I had another article printed in The Republic today.\u00a0 This one was written on the fly – about how much English teachers enjoy the research paper assignment.\u00a0 I know firsthand because in two days, my students hand in their final drafts … and I get to start grading them.\u00a0 I saw more plagiarism than ever before on the rough drafts, so I am anticipating having to give out at least a couple of zeroes when it is all said and done.\u00a0 That’s the worst part.\u00a0 That and the hours upon hours of sorting through all those papers.\u00a0 My rubric is fairly complex, so it takes 20 to 40 minutes per paper for the grading.\u00a0 It gives me a headache just to think about it….But here is the article:<\/p>\n\n\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thirty\nyears ago this coming December, I presented a five page research paper to my 9th<\/sup>\ngrade English teacher, Miss Shell.\u00a0 I was\nparticularly proud of my title: \u201cExtinction \u2013 A Grave Danger\u201d.\u00a0 Miss Shell did not smile.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n She never smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n Our papers were due just before Christmas\nbreak.\u00a0 That day, after the starting bell\nrang, Miss Shell briskly swept across the rows of desks in her militaristic\nmanner, snatching up the papers with which we were only too happy to part.\u00a0 One young man was still frantically shuffling\npapers into a pocket binder when Miss Shell reached his desk.\u00a0 She glared at Tim from on high.<\/p>\n\n\n Tim\u2019s face and neck glowed red as\nif ignited by her wrath and, without looking her directly in the eyes (an act\nwhich risked turning you to stone), he meekly stammered, \u201cI thought we had\nuntil the end of the period.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n \u201cYou didn\u2019t,\u201d she replied\nicily.\u00a0 She hovered a few more seconds\n(which seemed to us all an eternity) and, when it became clear his paper was\nnot close to being ready, she announced loudly, \u201cYour paper is late; your grade\nwill suffer,\u201d and marched on towards the next desk.\u00a0 The rest of us were all glad we weren\u2019t Tim.<\/p>\n\n\n Not coincidentally, I believe it\nwas early second semester when certain students (not me) began spitting on the\nhandle of Miss Shell\u2019s classroom door before she would arrive in the morning to\nunlock.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t directly participate in\nthe spitting, but I didn\u2019t intervene either.<\/p>\n\n\n Nowadays, I would be a bit more\nsympathetic to poor Miss Shell.\u00a0 Not only\nwas she a generally unhappy person, but that particular day was the unhappiest\nday of the year for any English teacher: the day when stacks of papers are\npresented for grading.\u00a0 After spending\nweeks pushing and pulling us through the research process, she was now anticipating\na Christmas break bent over piles of amateur research writing.<\/p>\n\n\n Here\u2019s the thing most high school students\ndon\u2019t understand:\u00a0 your English teacher\nhates the research paper even more than you do.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n You think it\u2019s not possible, but it\nis.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n I speak from the trenches \u2013 my\nsophomores will be turning in their final drafts in just days. Believe me, spending\nmultiple periods each day for a month instructing about plagiarism,\nparenthetical notations, and the Works Cited page holds little joy for the\naverage teacher.\u00a0 Plus, most of these\ntopics are surrounded by a thick fog in the minds of so many students.\u00a0 These days it\u2019s incredibly hard to even get\nthem to turn down the pirated music on their IPods long enough for you to make\na convincing case as to why it\u2019s improper to steal someone else\u2019s ideas or\nwords.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Nevertheless, in front of my class\nI have tried to bottle up my own frustrations throughout these trying weeks and\nhave done my best to practice patience with theirs.\u00a0 After all, I don\u2019t want to spend the rest of\nthe school year checking the doorknob for spit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had another article printed in The Republic today.\u00a0 This one was written on the fly – about how much English teachers enjoy the research paper assignment.\u00a0 I know firsthand because in two days, my students hand in their final drafts … and I get to start grading them.\u00a0 I saw more plagiarism than ever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10119,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10118\/revisions\/10119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}