I’ve worked for Tove since 1990, and over time, we’ve become friends as well as coworkers, and it’s a friendship that I cherish. We often tease each other about the fact that she keeps hiring me back to camp...
”Why do you keep hiring me?”
“Why do you keep applying?”
“Because you keep hiring me.”
“And I will if you keep applying.”
Like I said, I’ve learned a lot from her. Especially about the value of giving people a second chance. Because, you know, if you look someone in the eyes and tell them that they have let you down and outline what you expect from them ... they will often pull through.
On the other side of the coin, there’s my friend, Kerry. We’ve just finished our third year of teaching together. He taught in the local public school system for 25 years before he joined our school. He has a second chance philosophy as well. With him, however, it’s a bit different.
”Give ‘em enough rope and they’ll either pull themselves up...
... or hang themselves quite nicely.”
At the moment, I’m finishing an accelerated pre-summer Intro to Psychology class. I have 11 students enrolled, and on the very first day, I tell them what is expected.
1) Read your text and come to class prepared.
2) Do your own work.
3) Be prepared to move fast – this is a take-no-prisoners type course.
This is the second year I’ve taught the course. Last year, I had a few difficult students, but, for the most part, it was an exciting experience. This year, for the most part, I have good students as well, but, I have one.
He’s a jock. Self-described and labeled. He told me Tuesday “you can’t expect much from me. I’m just a dumb jock.”
He missed the complete irony of his next statement ... “I need a ‘B’ in this class so I can play football.”
I can’t expect much from him...but...hmmmm...that equation doesn’t quite balance.
What brought this about was the paper he turned in on Monday. I read it, well, tried to read it, but, the first paragraph was so poorly written that I just couldn’t make heads nor tails of what he was trying to say. Because of this, I decided to have him rewrite it instead of just giving him a failing grade. Especially when I noticed that a vast majority of the paper was “borrowed” from various web sites. Three quick Google searches and I had assembled most of his paper. When I spoke with him Tuesday, I dropped a subtle hint about how I’m making a name for myself around the college as someone that has an easy time finding plagiarism.
He turned it in today. I read it. He fixed a few of the punctuation problems in the first paragraph – the only one he’d actually written, but, the rest was still cut and paste jobs straight from the Internet. I shook my head as I wrote “0/50 – F” on the paper, and made a note that he needed to come see me on a break. Didn’t matter – he was late getting to class, so, while he was making excuses about his tardiness (he still hasn’t figured out that it’s his problem that he’s missing so much information, not mine, because he’s always late), I handed him the paper.
He couldn’t figure out why I failed him. I said, “I didn’t. You failed yourself.”
“But, I cited all the info from the web pages.”
“Yeah, but did you even write any of this except for the first and last paragraphs which are still so bad that I can’t consider it college-level work.”
“But, I cited all the info...”
“No. What you did was cut and paste all sorts of stuff straight from web pages. That’s NOT writing. All that is is assembling.”
Statistically speaking, he can still get the “B” he needs to play ball in the fall. Most likely ... he’ll be on the bench. We’ll have to wait until Tuesday to see....
1 comment:
Oh, Bjørn. Tove is the queen of a lot of things, sant?
I just finished up Intro. to Psych. online through the community college that I go to now. I have so much to tell you about it. See you on Saturday? Det håper jeg.
I like your other blog. Let's work on that. Okay?
-Gro
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