A placeholder tonight as nothing of importance happened today except things very much like things that happened yesterday.

My bad higher level class was bad. My lower level class wasn’t quite as bad. My worst students in my high school class were bad.

The only funny thing was in my high school class. My worst students were third in line for their presentation but rather than prepare for it (it helps to practice even though they don’t have to memorize it) they were doing homework from other classes.

When I called their number the moseyed up to the front and then 1) couldn’t figure out who was speaking first or 2) what order their pictures were supposed to be in. I sent them off to get their s#!t together.

One student realized that thanks to his partners he was about to fail and managed to salvage something  resembling a presentation by playing stage manager. Unfortunately he’s right. He is going to fail because of this partners. That’s one of the rules of the assignment.

What happened first wasn’t that surprising. What happened later was.

As predicted, the noise and inattentiveness of two classes inspired me to stop talking about the final exam. Instead I passed out an assignment and said “good luck”. Later I helped the students who actually seemed interested in passing.

I also sent three students back and forth between their desks and my desk until they actually completed their homework. (Long story.)

Then, this evening, as I was grading daily journals written by my university students, I realized that one of my students wrote well enough that he could have been an editor for Wikipedia. Actually, given that his “handwritten journal” matched a Wikipedia entry word for word, I suspect he might already be a Wikipedia editor. Or is it adopter?

Either way, all the students are now required to look up the word “plagiarism” and explain what will happen to them if they try that in the USA.

The trap is that I expect most of them to plagiarize the entry, which will lead to a teachable moment.

The best part about the last week of school is that most class time is spent reviewing or finishing projects which means I don’t have a lot of prep work to do. The students like it because I don’t mind letting them fail.

For junior high school, I typically discuss the material that’s on the exam and give students a version of the long writing question on the exam to practice. One third of the class works on it; one third pretends to work on it but ekes out only one badly written sentence; and one third plays, talks or sleeps.

I just let everyone do what they want. I’m not taking the exam and if someone doesn’t write the essay/long writing, it saves me time and energy.

I’ve mentioned before how, in the past, I’ve stopped explaining the details of what to study when it was clear that most of the class wasn’t listening. In the worst case, I erased what I’d already written and wished them luck. Later I gave the information to the few students who were actually interested in passing and suggested they share with other students.

With high school we’re finishing up final projects and that means there are lots of excuses and pleading. Students are also prone to take 15-20 minutes toilet breaks. (As these are usually my worst students, I just let them go and don’t chase them down.) The last class is usually spent reviewing the term’s material, but I see students doing math or other classes. I also see students sleeping.

Once again, I encourage them to enjoy themselves. Tests that add up to “0” are really really easy to mark.

We’re gearing up for the last week of the term. That means anything that can go wrong probably will. Even if it doesn’t, all hell breaks loose.

The last week of the term is marked by a number of key things that often cause more trouble than they are worth: Finishing exams and chasing down students.

For the former, we have to make the exams, including the listening scripts, and then record, edit and burn the listening files. Traditionally I waste two CDs in the process of doing this. Somewhere along the way, everyone has to approve the text of the exam and, even then, once exams are in student hands, we find a mistake.

For the latter, chasing down students, this applies mostly to getting students to finish their final projects for their high school second year classes. If they don’t do it, they get the lowest possible for score for the term and have to take a make up exam. As it is, I’ve got a student who’s two speeches behind and has already earned zeros on them. I expect I’ll see him at the make up exams.

That leads to the final problem: making make up exams and figuring out the process involved with getting information to the students. It’s complicated. (Actually, it’s not, but I always get something wrong each time I have to do a make up exam.)

After all that, we get the written exams in hand and things get really crazy.

Today I read a paragraph that was so bad that I actually got mad at the student who wrote it. Luckily that student wasn’t around.

The paragraph in question was part of a course I teach that prepares students to go overseas. My job is to read, mark and assign a mark to the paragraph and then follow a complicated online system to return the document to the students.

The trouble is, sometimes the students use online translators. They enter entire sentences in Japanese, translate it into English, then send it on as original work. The problem is that translators, at this point in their development are mostly crap. The English ends up semi-coherent, if the student is lucky, or incoherent. Today’s sentences were so bad I couldn’t figure out what the student was trying to say which meant I couldn’t fix it.

I added a lot of marginal comments and an angry note.

Next week I’ll check his first, when I’m still feeling patient and generous.