From a hand-delivered card received yesterday:
Professor Southern Man,
I would like to take this time out to say thank you! For me being a non-traditional student there were many adjustments. You have really been an inspiration to me. I'm glad to know that there are teachers who still care. You be encouraged and keep up the good work.
***
I can still do this stuff, apparently. :) Needless to say, the card made my day/week/month.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Meme borrowed from seabird78.
My Personality
90 | |
11 | |
43 | |
60 | |
46 |
You do not experience strong, irresistible cravings and consequently do not find yourself tempted to overindulge, however you experience panic, confusion, and helplessness when under pressure or stress. You tend not to talk much and prefer to let others control the activities of groups. You prefer dealing with either people or things rather than ideas. You regard intellectual exercises as a waste of your time. You dislike confrontations and are perfectly willing to compromise or to deny your own needs in order to get along with others, however you are not affected strongly by human suffering, priding yourself on making objective judgments based on reason. You are more concerned with truth and impartial justice than with mercy. You take your time when making decisions and will deliberate on all the possible consequences and alternatives. |
Why I hate home ownership.
I don't, really, of course--most days. I wrote that to get your attention. But.
In a sentence: It forces me to pretend to care about a process which doesn't come naturally to me.
In a paragraph: I can get really angry, just seething, when something like our clogged gutters and partially dislodged drain spout become the problems they're becoming, because then I have to role-play The Dedicated Homeowner. At the heart of it, no big deal. We'll call a few people, get some estimates, and have the job(s) done. But you would not believe how much I hate calling experts and listening to them tell me things which I have no choice but to agree with, because who am I?
I don't hate home ownership, but I hate the side effects of it. Here in mid-spring, for example, we have these little "fuzzy" things (pods?) dropping left and right from the trees, all over the deck and the yard and the driveway, lodging in the dogs' tails, just making a mess. A good clean sweep is needed, and in my weak moments such as now, I want the deck to sweep itself.
But I'd much rather sweep than supervise. I'm not interested in price comparisons and micro-managing to ensure that maintenance and/or preventive work gets done properly, but I realize I have to do so. I just want the work to be done. Give me five loads of laundry. Hell, give me a light switch to change out.
This also may be explained by the Talking End-of-Month Low-Bank-Account Blues.
Whaddaya gonna do?
Friday, April 25, 2008
A quick meme/lame excuse for a real post.
Borrowed from Inside the Philosophy Factory:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of min. 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
Book: The March, E.L. Doctorow.
All else was hectic intention, with the wind blowing tufts of cotton through the alleys and even the live oaks in the squares bending and swaying to the wind. In all of this Wilma Jones felt the smallness and insignificance of her own purposes on this morning. But that is the slave still in me, she thought.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Childhood albums #1: Elton John, Rock of the Westies. (REVISED)
As an impressionable second-grader in 1975, more impressionable than your typical second-grader, a friend one day brought me a tape of Elton John's Rock of the Westies. It wasn't a tape of Rock of the Westies, properly speaking; it was a tape of a recordplayer playing Rock of the Westies, probably in my friend's bedroom, complete with doors closing and parents calling.
I shoved the tape into my GE cassette recorder, cranked up the volume, and labored to understand something that sounded like "Yow how." I listened to Elton’s urgent voice calling out to some guy named Dan Dare, to an unnamed island girl. I heard a dizzying array of personae: a gringo in the wrong country and the wrong bar on the wrong night, a regretful lover, a street tough, an asylum inmate. I heard him imploring me to “check it out,” over and over.
Mostly, my impressionable second-grade mind was taken apart and reassembled like Lego. I knew of Elton, as most of middle America did, primarily through his first Greatest Hits from the year before. Before that, he had filtered into my consciousness through the inescapable AM-readiness of “Your Song,” "Crocodile Rock," "Bennie and the Jets," Reared in a suburban, top-40, easy-listening bubble, I knew I liked him in the acceptable ways: as a pristine melodist, as a balladeer. The man that observed me observing him on the front cover of Greatest Hits seemed elegant, impeccably dressed (as he sang years later, a certain sartorial eloquence), and cool as hell. Yet in TV concert snippets, he also looked like the wild man: oversized glasses, pastel wardrobe, impish smile, Jerry-Lee-Lewis-bent-over at the piano, stomping through one of his barnstormers, going over the top and taking everyone with him.
This is the Elton John that leaped out of that cassette recorder at me, and Rock of the Westies is still the only Elton John LP to have ever fully captured this side of the man: the bluesy, balls-out, Saturday-night’s-alright-for-fighting pub scrapper. For forty minutes, it sounds like Elton’s pursuing some interesting confluence of Mott the Hoople and the Faces. It sounds as though he bought a fifth of Jim Beam and told the expanded Elton John Band, “Fuck it, let’s rock.”
The result, even now, is thrilling. From a standpoint of pure propulsion, these songs move. The opening medley of “Yell Help,” (not “yow how,” as it turned out), “Wednesday Night,” and “Ugly” sets the tone: sit your ass down and let these songs wash over you. The guitars are thick and crunchy, front and center in the mix. The expanded instrumentation, especially James Newton Howard’s synthesizers and Ray Cooper’s arsenal of chimes, gongs, and xylophones, piles on layers previously unthinkable on an Elton album. And don’t forget Labelle, wailing righteously in the background. There is air to these songs, and space, even as they march toward the confluence of Glitzville and Desolation Row.
Rock of the Westies gets derided for the same facets I cherish, though thirty-three years on, it does sound more schizophrenic and rushed than your usual John/Taupin collaboration. Large chunks of Taupin’s lyrics still make little sense and/or contain the subtlety of a flying mallet, when they don’t border on sexism, racism, and plain old ignorance. How convincing is Elton as a street kid or a sailor? How much does Taupin know about prostitutes or mental illness, really? But Elton sings as though subtlety or sense don’t really matter, and the sheer force of the band carries him through. The momentum doesn’t let up. And Elton just plain sounds like he’s having a great time.
Doubtless there are better (read: more carefully arranged, more nuanced, more hit-laden) Elton John albums. Other albums of his make equally interesting left turns; I’m still a holdout for the minor-key, semi-rambling Blue Moves and its lyrical beelines into depression and suicide. Rock of the Westies was the second Elton John album of 1975, six months after Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, and it does sound a little slapdash, unnuanced, even a little strained. But what makes me giddy about it now is what made me giddy about it then. Present is Elton the rocker, the wild man--a side we only saw hints of before, and one we’ve seen little of since.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
The general surveys the carnage.
2:30 on Wednesday afternoon, and things are looking grim.
Three students in one class (out of 9 remaining) have turned in no revisions; this, after I gave everyone a handout and explained how they should approach revisions and when they were due and that they were required and how much of the final grade they counted (25%). So in the final tabulations, three students in this class will begin with a 75.
In another class, one student plagiarized 90% of her research essay and got a big fat zero. (I'd link to the previous post but haven't figured out how yet, so just scroll down about 6-7 posts. Sorry...) Four other grades on the research essay were in the 60s, two were in the 50s, and one was in the 40s; these numbers are explained by a combo of 1) incorrect citation formatting; 2) turning it in late; 3) shitty writing.
My third class is the only one this spring in which I feel they've made something approaching progress. Their profile is overall much better; might even have an A or two and several solid B's. That said, three students in this class also turned in no revisions.
Which leads me to asking this: how much can an instructor influence a class's mood? If "mood" isn't the right word, how about energy, motivation, vibe? With the really sucky classes, I usually feel the energy start to sap around midterm and it rarely recovers, and I feel I can do little to change it. With this one bright shining class, I feel they are a real community--and I also feel, curiously, I've had little to do with it, that they supplied the energy and wherewithal.
The best I can do, some days, is hopefully not drag them down any further. The best I can do is create a (with luck) supportive environment. But some of them wouldn't know a supportive environment if it bit 'em.
The more things change...
Three students in one class (out of 9 remaining) have turned in no revisions; this, after I gave everyone a handout and explained how they should approach revisions and when they were due and that they were required and how much of the final grade they counted (25%). So in the final tabulations, three students in this class will begin with a 75.
In another class, one student plagiarized 90% of her research essay and got a big fat zero. (I'd link to the previous post but haven't figured out how yet, so just scroll down about 6-7 posts. Sorry...) Four other grades on the research essay were in the 60s, two were in the 50s, and one was in the 40s; these numbers are explained by a combo of 1) incorrect citation formatting; 2) turning it in late; 3) shitty writing.
My third class is the only one this spring in which I feel they've made something approaching progress. Their profile is overall much better; might even have an A or two and several solid B's. That said, three students in this class also turned in no revisions.
Which leads me to asking this: how much can an instructor influence a class's mood? If "mood" isn't the right word, how about energy, motivation, vibe? With the really sucky classes, I usually feel the energy start to sap around midterm and it rarely recovers, and I feel I can do little to change it. With this one bright shining class, I feel they are a real community--and I also feel, curiously, I've had little to do with it, that they supplied the energy and wherewithal.
The best I can do, some days, is hopefully not drag them down any further. The best I can do is create a (with luck) supportive environment. But some of them wouldn't know a supportive environment if it bit 'em.
The more things change...
Monday, April 21, 2008
Declaration of principles, somewhat updated.
For whomever of y'all are out there reading this, rest assured not all posts will be teaching-related. I do (and think) other things. :) I want to get into some music appreciation, more poetry appreciation, homeowner tales, travel stuff, best Atlanta coffee locales, et al.
In the interim, I need to mess around with creating links to other pages within posts. Big earth-shaking stuff.
I may hold forth on politics, too, though if I do, I risk being held to what I say. :) As a friend of mine somewhat cynically put it, politics is a zero-sum game, and I tend to agree.
The grades, oh my god, the grades.
While doing some mini-calculating and educated guesswork tonight with the trusty calculator, I see this could be the first time a class of mine has not a single A or B. Yeesh. If you're guessing it's a small class, you're right; we're down to 9 now from 17-18 in January. If you're guessing that teaching that class has been like the Bataan death march, you're right. If you're guessing most of these students are more passive than pillows, you're right. It's amazing how lack of motivation can be caught like the common cold.
In this particular section, I started the semester with three repeat students; they all took me for this course last fall. One withdrew in March, another failed due to excessive absence, and the third will almost certainly fail again and may have a lower final score than last fall. This third guy was asking me today who he should take for the followup course this summer. Instead of recommending some names, should I have said, "You need to worry about passing this one first"?
When I teach the college-success class this fall, I am by god going to spend some time with strategies for active learning--that is, taking an interest in your fate. So many of these guys just drift around our halls and let school, i.e. life, happen to them--just like they did in high school.
And I worry, still, that I'm not active enough with some of these guys, especially the borderline or failing students, that I don't intervene as I should. That's another post for another time.
Why I'm grateful for my job.
Plagiarism and all, I still think I have one of the best jobs in the world, and I was reminded of that today while getting my dry cleaning.
I'm standing to the right of the clerk, next in line, when this dude walks in, steps up to the counter (technically in front of me), lays both hands on the counter, and doesn't move. The air about him, the air of "I'm not moving until I am waited on, and I fully expect to be waited on" made me want to say something wholly inappropriate. So the guy's standing there, immobile and oblivious, and I have to hand my debit card to the poor clerk through the narrow passage between his left side and the clothes hanger device.
And this is meant to convey only the fact that I'm glad I got a master's degree, because the idea of working with "the public" turns my stomach. I certainly have done it before, many moons ago, but not well. Three weeks at Subway, three months selling shoes, six months selling software, et al. But never for very long.
None other than William Faulkner says it best. He worked in the post office for a short time, and this is from his resignation letter: "As long as I live under the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation."
And the "demands" he speaks of are everywhere, even (especially?) where I teach. Expectations, demands, rights. Our college now has an office of customer service. We've been told it exists to better students' experience with the financial aid office, with advising and registration. But will it extend to the classroom? Has it already happened and I don't know it?
Last summer, our college faced a greatly reduced budget if we didn't increase our enrollment; we are losing a campus after this semester, and the governing body told our president he had to have 20,000 students enrolled. We are one of the biggest colleges in the state, but that seemed impossible. But he made it happen, and mostly (purely?) for the budget's sake. So as a result, we have plenty of warm bodies in the seats, but have we enrolled all these new folks cynically? How many of these folks are ready to succeed in college?
Several years ago at another campus, none other than my department chair said the unsayable in a department meeting: "The only thing that matters at this place is head count; quality of instruction does not matter." He has since moved on, and understandably so.
There I go again. Still and all, one can't beat this job, really. We faculty lead a charmed life. I sure hope we aren't headed for an 8-to-5 workplace atmosphere. There are those who would have it so.
I better lie down until this feeling goes away.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
A version of the real me, part 3.
This version didn't bring home any essays tonight--wasn't feeling it. (Two more students from the lackluster class turned in essays yesterday; that leaves two or three still unaccounted for. I think two other students have elected to stop attending. The beat goes on.)
Tonight's version of the real me is brought to you by all variations of Pillsbury bread in a can. That is on my all-time list of food I could eat until I throw up.
At the moment, the three CDs in the ol' player are Abbey Road, The Best of Loma Records (tiny L.A. soul label that got overshadowed by Motown and Stax), and One Alone by Dave Brubeck (still with us at a tender 87 y.o.).
I sing in a local community choir and have off and on (mostly on) for seven years. On a good day, I sing tenor.
I've developed a fondness for whiskey sours but am not drinking one now. Also red wine and some beer. A vodka tonic once in a while. After that, coffee or Coke.
I'm enamored with the new Gnarls Barkley record (yes, I still call them records and/or albums)--and I can't quite say why yet. It's spacy, funky, soulful, and unsettling.
Once upon a time I wrote poems. Maybe again soon.
The best way to end tonight is with a Charles Mingus quote: "In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time."
And this just in: the warbly, irritating, sorority-sister-boring Kristy Lee Cook finally got booted off American Idol. About effin' time.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Not a sugar rush, but close.
I've nabbed an essay for plagiarism. More are to follow, I'd bet.
"Big deal," you may say. I agree. I can't say for sure that plagiarism is on the rise, but it's definitely as prevalent now as it's always been. Perhaps it's easier to do, but does that mean it's happening more often? I'll leave that to the researchers.
Anyhoo! Off topic! I get such a rush when I discover a plagiarized essay; I should be outraged, but instead my eyes widen and my pulse increases, because I can't wait to write a big fat zero on the last page. This particular essay spelled trouble from the beginning. The topic was global warming--nothing more whittled-down, just global warming. I quick-checked the Works Cited page, and this student had written three separate entries for the exact same article.
Came to discover she took large chunks of text from two Web pages and copied and pasted--no citation, no credit, no attribution. A large part of defining plagiarism is whether or not the student intends to mislead, and I'm pretty certain that's the case here. Whether she intended to or not, though, she's still guilty. Did I cover this in class? You bet. Did she hear it? Who knows.
I did the Macaulay Culkin Home Alone fist-pump a few minutes ago. I need serious help.
Anyone else out there who feels not outrage but elation when confronted with the p-word?
"Big deal," you may say. I agree. I can't say for sure that plagiarism is on the rise, but it's definitely as prevalent now as it's always been. Perhaps it's easier to do, but does that mean it's happening more often? I'll leave that to the researchers.
Anyhoo! Off topic! I get such a rush when I discover a plagiarized essay; I should be outraged, but instead my eyes widen and my pulse increases, because I can't wait to write a big fat zero on the last page. This particular essay spelled trouble from the beginning. The topic was global warming--nothing more whittled-down, just global warming. I quick-checked the Works Cited page, and this student had written three separate entries for the exact same article.
Came to discover she took large chunks of text from two Web pages and copied and pasted--no citation, no credit, no attribution. A large part of defining plagiarism is whether or not the student intends to mislead, and I'm pretty certain that's the case here. Whether she intended to or not, though, she's still guilty. Did I cover this in class? You bet. Did she hear it? Who knows.
I did the Macaulay Culkin Home Alone fist-pump a few minutes ago. I need serious help.
Anyone else out there who feels not outrage but elation when confronted with the p-word?
Monday, April 14, 2008
Not tonight, I've got a headache...
...from reading a mere two, count 'em, two research essays.
My bunch has to formulate a problem-solution approach to their essay. One was actually not bad and on an interesting topic (male anorexia) but was severely under-researched. The other one was on that overfamiliar topic, obesity--the writer started to tailor it toward women and specifically African-American women and then got sidetracked into fast food calories and two or three other topics and was one word over three pages long. It was riddled with spelling errors and citation errors.
I started to read a third one--again, on an interesting topic (foreclosure) but peppered with surface errors. Time to walk away.
I'm about to the point where I know how good the essay will be based on the topic the writer picks. Like, one of the other essays, which I haven't read yet, is titled "Pollution." Do I need to read any further?
Dear Lord, this may be the most under-performing bunch I've ever seen in this course. It's now two business days past the due date; at least five essays haven't been handed in yet and will each be penalized 10 points. Subtract that 10 from the (probably) poor scores they'll get anyway for writing shit essays, and we're now looking below the bottom of the barrel. (What *is* below the bottom of the barrel, anyway?)
At least one other essay, which I looked at quickly, appears to have no citations. You read that right: a research essay without citations. I guess he assumed all his statistics were common knowledge.
I press on. I hope this isn't a rant against the students, which I vowed not to do early on in posting; I prefer to think of it as a rant against their writing. Which might also be a rant against their lack of motivation. And their too-busy lives. And...
A room with a view.
Amidst my complaining about student preparedness and motivation, I tend to forget that I have a nice office with a great view: a dogwood in full bloom, and the courtyard between this building and the fine arts building. It's taken me years to land an office with a close-able door, let alone one with a window, let alone one which boasts a view such as this.
I haven't yet cracked the research essays I wrote about last time; I fear for my sanity. But I did grade two small sets of in-class essays this weekend, essays for my two learning support classes. Funny, but I didn't fume and rage as I normally would, maybe because this was their first in-class essay and I didn't--well, I was going to write "didn't expect much." But I expected, to some degree, a lack of control and an abundance of errors, more so with these than with the out-of-class writings they've done previously. And I was rewarded, amply. :)
I dunno. We college instructors have a tough task when we're forced into this "catch-up" role. Take a public high school student who has been academically challenged all his life--never had much interest in school, nor it in him, but it's instilled in him that he has to go to college and get a degree to have much of a fighting chance in this world. Our institution is pretty much open admission--as long as you have at least a GED, have the right paperwork, and can either pay or qualify for financial aid, we'll take you.
But open-admissions policies reap exactly what they sow: we teach students with a whole host of reasons for being here, and with a dizzyingly wide range of skills and abilities. Too many of them don't really have a goal, other than to survive. As I told it to someone last week, college is just another bumper in their pinball-machine lives. And if I had their insane schedules, I too would have everything on my mind except college.
This fall, I'm teaching for the first time a college "success" course: how to study, take notes, make friends, choose a major, determine needed coursework, find the campus offices you need, et al. I've never done it before; I hope it's kinda fun.
I haven't yet cracked the research essays I wrote about last time; I fear for my sanity. But I did grade two small sets of in-class essays this weekend, essays for my two learning support classes. Funny, but I didn't fume and rage as I normally would, maybe because this was their first in-class essay and I didn't--well, I was going to write "didn't expect much." But I expected, to some degree, a lack of control and an abundance of errors, more so with these than with the out-of-class writings they've done previously. And I was rewarded, amply. :)
I dunno. We college instructors have a tough task when we're forced into this "catch-up" role. Take a public high school student who has been academically challenged all his life--never had much interest in school, nor it in him, but it's instilled in him that he has to go to college and get a degree to have much of a fighting chance in this world. Our institution is pretty much open admission--as long as you have at least a GED, have the right paperwork, and can either pay or qualify for financial aid, we'll take you.
But open-admissions policies reap exactly what they sow: we teach students with a whole host of reasons for being here, and with a dizzyingly wide range of skills and abilities. Too many of them don't really have a goal, other than to survive. As I told it to someone last week, college is just another bumper in their pinball-machine lives. And if I had their insane schedules, I too would have everything on my mind except college.
This fall, I'm teaching for the first time a college "success" course: how to study, take notes, make friends, choose a major, determine needed coursework, find the campus offices you need, et al. I've never done it before; I hope it's kinda fun.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Poetry, poetry readings, and poetry writing.
I did in fact go to the reading last night, at one of our local arts centers. I've been plenty of times before. Most of the readings happen in a little arboretum-ish building outside the main building. Depending on the size of the crowd, the mood, and the poet's skill at putting over his/her work, readings there are either like a great low-key party or like the Bataan death march.
There were two readers, the first fairly staid, the second lively. The former has several books to his credit; the latter edits a local poetry magazine and until recently taught where I do. I would have gladly listened to the second guy the whole night; he made a conscious effort to connect.
It is an unavoidable truth: some poets just do not read well, even if they're brilliant. There's nothing that pisses me off more than a poet who only reads, who has no sense of theatrics or public speaking. (Actually, the first guy was much more entertaining in between his poems, refusing to apologize for writing in meter and taking to task poets who write exclusively in first person.)
All in all, a decent night spent. I hung out a little with a colleague and a few others I always see at the readings.
And then home to confront anew my lack of poetic inspiration the past year. And my more-than-occasional feelings of anger and frustration and hopelessness, that I've gotten myself into a rut and there's no way out. That I teach not at a college but a glorified high school. That I'm avoiding doing the hard work. That even if I do work hard or make an effort, it doesn't really matter.
In the past I've called it anxiety; sometimes I suspect it's depression. From my amateur understanding, the two are often intertwined.
And then again, maybe I'm ready for the end of the semester.
There were two readers, the first fairly staid, the second lively. The former has several books to his credit; the latter edits a local poetry magazine and until recently taught where I do. I would have gladly listened to the second guy the whole night; he made a conscious effort to connect.
It is an unavoidable truth: some poets just do not read well, even if they're brilliant. There's nothing that pisses me off more than a poet who only reads, who has no sense of theatrics or public speaking. (Actually, the first guy was much more entertaining in between his poems, refusing to apologize for writing in meter and taking to task poets who write exclusively in first person.)
All in all, a decent night spent. I hung out a little with a colleague and a few others I always see at the readings.
And then home to confront anew my lack of poetic inspiration the past year. And my more-than-occasional feelings of anger and frustration and hopelessness, that I've gotten myself into a rut and there's no way out. That I teach not at a college but a glorified high school. That I'm avoiding doing the hard work. That even if I do work hard or make an effort, it doesn't really matter.
In the past I've called it anxiety; sometimes I suspect it's depression. From my amateur understanding, the two are often intertwined.
And then again, maybe I'm ready for the end of the semester.
Various shades of anger, dismay, and frustration.
I'm working through my latest round of frustration with my freshman comp students. Every semester I see new lows in student motivation; anytime I swear the bar can't go any lower, it does. Some of these lows come in bunches, unfortunately, as in abovesaid class.
Today their research assignments were due; allegedly, they've spent the last 5-6 weeks hammering out a problem-solution essay, gathering trustworthy sources, borrowing material properly and fairly, citing properly, etc. Out of 18 students still officially on the class roster, a grand total of 7 had their folders ready to turn in with all required materials when class started. 4 or 5 students weren't there; a couple showed up but turned nothing in.
Part of the folder's required materials are copies of all their cited sources; otherwise I can't judge how well they've borrowed and whether or not they've avoided plagiarism. I explained this in class, I put it in the original assignment handout, and I reminded them from a list of reminders last week, a list which I displayed on the computer projector in class and went through one item at a time.
Today I had to return 4 folders (4!) which had no copies of sources. One student actually said, out loud, "Oh. I didn't know that."
Jaw-dropping, isn't it? But it's the logical place to go for this class. I am appalled at the laziness and tuning out this bunch has shown me.
And I'm back to the old question that has haunted me plenty times before: is it worth teaching to the 15-20% of students who actually try, who actually give a fuck? How do I teach to my best audience and not let the other 75-80% get to me? I'm a great teacher for the motivated ones; the slothful ones, I don't know what to do for them.
Update, 2:17 p.m.: It gets worse. One of abovesaid students who didn't have his folder or anything else ready for class today just walked in here with his final draft and folder ready to give me--without copies of his sources. He also asked me how long the essay was supposed to have been. He also looked surprised when I reminded him he had to include copies of his sources.
The first time he came in here today, he showed me his draft in progress and told me he hadn't cited any sources. I reminded him that a major portion of the research assignment was proper borrowing of outside sources. So he left, presumably to find some passages to cite. That was probably an hour and a half ago.
I think I already know what grade the essay will get; I don't think I need to read it.
Make it stop. Please.
Today their research assignments were due; allegedly, they've spent the last 5-6 weeks hammering out a problem-solution essay, gathering trustworthy sources, borrowing material properly and fairly, citing properly, etc. Out of 18 students still officially on the class roster, a grand total of 7 had their folders ready to turn in with all required materials when class started. 4 or 5 students weren't there; a couple showed up but turned nothing in.
Part of the folder's required materials are copies of all their cited sources; otherwise I can't judge how well they've borrowed and whether or not they've avoided plagiarism. I explained this in class, I put it in the original assignment handout, and I reminded them from a list of reminders last week, a list which I displayed on the computer projector in class and went through one item at a time.
Today I had to return 4 folders (4!) which had no copies of sources. One student actually said, out loud, "Oh. I didn't know that."
Jaw-dropping, isn't it? But it's the logical place to go for this class. I am appalled at the laziness and tuning out this bunch has shown me.
And I'm back to the old question that has haunted me plenty times before: is it worth teaching to the 15-20% of students who actually try, who actually give a fuck? How do I teach to my best audience and not let the other 75-80% get to me? I'm a great teacher for the motivated ones; the slothful ones, I don't know what to do for them.
Update, 2:17 p.m.: It gets worse. One of abovesaid students who didn't have his folder or anything else ready for class today just walked in here with his final draft and folder ready to give me--without copies of his sources. He also asked me how long the essay was supposed to have been. He also looked surprised when I reminded him he had to include copies of his sources.
The first time he came in here today, he showed me his draft in progress and told me he hadn't cited any sources. I reminded him that a major portion of the research assignment was proper borrowing of outside sources. So he left, presumably to find some passages to cite. That was probably an hour and a half ago.
I think I already know what grade the essay will get; I don't think I need to read it.
Make it stop. Please.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Putting the fire fiend flat on his back.
That title is the title of one of my old poems, taken (stolen) from a caption in the Eureka Springs, Arkansas Historical Museum, from a chronicle of the huge fires that blazed through the town in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was spoken or written by someone directly involved, perhaps a fireman; I don't remember. Anyway, it was too good a line to not steal.
I use that as an awkward segue into wondering where my own fire fiend has gone--the muse, specifically. Maybe She has appeared again in the cyberspace of this blog, and maybe I should trust that. It's words formed into sentences, and that's something. In another other life, though, I was a poet, but in the last year, I haven't written much that I would call poetry. I've revisited old work sporadically, and I took a local workshop in the fall. But right after the workshop was over, I put away the poetry again.
I've had a jaded relationship with poetry all along, though, even when the writing has gone well. A trip to Barnes & Noble is enough to make me 1) shake my head in dismay at all the published poetry out there and 2) feel better that I'm not producing, because so many others are. I still go to readings, at least; tentatively I'm going to one tomorrow and one next week. Before, a good strong reading has re-lit the fire under my ass; more recently, I just try to appreciate the poem and the effort.
I guess if the fire fiend needs to be re-lit or agitated, he will be. What's very different from before, when I've gone for stretches without writing much poetry, is that now I don't feel guilty--much. I have to admit that there are many days when writing a poem doesn't seem worth the work. Does that mean I'm lazy? Perhaps. It may mean I'm just unwilling to put forth the effort.
But...there's this blog.
All the cool kids are doing it.
This one comes not from me but from a colleague who told it to another colleague, from whom I heard it today. So some of the finer details may be absent or wrong.
A student turns in a plagiarized research essay for the second-half composition course taught by Charlene*. (Students in Charlene's classes have to submit all essays through turnitin.com, plagiarism-detection software, so this particular student has known all semester she will have to do this.) Turnitin reports that the student’s essay is about 65% plagiarized—clearly unacceptable and grounds for a failing grade.
So Charlene gives the essay a zero, in accordance with her syllabus and the department policy. This week, the student barges into Charlene’s office and demands that Charlene grade the essay because the student wants to know how many points she needs to pass the class. Charlene politely responds that she will not grade the essay because it’s plagiarized. (I presume by this point that 1) the student has already received her essay back and 2) C. has previously gone over what plagiarism is during class. In any case, the student is responsible for knowing what it is.)
The student then bursts out, “Fine, next semester I’ll get an instructor who doesn’t care how much we cheat!” And storms out of the office.
This, sadly, is not an exceptional case where I teach. In this case, not only is the student incredulous that the software caught her, but she also doesn't understand (or care) that it's thievery and dishonesty, not to mention laziness. There's a chance she honestly didn't know she was cheating, too.
Last summer a student of mine appealed his final grade of F. He too had received a zero on his research essay and had similarly plagiarized, and this was a point of disagreement between us: what the word means. I don't use Turnitin, but from my cursory Google searches, I figured he had lifted 75-80% of the essay directly from other sources without proper citation, and I explained this to him. His counter was that he'd never been told by any other teacher that it was wrong to plagiarize.
Unfortunately, I believe him--to an extent.
Naturally, a student doesn't like to be "accused" of plagiarism. It indicates intent to deceive, plus it probably feels like a personal attack. A student once told me to my face he didn't plagiarize passages even after I'd given him printouts of the exact passages he'd plagiarized!
But several of my students, I think, just never learned how to do it correctly in high school, or never even wrote a research essay in high school. They don't understand why it's wrong. Or, they know it's wrong and still do it, and just want to see if they can get away with it. This is the kind of "catch-up" we teachers have to play at this place.
As for the student above finding a teacher who won't care about how much she cheats...she may just find one, sadly. But that's for another time, with much more whiskey than I have now.
*name changed
A student turns in a plagiarized research essay for the second-half composition course taught by Charlene*. (Students in Charlene's classes have to submit all essays through turnitin.com, plagiarism-detection software, so this particular student has known all semester she will have to do this.) Turnitin reports that the student’s essay is about 65% plagiarized—clearly unacceptable and grounds for a failing grade.
So Charlene gives the essay a zero, in accordance with her syllabus and the department policy. This week, the student barges into Charlene’s office and demands that Charlene grade the essay because the student wants to know how many points she needs to pass the class. Charlene politely responds that she will not grade the essay because it’s plagiarized. (I presume by this point that 1) the student has already received her essay back and 2) C. has previously gone over what plagiarism is during class. In any case, the student is responsible for knowing what it is.)
The student then bursts out, “Fine, next semester I’ll get an instructor who doesn’t care how much we cheat!” And storms out of the office.
This, sadly, is not an exceptional case where I teach. In this case, not only is the student incredulous that the software caught her, but she also doesn't understand (or care) that it's thievery and dishonesty, not to mention laziness. There's a chance she honestly didn't know she was cheating, too.
Last summer a student of mine appealed his final grade of F. He too had received a zero on his research essay and had similarly plagiarized, and this was a point of disagreement between us: what the word means. I don't use Turnitin, but from my cursory Google searches, I figured he had lifted 75-80% of the essay directly from other sources without proper citation, and I explained this to him. His counter was that he'd never been told by any other teacher that it was wrong to plagiarize.
Unfortunately, I believe him--to an extent.
Naturally, a student doesn't like to be "accused" of plagiarism. It indicates intent to deceive, plus it probably feels like a personal attack. A student once told me to my face he didn't plagiarize passages even after I'd given him printouts of the exact passages he'd plagiarized!
But several of my students, I think, just never learned how to do it correctly in high school, or never even wrote a research essay in high school. They don't understand why it's wrong. Or, they know it's wrong and still do it, and just want to see if they can get away with it. This is the kind of "catch-up" we teachers have to play at this place.
As for the student above finding a teacher who won't care about how much she cheats...she may just find one, sadly. But that's for another time, with much more whiskey than I have now.
*name changed
Monday, April 7, 2008
A version of the real me, part 2.
As you know by now, I teach English at a college in metro Atlanta, and I teach all varieties, from learning support (read: developmental, remedial) to sophomore-level literature. Most days I enjoy it; I think I'm decent at it, and no other job has ever given me similar satisfaction.
I wish not to turn this into a rant against "problem" students. Most of mine are grappling with becoming adults, in addition to juggling their busy schedules and finding time to do their school work, so I shouldn't be surprised when they sometimes don't take the tools I proffer them.
I've tried other guises over the years, but this guise is the longest-lasting: 10.5 years in two different college systems in two different states. In other lives, I sold shoes, unloaded trucks in a warehouse, swept/mopped floors, wrote movie reviews, and gave customers bad advice over the phone. (Guess I should count my ill-fated three-week stint at Subway, too.)
My favorite in-class essay topic of all time: "Is there any job you would never take, and why?" If assigned that one, I'd tweak it to discuss jobs I would be horrible at and therefore would never take. I'm lucky to have two loving, supportive parents who supported me a lot through college, so I never waited tables, for instance, or worked construction. (Most of the above jobs I worked after college.)
Another thing I never did for very long was work and go to school simultaneously. I continually marvel at these students of mine who work 30 hours or more a week, raise kids, drive untold miles on these clogged highways, take 12 or more hours a semester, and somehow still have a pulse. I couldn't do it. I am grateful that all the elements were in place whereby I didn't have to do it.
I tried to juggle work and school when I was in grad school. Because of our sometimes-quirky schedule in Shoe Central, once I had to miss a class meeting plus a presentation I was scheduled to give. After getting verbally ramrodded by the professor, I decided I wasn't going to combine the two anymore, that I couldn't be an effective student and work too.
I'm glad I didn't have to work, and I just wish more of my students had that luxury.
I wish not to turn this into a rant against "problem" students. Most of mine are grappling with becoming adults, in addition to juggling their busy schedules and finding time to do their school work, so I shouldn't be surprised when they sometimes don't take the tools I proffer them.
I've tried other guises over the years, but this guise is the longest-lasting: 10.5 years in two different college systems in two different states. In other lives, I sold shoes, unloaded trucks in a warehouse, swept/mopped floors, wrote movie reviews, and gave customers bad advice over the phone. (Guess I should count my ill-fated three-week stint at Subway, too.)
My favorite in-class essay topic of all time: "Is there any job you would never take, and why?" If assigned that one, I'd tweak it to discuss jobs I would be horrible at and therefore would never take. I'm lucky to have two loving, supportive parents who supported me a lot through college, so I never waited tables, for instance, or worked construction. (Most of the above jobs I worked after college.)
Another thing I never did for very long was work and go to school simultaneously. I continually marvel at these students of mine who work 30 hours or more a week, raise kids, drive untold miles on these clogged highways, take 12 or more hours a semester, and somehow still have a pulse. I couldn't do it. I am grateful that all the elements were in place whereby I didn't have to do it.
I tried to juggle work and school when I was in grad school. Because of our sometimes-quirky schedule in Shoe Central, once I had to miss a class meeting plus a presentation I was scheduled to give. After getting verbally ramrodded by the professor, I decided I wasn't going to combine the two anymore, that I couldn't be an effective student and work too.
I'm glad I didn't have to work, and I just wish more of my students had that luxury.
English can't compete with life.
Today my students in abovesaid class are writing an in-class essay. One of my afternoon students stood huddled outside the classroom door and urged me to step out for a second. I did.
Apparently someone broke into her house/apartment last night. She was fighting back tears and managed to convey that she was in no condition to write today. She pointed to the right side of her face but didn't really explain; I assume she was assaulted, too.
Luckily she's one of my best students this spring, so I told her to e- or call me to make up the essay. Normally I don't allow makeups even for the best of reasons, but now is no time to nitpick.
This is something else I may wish to delve into: which students need sympathy, which need a little prodding, which need a swift kick in the arse, and which deserve no quarter. It's a tap dance. And at times like this, I feel I'm waging a hopeless battle against the unpredictability of our lives.
Apparently someone broke into her house/apartment last night. She was fighting back tears and managed to convey that she was in no condition to write today. She pointed to the right side of her face but didn't really explain; I assume she was assaulted, too.
Luckily she's one of my best students this spring, so I told her to e- or call me to make up the essay. Normally I don't allow makeups even for the best of reasons, but now is no time to nitpick.
This is something else I may wish to delve into: which students need sympathy, which need a little prodding, which need a swift kick in the arse, and which deserve no quarter. It's a tap dance. And at times like this, I feel I'm waging a hopeless battle against the unpredictability of our lives.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Why Whitman, and why a cabin?
Post #1 contains lines from Whitman's justifiably immortal "Song of Myself," from Leaves of Grass. Those lines may sum up how I position myself toward this weird world: supermarkets, clogged roads, billboards, cell-phone natterers, et al. I'm not sure it's always an enviable position, either. It's observational, not always participatory. I often find myself on the outside looking in and wondering how I got here.
God knows I don't want to turn this into a series of gripe sessions, but perhaps it's inevitable to ask the David Byrne question when you turn 40, as I have: "How did I get here?" Most of the time I conclude that I got here because I wanted to be here, somehow. Maybe I didn't expect to be here, but...here I am. In that Whitman bit is contained bemusement and a discomfiting amount of detachment; I worry that I am detached from my own life.
But if the unexamined life is not worth living, I should rest easy; I examine.
Now why the cabin picture on the right? It's not where I live but a place where I once stayed. A house with a front porch was never a house I lived in, yet the picture remains. It's a state of mind, a place to sit outside, perhaps sip on a beverage, and be a "third party" to everything or nothing.
Which puts me in mind of Masters' "Petit, the Poet," and its narrator's lament at the failure of poetry (or of poetry as he learned to write it) to do justice to the world. Petit strikes me as a third party who has let the world pass him by while trying to do justice to it. That's the rhetorical swamp I find myself in these days. Let me try to dig myself out...
A version of the real me.
I started this blog five days ago, then deleted it in frustration three days ago, citing to myself the usual suspects: nothing to say, and nothing worth saying. I have a lot to learn about this blogging thing, but alongside that I gotta figure out why I'm starting one. I think I want to make it a journal-y endeavor for myself, but not just for myself. There seems to be a ready-made audience for this "sphere," and I don't know squat about that audience yet. Maybe that'll become clearer as I work it out.
Maybe I have nothing to say, but I'm gonna say it anyway. This blog'll perhaps be a way for me to work through my writing hangups and get to that confidence point again.
Funny thing is I teach English for a living. I'm a lot like my weakest writers--nothing to say, nothing worth saying--except with better grammar and punctuation skills.
Declaration of principles (mini-); who I be; Uncle Walt.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
--Walt Whitman
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