Gladly Would I Teach

Regardless of how long I teach, I will never understand when students plagiarize papers. While grading a wonderful set of This I Believe papers (see yesterday’s post), I started reading a paper that puzzled me. Since I require students to submit papers to Turnitin.com, a plagiarism detection site, I took a closer look at the student’s paper.

According to Turnitin.com, the paper contained over 20% of matching text from information that appears elsewhere on the Internet. I then checked a book about the student’s topic and found even more sentences that he apparently copied.

In most cases, this would anger me, but today I am just sad. The student is a nice young man and not a student I would normally think would cheat on a paper. I want to believe he would not cheat or copy part of a paper. I just don’t want to believe it.

Did he not realize that he couldn’t copy sentences from another source? I would like to think it’s a mistake, but no student could make it all the way to AP English without knowing about plagiarism.

Did he simply forget to enclose copied material in quotation marks? Again, that would be hard to believe for a seventeen-year-old student in an honors English class.

I gave the student a zero on the assignment, explained the problem, and asked him to see me individually. I’ll return the paper tomorrow.

Just when I was so sad over the idea that a student would plagiarize part of a paper, I picked up another student’s paper about her belief.

America needs to return to the days where people followed through on their promises and tried their hardest, no matter what the circumstances. Once upon a time, cheating was a serious offense, mistakes were acknowledged and rectified, and handshakes were the equivalent of a legal contract. Once upon a time, there were not unlimited opportunities to try again. Once upon a time, people had to work hard to succeed because there were no handouts. These are the values that America needs to return to. This personal responsibility is an important part of society that has been recently lost. This must be found again as America recovers from its recession. This I believe.

At the beginning of the semester, I always tell students how much cheating disappoints me. I emphasize that I can still have respect for students who make a horrible grade but who do not resort to cheating. I then emphasize that I can have little respect for students who take the easy way out and cheat.

I so hope the student can give me an explanation for what happened – some explanation that does not include copying.

If not, I hope he will admit his mistake and apologize. We all make mistakes.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

One of my favorite writing assignments is National Public Radio’s (NPR) This I Believe. Based on a radio series that started several decades ago, students write a 500-word essay that expresses ONE of their beliefs. The best papers illustrate beliefs with stories and lots of examples.

Some of the student essays are funny, and some are poignant. Almost all of them are thoughtful. Although some students charge through the assignment quickly and whip out something with little analysis or thought, most students have a hard time narrowing their beliefs to only one concept they wish to express.

I spent all morning grading their papers, and this batch of papers is probably the best group of papers I have ever read for the This I Believe assignment.

What do teenagers believe?  Teenagers’ optimism always rejuvenates me. Here is the list of beliefs from this semester’s students. The NPR format asks writers to name their belief, usually starting or ending the topic with “This I Believe.”

If you would like to use the NPR’s This I Believe assignment, please see the NPR website:

This I Believe

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Twice each year, we hold Open House for parents. Years ago I used to worry for days about these nights. Parents would follow their children’s schedules, and teachers would have about ten minutes to tell parents what students were learning in each class.

Over the years I have had some wonderful experiences at Open House Nights, but I have also had a couple of bad experiences. My worst experience was in my third year of teaching. The five teachers in my middle school team pulled about 100 parents into a large room to meet with them together. After I distributed handouts and provided my best ten-minute  synopsis of the class, an extremely loud and obnoxious parent stood up in the meeting and proceeded to express how unhappy she was with my teaching because I required too much writing and too few grammar exercises. She angrily challenged every explanation I provided.  To add to my consternation, the chairman of the board of education was sitting in my classroom while this happened.

As a 23-year-old inexperienced teacher, I was visibly shaken, and I mustered all of my fortitude just to keep from breaking into tears.

Finally a few parents and other teachers stopped the woman and we moved on. Later in the evening, many of the parents stayed around to see me individually and encourage me. The chairman of the board apologized for the outburst and told me that he wished it had never happened. Everyone was so positive and reassuring.

When I went home that night and when I returned to school the following morning, I, unfortunately, didn’t think of all of the parents who had been so positive. I thought only about the parent who had been so critical.

SO, when Open House rolls around each semester, I worry. I know that most of the parents will be kind and encouraging and will thank me for teaching their children. I worry about the one parent – the one who will attack, or criticize, or question everything I do.

Last night was wonderful. Parents were very happy and supportive, and the only comment that was even close to being critical came from a parent who said his son was always working on assignments for my class, but he went on to say that he thought that would help prepare him for college.

I’m very lucky because most of the parents were lovely and thanked me with such kind remarks. Since I teach all seniors and this is their final semester of high school, I didn’t have that many parents who came by to see me. One or both parents of only 19 of my 70 students stopped by along with another 10 or so parents of students I taught first semester.

It was a good night. No one yelled or criticized.

I needed that since I awoke this morning to the news that we will be furloughed three more days.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

“Me and my brother were late to school.”

“This photo is of me, Kayla, and Lauren.”

“Me, Shirley, and Jane want to do our project on Monday.

Is anyone else seeing and hearing “Me and _____” (fill in the blank) repeatedly?  Without question, I have more students uttering this solecism today than I have had at any point in my career.

When I first started teaching 30+ years ago, I often heard students utter “Me and ___,” but these students were not academically advanced students or students who were planning to attend college. Oh, how things have changed.

Today, I have to correct Advanced Placement students who not only utter “Me and _____” when they speak but also write it in formal papers. I know this probably sounds like an old English teacher concern, but I have reached my limit.

I don’t usually correct a student’s grammar errors in front of other students, but I’m making an exception on this one.

Years ago while I was teaching a grammar lesson, a student blurted out, “But that don’t sound right!”

I immediately stated to the student, “Don’t ever determine what’s proper according to what sounds right to YOU!”  When so many people continue to make the same errors and students hear the error repeatedly, they think the error is correct.

I don’t want to embarrass kids, but when so many of even our best students think it’s okay to say “Me and ____,” it’s time to circle the wagons and take a stand.

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Yesterday the fire alarm blared in the middle of first period.

Let’s see. High school seniors in their final semester of high school, have participated in at least 125 drills during their years in school; therefore, students know what to do.

The fire alarm went off during first period, and my students just sat there.

Instead of jumping up and walking down the hall in a quick but orderly fashion, my students just sat there.

“Get up, folks!  Let’s go,” I stated firmly, and finally they marched out of the room . . . slowly.

We participate in monthly drills so that students know exactly what to do in the event of a fire. It’s quite simple. Get up, walk out of the building quickly and orderly. (We once emphasized silence, but that’s fallen by the wayside).

Why didn’t my kids jump up instinctively and follow what they had learned in the drill?

Was it too cold outside?  Probably – 45 degrees in Georgia is cold, but that wasn’t the reason.

Were they lazy?  Probably – but how many students are so lazy that they will forgo the opportunity to enjoy a classroom interruption?

My students sat there simply because my school experiences at least 1 false fire alarm each week. At least once each week, we follow an adjusted alarm procedure:

• The fire alarm rings.
• Students walk out of classrooms and walk towards the exits.
• Twenty seconds later, the school secretary announces over the intercom, “Ignore the fire alarm. Ignore the alarm and return to class.”

Because students are repeatedly told to ignore the fire alarm, we are indirectly teaching them to ignore all fire alarms. Now, when the alarm sounds, students sit in their desks and do not leave unless teachers emphasize that they must leave immediately.

I remember reading about a tornado that struck an Alabama school during a dance many years ago. No one was injured because students immediately followed the drop-and-cover procedures they had been taught and had practiced for years. They behaved instinctively.

I know that fire rarely strikes schools today, particularly new buildings like my school that are equipped with first-rate fire protection. I still worry about what would happen if we actually had a fire when so many students are accustomed to sitting through fire alarms unless the teacher insists that they leave.

Yesterday, I was stunned at how slowly my students reacted when I told them to leave the classroom. I was even more unnerved when my class walked out into an empty hallway because most classes remained inside their classrooms awaiting an announcement from the office to ignore the fire alarm.

I worry.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Here’s the final student-created Public Service Announcement I’m going to post. The assignment was wide-open. Students had to choose a topic and create a 30 second to 1 minute video to convince students to do something (or not to do something). The video had to exhibit two types of appeals (ethos, pathos, logos).

I’m always amazed by the creativity of students. Here’s a funny PSA. This time I posted it on Schooltube so it can bypass my school’s Internet filters.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

As my students gathered in groups to create public service announcements (PSAs)  last week, most of them immediately wanted to create something humorous. They are teenagers who are always in search of humor.

One student came to me before school and wanted to know if she could work alone. She was deeply moved by all of the suffering in Haiti and wanted to do something to encourage people to donate money. Teenagers are often criticized for being  self-absorbed or tagged as the “Me Generation.” As Ansley’s PSA illustrates, however, some teenagers are indeed interested in what goes on around the world, and they have huge open hearts that want to help.

Please take a look!

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Yesterday, I drove 6 hours in order to see my niece’s baby girl. Since I couldn’t figure out a way to drive and grade papers simultaneously, much to the relief of other motorists, today I am facing a huge stack of papers that I must grade by tomorrow.

How many other professions end the week with a stack of work that they must complete over the weekend during their free time?

Writing, like reading, is taught best by allowing students to practice their skills as often as possible. For example, teachers who want students to become better readers must assign more reading and then find time to discuss the reading with the class or with individual students.

The same process is true with writing. To help students, we must require lots of writing, encourage students to write, and then provide feedback. There’s the rub!  When students write, particularly older high school students, teachers must then spend hours and hours reading and responding to their papers. Is it any wonder that teachers require few writing assignments?

So, here I sit in my home study. I will be sitting her all day grading papers and wishing I could have found a way to grade part of them as I drove all over Georgia  yesterday.

For those of you who think I wrote this post just so I could interject a photo of Sophie Catherine at 18 days, I plead guilty!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

I was excited about class on Friday because we were going to discuss Wallace Stegner’s “Town Dump,” a beautiful essay about his Canadian childhood. Students generally like the essay because of Stegner’s vivid descriptions of the items he finds at the local dump. Since the essay is told through the eyes of a seven year old, it is easy for the reader to understand how fascinated the young boy is with a catfish who may be the devil, or the leeches that cling to his skin, or the mounted goat’s head that he takes home until his mother makes him return it since it is full of moths.

One of my favorite sections of the essay is when seven-year-old Stegner writes a letter to a company and receives a form letter as a reply. The “windowed envelope” from people who are “his truly” becomes a treasure that the boy carries around for days.

At the end of the essay, Stegner asserts, “The dump was our history and our poetry.” Usually, students enjoy discussing how a dump is our history because it holds everything we have ever used and how the dump is like poetry in that it holds items that are memorable but not useful. We then continue the discussion by telling about items that we own that other people would consider unimportant or useless but we keep them because they are important to us.

Usually!

Yesterday, when I asked students what they thought of the essay they had read for homework, most of them had not enjoyed it.

“Why?” I asked in disbelief. Although most of them could supply explanations such as it did not tell a story, or they couldn’t relate, or they didn’t enjoy his philosophical views, some students answered unemotionally , “It was boring.”

“It was boring!”

Nothing kills a teacher’s enthusiasm faster on a Friday afternoon than to hear a student reduce a marvelous work of literature as “boring.”

Some days teaching would be easier if I turned off the lights and showed a movie, even a boring movie!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

Yesterday in class we viewed student-created public service announcements. The assignment was wide-open. Students had to choose a topic and create a 30 second to 1 minute video to convince students to do something (or not to do something). The video had to exhibit two types of appeals (ethos, pathos, logos).

I’m always amazed by the creativity of students. Here’s an uplifting PSA that four of my talented students created.

Just for the record, if the video is slow to load, hit pause and wait a few seconds until the shaded red on the progress bar reaches about half way. Then, click play again. (The kids had to teach me this tip. How do they know these things?!)

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott