May your day be already full of great company, good laughs, and fabulous food.  I am now going to leave my marvelous new computer behind and wrassle with some sweet potatoes, get the stuffing started and then roust some kids to come and set the table.  It’s going to be a wonderful day for us and I hope the same for all of you!

1. My darling and dearest husband knows how I have suffered these past 4 days with no computer to call my own and is as I type this, on his way home in his Prius with a new computer for me. I shall think long on how to reward him suitably. I am certain he will have suggestions.

2. My suffering was somewhat ameliorated by the constant presence of my new (crack) phone. I can email, text, phone and check the internet. I can blog (but alas not with a WordPress app – there is still none for my Touch Pro 2), but only if I magnify the screen and type carefully. Hence, the no blogging since my computer shit the bed. Isn’t that phrase awful? Blame Sphyrnatude for that – it’s horrible. yet I cannot deny that it is apt:  it’s one of my dear friend’s stock phrases. 

3. When my new Gateway thing comes home, I will transfer 25 g of files, and then 43 g of photos. Fortunately, when the computer died, it did so without taking the drives with it, so I will get back years of stuff; papers for my master’s degree, reams of planning materials for teaching, and a gazillion photos going back to when my kids were but gleams.

4. The ex-computer was 8 years old, had fan issues, and was LOUD. Not gonna miss it, but it did have Windows 03 on it, and I will admit to a reluctance to adapting to the alienness that is 07. I like the simple Word!  Adapt, or die, but no one said anything about not whingeing about it.

5. My computer’s death did not coincide, fortunately, with any great need for printing for my classes – we were revising drafts – but I need it up and running for next week when I take the students through a few classes of grammar and usage, based on what I know of the issues that seem overly sticky, like commas, run ons, and vocabulary enhancement. I figure I am going to use the course objectives to reiterate all the things they should have learned but mostly didn’t. They have one major paper still due, but otherwise, not a ton of course material, so they are captive to my teacherly whims.  Heh.

6. Classes end officially on the 16th, but really, that day we’ll hand each other paper and a fare thee well. Then,  I will have 48 hours to get final grades in. Eek.

7. Several of my students chose, over the semester, to not do any work and so, eventually decided that despite the fact that they liked me and the class, there was no point in their continuing to attend. So far, I have recorded academic failures for 7 students. These people probably intended to be serious students, WANTED to want to be focused and disciplined, but were anything but. Some of them suffer from the most grevous form of procrastination I have seen since an old student of mine didn’t get around to paying parking tickets, eventually lost his license, drove anyway, and paid nearly 3000 in fees. For what would have been $30 in tickets.

8. Tomorrow, guests arrive for the wonderful American wackyness that is  Thanksgiving. I pick up my 18 pound turkey (I LIKE turkey) tomorrow, and while my kids watch Return of the King for the first time, I will have the first of my pies baking. Boo likes Viggo and Monkey likes Orlando: I hope it doesn’t come to eye scratching and hair pulling.

9. I have a lot to be grateful for this year, and look forward to this holiday for yet another opportunity to be mindful and extra verbal about it. I also look forward to the time off to be silly, stuffed, and stupefied with my family and friends.

10. New computer: Squeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I am typing this on my phone and exploring the extent of my swearing vocabulary…

Gifts that give more: the Hungersite.

So far, I’ve got a high efficiency stove for my BIL, a garden in Rwanda for my husband, and the means to send two girls to school in Afghanistan for my niece.

Happy holidays, indeed.

I also miss the headspace that allows me to sit and compose and think about something other than the grading and the students and the fact that I may have gone WAY over the line in my teaching.

I really have. I may care TOO much.

My students can generally be characterized as mostly apathetic, uninformed (unless it’s a scroll by on their FB pages) and too used to second chances, flexible deadlines and not enough intimidated by the possibility of a zero among their grades. They want to do something if it’s easy, and doesn’t require a lot of thinking.

Thank all the powers that be that I have some exceptions!

As a comp instructor, I have morphed frighteningly (at least to me) close to acting like the mother of some/most of these kids.  I bug them about work they haven’t done, make accommodations – “you realize that without this draft, you cannot pass the course, right? If you get it to me by tonight at midnight,  I will leave comments and suggestions so you can revise it for the final version due this week” – and I have sent them links to articles I have found on their topics.

Time to take a BIG step back. My big aha moment was when I dreamed of how *I* would write some of their papers.

Students hand in their argument final drafts this coming week. I will admit to having encouraged a misunderstanding on their parts this past Tuesday when they showed up to class; I had let them believe their papers were due, not a draft, so when they came in with solid (well, in SOME cases) efforts, I brought them to the library for a final peer edit/conference/research session, and it was HIGHLY useful.

I may not get drek next week.

Next week’s looming due date is a revision of their final papers, and I plan to do the same thing – bring them to the library to work, to do the fact checking, last minute support gathering they should have done earlier.  That said, many came to me to tell me they were very glad to have had to do annotated bibliographies before their final research essays (8 -12 pages) were due, as they were thus forced to go deep into the sources and their relative strengths and weaknesses. At the very least, some of the skills absolutely necessary for success in the NEXT English class will have been learned.   One can hope, eh?

The weeks of the semester haven’t exactly flown by, but I have some students I have truly enjoyed working with;  some who have sent friend requests through FB (which I am ignoring) and others who share bits of their lives. I have learned so much about how to approach material and turn it into teachable discussion, and although my department over at the college is fragmented with little leadership and no sharing of materials or ideas, this has been a great experience. I am not going to teach next semester, and I am going to miss it.

So, my head’s been stuffed up my ass with all the school-related stuff I have been (0ver)doing. Meanwhile, my kids are growing furiously, my marigolds (above) are still going even with the ice crystals that adorn them most mornings, and I have people coming for Thanksgiving that I LIKE, with no drama, no resentment, no alien vibes – just loved ones with good cheer,  and fabulous energy.

Stay warm!

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…