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Crossroads School: Even More Counts of Plagiarism and Stupidity
There are only two weeks left of school here at the Crossroads. As such, I'm struggling to find things to fill my students' time. It's not that I don't still have a lot to teach them: I do. Oh, I do. It's more a matter of what's worth getting into this late in the game.
My seniors, for some reason unfathomable by mere teachers, are being allowed out a week early. They don't deserve such a break, but whatever. With their remaining week, I think I'll be giving them some parting tips on essay-writing and a lecture on how to take notes. If any of them actually make it into college, they're desperately going to need such a tutorial.
My eleventh graders are taking their tests on The Things They Carried on Tuesday. I think, after that, I'm going to assign a couple of short stories for discussion. They can ride out the last couple of days with surprise extra credit activities. The same goes for my tenth graders, except their focus will be on world literature rather than American literature. (And, of course, their test is on The Alchemist.)
My ninth graders get to write one last essay, though I've yet to decide the type. They also have a vocabulary test (maybe two!) to finish up. I really should devise some method with which they can earn extra credit as well. Hm.
Speaking of essays, my seniors turned in their crop of prose essays on Thursday. I just finished grading them tonight. Here's the list of stories they had to read:
"The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe
"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe
"The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"Videotape" by Don DeLillo
"Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"Indian Education" by Sherman Alexie
"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K. LeGuin
"The Mark on the Wall" by Virginia Woolf
"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift
I wanted to see how much they'd learned over the year, in regards to critical analysis and essay-writing. So I didn't give them any structured guidance on this essay. I simply gave each of them a story and requested they write an essay analyzing the story. Of course, I made myself available for any questions they might have. They didn't really have many questions. They had a week to work on their essays, including some in-class writing time.
The essays were, of course, disappointing: so much dull, uninspired, and flat misunderstandings of the texts. But none were as disappointing as that of one of the newer girls, a thoughtful and quiet student whom I thought had the best chance of understanding the assignment and succeeding with her prose piece: "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift.
Please find the text of her essay enclosed beneath the cut:
( An essay concerning 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift... )
For the students in my class, the above essay sounds bloody brilliant. Too bad I immediately knew it wasn't her work and found it via Google but a quick search later (it's down there, trust me). Discovering this particular girl had plagiarized was quite a bitter pill to swallow.
Another girl did it as well on her essay about "The Yellow Wallpaper." She copied from two different sites, though. She also tried to cover it up, albeit unsuccessfully. You see, her method of covering it up was to splinter the sentences, leaving out some words and joining together odd phrases. This rendered the latter half of her essay completely nonsensical. Really. For example:
"She feels her activity, freedom, and interesting of working and would help condition and reveals. Her description is mostly positive but disturbing elements such as rings and things but her bedroom walls are the bars on the windows.
The first few weeks of the summer pass, the author describe good & bad things about her & john She continues to long fore more stimulating of the company and her activities"
All lack of punctuation and the like are the student's. This brings the total counts of plagiarism for the year up to 6. And not one of them has gotten away with it. Honestly, when will they learn? How do they honestly think they're going to get away with this nonsense?
In addition to all of this, I have one student who's completely spazzing out on me. He hasn't bothered to do any of his work this quarter, so he's trying to catch up on all of it within the last two weeks. Unfortunately, his work suffers from a serious lack of quality or understanding.
Behold his essay analyzing Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"... actually, you know what, you might want to make yourself a drink first. I'll wait. You should possibly take a couple of painkillers. Just enough to dull the pain that will shortly begin throbbing behind your eyes. Got all that done? Good. Here you go:
The Lottery
A story about Shirley Jackson. This lottery was published in June 28, 1948 and issue in New York.
The lottery was mainly about Shirley Jackson and her family and Tessie her husband.
The lottery's democratic illusion is an ideological effect that prevent the villagers from crticizing the class structure of their society. The lottery also reinforces a village work ethio with distracts the villagers.
Shirley Jackson and her family went on to the lottery and didn't have to much fun there, so they were play and how the game go there is whoever get the black ball has to be stoned so therefore her husband had got the black stone and Shirley thought they tried to give him to black stone so she was made.
Shirley was very angry and she wanted them to do it over again so they did it over again and she had ended up with the Black then so she was stoned by the crowd and her family.
End "essay."
Yeah. He's not passing. Which is too bad, considering he apparently has some sport scholarship waiting on him that depends on him having good grades. My boss told me we really needed to make a push this quarter and try to get him the grades he needs to get his scholarship, but he's obviously not making an effort in my class. I've given him enough of a break by not penalizing him for turning in late work.
Also, yes, he blatantly plagiarized there in the middle from the essay I let them read in class. At least he had the sense to quit that rather quickly.
Wearisome! Wearisome.
My seniors, for some reason unfathomable by mere teachers, are being allowed out a week early. They don't deserve such a break, but whatever. With their remaining week, I think I'll be giving them some parting tips on essay-writing and a lecture on how to take notes. If any of them actually make it into college, they're desperately going to need such a tutorial.
My eleventh graders are taking their tests on The Things They Carried on Tuesday. I think, after that, I'm going to assign a couple of short stories for discussion. They can ride out the last couple of days with surprise extra credit activities. The same goes for my tenth graders, except their focus will be on world literature rather than American literature. (And, of course, their test is on The Alchemist.)
My ninth graders get to write one last essay, though I've yet to decide the type. They also have a vocabulary test (maybe two!) to finish up. I really should devise some method with which they can earn extra credit as well. Hm.
Speaking of essays, my seniors turned in their crop of prose essays on Thursday. I just finished grading them tonight. Here's the list of stories they had to read:
"The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe
"The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe
"The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"Videotape" by Don DeLillo
"Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"Indian Education" by Sherman Alexie
"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K. LeGuin
"The Mark on the Wall" by Virginia Woolf
"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift
I wanted to see how much they'd learned over the year, in regards to critical analysis and essay-writing. So I didn't give them any structured guidance on this essay. I simply gave each of them a story and requested they write an essay analyzing the story. Of course, I made myself available for any questions they might have. They didn't really have many questions. They had a week to work on their essays, including some in-class writing time.
The essays were, of course, disappointing: so much dull, uninspired, and flat misunderstandings of the texts. But none were as disappointing as that of one of the newer girls, a thoughtful and quiet student whom I thought had the best chance of understanding the assignment and succeeding with her prose piece: "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift.
Please find the text of her essay enclosed beneath the cut:
( An essay concerning 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift... )
For the students in my class, the above essay sounds bloody brilliant. Too bad I immediately knew it wasn't her work and found it via Google but a quick search later (it's down there, trust me). Discovering this particular girl had plagiarized was quite a bitter pill to swallow.
Another girl did it as well on her essay about "The Yellow Wallpaper." She copied from two different sites, though. She also tried to cover it up, albeit unsuccessfully. You see, her method of covering it up was to splinter the sentences, leaving out some words and joining together odd phrases. This rendered the latter half of her essay completely nonsensical. Really. For example:
"She feels her activity, freedom, and interesting of working and would help condition and reveals. Her description is mostly positive but disturbing elements such as rings and things but her bedroom walls are the bars on the windows.
The first few weeks of the summer pass, the author describe good & bad things about her & john She continues to long fore more stimulating of the company and her activities"
All lack of punctuation and the like are the student's. This brings the total counts of plagiarism for the year up to 6. And not one of them has gotten away with it. Honestly, when will they learn? How do they honestly think they're going to get away with this nonsense?
In addition to all of this, I have one student who's completely spazzing out on me. He hasn't bothered to do any of his work this quarter, so he's trying to catch up on all of it within the last two weeks. Unfortunately, his work suffers from a serious lack of quality or understanding.
Behold his essay analyzing Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"... actually, you know what, you might want to make yourself a drink first. I'll wait. You should possibly take a couple of painkillers. Just enough to dull the pain that will shortly begin throbbing behind your eyes. Got all that done? Good. Here you go:
A story about Shirley Jackson. This lottery was published in June 28, 1948 and issue in New York.
The lottery was mainly about Shirley Jackson and her family and Tessie her husband.
The lottery's democratic illusion is an ideological effect that prevent the villagers from crticizing the class structure of their society. The lottery also reinforces a village work ethio with distracts the villagers.
Shirley Jackson and her family went on to the lottery and didn't have to much fun there, so they were play and how the game go there is whoever get the black ball has to be stoned so therefore her husband had got the black stone and Shirley thought they tried to give him to black stone so she was made.
Shirley was very angry and she wanted them to do it over again so they did it over again and she had ended up with the Black then so she was stoned by the crowd and her family.
End "essay."
Yeah. He's not passing. Which is too bad, considering he apparently has some sport scholarship waiting on him that depends on him having good grades. My boss told me we really needed to make a push this quarter and try to get him the grades he needs to get his scholarship, but he's obviously not making an effort in my class. I've given him enough of a break by not penalizing him for turning in late work.
Also, yes, he blatantly plagiarized there in the middle from the essay I let them read in class. At least he had the sense to quit that rather quickly.
Wearisome! Wearisome.