Journal IV

This was the most stressful and, frankly, disappointing week as a teacher so far.

Monday: On Friday we had done some in-class work with one of their sources, so I began Monday's class by reviewing a couple things about the Allen piece and then I transitioned into the Porter piece. I thought that this discussion would go much better than it actually did. I thought they would latch onto the idea of intertextuality; I showed a video that described intertextuality in film; I loved this video and thought it was a great supplemental aid to the material. They seemed momentarily into the video, but quickly faded when I began to ask them questions about what intertextuality implied for originality. I broke them up into 4 groups and asked each group a questions. They did okay with this task, but I was still disappointed with the discussion overall. I then wanted to focus on synthesis because they have been doing so poorly with these in their reading responses. Their effort just seems so minimal- like the can barely even connect back to even one previous reading. They said they have trouble remembering who said what. I understand that this is brand new for them, but I told them that they have to memorize their biology terms, and they just have to memorize a couple points per reading. It's just something they have to do because they'll be doing these syntheses for the rest of the term. I then passed out a handout describing what my expectations were for their intros and synthesis. I also put up a sample intro and synth so they could see a visual representation of what I wanted.

Wednesday: Because of their confusion about their syntheses, I prepared a powerpoint describing exactly what synthesis was and some tips on how to do it. I then selected some examples from their Bernhardt reading responses to show what I thought was a good synthesis and what needed work. We then discussed Bernhardt; I rushed through this a bit because we had a lot to do, but they were so resistant to this discussion anyway. None of them had really understood that he wasn't arguing that their own papers needed to be so visual because they're writing for a particular community. I tried to explain this more clearly, but I think they had shut down by then. For the rest of the time I workshopped the sample intro and synthesis. I was disappointed to find out that even though I put it up a couple days early, no one had even glanced at the sample yet.

Wednesday evening I sent out emails to everyone who had minor violations. I got one email from a student who had dropped down to a 'C' who clearly never understood the grade contract completely. He also claimed that he had turned in the Bernhardt response on blackboard, but it didn't show up "for some reason." I accepted his late work. It's also significant that this student was absent for Wednesday's class because he would later plagiarize the synthesis (and summary) that I had chosen as an example of a strong synthesis/summary. I emailed this student on Friday telling him I needed him to come to my office hours on Monday because I had something incredibly important to discuss about his reading response. He hasn't responded, so I'm waiting to see how it goes...

Friday: I was quite deflated after the plagiarism incident because it seems so pathetic to me. Despite the fact that I hated this week, Friday's class went really well. We watched Beyond the Red Ink and I had them respond with some freewriting and then I asked them what they wanted most out of my comments. For the rest of the time we workshopped two papers. I made them read through the papers because I feel like I always talk too much and I wanted them to stay awake. They seemed alert throughout the workshop, and I left feeling better about the week as a whole.

Next time I think I will set up the readings a little better the days before it is due so maybe they can understand them better. I also will start teaching them about synthesis earlier. Ultimately I do think all the synthesis lessons paid off because their synthesis were decent (much much better than their reading responses). Overall, I thought there intros and syntheses were pretty good. No one completely missed the mark on them.