally the only ones there. It’s a co-op, so there aren’t any employees, and we used our keycards to get in. We cranked up the house sound system, and (literally) rocked. I wish I could say it was midnight, but it was closer to noon.  Then I took a nap while the boy worked on his web site. We ate fries. We played Wii. We read books. Mine: David Lee Roth’s autobiography, Crazy from the Heat. One of my fave books of all time. It’s out of print (a shame) and not even available in e-book format, so I’m reading an actual hard cover book! My friend got it on Amazon after I had raved about it awhile back. I’ve almost killed it in a weekend. The boy’s: He finished the last of the Hitchhiker’s Guide books this weekend. We watched football. Oh yeah, and I took him to a punk rock show. The old 80′s silly punk band,

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Video Class Update

September 9, 2011
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The drama lady is going to kill me. My fledgling video class has taken over the drama room, and I have my sights set on acquiring more classroom real estate from the music department. Soon I will control more classroom space than three or four “regular” teachers. Quick refresher goes here. In a comic book, the main character occasionally  talks to him or herself for awhile, and catches up those readers who may not be so loyal as to have read every issue. So it’s not strictly a flashback; more of a refresher or a  ”previously on” sort of thing. And so, previously on mrC’s blog…  I’ll be “teaching” (more like figuring how to teach) a seventh grade elective class in video production. I’ll have one period of seventh graders and $70,000 worth of computers and video equipment.  Our share of the fees charged to our local cable company for their franchise to extort the community has been sitting in the bank for years collecting interest. We’re the only secondary school left in the district who hadn’t spent their money. In order to spend the money, you have to give the cable company footage to fill up the time on

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BTSN 2011 Rocks!

September 3, 2011
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BTSN 2011 Rocks!

Thursday was Back to School Night. Early again this year. Takes the pressure off for knowing names at least. My first two years as a credentialed teacher, I didn’t have Back to School nights. I worked as a sub (which is how I got this gig) and “teaching” independent study for a high school district in “da hood.” (Since the program got paid by the kid, we sometimes literally went out and knocked on doors of dropouts and kids who had just stopped coming to school–as long as they showed up to our program once a week and did their paperwork, the district got paid like they were regular students at the high school. We were even encouraged to award high school credits as “incentives” for showing up.) So this was BTSN performance number 20. And in honor of the occasion, and since the wife was going to be in the audience (still didn’t wow her–more on that later), and since I suddenly got a little inspiration on the bike ride back to school for the gig, AND since my band teacher buddy had a spare geetar for me at the last minute (in tune even), I decided to bust a move and do

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Sweat Baby, Sweat.

August 31, 2011
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Since we started on a Wednesday, today marks the end of the first week. It’s going to be a very interesting (read: long) year. Let’s see… I got several hand-washers. Not a bad thing, but a bit unusual for the crowd I run with. I got “Space Invaders” constantly penetrating The Bubble. This crew seems to have a larger percentage of these than usual. I got boxes and boxes and boxes arriving all the time with computers and monitors and speakers and cameras and tripods and lights and boxes and boxes and boxes. (I have filled five recycling dumpsters with cardboard and packaging, and I ain’t close to done.) I am moving furniture and building tables and ordering kids around as they plug in network cables and monitor adapters, and label cameras and charge batteries and make comics while we wait for all the cameras to arrive and get set up. Tomorrow is Back to School Night, and I still have to figure out what the video class is all about so I can explain it to the parents. With any luck they’ll spend most of the 10 minutes drooling over the equipment. (One of social studies teachers opined, “Those

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You Gotta Have a Program!

August 29, 2011
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When I was a kid and lived and died baseball (I gave it up forever after the ’99 strike), I bled St. Louis Cardinal red. And growing up in suburban Sacramento like I did, the only chance I would ever get to see my beloved Redbirds was when they would come to Candlestick Park in San Francisco (90 minute drive) to play the hated Giants. And one of my fave memories of going down to see them is the guy selling programs outside. “Ya gotta hava program! How you gonna watch da game if ya don’t hava program? Ya gotta hava program! Ya gotta hava program. Hey kid! Ya gotta program? Ya gotta hava program!” What was this New Joisey guy doing in SF? He talked like Archie Bunker. I loved it. My friends and I must have put dozens and dozens of different words in place of “program” over the years. Brainstorm and discuss possibilities. It has to be a two-syllable word. Then I moved here, and went to a few Dodger game down in SmellA, and realized that that guy used the same shtick. I still loved it. Where I’m headed with this near record-length intro is that middle

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Random Featured Post

“There’s already something on the back of mine.” (Also: Racial Harmony.)

It was our first day back in the classroom after 8 days in the library. We were all glad to be back. “Oh, my clicker…how I’ve missed you.” One of them actually said that. OMG. What a day. Full of action, and laugh after laugh. First there was the video. YouTube is blocked in our district. Our head of IST keeps bleating about CIPA and how YouTube doesn’t filter, and…anyway, we can’t use YouTube. But finally, they created a workaround for us. We have to do things from home rather than from school, but it works OK. We find the YouTube video we want to use, and copy the URL. Then we go to the district’s “safe video portal” and paste it in. Then we can approve our own video, and use the safe portal to show it at school. It’s a bit clunky, but it works fine. Yesterday I added a video. I hadn’t even showed it yet, when I got an e-mail from my principal. I have only added a couple of videos before, but both of them were of the nutty variety, rather than the “educational” sort.  One of them is near the top of the most [...]

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

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Recent Comments

  • 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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