A Day of Paperwork

I've been doing paperwork all day--reading student projects and tallying quiz scores. In this first part of the semester, my students read lots of articles and essays; then they write summaries. They also are busy learning punctuation and grammar rules, especially the 8 Comma Rules, so the quiz reveals what they have learned. I'm finally done with the paperwork and now ready to meet the Thursday students tomorrow morning.

This is not a fun week with students. They've done a lousy job of writing summaries -- most of them want to copy the article or report what it says. Summarizing an article into one condensed paragraph requires practice and skill, but first of all it requires that they read the article and understand it. They don't like to read. They think they will get a college degree for warming a chair. I guess in high school no one read their papers. They are quite surprised when I return papers that I have read completely and commented on and assigned a grade.

I tell them from the first day of the semester that they won't pass the quiz if they don't learn the comma rules. I am amazed and disappointed at the number who do not believe me.

So tomorrow in English class they'll be doing some math -- they'll be dividing the real students from the imposters. They'll be adding and subtracting points. It won't be a fun day, but I imagine that "hell" week isn't a lot of fun for the school football team either and boot camp isn't for soldiers in training, but once the Friday night game begins or the battle starts or a graduate has to produce professional documents -- all that practice and all that training become valuable. So tomorrow I'll focus on the future because I know that is where my students will reap the dividends.

I'm tired. Good night from the land of "A"s and "B"s and "C"s and "D"s and now I'm looking for some zzzzzzzzzzz!

Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol