Sandburg special on PBS

[RJNorton]

I used the following technique. I had a blank piece of paper on my desk. If a boy or girl were misbehaving I threatened to write their name down on the piece of paper. I announced this with a dead serious, straight face and strong voice. I put vocal emphasis on the child's name when I made this "threat."

95% of the time this worked, and the student got his or her priorities straight! No one ever asked what it meant if their name were actually written down on the paper, although ex-students would come back the next year and ask me about it. Of course it really meant nothing, but I had a lot of really good laughs with ex-students about this.

How about the other 5%? Well, when a special Illinois early retirement package was offered, I gladly accepted and moved to Florida...