Striving vs. Surviving

Last week I was unequivocally faced with the dichotomy between students who want to strive and students who want to survive. 

Student A, a man who took my Composition I course last semester and is now taking my Comp II course this semester, came to me to ask me to be his mentor for a speech competition.  He had written a well-supported argument on the issue of immigration with a unique view and strong belief driving the paper.  Although he received an irrefutable ‘A’ for the paper, he still asked that I “grade” it again to look for any ways he could revise and make it even better.  Throughout Comp I and so far in Comp II, he has valued my feedback, recognizing that constructive criticism will make him a stronger writer, communicator, and human being.  He actively seeks out my classes because he knows I will push him to be better than he was the day before.  There is no “easy A” in my class, and he likes it that way, because he knows that when he gets that A, it was all him.

Student B, another young man in a different Comp II section this semester, came to me in the same week to ask why he was failing my class.  When I explained that it was because he rarely showed up to class and rarely turned in any work, he didn’t understand why he wouldn’t be passing anyway.  One of the requirements of the course is that students submit their work to turnitin.com as well as give me a hard copy for grading. Nine weeks into the semester and several missing assignments later, this student asked, "What's the point of the hard copy?” to which I replied, “So that I can give you feedback in order to improve your writing.”  He then said, rather assertively, “Well, I don’t need your feedback, I just need a grade.”  I was astounded, as I had never heard a student so vehemently reject the writing process.  Student B simply wanted the grade and expected it to be as passing one despite his lack of effort and refusal to follow directions.  It, unfortunately, wasn't.

Herein lies the fault line between students who want to be great and students who want to get by.  I have found this semester, more than any other, that there is a divide between the strivers and the survivors.  There is a distinct group of students in each of my sections who are pulling away from the pack, who have worked hard to improve, and who are now enjoying their achievement and finishing the semester strong. 

While I was annoyed at Student B’s clear disregard for the value of feedback, he did make me wonder if we’ve created this crater of indifference ourselves by focusing for so long on letter grades.  While I understand the need for grades in terms of ranking students and establishing a GPA, it does make me concerned that we push students to look to improve a grade, rather than improve their skills—the two do not always go hand-in-hand.  When I was in Grad school, my professor (now my colleague), who taught Teaching Writing as a Process, discussed with me the prospect of not giving grades since students focus so much on that one little letter and fail absorb the comments that would actually change that letter.  I experimented one semester with only giving comments until the final draft of the paper, forcing students to read the comments and improve based on them.  The results were fascinating—I had more students engaging in the writing process and understanding what they needed to do to improve their ability not just their letter grade.  However, they also felt extreme anxiety not having those grades, and I ultimately went back to the old way of giving them a grade just to see where they stand. 

I am considering trying this again, with some improvements to get the best of both worlds.   In fact, I am contemplating having students grade their own papers based on my feedback and a rubric.  Based on the types of comments they see on their papers, they could try to determine honestly what grade bracket they believe the paper would it fit into.

As educators, we must facilitate the learning process for students, ultimately putting their success in their own hands. Perhaps this could lessen the divide and encourage others to strive, rather than merely survive.  

The Cheater & The Champion

This semester, more than ever, I am dealing with a plague—plagiarism. This rampant disease is infecting educational institutions all over the country.  So far this semester alone, I have had to report seven students to Academic Affairs due to the blatant plagiarism they have committed in their work.  The lack of academic integrity is disheartening.  While the Internet does make it all so tempting, the students should have enough integrity and enough value in their education that they would want to do their own work—to learn something and to show that they are capable.  It’s easy to blame the Internet, but this has been happening for years.  I remember when I was completing my student teaching experience in a small town in Indiana over twelve years ago, my eighth-grade students were completing a little research project to do on an explorer.  One student’s paper was 100% copied from Encarta, back when CD-ROMs were the bees’ knees for finding information.  The student denied it, of course, and his mother supported the lie.  She shouted at me saying, “I stayed up all night working with my son on this!”  But when we showed her that the Encarta entry matched her son’s paper word-for-word, I said, “It doesn’t take that long to copy and paste, you should have gotten more sleep.”  Snarky, I know, but we both felt she deserved it, as does anyone else wasting our time with forged papers when we have plenty of legitimate ones to grade. 

One of the students I confronted this week regarding her plagiarized paper denied it right up until I showed her the 123helpme.com paper, from which she got 67% of her copied and pasted text.  The irony was that this didn't actually "help her" in the end since she got caught.  Given that she now has to start all over and write a new piece, while also being put on a “watch list” of sorts for cheaters, the student acknowledged that “No, it didn’t help.”  Lesson learned…or is it?  As another student mentioned, if she hadn't gotten caught, it would have helped after all. Every day, students try to find a way to beat the system, seeking out creative ways to cheat and just not get caught.  Some students work harder at cheating than they would if they were to actually do the work on their own.  Talk about irony.

On a brighter note, my students who are doing their own work are learning so much.  They are growing by leaps and bounds as readers, writers, critical thinkers, as students, and as human beings.  Those are the students I am proud of.  Any old Joe Schmoe can copy and paste from the Internet; a real student does his or her own work, looking for true success.  Whichever path a student chooses—that of cheater or champion—it becomes clear what that student is made of.  

I had a fulfilling moment just today with one of these students who chooses champion.  Her work is getting so good that it could easily be misconstrued as too sophisticated and the product of plagiarism, but it isn’t.  I’ve seen this girl grow as a writer and critical analyst over the last several weeks, and it is evident that she is applying what she has learned to better her work.  I decided to pull her aside to let her know how proud and impressed I am at her improvement.  She thanked me and actually said that it was nice that someone acknowledged it.  She said that another professor had questioned her writing not long ago, assuming she had cheated because it was good.  I’m glad that I could give this student the validation she was apparently looking for, but in the end it was I who thanked her, because I so appreciate an honest, hard-working student who has integrity and cares for what we teachers are trying to do—help them!