Kind act of the year award

Impostor syndrome ... is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a "fraud". Wikipedia

I've often felt I should go back to the town in rural Iowa where I began my teaching career and put up a billboard that reads "If you had me as a teacher in Stuart-Menlo High School in the 1970s, I apologize. You deserved better. Mr. Johnson."

In 1976, I was clueless 24-year-old with what I know now was an only partially developed pre-frontal cortex. My job included teaching 6 classes (with 5 preps) of high school English, speech, journalism, and drama. My extra curricular duties included directing plays, sponsoring the yearbook and weekly newspaper, and coaching speech contestants. Oh, I worked on the weekends at a gas station to supplement my mighty $8900 a year salary. And I had a family.

In the classroom 1978

Despite having received a teaching degree from a good college and doing student teaching, I really don't think I knew what in the hell I was doing. I learned grammar from Warriner's grammar book the night before I tried to teach it. I was bored by most of the stories in the literature text so we acted a lot of them out. I probably lost it with some kid 3 times a day and had an adversarial relationship with my principal who liked to listen into classes using the PA system without anyone's knowledge. My room had been an elementary classroom once upon a time so the chalkboard started at about my knees and went no higher than my chest. Smartboards, computers, and even VCRs were in the distant future. At least the teachers' smoking lounge was close by.

I did love directing the plays and coaching the other activities, but still I have been living for 40 years with the guilt of not being a good classroom teacher to those great kids.

But I had a visitor yesterday at one of the schools where I was helping distribute Chromebooks to middle school students. This nicely dressed man wearing the school's visitor badge saddled up to me and asked "Do you remember our Dirty Works in High Places?" Seeing my total confusion he introduced himself. "I'm Tim. I was one of your students at Stuart Menlo in the 70s. You directed the play Dirty Works in High Places. Remember?" If I had false teeth, they would have dropped on the floor. I indeed remembered Tim well since he was a star in our class plays and speech contests. I just didn't recognize him without the giant Afro hairstyle he sported back then. 

We had a nice conversation reminiscing about the good times and with him sharing videos he had made for a class reunion in which other students said they enjoyed being in the plays and what they learned in my classes. He followed up with an email that reads in part:

Not to keep repeating myself (this will be the last time, I think), please know that you were so loved as a teacher by me and by a great many of my classmates. I absolutely loved your class, because it involved being able to use my creativity in writing and in drama. You played a huge part in fostering that creativity in me, and for that I truly thank you! I truly enjoyed English class as well as Drama class, and to this day I am a grammar hound. (I only hope this e-mail doesn't disprove that in some way.) Also, you weren't one of those cranky teachers. It appeared that you loved what you did, and we loved being in your class because of it. Your great personality and generally-upbeat attitude were key factors. If there was something about those first two years of your career we should have picked up on, trust me...we didn't. This morning I was particularly touched by how you were touched after receiving this information when we talked. Thank you again for taking the time to sit and talk with me today!!

Tim, I was truly touched. You helped this old man dissipate 40 years of worry about his first years of teaching. 

Thank you for your kindness.

Blue Skunk readers, find a teacher who you liked and say "thanks." I guarantee you will make his/her day. Or year.

Drama Club, 1977-78 School Year

Teachers who can be replaced by computers, should be

I remember 1981.

I was a 1/2 time language arts teacher and a 1/2 time librarian for a 150 student junior high in rural Iowa. And 1981 was the year I got my first computer in the library - an Apple II. I used it with (as memory serves), AppleWriter and the MECC Gradebook. The principal used VisiCalc to calculate teacher salary proposals during teacher negotiations. The kids played Oregon Trail, Lemonade Stand, and Eamon after school. An inauspicious beginning to a career dominated by technology.

Professor Smith's prediction in the article above that computers in the classroom would kill literacy has not come true. His prediction that computers would replace teachers has not come true. (Although I still like to say that teachers who can be replaced by computers, should be.)

Today the same Cassandra-like warnings can be heard about computerized learning systems and AI and robots. I'd say the same thing: if what you do can be done by any one of these technologies, they should replace you.

As an educator, you are hired for your judgement, your passion, and especially your compassion.

Have a happy start to the new school year.

BFTP: Is academic recycling plagiarism?

Handing in an assignment twice, even if you've done it yourself, is considered "plagiarism." In other words, handing in the same assignment for two different courses... - Vivian in a comment responding to "To Make it Google-proof, make it personal" blog post.

I was startled when a magazine editor rejected a column I had written. "It's plagiarized," was the simple reason. And she included a URL where the material could be found online. I went to that web address, and sure enough, there was much of the material from which my column was composed.

Of course, the website was my own. I was busted. I'd recycled something I had written before. Which according to Vivian (see above) and the editor constituted plagiarism.

I would beg to differ. At a basic level, most definitions of plagiarism stress someone else's work is involved. For example M-W.com define plagiarism as: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own) include reference to another person's work). If one steals a physical object - a can of soup, say - one removes it from another owner. Moving one's own can of soup from one cupboard to another, just isn't theft. 

So let's call this intellectual property recycling, not plagiarism and ask if that practice is ethical.

If the teacher, editor, or other requester specifically states that one's writing needs to be completely original then re-using one's writing is wrong. But I'd argue that there are nuances here that makes recycling ethics a bit more complex. When I consider reusing something I've written before, I ask these kinds of questions - and it would benefit our students if we gave them practice asking them as well:

1. Am I writing for a different audience? (I may have written about a topic for librarians, but am now writing with building principals in mind.)
2. Is the focus of the topic different? (When I am writing about plagiarism, for example, the focus changes depending on whether it is an English teacher or a computer integration specialist for whom I am writing.)
3. Has the topic been updated? (What I wrote about BYOD two years ago may be very different from what I would write about today since technologies, legal interpretations, levels of acceptance have all changed.)
4. Is the purpose of my writing different? (Writing to persuade a librarian to adopt a new way of thinking about technology is different from writing to inform curriculum directors about what they should expect from their school librarians.)

A student who chooses a single topic (or more likely a blend of topics) for research that works both, for say, science and history assignments is not only ethical, but probably doing more intellectually challenging work by blending diverse subjects. (What was the science behind the atomic bomb and how did the bomb influence international politics?) 

And I would argue that the best research, the best writing, the best media production will come when students are allowed to write about genuine passions. If a kid loves horses, why should their K-12 portfolio not show an increasing level of skills and thoughtfulness of work - all about horses?

Academic recycling just might have its place in education.
 

Original post 7/17/08