Reading Log: Fill & Download for Free

Almost certainly a reddit bot that told people when they were wrong (By parsing Wikipedia’s List of common misconceptions and then searching for incoming comments that matched the misconceptions.)Of course it had some trouble with idioms but it was still the most fun I’ve ever had reading log files.

“[Son], it’s dinner time”No answer.I look in the lounge room, and he is sitting on the couch, engrossed in a book.At dinner, the book is tucked under the edge of the table.“[Son], it’s bed time.”No answer.I go to his room, and he is sitting in his recliner, engrossed in a book.I turn out the light, say good night, and fifteen minutes later the lamp is on under the covers, and his book is open.When completing his reading log for the Summer Reading Club, he has read a book (or more) a day.And I think to myself, “Yep, that’s my kid.”

When I was in seventh grade, our English teacher was an older woman named Mrs. M. Looking back, even though she was a strict teacher and otherwise unlikeable person, she didn’t deserve to be treated the way we treated her. We never paid attention in class and shamelessly talked over her during lessons. I’d say only half of us ever did our homework. Rumor has it, she retired the next year because our class had so badly broken her spirit.Remember how I said she was strict? We were made to fill out nightly reading logs, complete with pages and a summary of what we read, which was not out of the ordinary. What was unprecedented was her policy of checking books: in order to receive points for our reading logs, the books we read had to be pre-approved by her. She would “ban” books mostly for content she deemed age inappropriate, although she would also take issue with reading too many books at once, and refuse to sign off on new books until others were finished. Many of us, myself included, got fed up with the system and stopped checking new books with her entirely, leaving our reading logs forged or simply blank.Fast forward to freshman year, and our English teacher is a lovely woman we’ll call Mrs. B. She was quick to punish insolence, but we respected her because she respected us. She shared personal aspects of her life with us, and listened as we shared pieces of ourselves.Mrs. B had grown up in our school district and had graduated from the very high school at which she taught. She was also young enough that she had had many of the same teachers as us. One day, as we were reminiscing on our middle school experiences, Mrs. B told us that she had also been in Mrs. M’s seventh grade English class. She told us that when she was a kid, she read horror novels almost exclusively. Mrs. M had never let her read them because she didn’t think they were “real” literature. However many years later, Mrs. B got a job at the high school, and she found herself working alongside Mrs. M (the middle school would work closely with the high school to make sure that the middle school curriculum prepared students for high school). She said that they would often be stuck at the same meetings, where Mrs. B would come prepared with a stack of her favorite childhood horror novels, and page through them sitting directly across from Mrs. M, who would simply shake her head.First instance I’ve ever heard of a former student/teacher sticking it to another teacher. I think we all liked Mrs. B even more after that day.