Pat’s Polemics

Brian Barabe wrote: If a student has five 95’s and one zero, his arithmetic average is 79. Many teachers would easily bump the grade up (Continue Reading)

Last night my wife and I got together with another couple whose anniversary is the same date as ours. We’ve been doing this for 5 (Continue Reading)

My wife, who takes little interest in my linguistic pursuits, was intrigued today when I mentioned, as part of our conversation about what to do (Continue Reading)

Yesterday I subbed in a class where the teacher had seating charts. Each was in a different classroom but I noticed that in the one (Continue Reading)

This very plea invokes the image of master/pupil. One time I had a client who brought his kids in for counseling. Over several years the (Continue Reading)

Situation: large, noisy class with about 6 “ring-leaders?. Note: majority of the class has textbooks, binders and other notebooks and seem to be looking to (Continue Reading)

Today I had a chance to observe a teacher working with a small group of special ed kids in an English class. I had had (Continue Reading)

I subbed in a class last week. It was a fl class, Spanish. There were 3 block classes so they lasted an hour and a (Continue Reading)

It is always fascinating to hear of people talk about trends in teaching Latin – particularly when this is aimed at the idea of teaching (Continue Reading)

This is regarding my adventures at a high school I have been subbing in since September. I was asked to take this class over and (Continue Reading)

After a jillion posts back and forth, I share the frustration of the following post: I can’t help but wonder how many others on the (Continue Reading)

These posts are what I was responding to (see my response at Read More): >Over 85% maybe?! > > >—– Original Message —– >> Subject: (Continue Reading)

I read a post, typical of many, in which a teacher declares that her students don’t care about doing anything well. Something tells me that (Continue Reading)

So now we go to the external forces that can hurt kids and teachers when classes are big: colleagues, supervisors, parents, and one’s own self-doubts. (Continue Reading)

I’ve thought and thought about this. The first image that comes to mind is of my old principal. Why was that? I realize that my (Continue Reading)

I love this “reply” to the Turks by the Iraqi president, Talabani, who just happens to be a Kurd. “We are looking for peace, not (Continue Reading)

A current thread on a listserv has to do with the behavior of students and how classroom rules can affect that behavior and give something (Continue Reading)

Rather than list all the irritating things kids do, how about a discussion of what is going on with kids and which kids? All of (Continue Reading)

Here’s a post to a language teacher Listserv: “I’ve heard guácala used a lot by our Mexican teenage relatives who come to spend a year (Continue Reading)

Recently I read a post about tprs where the teacher said he didn’t like the lack of control over what the students were learning using (Continue Reading)

Anyone who looks at a REAL grammar of a language knows the complexity we language teachers deal with. A recent comprehensive grammar of English has (Continue Reading)

Recently a large response was garnered when I offered a list of Latin words with their Romance reflexes. I got balled up in trying to (Continue Reading)

Here is a post from an extremely astute language teacher: I’ve been pondering something. Why is it that we think flash cards are a good (Continue Reading)