Yesterday I received an e-mail that took me awhile to cipher. Dear Mr. Coward, Recently I have been thinking about making a hovercraft and wanted to be able to propel it in directions unlike the ones I’ve seen on the Internet. Those ones can’t propel in certain directions, but yours I saw was able to. However, the instructions were not as self-explanatory as you may have thought it was. I wanted to build what was on the site and modify it to make my own hovercraft. Please reply to me with this email address and help me understand certain parts of your instructions. Thank you. After more than 11 years on the net, my various websites contain well over 30,000 pages. I’ve had many, many e-mails over the years, asking all sorts of questions. But this one was a first. Hovercraft? Directions? When did I teach hovercraft building? Or is this some new sort of Spam e-mail looking for gullible hovercraft fans? What page was she looking at? Was this meant for another Mr. Coward? An hour or so of mulling (as well as some furious clicking) brought me to the answer. Through the wondrous power of Google, this budding hovercraft
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Today we were working in pairs (Que milagro – pairs in Mr. C’s class!) on one sentence summaries for the first seven chapters of The Midwife’s Apprentice. Sometimes I have to remind them that this is English, and we do have to put down our clickers and write now and then. They actually liked this one, and it was a great way to review a book we’re reading entirely in class, and don’t always get to every day. It forced them to go back and reread and review the book together, and to even use the table of contents (gasp – good practice for research in the spring). I did keep having to say, “Look in the book.” Anyway, at one point a pair of girls raised their hands and said, “We need help.” “Maybe you should make an appointment with your counselor.” The two girls were the ones who laughed the hardest. I know –and to make sure, my wife reminds me all the time– that some (many?) of the things I say to my students might be interpreted as being “mean.” She has said, “You’re one of those teachers I would have been scared to death of when
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OK. I’ll get back to the -isms eventually. I just have another great seventh grade line to share. Or two. A seventh grade class is the perfect straight man; they often don’t realize how funny they are, or how often they set you up for a funny line. We’re reading The Midwife’s Apprentice right now. I only have a class set, so we’re reading it all in class, like The Outsiders. It should work out beauty, with just a couple weeks left until winter break. The kids usually like this one a lot. It has the word fart in it. There’s poop (we’re 800 years from the toilet), lots of insults, our heroine is a plucky underdog whom they all root for, and it’s funny. Everything a seventh grader could hope for. We were talking about how, in those days (Middle Ages) most people didn’t have a last name, and were often called by whatever they did for a living: John the Miller and Walter the Smith and Stephen the Fletcher (the guy that puts the feathers on arrows) and so forth. “So, many of the last names we have today have their origins in what our ancestors did for
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We had an open mouth quiz on chapter 8 today. One class has several boys who have a new phrase they’re trying out. Personally, I sort of like it. 4) On p127, we get an example of what seems to be foreshadowing. What is it? a) When Two-Bit says that Darry will kill him if Pony’s really sick. b) When Two-Bit says Darry could be a Soc. c) When Pony says he has a helpless feeling. d) When Two-Bit calls Pony chicken. e) When Pony says he’ll be well by tonight. “OK, number four. What’s foreshadowing?” The class takes care of that one for me. Most of them laugh, and one says, “I was wrong.” (Pony’s line at the end of chapter three, and a beauty example for them of foreshadowing.) “Oh yeah. Ok, so it’s C, right?” “True that.” “Number six. Darry, I mean Dally (they always mix up those names), right?” “True that.” (me, doing some “refocusing” of a gentleman off to the side) “‘Clark,’ could you focus your comments on the questions? Open mouth only applies if that mouth is talking about the questions.” “True that.” “And I think we’re done with that line, for today at [...]
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That reminds me of those great SNL skits about the Sofa King. You know, how the prices are "Sofa King" low, the deals are "Sofa King" great, etc. (You obviously have to say those phrases out loud to get the joke.)