I'm not going to say that one of my resolutions is to post more consistently or more often - I'd like to do both (or either) but I know that what always happens is that I get too busy and then I just feel guilty. But what I do resolve to do is at least to try to remember that the whole reason I started this blog was simply as an outlet for me to "think aloud" about my teaching. I think one thing that has stopped me from posting more often is that I've felt a need to 'craft' my posts, to flush out my thoughts into something coherent before sharing them here. The very process of writing often helps me with that flushing out, but there are a lot of times when I don't post stuff because it seems 'incomplete' - the number of unfinished posts I have is really pretty lame. So I've decided that I need to get over that and just use this blog as I originally wanted, as a sort of 'online journal' of thoughts about teaching. I certainly hope those thoughts are interesting to other people, and I love to hear what other people are thinking, but I guess I just wanted to warn everyone that my posts this year may be shorter and/or more disjointed than in the past but hopefully, more plentiful...
I came across an interesting discussion about a 19-year-old intern who was fired from The Gazette in Colorado Springs for plagiarism. There appears to be some controversy over the fact that the editor publicly named the girl in a letter to readers (explaining and apologizing for the plagiarism), with some people saying that doing so was unduly harsh because this incident will now follow her for the rest of her career. I was intrigued by this discussion for two reasons - one, it seems pretty clear to me that this was not a case of ignorance (as I have often encountered with my own students who have no idea how to paraphrase or cite correctly) and two, putting aside the offense itself, I have often struggled with how to handle situations where there are long-term repercussions for a student, repercussions that lead the overall costs to be far higher than might seem warranted for the specific situation. As an example of the latter issue, I have occasionally taught seniors who need to p
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