Pearl Harbor the Movie Help

Ok, I'm questioning my sanity and accuracy on something, since my regular challenge-everything-rudely (it's all about the attitude, people, keep that in mind!) student suggested today that I was out to lunch to say that the film "Pearl Harbor" portrays the use of Japanese kamikaze pilots. For some reason I really thought this was true. I thought I read it somewhere or something. Can anyone who has seen the movie help me out on this? Can you say that someone watching this film might get the (wrong) impression that kamikaze pilots were used at Pearl Harbor? Or am I the misinformed one? Someone who knows or remembers this film, please help. I really don't want to have to go find the movie and look at it to answer my nagging questions on this. Just tell me if I'm right or wrong.

What Kind of Plagiarism to Avoid

Every year when I correct research papers I catch plagiarism. It still astonishes me that it continues to happen, despite my warnings to students. I have already caught two significant cases in grading papers recently. One case I caught last week, another today.

Now in case you don't know, there are differents kinds of plagiarists. Some, I think, are just sloppy or careless. They quote an entire paragraph or two of text and include the citation for it at the end, but neglect to put quotation marks around the passage. Since it is an exact quote and they didn't give proper credit, it's plagiarism. I caught one girl doing this last week. I was disappointed by it, and she got her zeroes as the consequence. Anyone who thinks this is harsh should be alerted to the fact that I have talked about avoiding plagiarism and reiterated what it is in class until all my students are sick and tired about hearing me mention it. So there really is no excuse at this point for not quoting huge chunks of the paper. And as often happens with excessively plagiarized work, it would have received a failing grade anyway, even if it was properly cited. This is an irony that plagiarists in my classes have not seemed to catch on to. It's really not worth cheating, because even if they don't get caught for it, they'll probably fail on the merit of the weak research and writing anyway!

Other kinds of plagiarism are equally sloppy. One kind includes plugging in citations in most of a paragraph, then tucking in more info at the end of it without a subsequent citation. While also careless, I tend to be a little more generous with this kind, provided it's the students own words. They paraphrased it and didn't give credit. This is wrong. It receives a penalty. Excessive mistakes this way receive a harsher penalty. When another draft is coming, I expect them to fix it the next time around, or else it won't be accepted. If it's a final draft, I'll likely refuse to give it a grade until it's fixed.

The worst kind of plagiarism, which I caught today, is blatantly devious in nature. It happens in such a way that I know the student is not just making a careless mistake. In fact, they construct their paper in such a way that, when I catch them, I know they have purposefully tried to make it look like it's not plagiarism, when it really is.

I'll try and do my best to illustrate this. A paper I graded today had multiple citations. So it looked like proper credit was being given. In fact, it cited a variety of different sources, which is something students need to do to score highly. It even had sections quoted with the proper quotation marks. On the surface it looked impressive. Problem was, the language did not sound like the student's, even in nonquoted passages. So I did a little googling... And she got nabbed.

I found entire sections of the paper word for word from several internet sources. Problem was, it was written as if the first paragraph was the student's own words, with one citation, then a block quote (indicating it's verbatim) with another citation from a second source, then the writing went back to paraphrasing of a third source. The problem? Though presented as two paraphrased sections and one direct quote, the entire section was verbatim from the same source! This pattern repeated itself throughout the paper. The student apparently cut and pasted huge chunks of writing from several different websites, then edited it to make it look like it came from various books and websites. I can imagine the fun she had "editing" this.

My imagination of her thought process: "Hmmm, let me see here. I think puting quotation marks around this line and saying it came from this book would be good. What page number should I attribute it to! How about 178, that's a number I've always loved. There, that's good. Now, I'll say the next three lines were paraphrased from this journal article. There, plug in that citation. I'm doing pretty well here. I'm citing multiple sources, which will make me look smart. Oh bother, my text ran out from this internet source. Let me just paste in another website here, so I can finish the paragraph. Good, that's done. Now I think I'll end the page with a block quote, and say it came from this book. I'll call it page 32 this time. And then I'll put a line in from this website..."

Talk about cheesy! I was flabbergasted to discover this kind of deceit.

What's also ridiculous, and a bit sad, is that this student does not speak or write English very well. It is not her first language. The pasting job was horrendous. The paper was a misery to read. It was almost literally gobbledygook. Imagine pasting several different websites together concerning the same general topic, and you get an idea of what this paper was like. I can only imagine what this student thought she was doing as she put this paper together. Maybe she thought she was sounding brilliant with her mastery of the English language. But I honestly don't think she understood about three-quarters of what she pasted in (remember I also have a decent idea of her reading comprehension skills.) I can only imagine what she thought I would think about it. I can't believe she didn't think I might question whether it was her own work. I mean, she used the world "curvilinear."

Picture my incredulity at reading this. "Curvilinear!!!!????????? You've got to be kidding me!" That was the gist of my reaction. I, who have a fairly good working knowledge of this girl's English language skills by now, was astounded to discover that she tried to pass "curvilinear" off as her own word!

What I said before about plagiarized work holds true here. If I had bothered to grade the paper, it would have received a failing grade on its own merits. But I stopped half way through after finding multiple blatant instances of plagiarism. I'm still shaking my head...

You wannabe plagiarists out there, please take note, you have to be more subtle than this!

Sophie Scholl

Ok, it's movie recommendation time. I've watched a couple worth noting while on "break" this week. ("Break" because I have fifty 10-15 page papers to correct if I so choose. Because I'm a slacker and choose to spend some of my time doing things other than work, I'll be doing well to get forty of them done. The others will just have to wait!) Flags of Our Fathers is not worth seeing, in my estimation. It's just too gross and horrific in its violence. One reviewer was right in saying that Saving Private Ryan has nothing on this film. You might gain more appreciation for the sacrifices our men in uniform made while in the Pacific fighting the Japanese. But you don't need to see bodies scarred by unspeakable injuries to appreciate sacrifice. And you might be scarred for life if you look too closely at some of the footage (I was even careful not to look at it all, and I was still very disturbed by what I did see).

But a film I do recommend, one that's probably far off the beaten path for most of you and thus should be noted, is Sophie Scholl. It's a foreign film, in German. It's based on the true story of Sophie Scholl, a German student and anti-Nazi during World War II involved in distributing anti-Hitler literature on a university campus. While definitely the opposite of action packed (most of the story is driven by dialogue, so you really have to read the subtitles closely), it is really quite moving. The young woman, along with her brother, were both very courageous. What's also interesting is that despite this being a recent film and being nominated for an academy award, there is also a Christian flavor that comes through rather strongly. Maybe that's why it didn't win the award, because the religiosity in it is not avant garde enough. But I was impressed by the girl's faith as well as her example of one whose conscience and conviction did not cave in the face of hard circumstances. I won't say anything else so as not to spoil it. If you want a slow paced, bloodless and inspiring story from history, check it out sometime. Its unrated, but I think it would be PG if it was. So even parents might feel safe in allowing some of their children to see it.

A Lighter Moment: A.K.A. I Have Failed As a Teacher

This was laugh out loud funny for me. I hope you enjoy.

The question on a test: "In what way was the concept of total war evident in both World Wars?"

One student's answer:

"In both World Wars, women were involved either by replacing the men's jobs or by being munitions or nurses... Even propaganda was being used to have men join, or encouraging women to be munitions, or telling people to use less food."

I couldn't help but laugh. And I guess I've totally failed as a teacher. I really don't recall talking about women being launched upon the enemy in an effort to inflict massive casualties, but if that's what the student got, something has been lost in translation...

When Your Car Gets Stolen, Do This

Believe it or not, I do lead a busy life on the weekends in preparing for school the next week, in addition to correcting papers, tests, etc. That I am writing this on a Sunday afternoon may lead you to think otherwise. Rest assured, I only have about 40 ten to fifteen page papers to correct, with another 40 or so on the way this Thursday. So I should be otherwise occupied. But being a teacher means you can set your own deadline for getting things corrected (usually, unless the marking period is about to end, which it's not!), so I can give in to the sudden urge to report this story.

My car was stolen this last Friday. Yup, I had gone to the mall and made some very important purchases: Baseball Mogul 2008, which turns out to be a game with some serious flaws, but it's still entertaining; and my dinner, comprised of some Chinese food. I got out to the parking lot where I had parked my car. It was gone. I did a little double take, and looked for it again. It was still gone. I started to scan rows of cars that were next to the row I thought I had parked my car. It was still gone.

My brain began to race. "What is my license plate number? I'll need it to report a stolen vehicle." (Actually, I imagine they can look such things up on their system provided they have the make and registered owner, but I wasn't thinking too sharply in my semi-panicked state.) Thank goodness I had my cell phone on me to place the 911 call. I began to imagine the events that would unfold after calling 911. "I'm here to report a stolen vehicle." Some time later the police show up lights flashing, and an officer starts taking down vital info, such as when I left to enter Best Buy, when I came out, etc. Also in my thoughts: "Why would they steal MY car? It must be for the used parts or something." I know that Toyota Camry's or some such car get stolen a lot as used vehicles because their parts are fairly valuable. Must be a good black market for them. With that knowledge and my mind racing I contemplated the reason. And maybe because my teacher's bag was in sight? Maybe someone thought there were some valuables in it? Uh-oh, I'm going to have to tell some students to resubmit their research papers, because they were in that bag.

Ok, that's a semi-stream-of-consciousness recount of various thoughts I had. As time ticked by and it seemed more and more likely that my car had been stolen, as preposterous as it might seem (it's a Ford over ten years old with 150,000 plus miles on it!), I continued to scan the parking lot and look for my car, in case there was some outside chance I had missed it. It would be rather silly to call 911 before making absolutely sure that it wasn't there. But before I had begun a methodical walk up and down every single possible row that it could be in, I spotted it. There it was, right where I had left it. I don't know why I hadn't seen it before. I think maybe I saw it once but didn't recognize it, so went to the next row or two over. I dunno. But then I laughed out loud. For it was preposterous to think that someone would steal my car!! They'd have to be pretty desperate, that's for sure.

Has anyone else had a mall or other large parking lot incident where they couldn't find their car and begin to think it was stolen? I've had such incidents before, but none that I remember which went on as long as this one did. Though time slowed down a bit, I think it was probably a solid 2-3 minutes that I walked around and searched for my seemingly absent car. That's a LONG time when you think it's really stolen!

Lesson: When your car gets stolen, be very thorough and search everywhere in the parking lot before you report it! It will save some major embarrassment! I'm glad I waited a little before putting in a panicked (actually, I imagine myself being very calm and collected in reporting the theft of my car) 911 call, so that I never had to make the call!

Lessons My Teacher Taught Me: For What Good Are Irritating Students?

I consider myself a very patient person. I don't know that I'm the most patient person of all the people I know, but I think I'm a good deal more patient than at least some people I know. And I think my job requires a fair amount of the quality, though perhaps having children would require more. At least Moms might like to claim so, though such claims are rather less scientific than they are impressionistic, and seeing as most Moms do not also teach in a public high school, I'm not sure they can really lay claim to being the most patient. Then again, seeing as I am not a Mom, nor likely to ever be one, I will be consistent and not suggest my occupation takes more patience either. Ok, that's digression number one for this post.

Back on track. Patience. I have to have it. It takes patience to deal with a class of 30 students who would much rather talk than listen to me ramble on about history, or their homework, or whatever. It takes patience filling out seemingly endless paperwork every day, or every other day, on the handful of students who continously cut my study hall or U.S. History class. It takes patience endlessly filling in bubble sheets eight (yes, that's right, eight!) times a year so a machine can read them and turn them into report cards and progress reports and canned comments, like "needs to work to capacity" (how many barely functionally literate students can even understand that comment??) or "displays good effort" or "needs to complete assignments" or "needs to improve test grades." It takes patience to deal with parents who can't understand why Johnny is failing and make comments like "He's working so hard" and "He's passing all his other classes," when Johnny has missed five of twenty homework assignments, has failed all but one of his tests, and does not open his mouth in class, even though participation is part of the student's grade. It takes patience working in a school district that does not provide staples for the copy machines, so that teachers are left to endlessly staple packets they prepare for their students in an effort to help them learn the topic, or perhaps become interested in some aspect of history. It takes patience dealing with the freshman in homeroom who has to be told to be quiet almost every day and stop talking, and to know how to respond to him when he claims it is his first amendment right, also stated in the school handbook, that students can say things even when they are unpopular or do not want to be heard.

(New paragraph just to break things up.) It takes patience working in a school district living in the dinosaur age. I only have an overhead projector--technology that is 30-40 years old?--only because it is on loan to me from a family member. And I only just got a screen upon which to adequately project the images from said projector, rather than using a wall with broken surfaces which makes it very difficult to read. This screen has been about 18 months in the coming since I first requested it. Need I say that sometimes people move slowly on requests where I work? I also got a computer in my classroom early in the year after having none for a year. Still working on a printer, but at least I can read email in my own classroom now...

It takes patience dealing with students who would cheat if they could by sharing answers about what will be on an upcoming test. It takes patience listening to students and their multitude of excuses for not turning in work on time. It takes patience dealing with students who think that Vietnam is near the Middle East, and who do not know how to write a sentence without making it a run-on and who obviously don't know much about grammar at all compared to the expert who knows everything about grammer and has never written a run-on sentence in his life despite the fact that he had a dictator for an English teacher in ninth grade but he survived. It takes patience dealing with students who do not seem to get the fact that whenever they write a research paper and use information not their own, they need to cite it. And whenever the write a research paper it would be helpful if they did more than summarized the textbook.

Did I mention plagiarism? Don't get me started on that...

Where am I? I think patience is the point. Yeah, I hope this doesn't sound like I'm extolling a virtuous life or something, because I'm not (you'll see soon). But I hope the point that patience is a key ingredient to doing my job has come across. So I was surprised recently to discover that I was really struggling to be patient with a couple of my students.

These students are both guys. They also are both lazy. One is failing the quarter due to not doing much work, the other might pass, but just barely. One of them especially likes to challenge me frequently in class. He claims I am wrong on various points I make. Furthermore, he often does it in a belligerent tone and interrupts my lecture without any warning. He's almost vitriolic in his approach. It's like I've done an offense against humanity in what I've said, and it's his mission to counter my assertions with both negativity and conviction sprinkled in his tone of voice. What's funny is that usually he is out to lunch. He watches the history channel a lot, and I have believe he thinks he knows more than I do when it comes to a lot of history we discuss. On one hand I think that's more than a little amusing, as I have immersed myself in more history in the past ten years than most of my students will in a lifetime. And even if he has watched a lot of TV, I still have quite a headstart on him when it comes to studying the topic. One example of his claims: once when I equated "conscription" as a synonym for "the draft" in the context of WWI, he contradicted me. (Remember I try to keep things relatively simple for these students). "No it's not" he blurted out. When I gave him a chance to explain himself he went on a spiel about how with the draft you could do certain things to get out of it, etc. I believe he was thinking of the draft during the Vietnam War. I had said nothing about details surrounding conscription, other than to say that militarism in Europe led to countries conscripting, or requirng all men to serve within their armies (Great Britain was an exeption to this, but I don't think I mentioned that). Yet I am quite sure this could include exceptions as well (I hardly think men without arms and legs, for example were required to serve!) As it turns out, conscription is basically the European equivalent of "draft." I don't know of any substantive difference between the two (any historians out there want to correct me, feel free to). And certainly if there is a difference, I do not think this student knew to what he was referring when he made the claim.

Anyway, this one example illustrates a general trend. This student will challenge me whenever he can, and is almost unceasingly belligerent about it. For some reason, good or not, this grates on me more than most any other behavior. It's probably an ego thing or something, though I don't think I really have that much of one, because I am generally quite open to students respectfully challenging me when they think I'm wrong, and I have freely admitted to being wrong in the past. So it's not that I think I'm perfect or anything. I think it's partly the laziness combined with the belligerence. It's kind of like "You barely ever crack open a book and do any work, and you're challenging me on little things like this??"

Ok, what's my point? My point is that this belligerence and irritation I have have recently seen mirrored elsewhere. Specifically, in me. For every time I sin in some way and displease God, I am essentially doing the same thing. I am telling Him I know better than He, that my way is better than His. That I know more about how I should live my life. As much as it must pain/irritate/hurt Him when I do contradict His plan by sinning, He still shows everlasting patience, kindness, and mercy with me. So God helping me I will do the same with these students. How can I do less for them, when God has shown so much leniency and forgiveness toward me? So chalk this one up to a less my Teacher has taught me. Irritating students show me what God feels like toward me when I stray.

Free (Pink) Lemonade Anyone?

Just thought I'd let everyone know that if they want some free lemonade, you can have it at my expense. You just have to do a little hunting in a certain Walmart parking lot for a shopping cart with a case of lemonade on the bottom level. Actually, you're probably too late. I can picture someone making the discovery and it making their day. Kind of sick that someone's day would be made by discovering an item someone forgot as they loaded up their trunk with groceries. Maybe the grocery cart guy will discover it and consider it a tip or something. Grrrr. Now I feel really stupid, upset at throwing away the 2.61 I paid for it (to my delight, I discovered upon perusing my receipt that it was on sale!), and generally bitter at the world. And I feel like I have my Mom's genes or something to forget such a thing (sorry Mom, but it's a good thing too; you know I'm your son!) Sigh. And my next sip of lemonade will be delayed for weeks, probably.

Anyone with forgotten grocery stories feel free to tell yours and make me feel better. Or maybe I'm alone in the world with my stupidity. If so, don't say anything please, and let me suffer under the illusion that someone else has once shared my pain...