Yes, you read that correctly. I wrote "breasts". Your attitude is, quite possibly, about the same as my students' this afternoon. As we were reading our book ("The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" - rather a good read), one of the boys read the word "breasts". Yes, you know the connotation (He wasn't talking about chicken.). And he couldn't stop laughing. What? Are we in high school? ...Yes, we are.
Other laugh-worthy news today included a student in my 6th period asking this question:
"Did the Jews build the pyramids?" As you can tell, the kid is a genius.
Also in 6th period, I discovered a way to help one of my students sit quietly in his desk. Playdoh! I'm not kidding. I gave him a little container Playdoh and walked away. He was fine for the rest of the period. Teacher win!
In more sad/irritating news, I had a student in Composition leave the classroom. He discovered that I'd given him an F on his last paper. I did that for two distinct reasons. First, he wrote me a paragraph. No more than a dozen lines. Second, he plagiarized. Over half of what he had on paper was copied. How could I tell? The syntax. He doesn't have punctuation, spelling, or grammar that correct. And it wasn't hard to find the passage. So he got mad. Started cussing. I told him to cool it. He refused. Then he threatened to leave. I told him to go. With an attitude like that, I didn't want him in class. He'd have irritated me and been a distraction to the class.
I believe that's the fifth or sixth case of plagiarism in that class during this semester. The last four have been within the past two weeks. One student has plagiarized two entire essays. Granted, he changed a few words in the second. One other student plagiarized a paragraph (not the student mentioned above). The rest of her essay was decent, so I'm not entirely sure why she plagiarized. Might have had something to do with the fact that she was playing a game online while the rest of the class was watching the movie. [shrug] Her choice.
Well, that's about it for now. Perhaps I'll write about Christmas shopping. Or the lack thereof. Whatever.
Gotta love high schoolers. Unfortunately by that time you should KNOW the Jews built the pyramids. But you're never too old for Playdoh. Epic teacher win, Wordbender. :-)
ReplyDeleteAs for the plagiarists... I'm sorry. I hope they learn something, like, DON'T PLAGIARIZE.