Last Class

Today marked the last class of the class for whom I was TA'ing, and the source of stories found in this blog. Do not fear, for next semester I will be student teaching, and continuing work on my Graduate Assistantship, so undoubtedly I will have more to share.

Anyway, today's class was spent going over the final exam students will be writing a week from today, and I led the discussion. For the final, students are required to use two texts, one an article from Harper's that I mentioned earlier, and the other being an outside source which the students have found perusing the New York Times, or one of the texts assigned through out the year. Students will begin by summarizing one of the arguments presented by Crister (Harper's), and then proceed to have a conversation between the two pieces and their own opinions. It was my task today to help students get a grasp on the Crister article.

The article was a bit lengthy, and Crister presented a few different arguments, all of course supporting his main idea. I began by asking students to offer up what they deemed his major argument to be, and as it was more-or-less spelled out for them in the sub-title, they nailed it pretty good. We then moved on to discuss his other arguments. Most students seemed occupied with viewing the article through an animal rights lens, and so I attempted to gear the discussion in that manner.

In the end it seemed students understood what was going on in the article, and I was allowed to present a diagram of ethics that I stole from Roderick Frazier's The Rights of Nature. Undoubtedly, ethics professors would probably find fault or dispute the diagram, but none-the-less I find it to be an interesting one that makes students think about their world and - in the end - hopefully make them better humans. A lofty task no doubt, but I truly feel the diagram helps.

The diagram, as you may be able to see from my notes, looks almost like a cross sectional view of a tree that is ever expanding through time. At the center of the circle is the Magna Carta which limited the powers of the King. As time progressed, these powers became more limited, and rights became more distributed through the populace; gradually moving down through the classes. I forget the details between the Magna Carta (1215), and the Bill of Rights (1791). As society progressed, rights were given out further to include African-Americans, women, people of color, and it is here that the diagram was applied to animals. The outer circles began to include animals, mainly mammals, those that are larger in size and are somewhat resemblant of human kind. We then progress to include all mammals, and then to the other Animal Kingdoms, and so on until possibly one day we include the entire Universe as having basic rights of existence not to be impeded upon by human behaviour. These circles concerning non-humans are dotted as there is still progress to be made, but the ideas exist, and there are actions towards giving rights to these bodies - PETA, ALF. There is really no knowing how far or in depth these rights may expand. Currently our scientific paradigms tell us animals do not think or communicate in such a way as to place them on level with human kind, but as paradigms are constantly changing - after all it was not so long ago that the bumps on your head told of your intelligence - we cannot say just how far these rights will one day extend.

As a side. If you note in my diagram I had wrote "Black Men" then scribbled out "Black" and wrote "A.A." This was not a slip of the racist sort, for at the time when Black people gained rights it was mostly in recognition of African American men. However, according to my most recent knowledge, using the term "African American" to describe Black people is racist as it assumes that all Black people are from Africa.

Plagiarism Vs. Paraphrasing

I awoke this morning in my apartment and thought I was sleeping in a tent. I have no insulation in my ceiling, or my walls. It was cold. It was ten o'clock when my phone rang with The Professor on the other end explaining to me her battle with a sinus infection, and asking me to take the class on today. Her requests were simple:

1.) Go over plagiarism and paraphrasing. Apparently some of the students had difficulty paraphrasing in their final draft of paper number two. Instead of paraphrasing, they changed a few words and subsequently plagiarized. In the world of literature, plagiarism is not a more-or-less topic, you either have plagiarized, or you have not.

2.) Students were to hand in their third reflection piece today, and I was to go over their paraphrasing in those papers with them.

They were not heavy tasks for me to accomplish, and I feel I got them done appropriately. I began by getting students to give the class their definitions of paraphrasing and many of them explained that paraphrasing is simply not using a piece of text word for word. I sort of cringed at this. Unfortunately, I think this is what we teach students. More often then not, students think plagiarism is using an exact copy of part of a text; they don't seem to grasp the fact that in order to really paraphrase, they need to put the entire quote in their own words.

I put a quote on the board from the Funk article that students read for class the previous class and had them attempt to paraphrase it. The students that opted to share their paraphrasing had completed the task correctly, but I'm not sure of the students that didn't opt to share. The ones that share clearly have a grasp as they have the confidence to share with the class.

I then decided to explain to them how to go about paraphrasing. It is not the quickest technique, but it pretty much guarantees you won't exactly plagiarize. When we look at a quote, we need to glean the facts from it. If we can figure out the bare-bones facts that we are interested in we can do away with the quote and the language the author used. We then take these facts and put them into our own words, and make the connection using our own language. At this point, you should have a statement that doesn't mirror that of the original quote, but still contains the main ideas. Of course we need to reread the original quote and make sure ours is not the same, and even more importantly, we need to remember to cite. The ideas are not ours and therefore need a citation.

I also had the class exchange papers and read through them looking for paraphrasing/plagiarism as well as other grammar issues we had discussed in class - run-ons, comma splices, in-text citations, and comma usage. While this may not be full bore peer-editing, it is a beginning, and will eventually allow students to edit their own work more efficiently.

Gleaning

The other day, the Professor was out and I had to begin students in on the third unit by showing them the video The Gleaners and I. An interesting video I suppose, but way too long. Whoever edited this video needs to go back to school and re-learn how to edit. While I was showing it, the projector got too hot and shut off. I was sitting at my desk, enjoying the video while perusing the crowd of students making sure no one was using this as nap time when the video cut out. I had no idea how long I would have to wait for it to properly cool off, I did not have anything really for the students to do, and I knew I could not just let them go. I got up to the front of the class, and about half of them looked at me with those tilted faces and coy smiles assuming I was going to let them go. I was not.

I began to talk about the video. Gleaning. It was something - in this video - of the late 1800's and early 1900's. Poor people would go into farm fields after they had been picked over by the machines and pick up any left over product they could possibly eat. Some of the students found this to be slightly awkward. The whole idea of picking up left-over food and using it as your own. I went further into gleaning, and spoke about the individuals that wander around markets after their culmination and pluck any left-over food from the ground.

This last idea really irked some students. They found it "disgusting". However, a few of the students looked on in silence with a look on their face that explained to me that while maybe they were not forced to scrounge food out of the trash to survive as children, they know what it is to not have.

As I continued talking about gleaning I realized that this gleaning of food was foreign to the students and they needed something real life, so I began coming up with examples. The first example I used was my grandparents. My grandparents go to Florida every winter and like most grandparents mine are cheap. A good deal is a good deal and should be taken. I think Florida caters to this. Anyway, for five dollars - or so I have been told - you can get a five gallon bucket and go through a tomato field that the machines have already been through and pick up any tomatoes still there. God bless capitalism, eh? Pay for something that would otherwise rot and go to waste.

After the first example, the students still seemed a bit distant and did not seem to care too much. The second example got them. At least it got most of them:

"I have a friend who is unemployed. He lives at home and has no steady source of income. He makes money on the internet, on Ebay. You know those "trash pick-up days" when everyone throws their junk into big piles for the town to come pick up?" I got some nods of agreement but mostly looks of confusion. "Well, my buddy goes around and picks up stuff that is getting thrown out and could be re-sellable, like bicycles, or gym equipment. He makes some decent money this way. It's gleaning."

With this last example the students all seemed to nod in understanding. Whether they understood what I was saying, or they were finally understanding that they were going to sit in their desks and listen to me blabber while the projector cooled down, I am not sure. I continued to ramble on for a bit and somehow - although, I cannot recall now - I got talking about the Irish Potato Famine, and the lesser known Southern Corn Blight of the 1970's, and then the film started back up.

We finished the film today. The Professor was there and the students acted no differently. All incredibly unenthused about the video, and still slightly disturbed by this idea of "urban gleaning" in markets and along street sides. Maybe we should have watched a few episodes of Sanford and Son instead, but the library probably does not have the DVD's in their possession.