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Busted

Thursday 29 October 2009 | 0 Comments

Reading over student work, I find a sentence that troubles me: it has a maturity that belies its author. I continue reading, and within a few moments, I'm pulling out the laptop and Googling the suspect sentence: it's lifted directly from Wikipedia. With a sigh, I write "See me" at the top of the paper, underlining it emphatically.

Dealing with plagiarism is one of my absolute least favorite duties as a teacher; it's especially tough when it's a student I really like, a student who is sensible and gives every impression of being a conscientious student.

Plagiarism is a sin that is hard to treat evenly. Is unintentional plagiarism as bad as intentional? Is malicious plagiarism ("He'll never catch on, the old doddering fool.") worse plagiarism motivated by laziness or procrastination?

As I'm reading, and I begin to grow concerned about the authenticity of a particular essay or poem, I find myself tensing up. A brier patch of issues awaits, and it's seldom a pleasant experience.

Celuacy for non-Poles, is a grade above an "A". It signifies mastery of a subject accompanied by superior extra-curricular work.

On one occasion, though, a young lady of supreme character managed not only to avoid losing respect but managed to increase it. She was a student in Poland, and she worked hard to have celuacy ("excellent") in as many classes as she could. She turned in a journal that was clearly plagiarized. (With English learners, it's easier to discover copied work, for obvious reasons.) I spoke to her about it, asking her why she'd done it.

"I just didn't understand that we weren't supposed to copy."

A lame excuse, but she had so endeared herself to me (to all teachers) with her hard work and dedication that I put off the inevitable. "Well, I'll think about how we can handle this; my standard policy, though, has always been to give a failing grade for plagiarism." She said nothing, but she was clearly upset.

The next day, she approached me. "I've been thinking about it," she began, impressing me with her correct use of the present perfect continuous tense. "I should have known better. I want you to give me a zero."

I did, but I made sure she had plenty of opportunity to offset that zero and maintain her high average.

She did.

Every time I've had to deal with plagiarism since then, I've hoped for such a response. So far, no luck.

Maybe tomorrow.

Retrieving Apples

Sunday 25 October 2009 | 0 Comments

A trip to the orchard is supposed to involve stretching to pick the perfect apple that is just out of reach. It's supposed to mean a delicate tug and twist to remove an apple without causing others to fall to the ground. It's supposed to be about branches bending under the weight of apples. Last year it was about all those things. This year, it was a question of picking them off the ground.

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It's a little disheartening to be scavenging apples rather than picking them, but Pink Ladies -- sweet with a tart edge and a crunch that is audible -- are not apples one leaves to rot on the ground.

So we picked them,

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hauled them in baskets

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as well as wagons,

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and brushed them off and ate them.

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Every now and then, we stopped for a group picture, which reminded me of the greatest features of digital photography: easy sharing. No more line of cameras at the photographer's feet. No more "One more! Just one more!"

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No more last minute re-groupings as someone realizes that he wants a group picture, too.

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And that certainly was a possibility, given the number of photographers in the group.

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Madeline at Boo in the Zoo

Tuesday 20 October 2009 | 3 Comments

In an old zoo in Greenville that was covered with vines
Weaved hundreds of children in one very long line;

The smartest, cutest, and funniest was Madeline.

She was not afraid of the candy-sharing workers of the zoo,

And to the snake behind the glass, she just said "Poo poo!"

"Poo poo" to the lion, too.

The animals in the cages had all gone to sleep,

And it almost made poor little Madeline weep,

But the thought of more treats made her pick up her feet.

She posed for pictures with pumpkins and hay,

But in the end, she was glad to call it a day.

In the parking lot, "Watch out for the cars" was almost all she could say.

Amateurs

Sunday 18 October 2009 | 1 Comment

Four Saturdays of work. A couple of pros would have the backs and arms to get it all done in one day. We took somewhat longer.

Part of it was inexperience. Having never dug up and recreated a planter, we had no idea how long it would take; we certainly didn't know how much effort it would require.

Although the vision was very amorphous, we somehow knew what it would look like, though.

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Now, instead of five boxwoods we have:

  • two Loropetalum chinense,
  • two Gardenia brighamii,
  • three Rhaphiolepis indica,
  • three Rhynchospermum jasminoides,
  • a line of alternating Tradescantia pallida and Senecio cineraria,
  • a small patch of Viola tricolor hortensis.

Who am I kidding? I can barely remember the plants' common names, let alone the Latin.

The Bad Hat

Saturday 17 October 2009 | 2 Comments

That Brooke -- she's a bad influence. At school, she teaches L to disregard all safety, to live on the edge, to do somersaults.

There were a handful of less-than-perfect landings for each perfect one.

Jack-o-Lantern

Thursday 15 October 2009 | 2 Comments

Carving a jack-o-lantern is a paradox: it requires forceful and delicate motions. And it's often simply messy.

Head = effective illustration of the effects of a wide-angle lens

The lesson I learned this year: don't cut the top hole too small. It makes scraping the insides a nightmare because there are no do-overs with that first cut.

There are also no re-dos with the delicate work.

Which is why our ghost is holding a blog instead of a three-candle candelabra.

Next year.

Outsourcing

Tuesday 13 October 2009 | 1 Comment

For the first several months of L's life, K and I could be fairly sure that everything she knew was something we'd taught her, directly or indirectly. Sometimes she would imitate us with prompting, sometimes without. There were few moments that prompted comments of "Where'd she get that?" and the like.

When she started spending time with other kids and adults at daycare, the gradual shift began. Slowly she picked up as much at daycare as at home; then, daycare overtook us.

Now she comes home with songs we've never heard:

Twinkle, twinkle traffic light...
Red means stop
Green means go
Yellow means very, very slow

She comes home with skills we haven't touched on: tracing numbers and letters is the most recent.

These things come from the teacher, who told K this morning during the first of many parent-teacher conferences, that L is a "good old-fashioned girl" with good manners and a strong sense of right and wrong.

Other things come from friends. Brooke taught her how to swing by herself.

She's growing more and more independent.

Now, she knows she can get her information from other sources, that she's not dependent on us mentally any more than she is physically.

Which, in reality, is still quite comforting: still many years to go. It comes in mercifully slow steps.

The Eternal Project

Sunday 11 October 2009 | 2 Comments

The Perpetual Motion machine does exist: it is mischievously named "the house".

When we moved in, the front looked like this:

June 30, 2007

Grass that was fried; shrubs that were ignored.

A general feeling of neglect.

A clogged sewer line a year ago finally prompted us to pull out the dying boxwoods; embarrassment at having the worst-looking lawn in the neighborhood prompted us to emergency measures with our yard.

Now, our yard is well on its way to becoming the envy of all who drive by.

The boxwoods are gone, roots and all.

As is my back.

The replacement bushes are still sitting in a nursery somewhere: that's Wednesday afternoon's project. In the meantime, the bed sits empty.

The upshot of all of this: the cat has a new place to nap.

Opportunity Lost

Friday 09 October 2009 | 5 Comments

Not many people have a chance, a clear-cut chance, to be magnanimous. Obama had one today, and he blew it. By his own admission he doesn’t deserve the Nobel prize, yet he accepted it, leading to countless howls from the right and some raised eyebrows on the left.

He should have declined to accept it. There’s precedent: Lê Ðức Thọ was awarded the Peace Prize (along with Kissinger) in 1973, but he did not accept it, explaining that there was still no peace in his country. He’s the only person to decline it, and it shows a certain honesty that is rare.

Obama should have said, “I am humbled by the honor bestowed upon me. However, I feel I do not deserve it; therefore, I respectfully decline to accept the award.”

What could anyone, on the right or the left, have said about that? Amid the inevitable cries of “political posturing,” a reasonable person could only, however begrudgingly, admit that it was a magnanimous decision.