O’Mama ’s new toy is simply AMAZING.

Weather permitting, Monkey’s Mitzvah spot: Sea!

(Taken with my spiffmo new smartphone.)

1. I canceled my class today because I have something nasty brewing.  I have a headache that directs me to be still, as moving my head or neck is stupidly painful. Why am I blogging?

2. I still have to grade papers, even if I have to be careful as to how I move my neck. Last night I got through papers about, among other things, Whales, Living in Rome in 1 AD, Jeffrey Dahmer’s Psychosis, and Women in Gangs, but have to get through the last 8 or so before I can seek out the couch and the blankets.

3. I just read a “research” paper/screed about how this country may or may not have too many doctors (his argumentative paper doesn’t really choose a side). Sentences like this one, while good for a laugh, do not help my head:

“A common procedure that pathologists perform is a Pap test, where a mole is removed from a patient and then the pathologist will examine it to determine the best treatment option for the patient.”

or this one:

[Steroids] made the normal man who appeared to be scrawny, look like a strapping lumberjack.”

4. Yesterday, as my head began to pound, and I had had just about enough of bad papers, I got punchy and  launched into a stupid game 12 year olds of all ages like to play. My kids play it at camp – the PENIS game. So, there I was, whipering PENis, PEEEEEnis, peeeNIs, until my kids turned from their desks and stared at me.

Boo, laughing, put her head in her hands and moaned, “I hate when you get like this.”

“PEEEEEEEEEENis!” I shout.

“Mum, doesn’t your head hurt?”

“Well, yes, but maybe it’ll stop if I keep saying penis.”

Grinning. “Hasn’t stopped yet, has it?”

“No, but maybe I’m doing it wrong?  PPPPPPPPPEEEEEEEEEEEEnnniiSSSS!

Laughing with my daughters is always a treat.

5. One bright spot on my horizon is a new cellphone that will arrive today. I checked tracking (don’t we all?) so I know it’s on a F*dex truck somewhere around here, and will be delivered before 4:30.  I’m trying not to move too much as I froth in anticipation.

6. My new brainline:

from www.3g.co.uk

It’s the HTC Touch Pro 2, and with it, I will join the 21st century (my current phone is 7 years old) and  be able to TEXT my friends, kids, husband, write word documents, watch streaming video, blog, and I’m just about inarticulate with glee and anticipation.  Lots of EEEEEEEEEE!

7. I love it how some things, like the wasp? and the marigolds (calendula), hold on until it pretty much snows. This was taken on Sunday.

8. Tomorrow, I will see my student who got back into my class after having plagiarized, which I am enough of a professional to handle by not acting any differently. I don’t like this student, and because I doubt my ability to be suitably impartial, had someone I trust to give me a fair assessment read it for me. We agreed that the paper landed just in the D category, bringing this person’s all around grade in that range. He may yet pass. Maybe.

9. Boo’s been working on one of the book covers and in depth review projects Freshman English teachers like to assign. My daughter is often reticent to try new books, new authors, so when she was dashing out the door three weeks ago and needed, by the way, a book to read, I handed her The Beacon at Alexandria, by Gillian Bradshaw. She devoured it, s I knew she would, and despite thinking the assignment dumb, learned to write expansively, with informed detail about her topic in a way she’d previously derided as bullshit. I helped her see that writing for any topic, for any audience, is filling in the gaps, analyzing, and extrapolating, and a vital skill for academia, and life.

She rolled her eyes, kissed me and then told me she wished I were her English teacher.

Aww.

10. Fall at night sure is pretty.

]]> http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/ten-things-tuesday-18/feed/ 7 Organic Mama HTC-Touch-Pro2-Review-Photo1-3G IMG_1553 DSCN2715 http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/plagiarism-boy/ http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/plagiarism-boy/#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:05:42 +0000 Organic Mama http://thebluetwin.wordpress.com/?p=2393 ]]>

from lrdc.pitt.edu

I am a teacher of College English at a midsized community college in New England.

Last week, after students were told to take their final versions of their compare and contrast essays home to insert all their citations both intext and in a works cited page, I got a paper on steroids from Alan with paragraphs  ripped word for word from internet sources (and also not on his list of preapproved academic sources.) Word for word.

I know almost everyone uses information they find elsewhere, but this kid hadn’t been bright enough to weave in any of the information into his paper. His own writing was horrifically awful, which did little to hide the beautifully written paragraphs he’d boosted. In order for him to seamlessly synthesize what he was supposed to have learned from his sources, someone else would have had to have written the paper.

Somehow, Alan had managed to get through high school without ever hearing that taking chunks of text from the internet without citing it constituted plagiarism and was a Very Bad Thing.  I found this hard to believe, so I asked other of my students – who had been to the same high school and had had some of the same teachers – what exactly they’d learned at this high school.

I was told, and I quote, “He totally knew what he was doing was wrong. He was being lazy and stupid, and hoping he wouldn’t get caught. He’s a jock”.

I busted Alan out of my class. Then I photocopied the paper with the ripped off paragraphs (along with the highlighted sources I easily found via Google) and sent it to my chair.

Alan wrote this (unedited) email after I gave him the administrative failure:

Please, is there anyway I can talk to you about this. It was a mistake, I promise it  really was. I didn’t pass that paper in hoping I would get away with plagiarism. When you told us to all go back and cite our sources I did but I missed two.I’m heart broken right now. Everything has gone wrong in the last year I almost gave up school and just got a job. I stayed with it though. I was just beginning to learn English and climb up the latter again. The way you taught it really stuck in my mind and I was truly learning. I know you have a job to do and maybe I was or wasn’t one of your favorite students. Please though could I just sit down and talk to you for a little bit after class is over today. I am really lost and stunned.

Al appealed the administrative failure to the chair of the department.  Since I expressed not being averse (underwhelming enough?) to his rejoining my class, the chair has indicated that since I did not go into enough exhaustive detail about what and how to cite, despite each student having multiple resources (including their handbooks and Blackboard, where I have posted sample essays) and despite the fact that I handed them photocopies of how to weave sources into the text, Alan is to be given a second chance. Apparently Alan still didn’t understand.

Does he deserve another chance? This is the kid who failed out of Local U in math and English and came to the community college to make up those grades.  Oops, eh? Clearly, he’s desperate, but also clearly, I’m supposed to be the teacher in the equation, to help him learn his lessons and benefit from his mistakes.  I’ve been told that had this been later in the semester, this chance would not be available to him. However, given so many revisions are yet to come, and so many more opportunities to craft and hone essays yet remain, he will re enter my class on Wednesday morning.

He will, however, be signing a memo of understanding that dictates, in excruciating detail, that should he feel compelled to breathe without first citing his sources, he will be out on his ass with a great big F carved into his forehead.

Ok, just out, with a no-contest F.

I can’t honestly say I did EVERYTHING I could have to spoon feed him and the other students about what to do and what not to.  I do feel compelled to recognize I had made a lot of assumptions about what this (very thick) student and his peers knew.  That’s the only sticking point I can think of, however. Ultimately, the chair of the department thinks Al can be salvaged and that this lesson (and mark on his academic file) will serve him in the end.

Thanks to my fantastic community college teaching colleague Dingo, I have sent each and every student the  plagiarism tutorials she uses, along with links to read about how to academically cover your ass.

I did learn from this debacle too, but mostly I learned to cover MY ass, to make sure there is NO possibility of any vestige of doubt that the students are given enough information, that when they hang themselves from their own stupidity, I have the proof.

It’s getting colder out there.

Here in New England, the nights are frosting up windows, and turning the grass and what remains of the flowers and bushes that monochromatic blueish that disappears if the sun deigns to shine.

I’m a layer-er. I have to sit still these chilly days, grading and commenting on student papers and therefore, I tend to have several shirts on a the same time. My darling, beloved, and acerbic husband does not share my predilection toward layered warmth and, as he frolics in a tshirt,  is often vocally shocked at how padded I like to be.

It seems my hands are cold when I touch him. You know, UNDER his shirt.

I am neither an insect (is insect sex insex? just wondering…) or a lizard. Just a chilled New Englander with slow blood circulation. I have 8 weeks of this semester to go and then, THEN, I won’t be chained to my desk.  Maybe my blood will even circulate.

Now, back to the second in a row paper on gangs…

Chili has a great list of reasons she can’t blog and I am boosting her idea because I am in a very similar boat as she. Busily bailing as I go.

1. I have a stack of research papers that need to be graded for tomorrow morning at 8.

2. Dinner is what is now not the block of meat-colored ice I hoped to dine on last night (we had an egg night). I will throw some veggies together for a side dish, but otherwise, no kitchen goddessing for me.

3. Today is Sphyrnatude’s birthday, and as such, I am going to be making him something decadent and wonderful.. . when I figure out and shop for whatever I’ll be making for him tomorrow night when he comes for dinner.

4. Sephira, the yappy wonderbitch, needs walking. Running, actually. Bad O’Mama.

5. Laundry piles I have given up on folding. If I need something, I now know which basket to plunder.

6. Reading and planning for the second half of tomorrow’s 4-hour class. I have them looking at two articles – one supporting and one vilifying – the Harry Potter’s effect on young minds.

7. The glut on email in my inbox.

8. Unreturned phone calls to loved ones.

9. The archeological dig I call my desk.

10. Last but not least, I am too busy to blog because in my downtime, I can’t stop thinking all about the faceted and fascinating effects the visit of my inlaws this past weekend has had on all of us.  Still decompressing and sweeping out the vestiges of nasty negativity and lousy communication they left in their wake. Ugh.

I hope your Tuesday is a wonderful, less frenetic one than mine.

I’m  grading college composition papers at the moment, and trying not to alarm the sleeping Sephira at my feet.

I’m seething.

Thing is, I’m not surprised that my students generally didn’t listen when they were told to cite actual sources for their compare and contrast essays, but when they include opinions that cannot be supported as “fact,” my panties bunch up and I get all growly.

Get THIS guy’s opinion on why you shouldn’t travel on buses: “The air conditioning on buses is often cold and uncomfortable and the odor of the bus is sometimes unbearable since many of the lower social classes ride buses.”

I can’t make this shit up.

1. If my students in a comp class at the community college  were given revisions criteria, feedback, and 3 weeks to fix their papers, and they don’t? I get upset. Irritated, perhaps even all the way up to ripshit (a term I just learned last week, btw).

2. If a student doesn’t hand in drafts – ANY drafts – but comes to class and participates with insightful and witty commentary, and I have to have him dropped from the course because he hasn’t completed any actual work, I get sad. And bloody pissed off.

3. When a student carefully considers feedback, makes pertinent changes, and improves their paper to the point that it is a thing of beauty? First I shout with exultation, then I record the A they earned.

Uh, then I bronze the paper, right?

4. I am going to class today to workshop the next draft type – informational papers, but I also have to hand back their mostly awful papers. I would like to think they will read my carefully considered comments and pertinent edits (I can’t help editing sometimes), internalize them, and have that new mindfulness affect their subsequent papers. I would like to.  A lot.

5. Since I have already said often (because they may not have heard me the first 9 times) that I will take back their papers to re evaluate for a better grade – and I will – but I know I will be getting at least 15 per class, which means I have to READ THEM AGAIN.

6. I am quite clear that some of these students will be hopping mad when they get their papers back. I brace myself against this expected wave of hostility from them by the recognition that I do them no fucking favors by rewarding woefully inadequate, error-ridden essays. They may hate me, but they’ll learn from me.

7. My pens – my colored, fine-tipped markers – have supported me throughout this grueling grading process and I am grateful.

8.  I have dressed in comfortable and sanity-sustaining green and purple for today’s essay melee. I hope, I HOPE the students will be mature enough to take the criticism and learn from their mistakes, and that this won’t affect the good atmosphere of the class, but if it does, I am prepped.

9. Why can’t they title their papers? “Informational Draft” just doesn’t do it for me.

10. Hey! If they work to improve, maybe their final research essays, due in December, will be joys to read?

What? Why are you laughing?

Too many abysmal papers make me cranky.

(thanks to Chili for the succinct and brevity idea: LOVE IT!)

1. I’ve been missing this space, and Jules’ space, and Dingo’s and Louise’s and Kizz’s and Gerry’s and K8’s and… and frankly, am looking forward to hauling myself through this semester to regain some of my time away from reading and grading 40+ essays per week.  Thing is, because of some things that aren’t yet clarified, and a huge project looming on the horizon, I probably won’t be teaching next semester, so while I am keenly aware of how much I have been enjoying being in a classroom again, I know it’s temporary. Strangely, that’s made me enjoy it more – I’m more relaxed and more prone to taking risks because I am less attached.  Chili intuitively assessed that, and she’s hit the nail on the head.

2. While I have been snowed under and too preoccupied with the teaching, I missed using this space to celebrate the birthday – the 12th birthday – of Miss Monkeyface. My youngest has grown so much over the last year; she’s taller, more involved, is all leg, is engaging and thoughtful, insightful and full of spirit. She also writes poetry. My English teacher heart just swooooons.

3. Breaking the Yom Kippur fast last night was heavenly.  I spent the day initially working, but decided after an hour or so, that I needed to be in brain-off mode, and took to the couch with the latest Kelley Armstrong braincandy. I did spend some time outside, walking with the husband, taking in the spectacular sunlight on the changing trees.  We live in a gorgeous place, and contemplation and reflection came quite easily.

Back to the food! We broke our fasts with French toast, scrambled eggs, maple syrup, orange juice and mmmmmm. For me, the fast was an important reminder of what I take for granted, and what falls through the cracks when I am busy taking care of my needs and wants.

4. My daughter (the now 12 year old) likes to pick her battles with me. Lately, she leaves her wet towels on the floor to see if I will notice, and I haven’t been noticing lately, what with being changed to my desk and all.     Next time she does it, it goes under her pillow.

5. We heard from the Vet Board about our desire to bring some sort of sanctions against the vet and the practice that so failed our late Shem. Basically, they said even if we could prove all that we had alleged, it would not be enough to instigate any charges.  They also sent their condolences. The same day the letter arrived  we heard from the breeder we got Shem from (her email had been bolllixed up until that day), who also sent her love.

It’s time to let go.

Sigh.

6. We’ll soon be planting a mulberry tree right next to Shem’s grave, in our meadow. We may go looking for it this weekend, or we may wait until the Spring. At any rate, we’ll be designing and crafting a marker for his spot in the field, not that we would ever forget his presence there, on the other side of the grass.

7. I had to forgive myself, during these High Holy Days, for my involvement, or lack thereof, that might have contributed to Shem’s death. IF I had paid better attention, acted sooner, something…

8. Want to hear what a shofar sounds like? Go here for a NPR treat.  Thanks, Chili!

9. Teaching is going well, and I am getting into the groove with my classes. That said, it’s only week 5 somehow. Little bit of d r a g going on.

10. This? This is how I play scrabble with my blushing nephew. I used nipples, however.  It was enough. But this ? Genius.