Sunday, March 01, 2009

And the Beat Goes On

It's been an interesting week.

All week I have been hounded by a student who believes she deserves an "A" and I graded her with a "C." I applaud her persistence but every time I see email or hear her voice I have to take a deep breath and try to be patient. It doesn't matter that I am basing her assignment by national standards, she still believes I am being subjective. I have shown her the criteria; she has rejected it. And on top of this, she has decided I am too rigid with students and not flexible. She has continued with the idea that I am not thinking about the needs of the students but am making things easy for me.

You have to laugh :)

Now on top of this, I have a student who has plagiarized two essay exam questions, plagiarized to the point of simply cut and pasted the information from websites. When I told her she would not receive credit for the test questions, she tried to put it back on me, that I was not clear when I said to use the textbook and the Internet to support her answers. She did not plagiarize, she said, because she changed the words into her own. So I had to take both her work and the websites I found and paste them side-by-side, with all language and thoughts the same in red. Both the articles and her answers had little that was not red. A word here and there. I sent this to her. She said she understands why I might think it was plagiarism, but she just forgot to cite her references. One of these "references" was a t-shirt ad...she liked how they talked about a certain motif on the t-shirt... When I referred her to the student handbook, she asked if she could at least get credit for researching the questions.

You have to laugh :)

I lost 3.5 pounds this week, only a breath away from that magic 45 number. I asked Doug to take me out of town for the weekend as I have been feeling anxious and nervous. Probably waiting to hear back from one student of another... So we went to a hotel out of town. We relaxed. I still did school work but relaxed while I did it. The kitties were happy to see us this evening :)

Weekly pics are up. Things are not moving as quickly so I don't notice much change. Still worth seeing since I spent the weekend looking at myself with a whole different set of mirrors. Not a fun thing, seeing yourself from different angles and realizing how much you have to lose. I forget at home. I am just keepin' on keepin' here at home...go out and things look different.

But, between students and an unmanageable workload, I think I will, as Dory says in Finding Nemo just keep on swimming.
.

5 comments:

Myra said...

Keep on swimming is right. I am so proud of you with the weight loss. You are doing great!

Gari in AL said...

Students will always be students, won't they? I think part of education is learning to take personal responsibility: the phrase I used to repeat to my clients. And that's what you did when you decided to "get away," took responsiblity for yourself. Also, congrats on your weight loss: little by little you're gonna get there.

Lynn W. said...

You definitely deserved a week end away after what you've gone through with your students. And big congrats on the weight loss. You're just keeping at it and that's how it works best.

Anonymous said...

Students are students.. I have a lot of students who plagarize too!! :( I think you're doing great Pollyanna! :)
-genny

Crispy said...

Hi Dori, Hooray for the weight loss and hugs for putting up with those little snits who I'm sure Know they are wrong but refuse to admit it. It's probably how they wear down their parents...like Bart and Lisa in the back seat of the car...Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet? LOL

Crispy