As a teacher, I have admittedly become somewhat jaded to excuses that I get from students who fail to show up for class or turn their work in on time. I try to be understanding that problems happen and they lead lives like the rest of us that are full of pitfalls and turmoils. Trying to discern a student's honesty about problems that they may have is something teachers struggle with.
I once made the comment that if I had a nickel for every student who emailed me and said they couldn't make it to class because grandma, grandpa, cousin, uncle, aunt, or acquaintance died I would be a rich man. True or not, I've had excuses as wild as a student telling me that he was hit by a hit-and-run driver while riding his bike to school and could not make it to class. By the way, he wasn't hurt, but he had to fill out a police report which detained him.
As graduate students who have lives that often deal us with blows, it makes us cringe to have to explain to a teacher that we have had something come up that prevents us from being there. We ARE graduate students because we did our work, and yet I cannot dismiss the feeling that every time life deals me with a blow, sometimes severe, I cannot help but think of all those emails I received from students that seemed doubtful at best. When I send an email that says "Oh, by the way I won't be able to make it because life happened," I have all of my past and present students' emails haunting me. Dealing with this issue as a teacher is still a mystery to me. Dealing with the issue as a student whom is also a teacher is even tougher.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
"Taking Vernaculars Seriously"
In case this shows up in the top spot on my blog, forgive me this was a draft that I had done some time ago and meant to edit it before I published. It may appear out of place.
Okay, I may be about to get myself in trouble. This is a sensitive subject and one that I take very seriously. but I have to say as a "hillbilly" with bad speech skills that I acquired over a lifetime that I have learned to do some code-switching between my academic life and my private life. The question that linguists have argued over for years is: how much leeway should be afforded various groups for language patterns that have developed over decades? Do we treat these vernaculars as separate languages with their unique styles? Should we force students to adopt elitist and standardized forms of language at the risk of wiping out a cultural heritage that dates back for centuries?
My take on the subject is that we should not dismiss oral traditions and speech patterns that are passed down from one generation to the next. Quite the opposite is that we should celebrate the diversity that we enjoy. However, in a world that has essentially adopted a standardized version of English as a global language, where does that leave people who refuse or neglect to adopt the language skills that they need to succeed. We have people from China and India who struggle to master the language in a world that has evolved, maybe unfairly, around them so that they may get a piece of the pie that we call "The Global Economy." For many of these people it is NOT a choice but a necessity to survive and succeed. They are not being asked to forget their heritage or their native tongues, but the choices they make are theirs to make and often makes a difference in their economic success.
If we have people in the United States who cannot, or refuse, to be able to use a standardized form of English to be able to succeed then those groups are woefully misguided into a misconception that it is acceptable to use vernaculars in any situation. This case is simply not true.
Okay, I may be about to get myself in trouble. This is a sensitive subject and one that I take very seriously. but I have to say as a "hillbilly" with bad speech skills that I acquired over a lifetime that I have learned to do some code-switching between my academic life and my private life. The question that linguists have argued over for years is: how much leeway should be afforded various groups for language patterns that have developed over decades? Do we treat these vernaculars as separate languages with their unique styles? Should we force students to adopt elitist and standardized forms of language at the risk of wiping out a cultural heritage that dates back for centuries?
My take on the subject is that we should not dismiss oral traditions and speech patterns that are passed down from one generation to the next. Quite the opposite is that we should celebrate the diversity that we enjoy. However, in a world that has essentially adopted a standardized version of English as a global language, where does that leave people who refuse or neglect to adopt the language skills that they need to succeed. We have people from China and India who struggle to master the language in a world that has evolved, maybe unfairly, around them so that they may get a piece of the pie that we call "The Global Economy." For many of these people it is NOT a choice but a necessity to survive and succeed. They are not being asked to forget their heritage or their native tongues, but the choices they make are theirs to make and often makes a difference in their economic success.
If we have people in the United States who cannot, or refuse, to be able to use a standardized form of English to be able to succeed then those groups are woefully misguided into a misconception that it is acceptable to use vernaculars in any situation. This case is simply not true.
The "Gameplay" article
Last Christmas my fourteen-year old son received an X-box "live" program so he could use his X-box 360 online and chat with other players in realtime audio through a headset that plugs into his console. There are many weekend nights that my son will stay up until three or four in the morning to play his favorite game "Call to Action." My assumption was that it was just a game and that it was okay to indulge him as long as it didn't interfere with school work or other social activities, after all, I know very well how addictive computer games can become.
What I wasn't prepared for was that he forgot to turn off the exterior sound to his headset one day while he was playing online. As I sat in the family room listening to the chat that was being discussed from who knows where, I was appalled at the amount of explicatives and politically incorrect language that I heard. Much of the language came from what sounded to be people who were much older than my fourteen-year old. I really wasn't sure how to react to the situation and admonished him for participating in an activity that allowed the use of such language.
The "Gameplay" article disturbs me on many fronts. The most disturbing of all is that there is already X rated games being promoted to adults as a sort of a "fantasy sex world." While it may be great for Carlos and consenting adults to explore their sexual identities in an online environment, is it really necessary for my son to be exposed to such propositions at his age? He is just at the age where he is exploring sex and sexual boundaries (he has a girlfriend) and I would prefer that his judgement and values concerning sexual matters be guided by me and his mother and not by an online gaming environment. What a spooky thought that is!
What I wasn't prepared for was that he forgot to turn off the exterior sound to his headset one day while he was playing online. As I sat in the family room listening to the chat that was being discussed from who knows where, I was appalled at the amount of explicatives and politically incorrect language that I heard. Much of the language came from what sounded to be people who were much older than my fourteen-year old. I really wasn't sure how to react to the situation and admonished him for participating in an activity that allowed the use of such language.
The "Gameplay" article disturbs me on many fronts. The most disturbing of all is that there is already X rated games being promoted to adults as a sort of a "fantasy sex world." While it may be great for Carlos and consenting adults to explore their sexual identities in an online environment, is it really necessary for my son to be exposed to such propositions at his age? He is just at the age where he is exploring sex and sexual boundaries (he has a girlfriend) and I would prefer that his judgement and values concerning sexual matters be guided by me and his mother and not by an online gaming environment. What a spooky thought that is!
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Plagiarism and the Web
Plagiarism is a tricky business. Devoss and Rosatti would suggest that it is fairly straightforward about how plagiarism occurs in the classroom, but I would say that they are somewhat misguided. There are several key factors that play into plagiarism and figuring out what constitutes plagiarism is a challenge for students and teachers as well.
In the work force, people often work on projects that require collaboration as well as existing material (Web material, research, work that has been done prior to the current project) without formally citing such sources. It is done all the time in the corporate world but is rarely accepted in academia. Discerning what is common knowledge from an original idea is hard enough, but to decide when credit should be given to a particular source in a particular situation is something that teachers and students have a hard time grappling with.
It is easy enough to understand that students who copy and paste papers that are clearly not their own constitutes plagiarism. But when does "crossing the line" become truly, "crossing the line?" Students can easily reword something that they have read on the Web to make it sound like an original piece. How this differs from scholars who write papers under the assumption that their readers have common knowledge about tenets that were established by other scholars but may not be widely known is hard to discern. Most scholars, of course, have a transparency in their writing that clearly delineates their ideas from others. Plagiarism is a hard subject to tackle and I think that Web learning exponentially increases the problem.
In the work force, people often work on projects that require collaboration as well as existing material (Web material, research, work that has been done prior to the current project) without formally citing such sources. It is done all the time in the corporate world but is rarely accepted in academia. Discerning what is common knowledge from an original idea is hard enough, but to decide when credit should be given to a particular source in a particular situation is something that teachers and students have a hard time grappling with.
It is easy enough to understand that students who copy and paste papers that are clearly not their own constitutes plagiarism. But when does "crossing the line" become truly, "crossing the line?" Students can easily reword something that they have read on the Web to make it sound like an original piece. How this differs from scholars who write papers under the assumption that their readers have common knowledge about tenets that were established by other scholars but may not be widely known is hard to discern. Most scholars, of course, have a transparency in their writing that clearly delineates their ideas from others. Plagiarism is a hard subject to tackle and I think that Web learning exponentially increases the problem.
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