I am incredibly direct. Most of the time, I don't think I'm rude (anymore - I admit I've had to work hard to learn how to be more diplomatic); I simply have a hard time not saying what I'm thinking. And there are times when I forget that, as a teacher, this is not a good thing. I'm pretty sure I've never been publicly rude to a student but in class last night, I reacted without thinking to something a student said and the more I've thought about it, the more I feel stupid about it. I wasn't actually reacting to the student himself; he used a term that I haven't heard in a while, that he had obviously learned in another economics class, and I was thrown off because a) it took me a second to figure out what he was talking about and b) when I realized what he meant, it told me something about the way one of my colleagues must teach a particular course. I laughed, then realized that the student might think I was laughing at him, so I felt like I needed to explain why I was laughing, but I think that only made it worse. It was an awkward moment at the time, and I feel even more awkward about it now, but there's not much I can do about it about at this point except try to remember to think a little longer before I open my mouth...
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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