A total turnoff.

Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

The 22 students who signed up for Janet Morrison's "Turn Off Your TV" class at Corridor Alternative Elementary had the best of intentions: They'd go the whole week screen-free.

No TV. No computers.

But it's not easy to stay on the wagon when your little brother refuses to give up cartoons. Or when your mother insists on watching the news. Or when another Corridor teacher shows a video in your homeroom class.

Third-grader Logan Sexton has been bombarded with such temptations all week. His parents almost always have the computer on, he said, "and my sister just can't go without TV for a week."

Nonetheless, Logan and his classmates largely have steered clear of screens this week, which is National TV-Turnoff Week, a 20-year-old campaign by a nonprofit organization called the TV-Turnoff Network. According to its Web site, 7.6 million people around the world participated last year.

Morrison's daily affirmations have helped students keep their resolve. Every morning, they've been greeted with new poster messages, such as "Can YOU Do a Tubeless Tuesday?" and "Day Three, No TV, There's So Much Outside to See!" They've all signed pledge cards saying they'll watch no TV and play no computer games, and they're learning about fun alternatives they can share with their families.

On Thursday, it was interactive poetry. Working in pairs, the children read aloud catchy, bug-themed poems from "Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices," by Paul Fleischman. It's a book that came in handy one weekend at the coast, Morrison explained, when the VCR at the cabin she had rented with friends went on the blink.

Fifth-grader Laken Johnson has taken her pledge with utmost seriousness, said her father - despite the fact that neither he, her mother nor her 6-year-old brother has been willing to join her.

"She's done it on her own, which is impressive," said Lane Johnson, a teacher at Sheldon High School whose family shares a fondness for "American Idol." "She actually walked by the TV when it was on and turned her face away and said, `I'm not going to even look at it.' It was really cute."

Laken, 10, said she was sad to miss "American Idol," and also yearns for a dose of "Full House."

"The first day was easy, but it's gotten harder," she said.

But she's also found other ways to have fun. "I've been getting to do a lot of things outside," said Laken, who doesn't watch copious amounts of television anyway, according to her father. Doing without TV, she added, has also given her more time to devour Lemony Snicket books. "I've been reading a lot," she said.

While Morrison has long encouraged students in her regular classes to take part in TV-Turnoff Week, this is the first time in her seven years at Corridor that she's taught an elective class on the subject. Corridor offers multi-age elective classes on various subjects each afternoon, which run for two or three weeks.

"I know there's a lot of great stuff on TV, and I certainly enjoy a lot of programming myself," said Morrison, who also has sworn off television this week, despite an alluring PBS series on the environment. "But those young minds and brains - they haven't developed enough to really understand what they're hearing."

On the first day, Morrison asked the students how many had TVs in their bedrooms. "It kind of compares to the national average - about 50 percent," she said.

One of those is third-grader Adam Diess, who said the amount of television he watches "depends how bored I am." He's placed a decorated TV cover - a first-day art project in class - over his set, and claims he hasn't missed it much.

"It lets you know how fun it is outside and not just sitting around the house," he said.

For the 11th year in a row, the Eugene Public Library has observed TV-Turnoff Week, offering pledge cards and hosting special events, although nothing quite as splashy as the public burial of a television set several years ago.

"What we're all about is the promotion about or even just the thought that there are alternatives," said youth services manager Mary Ginnane, who counted 101 pledge cards as of Thursday afternoon. "We're happy that we're planting the seed about the joy of reading and the great family feeling of reading a book together."

TV BY THE NUMBERS

7 hours, 12 minutes: Amount of time each day that TV is on in an average U.S. household

66: Percentage of Americans who watch TV while eating dinner

200,000: Number of violent acts the average American child sees on TV by age 18

16,000: Number of murders witnessed by children on television by age 18

53.8: Percentage devoted to stories about crime, disaster and war

80: Percentage of Hollywood executives who believe that there is a link between TV violence and real-life violence

30,000: Number of TV commercials seen in a year by an average child

98: Percentage of U.S. households with at least one television

CAPTION(S):

Skyler Lindstrom-Hernandez (left) and Sabra Chambers are replacing television with poetry during National TV-Turnoff Week. By age 65, the average American will have spent nearly watching this box. nine years