I have spent my weekend in various shades of irritation. Ryan has been gone since Wednesday night, which may account for some of my crankiness. Being a natural extrovert, extended amounts of time alone lend themselves to such emotions. I have found myself talking to myself and laughing at the things I say. ;o )

I am frustrated for another reason, however. I assigned a project to my 50 Advanced English students at the beginning of second quarter which involved reading two challenging (above their grade level) novels and blogging about them. I set up an online classroom, created a list of books, and expected them to be able to finish the project by January 9th. Each blog only had to be three paragraphs long - a single paragraph of plot summary which did not give away the ending and two paragraphs of personal reaction. Well now, in the process of grading said blogs, I've caught four of them plagiarizing massive portions of the assignment. One of them was so gutsy as to use the sparknotes plot summary. I am not sure if they didn't realize that I would catch them or what. My frustration is multi-faceted. First, I am let down by their basic lack of integrity and hurt by their inherent lies. Two, I am offended that they would blow off such a simple assignment for which they had ample time. Third, I am overwhelmed with the fact that now I have to contact all of their parents to have an awkward conversation about their child's indescretions and set up consequences with the administration at school. There will need to be uncomfortable face to face confrontations with each student. Finally, every time this has happened, the relationship between the student in question and myself always suffers. As an English teacher, I have sort of braced myself for the reality that this will likely happen at some point in each year of my teaching career. It happened last year. It happened earlier this year. I have at least convinced myself that I must simply deal with it in a diplomatic fashion and present the parents of students who plagiarize with a firm set of consequences from which I do not waver. The school has a firm policy on the issue and I point out that plagiarism has been grounds for students being dismissed from school at the college level in a myriad of cases.

The unnerving part of this situation comes from the fact that sometimes the parents argue that their children did nothing wrong. Even after I found a student copying entire portions from a local newpaper, and even printed off the newspaper article - the parent argued that her student reads the paper and probably just used those (exact??) words because she had read them once. Yes... your prodigy child who currently has a D in English has the capacity to remember entire expository articles word for word. Right. *sigh*

So off I go to school tomorrow, hoping for the best.

On a completely different note (this will be a pun in a moment, wait for it)... I have discovered that I really enjoy the music of Claude Debussy. I attribute my initial curiosity to reading the book Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. At one point, Edward and Bella admit to both enjoying Claire de Lune. I knew I had heard this song name before, although couldn't remember what it sounded like. So after typing it in to youtube, I realized that I too love that song! I then created a Debussy pandora station (www.pandora.com - it's wonderful!) and have been listening ever since. It's very soothing and although I'm feeling a bit like an old person (or at least glumly admitting to myself that my father may have better taste in music than I once thought), I'm glad to have reached a place in life where I can be confident in whatever musical selection I choose.

I suppose I should end on a positive note about students... last week we covered text structures in class (aka: the way the details of the story are arranged... sequence of events, cause and effect, problem solution, compare contrast, etc...). After giving notes about the definitions of these structures, I asked the students to create small cartoon strips illustrating a story using these structures. They had to create a four frame cartoon on a piece of cardstock. So for problem solution, some created a problem such as "Sally has no lunch money." In the next boxes, Sally tries various ideas to raise money, until finally in the last box, "she asks her dad and he gives her some." They've been relatively cute as I've looked over them so far. I had one student, however, who embraced the project and ran with it. She asked if she could create her own children's book (it's multiple pages long!!) using the example of "if you give a mouse a cookie..." and creating her own cause and effect. It is SO cute so far! I am so proud of all of the extra work she is putting into it. I'll try and post more about her story once I see the whole thing. Oh the joys of kids who care!