matching tracksuits

In all my classes, I emphasize the importance of being able to back up assertions about a given text with information from the text. "Where do you see that in the text?" It's a typical question in the classroom.

With one group today, we were doing a Socratic Seminar on the question of who is ultimately responsible for Juliet's fake death at the end of act four in Romeo and Juliet. Our discussion skill focus was on backing everything up from the text and, equally important, recognizing when others have made claims that aren't necessarily backed by the text and calling them on it.

"Where do you see that in the text?"

"Show me from the text."

"I don't see that in the text."

At the end of the day, a young lady came back to inform me that during math class, she'd felt the teacher was wrong and said, "Excuse me, Mrs. M, could you show me that in the text?"

Students' drawings of Queen Mab.

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O'er ladies ' lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:

Dear Terrence,

I understand you didn't really like the sonnet assignment. That's fine: not every assignment has to be to your personal liking or approval. Understand, though, that, because this is not a poetry writing class, I had no intention of grading it with the kind of severity that would result in a bunch of failing grades. It was the struggle of writing in iambic pentameter that I was after, as well as the experience of having to think about each and every word as you wrote. That's probably not something you've ever done before, but you'll write plenty of things in your life that you should consider word by word.

But, you didn't like it. Perhaps you even thought you couldn't do it. As a solution, you decided to bounce around the internet for a while until you found a sonnet that you thought you could pass off as your own, then you typed it up and attempted to do just that.

I wish you had spoken to me about this earlier: I could have given you some pointers to help you not get caught. But you are caught. Still, in the spirit of charity, I'll share the pointers anyway.

1. Be aware that I have taught English for a long time. I know how eighth graders sound, even the most gifted, when they're writing. I know what kind of topics they choose. I know what kind of vocabulary they're likely to use. So at least choose a sonnet that sounds like a kid wrote it, not a hormonally challenged adult. With that much experience, I have a pretty strong intuition about what is and isn't from the pen of an eighth grader.
2. Understand that I know your personal writing voice. It's not just that I know how eighth graders write; I know how specific eighth graders -- including you -- write. I know what kind of ideas you're likely to write about and which ideas might never cross your mind. I've given you standardized testing that provides me with ample information about what kinds of words you're likely to understand and to use in your own writing.
3. I expect it. I know someone will do this, and I read every paper with the thought that, no matter who the author, there's a latent (don't pawn off work with that word in it: I know you don't know what it means) chance of someone trying to pull one over on me.
4. I've caught them all. Every single one. Remember the Terminator? That's me. Only without the bulging muscles. Or the Austrian accent.
5. Make sure you know all the words in your plagiarized work. It's awfully telling when a teacher uses a word (intentionally, of course) that you've used in your work only to receive blank looks from the one person who used the word (a word like, say, "latent") in "her" work. (I put her in quotes because, well, you understand.)
6. Choose a sonnet that's about a topic that the average eighth grader would be interested in. I know you personally, so it's not just a matter of an abstract idea: I know what type of thing you're likely to write about. Burning passion is not one of them. No eighth grader would write about that topic, especially you.
7. Finally, I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating: make sure it sounds like an eighth grader. Eighth graders to speak of anyone's "wanton fiery beauty." Eighth graders don't write poems with final lines beginning "pleasure me."

With these ideas in mind, I'm sure you'll be more successful in your next efforts to act as a thief and pass off someone else's work as your own.

Regards,
Your Disappointed but Not Surprised Teacher

A pleasant Friday afternoon surprise: two students, classified by some as “average” in every way, working on a web site evaluation activity, noticed something I hadn’t even noticed. First, they notice that two sites mention the same book.

Next they notice that one site gives the title incorrectly.

Excitement.

“I guess this means it’s a less reliable web site, right Mr. Scott?”

I’ll say.