Eenie, Meenie, Meinee… C+?

Calculating the grades for a writing class is much more art than science. How I would love to have only “multiple guess” tests to grade—better yet, Scantron—instead of a mound of mushy, subjective, eight to ten page student research papers.

I accepted my first adjunct professor position less than a year after I graduated with my Master’s in English Education. I took in my first load of papers about three weeks after that. It was the moment after I read the first paper that I realized I had NO idea how to grade.

In grad school, the professors used words like “paradigm”, “rubric” and “rhetorical”. I went home and looked them up in a dictionary. The grad school professors tossed around these words like we knew what they meant, and most of the students nodded and tried to look sophisticated while wishing somebody had the guts to say, “Er…what?” We looked at high school papers and puzzled out the anonymous students’ cognitive development based on handwriting factors. We heard over and over again that “multicultural = good”. We learned that the most fantastic idea for a writing class (and for investors in 3-ring binder stock) is called a “portfolio”.

What I never got was an explanation, an example, or a template (I mean a rubric) for grading.

So, how DO you grade a pile of papers?

• Read them all. (Try to ignore the fact that Timmy is a douche bag and concentrate on his writing.)
• Make yourself a cup of peppermint tea to quell the nausea that rises as you imagine yourself having to read them again.
• Read them again, this time pen in hand. Red pen is traditional, but I’ve found it scares students too much so now I use blue. Avoid committing to actual grades.
• Play some Spider Solitaire to let your mind go blank.
• Read them again, this time making helpful comments at the bottom while trying not to overuse the words “awkward”, “wordy” and “sucks”. Continue to avoid grading.
• Wash the dishes, vacuum, dust, reorganize your DVD collection, watch You’ve Got Mail again, print those return address labels you’ve been meaning to make for the past year. In other words: avoid.
• Force yourself to read them again (skim, at least). Find the best and the worst—now you’ve got your A and your F. Sort the rest based on those first two. (Use the “Douche Bag Scale” for any students on the cusp.)
• Try not to think about the fresh pile of papers you’ll get in about two weeks.

Grading = Guessing + How Much of a Pain in the Butt Were You?

Jimmy is a model student. He listens attentively and takes careful notes. When teacher asks a question, more often than not, Jimmy’s hand will be politely raised to just above his right ear and he always has a thoughtful answer. If Jimmy doesn’t understand a lesson, he asks a pertinent question that invariably helps the entire class. His work is always on time and it steadily improves as class progresses.

Jimmy gets an A.

Timmy is a douche bag. He constantly talks to his neighbor during class and rarely brings a working pen. When teacher asks a question, Timmy either mutters a wiseacre comment to anyone listening, or he will shout out the first thing that pops into his head, relevant or not. If Timmy doesn’t understand a lesson, it’s because he’s been texting his friends all class or because he has fallen asleep under his hoodie. His work, however, is never late, though it usually has mustard stains. As it turns out, Timmy went to an excellent high school and he has a natural talent for writing. Timmy’s final work is of exactly the same caliber as Jimmy’s.

What grade should Timmy get?
What grade will Timmy get?
What grade do you want to give Timmy?

For this reason, and this reason only, teachers have always had a sizable portion of their final grading chart devoted to “The Douche Bag Contingency Reserve”, a.k.a. “Class Participation”.

The adventures of grading to be continued in “Eenie, Meenie, Meinee… C+?”

The Computer Ate My Homework

This is the age of technology and my students would be lost without their gadgets. Because they’re so used to typeface, today’s students have a difficult time reading cursive handwriting. Even teachers can’t imagine accepting a pile of hand-written final papers, though they probably can remember handing in their own, carefully copied over essays.

Even though I was born prior to the home computer; even though my elementary school had a single computer on a big cart that they pushed from room to room, giving each student half a minute to meander a pointless maze with a black and white “bunny” (just an oddly shaped cursor); even though I typed all my high school essays, and half my college papers, on a Smith Corona, seeing only four lines at a time; despite all of my handicaps, I am able to perform many different technological feats that are, apparently, marvels to my students.

- I can word process.
- I can save a file.
- I can backup a file.
- I can change the ink in my printer.
- I can add paper to my printer.
- I can silence my cell phone.
- I can use email.
- I can use and reload a stapler.
- And I can still remember how to program a VIC-20 in BASIC to fill a screen with the word “Hello!”

Why, then, are my students, who probably had personal computers in their cribs, technological morons?

Because their dogs ate their homework.


10 print “Hello!”;
20 goto 10

Rude Awakening: Your Parents Aren’t Any Good at Writing, Either

“I don’t understand,” Ashlee complained, her pink-glossed lip trembling. “I sent my draft to my parents to fix.”

“You what?”

“My parents sent me copies of articles they said would work for my paper, and they corrected my draft, so I don’t see how I could have gotten a D-!”

The three page research paper flopped limply in Ashlee’s hand. The ink I added to it with my comments easily doubled the weight of her “research” that was short seven pages and four sources. I could practically smell the horrid thing as it hung there. It stank.

Kyle was also holding his stillborn paper. “My cousin is a published author, and he doesn’t understand why I got such a low grade, either.”

“He actually read your paper?”

“Yeah.”

“And he still doesn’t understand why it’s a D?”

“He thinks it’s much better than that. An A- or B+ at least.”

“Is he ‘published’ on a thing called a ‘blog’?”

I’m sorry, people. I hate to be the one to break it to you. Those folks you’re asking to help you are just not good writers. It might be your mom, your dad, your sister, brother, cousin, grandparent or weird Great Uncle Roy, but apparently a mental block concerning the use of commas runs in your family. It’s a wonder any of your ancestors were able to communicate enough to even understand they wanted to mate.

May I suggest, my revelation-dazed pupils, that you start now to graft fresh DNA, preferably from someone with literacy skills, onto your family tree?

“100% Original and Non-Plagiarized Term Paper Writing Services”

I tell my students on the first day of class:
I would rather see the biggest, steamiest hunk of corn-studded writing you created yourself, than a good paper you didn’t.

And still, some will try.

What is the point of going to college—which is, despite current societal pressures, entirely voluntary (see previous posts)—if you’re not going to do the work?

There are many services on the internet dedicated to selling papers to college students. You can get an awful paper for free, increasingly decent papers for increasing amounts of money, all the way up to a custom-written paper based on the actual assignment for as much as $38 per page. (One site even advertised “100% Original and Non-Plagiarized Term Paper Writing Services.” Say, WHAT?!?)

The biggest clue that I have been given a plagiarized paper is that it’s too good to be true. The vocabulary is appropriate and multi-syllabic. The facts are interesting and well-integrated. The paragraphs are sophisticated, relevant and a joy to read. It is clearly not my student’s writing.

Without knowing my student, without researching any portion online, see if you can recognize the following passage as plagiarism. It was the beginning of a research paper titled “Russian Revolutions” that was my very first brush with this kind of cheating:

The abdication of Emperor Nicholas II in March 1917, in conjunction with the establishment of a provisional government based on Western principles of constitutional liberalism, and the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in November are the political focal points of the Russian Revolutions of 1917 (Carr 24).

By the second page when I read the words, “repudiate annexationist ambitions,” I knew without a doubt I’d been had.

Yes, I caught him, but one paper late. “Russian Revolutions” was a revision he handed in on the last day of class. I found it was plagiarized, gave him the zero, and turned in his grade… then, not wanting to believe my “benefit of the doubt” was really “ignorance”, I belatedly thought that maybe he plagiarized his other paper, too. It had been a B paper, and it had sounded like him… but I looked it up anyway: plagiarized.

I was pissed.

I went to the director of the Writing 100 Department, who also ran the History Department and didn’t really give a rat’s tuchas about my puny class. I told him my story and asked what we could do about reversing this student’s grade. He laughed. He laughed and told me a story about when a kid plagiarized a paper but didn’t change the fact that it said Jimmy Carter was still president.

I said, “Oooh-kay. So what can I do about this student?”

The answer was: NOTHING. He would do nothing. I could do nothing. I finished what I had to do for that semester, and I quit. I also swore I’d never be back, but here I am. They have since reorganized and given Writing 100 its own department. There are also clear measures in place to deal with plagiarism. But I’m not letting plagiarism happen again. Not in MY classroom.

DON’T let it happen in yours.

Ashley, Ashleigh and Ashlee

In high school during the late 80s, my friend had Mr. Jewett for 10th grade biology. Over twenty years later, I was working as a historic site tour guide where “Toby” was one of the veteran guides. Although I recognized him immediately as being one of the teachers from my high school (he had always been bald and grizzled), I couldn’t remember his name. I couldn’t remember if he taught math or science. And while I knew he hadn’t been my teacher, I had no idea who I knew who did have him.

He remembered MY name.

HOW?!?

Granted, in high school, students are trapped in (usually) a single building for (usually) four years instead of spread across a sprawling campus with thousands of students, but, still! I was never his student, and it has been nearly twenty years since I last saw the inside of my high school.

So how come I can barely remember my students’ names when they’re sitting right in front of me?

I blame baseball caps and bleach. How can I tell one boy from another if they all look the same under a fashionably mutilated baseball cap? How can I pick out an individual girl in a sea of bleached-blonde hair?

The black kid, fine, I’ve got him down, but I can’t call on Casey all the time. It’ll look suspicious. All the minorities I manage to remember because there are so few of them in the sea of pale. In addition to the brown, tan and ecru students, I know the old lady, the guy who wears camouflage every day, and the midget. The exceedingly zaftig students I can pick up, too (not literally). But you don’t want these “unusual” students to know you remember them because of their port wine stains, their wandering left eyes, or their unibrows.

It’s those average, white, hip (but not glaringly hip) students that I just cannot pin down. And when there are three Ashleighs… I’m toast.

Have Money, Will Admit

Ask a college professor if he believes incoming students are getting dumber every year and chances are he’ll give you a desperation-tinged, “Yes!” If it is true that this year’s incoming college freshmen’s pencils are even duller than last year’s, then why?

• Blame the high schools for not preparing students properly?
• Blame the government for forcing high schools to “teach to the test”?
• Blame television, e-mail, texting, Xbox, YouTube, I-Pods and godless music videos for distracting our young people, wiring their brains differently and making them incompatible with traditional education?

There’s probably plenty of blame to spread around, but I believe the major reason college students are T minus dumb and counting is because of the colleges themselves. Not that college has become more difficult or that professors aren’t as good as they used to be, but rather because of the way society looks at college: the idea that college is for everyone.

Society has been pushing the idea that a college education is a requirement, and even a right, for everyone. I say it is neither.

Colleges, however, benefit monetarily from this idea and are loathe to go against it. Financially-strapped institutions see each student registered as a walking pile of cash. If you have the money, they’ll let you in, whether it’s best for the student (and the school) or not.

I begin my freshman writing course with an in-class journal entry. It’s not graded, and the four questions are fairly easy to answer. The first question is, “What are the main reasons why you write (or why you don’t write)?” The answers I get most often are variations on, “I write when I have to for class.” I also get, “I don’t like to write. If I have something to say, I will just tell the person.” I have also gotten, “Writing is boring/stupid/worthless.”

If you believe advanced education to be worthless, then why are you here?

The last question is, “What are you most looking forward to in college?” The most popular answer is, “I’m looking forward to socializing and getting the ‘college experience’,” i.e. parties, alcohol, sex and, most likely, recreational drugs. When she finally came back to class, one of my students needed to wear sunglasses for three weeks because she had thrown up so much from drinking, she had broken all the blood vessels in the whites of her eyes.

If living on your own means a weekly stomach pumping, then why are you wasting tens of thousands of dollars on classes you’re not attending?

These students should learn a trade. These students should live in an apartment on their own for a year to get their newfound freedom out of their systems. These students are not meant for college—and that’s not a bad thing. What’s bad is forcing them to go to college anyway and wasting somebody’s money and everybody’s time.

Let’s make the university more exclusive. I don’t mean barring anyone by race, creed, religion, gender, or social status. I mean only accepting those students who have the brains AND the willingness to get an advanced education. Let’s value other life paths more. Let’s change the attitude that college is necessary for everyone.

Remedial College

College should definitely not only be for white, upper-class men. It should also not only be for whites, nor only for the upper-class, nor only for men. College, however, should definitely NOT be for the retarded.

I don’t mean people with learning disabilities; I mean retarded.

During my first stint at the prestigious private university where I work, I taught two sections of “developmental” college composition. Although you could argue that college is no place for “developmental” anything, there are some very intelligent, hard-working students who, for one reason or another, need extra writing help to bring themselves up to the college level. Think: the math whiz. Think: the ESL student. Think: a brilliant people person who has avoided the inevitable. Think: students from low-income families who may not have had the best college preparation in high school, but they’re very willing to learn and work extra hard to catch up.

However…

In one of my “developmental” sections was a retarded student. Re-tar-ded. In college. Don’t picture Rainman, this student was not a savant, he was simply retarded. He couldn’t answer questions or participate helpfully in discussions. He was terrible at reading and if you looked at any of his writing his retardation was crystal clear. He spoke out of turn, he didn’t listen, he was combative and rude. He read a newspaper (or at least held it up in front of his face), blocking other students and turning pages noisily. When asked to put it away, he refused. When asked to leave, he got angry and refused. What does one do with a 200 pound angry, retarded man?

How do I know?! I’m a college teacher. I’m not supposed to be a tard-handler.

I’m all for people being allowed to reach their full potentials, but this student had reached his in the 5th grade. What he needed was to learn some basic job and life skills so he could, hopefully, live on his own someday. Maybe he could learn to sort pencils or silverware, but he did NOT need to learn how to cite a research paper in proper MLA format.

Why was I (as well as his fellow students) subjected to Robbie the Retard? A university accepting the retarded is an extreme example of a larger problem I will discuss in my next posting, “Have Money, Will Admit”.

Introduction

Hello, my name is Karen, and I majored in English.

I didn’t want to teach. I wanted to be a writer. I only had a vague notion of what I had to do to become a writer, and I never really tried very hard to find out more. I graduated with excellent grades and a BA in English. Because “never a day without a line” was “try to at least open Word this month”, Payless Shoes didn’t want to hire anyone with a college degree, and I missed being in school, I went back and got my Master’s degree in English Education.

I didn’t want to teach elementary brats. I didn’t want to teach pre-teen even brattier brats. I didn’t want to teach hormone-driven high school bratty brat brats. I figured I’d teach the students who really wanted to learn: college students.

I took all my Master’s courses including the pompously titled “Language, Cognition and Writing”, “Multicultural Literature” and “Sociological Bases of Education”. I didn’t need to become state-certified to teach college, and I therefore didn’t need to student teach. So I didn’t.

I graduated in February and by August I had a position at a prestigious private university teaching two sections of freshman composition: Writing 100.

Why did I ever think that reading Off White: Readings on Power, Privilege, and Resistance would prepare me for a real classroom? Why did I never hear anything about how to design a writing assignment, how to design a syllabus, or how to calculate grades? And why did I ever think that college students actually wanted to learn?

My name is Karen, and I teach college writing.

This is my blog for English majors who want to be writers, prospective teachers soon to be eaten alive by their students, and, hopefully, some of those pompous jerks who think they’re teaching graduate students how to teach.

I will discuss the struggles, the pitfalls, and the triumphs. I will give to you what tips I have figured out after five (going into six) crazy semesters. I will beg of you professor veterans to post your suggestions, your tips, your horror stories and your inspirational stories here (selfishly) for me, and for all who care to learn how to really teach college-level writing.

Stay tuned for my future postings which will include: “You’re On Your Own, Sucker”, “Freshman are Still High School Students”, and “Have Money, Will Admit”. I will be including (sans identifying information, of course) actual student writing. Brace yourself, and God help us all.