On my way back to my office after the M&D class today, I encountered the very bright young woman from my 101 class: she'd just picked up the mechanics rubric I'd left for her--and she was very upset about having missed another class. We stood on the stairs for some time until I finally suggested we head into my office. She felt it was important to tell me about the health problems she's been encountering--which sound pretty upsetting--but she also wanted to talk to me about whether she could use an article she'd found, even though it didn't provide conclusive proof about her point.
We ended up talking for almost an hour. Part of the time was figuring out how to correctly place and format a header using the word-processing software on a Mac, but we did also talk about her paper, about her ideas, about her health--and about the need for her to prioritize her health and not add worries about school as a stressor to an already stressed system.
And suddenly I find myself in somewhat the same position. My health concern is minor, but I found myself thinking, "I can't see the doctor at this time because of Advisement, and I can't see her at that time because of class..." when what I really need to do is just see the doctor as soon as I can so I can stop worrying about it. Everything else can be figured out: I should know by now that I'm infinitely capable of improvisation, figuring out how to make various kinds of purses out of all sorts of ears (silk/sow, mesh/moose, whatever).
My guess yesterday about how the classes would go today was correct: the students had tons to say about the ending of Oryx and Crake, and we didn't start with Blade Runner. As planned, I'll show them the beginning of it on Thursday, and we'll finish it--or not, their choice--next Tuesday. M&D was occupied almost entirely with watching Gossford Park. I'd forgotten how long it takes to get to the actual murder: well over an hour into the film. In fact, that's where I stopped--to a universal sound of protest from the students. (Cliff-hanger: gotta love it.) So of course they want to see the rest of the movie: now they want to find out who did it and why. We may or may not get around to talking about The Big Sleep--but that's OK. We can talk about it next week.
I do keep forgetting that I'm going to be away: not only do I forget to tell the students, I've forgotten as I've scheduled other things in my life. (This seems to be a motif: forgetting what's on my calendar.) I was going to spend tonight after class writing up the one observation I already conducted and getting all the materials ready for the subs--but meeting with my student, then talking with Paul, then taking care of a little P&B business has made it late enough that I need to decamp: I have to go to the grocery store, for one thing, and I want to get home before too late. I have absolutely no idea what tomorrow will be like. I had a blissful hour or so today in which I had absolutely nothing in my hands that required marking, but now that the papers are rolling in, I know part of tomorrow will be spent trying to stay ahead of a potential tsunami of work. But that's tomorrow, which is another day. And today is stick-a-fork-in-it done, as far as work is concerned.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Monday, October 12, 2015
And a new week begins
Pretty easy day, all things considered. I only had a few little things to mark for the 101--and mostly they had to do the heavy lifting: their task for today was to work on the mechanical bits of their essays: sentence structures, punctuation, documentation. It was a bit odd to have a class full of young men: the three women in the class weren't there today (one of the men was missing as well). So, six young men sat there, calling me over with questions, working on whatever. The young man I've been calling the Guinea Pig but whom I will now call Mr. Irrepressible actually was somewhat repressed today: the essay he submitted had significant problems--mostly insofar as he went for sweeping, and unsupported, pronouncements instead of a sound and reasoned argument about a debatable thesis. He told me he was embarrassed, which I reassured him wasn't necessary, and clearly he was overwhelmed. And as is usually the case, being faced with the task of significant revision, he chose instead to work on rewording some sentences. No, I explained: you need to work on the big stuff. Put together a revision plan. "This is hard," he said. Yes. Clearly I'm going to have to repeat myself numerous times: Writing is hard; revision is much harder.
One of the other students said that he hadn't wanted to revise until he'd also done the mechanics stuff--and I explained that there is actually a real benefit to revising first, then doing mechanics stuff on the newly revised piece. I realize that I should have shown them my process--the multiple versions of a book review that I've been using as a sample for some time--way back when we started. I'm not sure how much good it does, but they truly need to see revision as one process, mechanics review as something separate. With that particular young man, I simply said that maybe he should try it the other way--two separate passes (possibly more)--on the next essay.
When I told them I was giving them a handout explaining the submission requirements for the final submission, due Wednesday, the young preppy type expressed astonishment and dismay. I reminded him, all of them, that they'd had the papers since last week to work on--but this is part of the learning curve for them. Revision takes time. Don't put it off.
Apart from class, I've finished rereading Oryx and Crake and have marked most of the assignments that I need to return to the SF students tomorrow. I get the feeling we won't start Blade Runner: I suspect they'll have way too much they want to talk about regarding the novel. Which is OK: if we have to finish up Blade Runner next week, fine. Or we may just not finish it. I'm actually thinking about that in terms of M&D tomorrow. The period will essentially be used showing Gossford Park, but since we didn't get very far into it last week, we probably won't finish tomorrow--so I'll let them vote: we can finish watching it the next class, then talk about The Big Sleep (quite a shift of gears), or we can just leave the rest unwatched and anyone who is interested can watch it on his/her own.
In any event, I expect tomorrow to be another relatively easy day: in SF, the students will do the heavy lifting; in M&D, we'll watch a movie. I don't have anything in the morning before SF, so I can easily get the rest of the assignments marked to return.
I'm trying to have a plan for marking papers, however. It does help that I'm not collecting them all at once, but that is rather complicated by the fact that I'll also be collecting the 101 papers this week. (Poor planning on my part, that, though it is easier to mark the final submissions of comp papers, since I don't have to say much.) But we'll see how things play out.
One thing I feel more than a little guilty about: I completely forgot that we'd decided to have a seminar hours committee meeting on Thursday evening, and I bought tickets to the simulcast of the National Theater's production of Hamlet. To hell with the committee meeting; I'm going to the play--but I do feel ginchy about it: I don't like being the bad girl who misses something important "just" to do something fun. But hey.
On a rather different note, I've gotten involved in the planning for the next ASLE conference--or at least a proposal to have it held at Stony Brook. I have a strong feeling the proposal will be approved, and I'm not entirely sure just how far my involvement will extend. Since I'm not on their campus, there is a lot I really can't help with--but I may well be drafted into helping organize field trips or some such. And as I looked over the proposal (as part of the potential organizing team), I realized that this would have been a wonderful thing to include in my application for promotion--and now I don't need it. But it still will be cool to be involved (she says, with some trepidation, imagining a year from now being absolutely crazed trying to find time to handle who-knows-what). And it will definitely be cool not to have to travel to be part of an ASLE conference--or not to travel more than the hour drive from my place to Stony Brook.
I'm sure there's other stuff I could talk about, but I want to make the most of an easy day and try for a relatively easy night, too. More tomorrow...
One of the other students said that he hadn't wanted to revise until he'd also done the mechanics stuff--and I explained that there is actually a real benefit to revising first, then doing mechanics stuff on the newly revised piece. I realize that I should have shown them my process--the multiple versions of a book review that I've been using as a sample for some time--way back when we started. I'm not sure how much good it does, but they truly need to see revision as one process, mechanics review as something separate. With that particular young man, I simply said that maybe he should try it the other way--two separate passes (possibly more)--on the next essay.
When I told them I was giving them a handout explaining the submission requirements for the final submission, due Wednesday, the young preppy type expressed astonishment and dismay. I reminded him, all of them, that they'd had the papers since last week to work on--but this is part of the learning curve for them. Revision takes time. Don't put it off.
Apart from class, I've finished rereading Oryx and Crake and have marked most of the assignments that I need to return to the SF students tomorrow. I get the feeling we won't start Blade Runner: I suspect they'll have way too much they want to talk about regarding the novel. Which is OK: if we have to finish up Blade Runner next week, fine. Or we may just not finish it. I'm actually thinking about that in terms of M&D tomorrow. The period will essentially be used showing Gossford Park, but since we didn't get very far into it last week, we probably won't finish tomorrow--so I'll let them vote: we can finish watching it the next class, then talk about The Big Sleep (quite a shift of gears), or we can just leave the rest unwatched and anyone who is interested can watch it on his/her own.
In any event, I expect tomorrow to be another relatively easy day: in SF, the students will do the heavy lifting; in M&D, we'll watch a movie. I don't have anything in the morning before SF, so I can easily get the rest of the assignments marked to return.
I'm trying to have a plan for marking papers, however. It does help that I'm not collecting them all at once, but that is rather complicated by the fact that I'll also be collecting the 101 papers this week. (Poor planning on my part, that, though it is easier to mark the final submissions of comp papers, since I don't have to say much.) But we'll see how things play out.
One thing I feel more than a little guilty about: I completely forgot that we'd decided to have a seminar hours committee meeting on Thursday evening, and I bought tickets to the simulcast of the National Theater's production of Hamlet. To hell with the committee meeting; I'm going to the play--but I do feel ginchy about it: I don't like being the bad girl who misses something important "just" to do something fun. But hey.
On a rather different note, I've gotten involved in the planning for the next ASLE conference--or at least a proposal to have it held at Stony Brook. I have a strong feeling the proposal will be approved, and I'm not entirely sure just how far my involvement will extend. Since I'm not on their campus, there is a lot I really can't help with--but I may well be drafted into helping organize field trips or some such. And as I looked over the proposal (as part of the potential organizing team), I realized that this would have been a wonderful thing to include in my application for promotion--and now I don't need it. But it still will be cool to be involved (she says, with some trepidation, imagining a year from now being absolutely crazed trying to find time to handle who-knows-what). And it will definitely be cool not to have to travel to be part of an ASLE conference--or not to travel more than the hour drive from my place to Stony Brook.
I'm sure there's other stuff I could talk about, but I want to make the most of an easy day and try for a relatively easy night, too. More tomorrow...
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Caught noodling...
I've been sitting here for I don't know how long, futzing around with a handout for the M&D students on the characters in Gosford Park, which I started showing today. I know the film well, but I realized that the beginning is pretty bewildering: everyone is talking very fast in British accents and there are a gazillion characters and the scene shifts back and forth very quickly. But it's a great movie, so, well, I'm going to show it anyway. I'm not sure I showed enough today that we can finish it on Tuesday, but we'll see.
In the SF class today, Mr. Hostile (who isn't) actually beamed at me: he was (annoyingly enough) reading during much of class--but he'd gotten through a very important chapter in which, as he said, "The shit really hits the fan." Yup. I'm glad he's psyched about what's to come.
I met with a student from that class earlier today, too: she's been consistently getting failing marks on her responses--because she's not understanding much yet not trying very hard to understand. Again, I saw her book: nary a mark in it. I gave her the exact same spiel I've been giving over and over and over: annotate your text, go back to reread the parts that confuse you to see if they make more sense when you pay closer attention, respond to specific details, dig in to what confuses you--or what you're noticing and why you think it's important. But--in what seems to be some kind of trend--in my office I saw a completely different person than I've seen in class: alert, bright eyed, eager. She confessed that she was afraid of looking stupid, so I gave her my usual spiel about that: first, if you have the question, chances are that other students do, too, but more important, it's your education, so don't worry about what other students get or don't: you have the question, so get the answer. And just coincidentally, she ended up in the group with Mr. Not-Hostile, and he was smiling at her while the two of them had what looked like an engaged conversation. I don't know what will happen with her, but maybe she can turn it around. That will be quite a breakthrough if she does. I hope so.
During my office hour, one of the students from M&D came to talk to me about a project that he's working on: he's put together an idea for a series of manga that center on solving interconnected mysteries, but he wants to put his ideas into novel form and he wasn't sure how to go about it. I don't think I've said much about this student before, but he's brilliant--and a huge fan of mysteries. He's read almost all the mysteries I've assigned this semester--but in Portuguese, as he's Brazilian. We had a great talk, which wandered from ideas for his books to how to publish to whether he should continue to pursue a career in forensics, even though he's hating his bio and chem classes, or what he should do. I wanted to get the whole think on film so I could take it to the administration and say, "Look: this is what real mentoring is. Maybe this student won't stay at Nassau, but he'll never forget it as an important experience in his life. He's learning what really matters here." I loved it: that kind of exchange is the absolute best part of teaching--that, and the moments when students like Little Miss Lost (the student I was talking about above) suddenly click in and get it.
But my brains just went on the fritz. I have to pack it in for today--for the week, in fact. Oof-dah.
In the SF class today, Mr. Hostile (who isn't) actually beamed at me: he was (annoyingly enough) reading during much of class--but he'd gotten through a very important chapter in which, as he said, "The shit really hits the fan." Yup. I'm glad he's psyched about what's to come.
I met with a student from that class earlier today, too: she's been consistently getting failing marks on her responses--because she's not understanding much yet not trying very hard to understand. Again, I saw her book: nary a mark in it. I gave her the exact same spiel I've been giving over and over and over: annotate your text, go back to reread the parts that confuse you to see if they make more sense when you pay closer attention, respond to specific details, dig in to what confuses you--or what you're noticing and why you think it's important. But--in what seems to be some kind of trend--in my office I saw a completely different person than I've seen in class: alert, bright eyed, eager. She confessed that she was afraid of looking stupid, so I gave her my usual spiel about that: first, if you have the question, chances are that other students do, too, but more important, it's your education, so don't worry about what other students get or don't: you have the question, so get the answer. And just coincidentally, she ended up in the group with Mr. Not-Hostile, and he was smiling at her while the two of them had what looked like an engaged conversation. I don't know what will happen with her, but maybe she can turn it around. That will be quite a breakthrough if she does. I hope so.
During my office hour, one of the students from M&D came to talk to me about a project that he's working on: he's put together an idea for a series of manga that center on solving interconnected mysteries, but he wants to put his ideas into novel form and he wasn't sure how to go about it. I don't think I've said much about this student before, but he's brilliant--and a huge fan of mysteries. He's read almost all the mysteries I've assigned this semester--but in Portuguese, as he's Brazilian. We had a great talk, which wandered from ideas for his books to how to publish to whether he should continue to pursue a career in forensics, even though he's hating his bio and chem classes, or what he should do. I wanted to get the whole think on film so I could take it to the administration and say, "Look: this is what real mentoring is. Maybe this student won't stay at Nassau, but he'll never forget it as an important experience in his life. He's learning what really matters here." I loved it: that kind of exchange is the absolute best part of teaching--that, and the moments when students like Little Miss Lost (the student I was talking about above) suddenly click in and get it.
But my brains just went on the fritz. I have to pack it in for today--for the week, in fact. Oof-dah.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
The heavy lifting
The 101 students today got a taste of the real heavy lifting that comes with revision. I gave them back their papers--which I barely got marked in time before class--and I had them sit there to work on a revision plan. They started to see their papers in a whole new way, often seeing things that they'd not noticed but that now seem glaringly obvious. The idea of the revision plan is to break the revision process down in to manageable chunks, as otherwise it's overwhelming--and I told them several times that the first step could very well be something to do with the body of the paper rather than the introduction: that often the introduction will suddenly become clear and almost write itself, once the ideas in the body are clear. Several students needed to reconsider their research as they'd relied almost entirely on personal response, not on ideas that they could substantiate with facts. Big sweeping generalizations? Get rid of them: give me your ideas instead.
I did mark much less than usual. I used a purple pen to point out a few examples of sentence-level stuff, but the main comments were in blue ink--and were primarily overall, global comments along the lines of "There seem to be ideas that contradict here: look back at your thesis, and look at your research to determine what your stand really is--and whether you can back it up." I have no concrete proof, but my gut sense is that the fact that most of their writing was left unmarked, that my comments were in the margins and nowhere else, made it a lot easier for them to focus on the big, structural concerns and not get lost in minutiae.
And I had a serious talk with the Guinea Pig, who was very suppressed by the fear of failure. As I was handing back everyone's papers, I gave him the essay assignment sheet with a bracket indicating the submission requirements and told him to read it over carefully. Then I took him out in the hall to talk to him. My decision is to take 20 points right off the top of his paper--two days late--plus another ten for the late upload to Turnitin.com, and then give a mark from there. He'll get a painfully low score, but it's better than a zero, and now he can proceed with the paper. He will have a much harder task in front of him, as he'll have to accomplish in two days what his classmates will have more than a week to work on, but I'm giving him a hell of a gift. And I did say that the main lesson I wanted him to take away from the experience is that he needs to pay rigorously careful attention to assignment sheets, read them with keen attention and understand exactly what is required. I said, "Don't think you know; know you know." He did try the "I was sick" routine: "Do you have a computer at home?" "Yes." "Do you have internet access at home?" "Yes." "Then why didn't you e-mail me to make an arrangement about submitting the paper?" "I didn't know what to do." "It's in the syllabus and on the assignment sheet...."
Sigh.
I don't know if he'll be able to pull off a passing grade--and several of the other students are doing serious damage to their grades because they're not doing the online discussion board posts. I'll lay down the law about that one more time on Wednesday, along with warning them not to neglect the upload to Turnitin of their final versions of the first essay--but that's the last warning. If they haven't gotten the message by now, they're simply not going to, until that final grade hits and they see just how much of a difference those missed assignments make.
After class, I spent some time just getting my desk slightly organized: things were getting lost in the shuffle--the Best and Brightest student from 101 told me that she hadn't gotten two assignments back; I knew she'd done them, as I'd recorded marks, but I had no clue where they were--and I needed to get a little triage going. Then I read the two sections of Oryx and Crake that we'll go over in class tomorrow. Still to do, read the final bits of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and mark the assignments for the two lit electives. And I know two students want to see me tomorrow, one just before club hour, another during club hour, so that will put a dent in the amount of time I have in which to do the prep for classes. I had thought about taking the Christie mystery home with me, but I honestly think I'll do better to let it go until tomorrow--I can't imagine it will take all that long to read--and instead try to get myself relaxed as early as possible tonight. I'm reading a wonderful mystery--The Child Garden, by Catriona McPherson--and I can't wait to dive into it again.
So, off I go to do precisely that.
I did mark much less than usual. I used a purple pen to point out a few examples of sentence-level stuff, but the main comments were in blue ink--and were primarily overall, global comments along the lines of "There seem to be ideas that contradict here: look back at your thesis, and look at your research to determine what your stand really is--and whether you can back it up." I have no concrete proof, but my gut sense is that the fact that most of their writing was left unmarked, that my comments were in the margins and nowhere else, made it a lot easier for them to focus on the big, structural concerns and not get lost in minutiae.
And I had a serious talk with the Guinea Pig, who was very suppressed by the fear of failure. As I was handing back everyone's papers, I gave him the essay assignment sheet with a bracket indicating the submission requirements and told him to read it over carefully. Then I took him out in the hall to talk to him. My decision is to take 20 points right off the top of his paper--two days late--plus another ten for the late upload to Turnitin.com, and then give a mark from there. He'll get a painfully low score, but it's better than a zero, and now he can proceed with the paper. He will have a much harder task in front of him, as he'll have to accomplish in two days what his classmates will have more than a week to work on, but I'm giving him a hell of a gift. And I did say that the main lesson I wanted him to take away from the experience is that he needs to pay rigorously careful attention to assignment sheets, read them with keen attention and understand exactly what is required. I said, "Don't think you know; know you know." He did try the "I was sick" routine: "Do you have a computer at home?" "Yes." "Do you have internet access at home?" "Yes." "Then why didn't you e-mail me to make an arrangement about submitting the paper?" "I didn't know what to do." "It's in the syllabus and on the assignment sheet...."
Sigh.
I don't know if he'll be able to pull off a passing grade--and several of the other students are doing serious damage to their grades because they're not doing the online discussion board posts. I'll lay down the law about that one more time on Wednesday, along with warning them not to neglect the upload to Turnitin of their final versions of the first essay--but that's the last warning. If they haven't gotten the message by now, they're simply not going to, until that final grade hits and they see just how much of a difference those missed assignments make.
After class, I spent some time just getting my desk slightly organized: things were getting lost in the shuffle--the Best and Brightest student from 101 told me that she hadn't gotten two assignments back; I knew she'd done them, as I'd recorded marks, but I had no clue where they were--and I needed to get a little triage going. Then I read the two sections of Oryx and Crake that we'll go over in class tomorrow. Still to do, read the final bits of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and mark the assignments for the two lit electives. And I know two students want to see me tomorrow, one just before club hour, another during club hour, so that will put a dent in the amount of time I have in which to do the prep for classes. I had thought about taking the Christie mystery home with me, but I honestly think I'll do better to let it go until tomorrow--I can't imagine it will take all that long to read--and instead try to get myself relaxed as early as possible tonight. I'm reading a wonderful mystery--The Child Garden, by Catriona McPherson--and I can't wait to dive into it again.
So, off I go to do precisely that.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Hungry. Tired. Done.
I know tomorrow will be somewhat harder than it might otherwise be as a consequence, but I have no intention of doing any further work today. I'm not even going to empty out the bag that I carry to classes or pull student assignments out of the respective class folders. I have all the 101 papers to mark prior to tomorrow's class--but one way or another (probably another), I'll get them marked tomorrow. I know I'd be unable to do it today.
I didn't rant at either class about plagiarism. I did, however, go over the purely mechanical details of how to format a paper, what introductory paragraphs should look like, what a thesis is and where it goes, how to incorporate quotations and paraphrases. It's mind-numbing, of course--and of course the students who were nodding off are the ones who are most in need of the information--but I felt it needed to be done.
Once I finished all that, the SF students really got rolling on the discussion of the book. I was sorry we didn't have time to discuss with the class--and sorry I had to stop them when they were in full spate--but I'm hoping this bodes well for Thursday. The M&D students were more flat and dull today. I tried joking with one student about whether he'd been cheating, and it fell absolutely flat. But he asked me about a mark on his response, and when I said he'd done good work, then turned my back on his group, they started laughing. I'm sure I'm paranoid, but I got the sense they were laughing because I'd praised him for thinking and he hadn't been. So I whispered in his ear, "And if you cheated, we'll pretend you didn't." He said aloud, "I didn't cheat!" I said, "I know; that's why I'm not taking you aside to talk to you about it." I turned my back again: more laughter.
Fuck. Whatever.
However, the student I talked to last week about his responses--the one I suspect of plagiarism--showed me his latest response, which does include quotations from the novel, but he was concerned because he hadn't reviewed the first 8 sections and had only written about the 9th, so he was afraid I might not accept it. I said I would. And today in class he spoke up with some good ideas, so maybe I was unreasonably suspicious. But it's like the old joke about being paranoid not meaning that they're not out to get you: just because I may be overly suspicious doesn't mean students aren't plagiarizing.
Speaking of which, I looked at the Turnitin.com reports, and Mr. Bewildered plagiarized 17% of his paper. It's the kind of thing where a student as lost as he is probably didn't know he was doing it: the plagiarism is all short phrases--but there are enough of them, separated only by a few words of his or a fact that he's formatted slightly differently from his source, that he's potentially in huge trouble. I feel bad for the kid, but he's really not at all ready for college material--at least not what I consider college material. He's smart enough to know he's struggling but not smart enough to get himself sorted out.
And nothing from the Guinea Pig. I'm going to have to figure out what to do when he shows up to class tomorrow with his paper and thinks he'll be able to turn it in. Part of me wants to get rid of him, because he's making such a hash of things--but part of me thinks he's salvageable, and he's said my class is his favorite (not brown-nosing either: it's clearly genuine appreciation), so I'm inclined to try to figure out how to work with him in a way that is still fair to the other students.
Well, that's a problem to resolve tomorrow.
I'm sure there is more I could go on about today, but I am hungry, and I am tired, and I do want to put a button on today. There are many things to be grateful for; I know that. I just don't feel like hauling them to the surface as a reframe for the day. Suffice it to say that I'm pretty sure I can turn the week in general into something like OK by Thursday.
I didn't rant at either class about plagiarism. I did, however, go over the purely mechanical details of how to format a paper, what introductory paragraphs should look like, what a thesis is and where it goes, how to incorporate quotations and paraphrases. It's mind-numbing, of course--and of course the students who were nodding off are the ones who are most in need of the information--but I felt it needed to be done.
Once I finished all that, the SF students really got rolling on the discussion of the book. I was sorry we didn't have time to discuss with the class--and sorry I had to stop them when they were in full spate--but I'm hoping this bodes well for Thursday. The M&D students were more flat and dull today. I tried joking with one student about whether he'd been cheating, and it fell absolutely flat. But he asked me about a mark on his response, and when I said he'd done good work, then turned my back on his group, they started laughing. I'm sure I'm paranoid, but I got the sense they were laughing because I'd praised him for thinking and he hadn't been. So I whispered in his ear, "And if you cheated, we'll pretend you didn't." He said aloud, "I didn't cheat!" I said, "I know; that's why I'm not taking you aside to talk to you about it." I turned my back again: more laughter.
Fuck. Whatever.
However, the student I talked to last week about his responses--the one I suspect of plagiarism--showed me his latest response, which does include quotations from the novel, but he was concerned because he hadn't reviewed the first 8 sections and had only written about the 9th, so he was afraid I might not accept it. I said I would. And today in class he spoke up with some good ideas, so maybe I was unreasonably suspicious. But it's like the old joke about being paranoid not meaning that they're not out to get you: just because I may be overly suspicious doesn't mean students aren't plagiarizing.
Speaking of which, I looked at the Turnitin.com reports, and Mr. Bewildered plagiarized 17% of his paper. It's the kind of thing where a student as lost as he is probably didn't know he was doing it: the plagiarism is all short phrases--but there are enough of them, separated only by a few words of his or a fact that he's formatted slightly differently from his source, that he's potentially in huge trouble. I feel bad for the kid, but he's really not at all ready for college material--at least not what I consider college material. He's smart enough to know he's struggling but not smart enough to get himself sorted out.
And nothing from the Guinea Pig. I'm going to have to figure out what to do when he shows up to class tomorrow with his paper and thinks he'll be able to turn it in. Part of me wants to get rid of him, because he's making such a hash of things--but part of me thinks he's salvageable, and he's said my class is his favorite (not brown-nosing either: it's clearly genuine appreciation), so I'm inclined to try to figure out how to work with him in a way that is still fair to the other students.
Well, that's a problem to resolve tomorrow.
I'm sure there is more I could go on about today, but I am hungry, and I am tired, and I do want to put a button on today. There are many things to be grateful for; I know that. I just don't feel like hauling them to the surface as a reframe for the day. Suffice it to say that I'm pretty sure I can turn the week in general into something like OK by Thursday.
Monday, October 5, 2015
Fast post
It's after 8; I'm still in the office, and I need to be back early tomorrow, partly to get work done, partly to do a 10 a.m. observation.
I still need to re-read the assigned pages for both electives tomorrow and to mark all the homework for the M&D class--and I need to get the papers marked for the 101 for Wednesday.
As for the 101, disastrous. The best and brightest student was not there. The Guinea Pig was not there. Mr. Bewildered showed up 35 minutes late--too late to engage in the peer review. One student was there who has turned in 2 assignments all semester to date, neither being an article we'd read to discuss. He did have his paper, but I can only imagine that it's, shall we say, inadequate, as I have no evidence that he read anything he was required to include. So the whole peer review thing was sort of deadly.
I had them read the information from SUNY about what a good revision should demonstrate; then I asked them what they could actually do in order to, say, foreground relevant material, or create a clear logic. As Cathy would say, all I heard was crickets. No clue. What might you have to add? Might you have to delete anything? Would you maybe have to move things around? ("Uh... Uh ... Uh...") They finally had a few ideas, but holy god.
And I am even more certain than I was before that several students in the SF class are plagiarizing: simply reading summaries of the works online and not actually reading the books at all. I don't know whether to go in and rant at them tomorrow or not. I reckon I'll play it by ear--but man, I was pretty fierce in telling Paul what I'd like to say to them.
I told Paul I felt frantic today--and then I remembered what he's dealing with. In comparison, my little bit of fluffed feathers is absolutely insignificant. Still, I probably will have to bail on either the department meeting or P&B--or both--in order to be fully ready for tomorrow's classes. I don't know how much reading I can do tonight, or at least how much I can do with any real attention and intelligence.
I'm completely manic, wired, feeling wild-eyed and like my hair is on fire--but the alarm is going to go off pretty fucking early tomorrow (for me anyway), so I need to get home and get wound down somehow. Anyone have a big cast-iron frying pan handy, so you could just knock me upside the head?
I still need to re-read the assigned pages for both electives tomorrow and to mark all the homework for the M&D class--and I need to get the papers marked for the 101 for Wednesday.
As for the 101, disastrous. The best and brightest student was not there. The Guinea Pig was not there. Mr. Bewildered showed up 35 minutes late--too late to engage in the peer review. One student was there who has turned in 2 assignments all semester to date, neither being an article we'd read to discuss. He did have his paper, but I can only imagine that it's, shall we say, inadequate, as I have no evidence that he read anything he was required to include. So the whole peer review thing was sort of deadly.
I had them read the information from SUNY about what a good revision should demonstrate; then I asked them what they could actually do in order to, say, foreground relevant material, or create a clear logic. As Cathy would say, all I heard was crickets. No clue. What might you have to add? Might you have to delete anything? Would you maybe have to move things around? ("Uh... Uh ... Uh...") They finally had a few ideas, but holy god.
And I am even more certain than I was before that several students in the SF class are plagiarizing: simply reading summaries of the works online and not actually reading the books at all. I don't know whether to go in and rant at them tomorrow or not. I reckon I'll play it by ear--but man, I was pretty fierce in telling Paul what I'd like to say to them.
I told Paul I felt frantic today--and then I remembered what he's dealing with. In comparison, my little bit of fluffed feathers is absolutely insignificant. Still, I probably will have to bail on either the department meeting or P&B--or both--in order to be fully ready for tomorrow's classes. I don't know how much reading I can do tonight, or at least how much I can do with any real attention and intelligence.
I'm completely manic, wired, feeling wild-eyed and like my hair is on fire--but the alarm is going to go off pretty fucking early tomorrow (for me anyway), so I need to get home and get wound down somehow. Anyone have a big cast-iron frying pan handy, so you could just knock me upside the head?
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Lots to say...
...and I may end up having to say less than I might normally, as I have to get out of here pretty soon to meet a colleague for dinner. It's a good reason to be blasting off campus, but I do feel a little itchy when I feel pressured to blog in a hurry.
But here goes.
Two students withdrew today, one from the 101 and one from M&D. The student from 101 had been mostly silent and uncommunicative, and I'd gotten the impression he was floundering--but when he came to my office, he was bright, articulate, talkative... I teased him about it a bit, saying, "This is the most I've heard you speak!" He said he loved the class, but he had to get more hours at work in order to stay financially solvent: I fully understand. The student from M&D also was in pretty deep water--and he also said he had to withdraw because he didn't have time for all the work on top of a full-time job. Fair enough. But I'm sorry to lose the young man from 101. I hope he turns up on one of my rosters sometime in the future.
A student from the SF class dropped by today during club hour: I wasn't technically available, but she wanted to talk and, well, I was there, so I said I'd meet with her. She was struggling with the book--but as I talked to her, I realized that she has annotated essentially nothing. Everything I say about digging in to details apparently just feels like too much work--but then the students are upset when their cursory reads leave them confused.
But as I entered the SF classroom today, even some of the best and brightest said they were struggling with the reading. Part of the struggle is the multiple time-frames of the narrative structure, but another part is that they are deeply disturbed by the content. (And I'm thinking: if you hate this, you're really going to hate Windup Girl.) But because so many of them are having trouble, I said we'd slow down the reading pace a bit--and for Tuesday, they have to read one more section (a brief one), but their main task is to review the first eight, trying to apply what they've learned to what they already read. My hope is that they'll discover they actually understand a lot more than they think they do. But that means I've had to bump some other stuff, so I'm going to have to produce a revised assignment schedule--and a revised grade calculation sheet. Obviously I won't get that done today, but I may get it done over the weekend.
And what's the mantra? "We'll see."
I was pretty happy that--despite the meeting with the student--I was able to go to the M&D class having reviewed the pertinent chapters of Roger Ackroyd (and actually, I read too far: oops, my bad) as well as having marked all the homework I'd collected last class. I did have to skip the MDC event (sorry William!) but it does lighten the load for next week--which will be important, as I am going to get the next submission of papers from the 101 on Monday, and I'll need to be sharp to stay on top of the marking for those. I have to remind myself not to mark too much, and to focus on the positive--and that, in fact, will require some mental acumen, or I'll slide right back into my old patterns of marking every little jot and tittle.
In the M&D class, we spent some time going over the paper requirements and the topics: I wanted to give them more structure in terms of the topics, but now I feel that I may have flown a little too high and provided topics that they don't understand or know how to approach. Well, it's that perpetual struggle to find the mythical magic assignment that works for everyone.
But I probably should do the same thing with the SF students--though they've been a lot more likely to pull out the paper assignment handout during their group discussions to talk about what they have to do. I also am seeing real signs of them trying to make connections among the readings, which is uber-cool. The M&D students may not be doing that so well, but several of them finally are starting to grasp the purpose of the reading responses and what they should include. Sigh of relief.
As for the hurricane, we continue to monitor the situation, but it looks like we're going to get some rain but nothing significant. Now, I just hope the 101 students didn't count on having the extra time for their papers and come to class prepared.
And I have to dash to meet Mary. Bon weekend, y'all.
But here goes.
Two students withdrew today, one from the 101 and one from M&D. The student from 101 had been mostly silent and uncommunicative, and I'd gotten the impression he was floundering--but when he came to my office, he was bright, articulate, talkative... I teased him about it a bit, saying, "This is the most I've heard you speak!" He said he loved the class, but he had to get more hours at work in order to stay financially solvent: I fully understand. The student from M&D also was in pretty deep water--and he also said he had to withdraw because he didn't have time for all the work on top of a full-time job. Fair enough. But I'm sorry to lose the young man from 101. I hope he turns up on one of my rosters sometime in the future.
A student from the SF class dropped by today during club hour: I wasn't technically available, but she wanted to talk and, well, I was there, so I said I'd meet with her. She was struggling with the book--but as I talked to her, I realized that she has annotated essentially nothing. Everything I say about digging in to details apparently just feels like too much work--but then the students are upset when their cursory reads leave them confused.
But as I entered the SF classroom today, even some of the best and brightest said they were struggling with the reading. Part of the struggle is the multiple time-frames of the narrative structure, but another part is that they are deeply disturbed by the content. (And I'm thinking: if you hate this, you're really going to hate Windup Girl.) But because so many of them are having trouble, I said we'd slow down the reading pace a bit--and for Tuesday, they have to read one more section (a brief one), but their main task is to review the first eight, trying to apply what they've learned to what they already read. My hope is that they'll discover they actually understand a lot more than they think they do. But that means I've had to bump some other stuff, so I'm going to have to produce a revised assignment schedule--and a revised grade calculation sheet. Obviously I won't get that done today, but I may get it done over the weekend.
And what's the mantra? "We'll see."
I was pretty happy that--despite the meeting with the student--I was able to go to the M&D class having reviewed the pertinent chapters of Roger Ackroyd (and actually, I read too far: oops, my bad) as well as having marked all the homework I'd collected last class. I did have to skip the MDC event (sorry William!) but it does lighten the load for next week--which will be important, as I am going to get the next submission of papers from the 101 on Monday, and I'll need to be sharp to stay on top of the marking for those. I have to remind myself not to mark too much, and to focus on the positive--and that, in fact, will require some mental acumen, or I'll slide right back into my old patterns of marking every little jot and tittle.
In the M&D class, we spent some time going over the paper requirements and the topics: I wanted to give them more structure in terms of the topics, but now I feel that I may have flown a little too high and provided topics that they don't understand or know how to approach. Well, it's that perpetual struggle to find the mythical magic assignment that works for everyone.
But I probably should do the same thing with the SF students--though they've been a lot more likely to pull out the paper assignment handout during their group discussions to talk about what they have to do. I also am seeing real signs of them trying to make connections among the readings, which is uber-cool. The M&D students may not be doing that so well, but several of them finally are starting to grasp the purpose of the reading responses and what they should include. Sigh of relief.
As for the hurricane, we continue to monitor the situation, but it looks like we're going to get some rain but nothing significant. Now, I just hope the 101 students didn't count on having the extra time for their papers and come to class prepared.
And I have to dash to meet Mary. Bon weekend, y'all.
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