March 13.  I started reading student blogs at 6:30 this morning and by a few minutes before 7, I was hating life.

I read an essay--this was my comment:

"I try to discourage these type of generic, interchangeable essays that have nothing at all of the writer in them. They always have a certain air of competence, but no heart at all. Try again, please--put XX [not the student's real initials] in the darn thing, ok? Tell us your experiences with these people if you have them, make it real, set it in Maine, etc etc."

[The student later removed the essay and my comment so I'm not breaching the student's privacy by reproducing what I said.]

I looked at my own comment and asked myself why I'd written "your experiences...if you have them."   If you have them.... I had my doubts about that and about the whole essay, otherwise why would I have said "the darn thing," a jot or two ruder than I usually care to be?

So I googled the essay title and the third google listing was a place selling essays online. I clicked again and saw they had some free samples and my student had lifted the essay from those, made a few changes, and voila, instant paper.  Or maybe a friend of the student did the changes.  Doesn't matter, this wasn't a tough call at all--huge chunks of the paper, sentence after sentence, were word-for-word from this dumb website.

And I've been upset the rest of the day.  Really felt like s--t.  Bumming, hating life--and trying to figure out why.

Of course, on one level if a student cheats, any responsible teacher has to examine his class, his teaching, his syllabus, his assignments, and try to figure out what went wrong and why.  And I'm doing that and it isn't much fun.

On another level, a cheat chooses to cheat and I don't blame myself.  But I still feel awful and so continue trying to figure out why.

Bad writing does not bother me.  I see it every day, lots of it, and occasionally do it myself.  Bad writing is just writing waiting to be made better.  Only very very rarely do I tell a student to give up a piece and start over--maybe two or three times a semester out of hundreds and hundreds of things I read.  I can help a student who is writing badly. 

People write badly because thinking clearly is hard, remembering is hard, imagining is hard, and looking at things as they are, without fibbing, b.s., and cliches is hard.  That's why people hate writing--it's hard.  And if you don't hate writing, you're not trying hard enough.  When you try hard enough, then you'll hate it.

But that's all okay.  It's your education.  No pain, no gain.  I can't make it less hard, but I can show people where they've skipped away from the hard stuff and encourage them to go back, rewrite, write better.

I like doing all that.  It's a job I like.

Of course, it's all different with an essay like the one I read this morning.  It's one of those essays stupid English teachers love--it's very clear, very much like a diagram, very well-organized, full of typical details--but it's completely DOA--dead on arrival.  It skips all the hard things.  As I told the student, it has no heart.

But it's worse than that.  People hold essays up like this as models.  People think it's 'good writing.'  It pretends to do the hard things, but it's counterfeit all the way through and teaches a powerful lesson: pretend stuff works; pretend stuff is good enough; pretend stuff is indistinguishable from the real thing.  Don't bother looking, thinking, feeling, or imagining--you can fake it and no one can tell the difference.

That's what my student told me, and I didn't want to hear such cynicism, such lack of self-respect, such contempt for the student's own mind, heart, life, and experience.

March 11.  Acadia Writing Lab had to wait over four months to get its new wheely chairs--but only two for the first wheely chair casualty.

I noticed on one chair today that the adjustment knob that lets the back go up and down has been removed and the plastic backing has come loose and is flapping in the breeze.  I like to keep this web page a zero tolerance zone where we forbid all violence, even violent fantasies about throttling the throats and knocking the empty skulls of the sort of louts who would destroy state property.

So, all such fantasies are officially forbidden and never ever could be entertained, not ever.

March 11.  Okay, I understand that if you're writing an isearch about visiting  a place with legalized prostitution and drugs, you'll be sitting in class reading about legalized prostitution and drugs.  No problemo!

Then in third period some cheerful women started comparing the shave-jobs on their legs and suggesting what guys could shave to make themselves even more attractive than they currently are... I suppose that could turn into a nifty freestyle blog post.  But I was blushing too much to think, much less make that suggestion to them.

I just don't remember stuff like this from my own college classes....

March 11.  Working up my dogs-in-literature reading list yesterday.  When I actually began looking at the books I had been thinking about, imagining assigning them, lecturing, explaining--I bailed on some of the material.  I was afraid of this happening again!

One of my books was by Vicki Hearne, for example, and she scolds people for certain attitudes toward dogs--soppy, goofy, sentimental attitudes.  I know that some students are going to have hurt feelings, which is fine, except that if I even try explaining what I think she's getting at, they will be further offended, then associate her ideas with me, and finally wind up blaming me for their being offended.  After all, if Goldfine assigned it, he must believe it, right?  It must be his idea too!

That doesn't mean I necessarily want to avoid controversy--'My Dog Tulip' is going to revolt and infuriate some people, but what's offensive is not his opinions so much as his very purpose in writing: he gives a genuine, detailed look at a dog's sex and excretory life.  Some people don't want to read about this stuff (yuck!), but thinking about it in connection with dogs is really unavoidable, so there it is in my reading list.

March 9.  Outstanding work-ethic on student KP!  Here it is a few minutes past 8 am on a day no one should be out and about, but EMCC has classes, and my first period class has ONE student--and what a student he is, the best writer here today (sadly, also the worst.)

We're sitting here side-by-side.  He's writing a classification paper about the nuns he knew back in the day at St. Ann's: the violent, the playful, and, finally, the good-teaching nuns. 

And, while he does that, I'm writing this.  If KP needs my advice, help, input, or wisdom, I won't be doing my usual, "Just a sec, be right over, gotta finish talking to so-&-so...." 

Nunh-unh!  I'm on his case.

Just having a conversation about the red paddle Sister Carmella used when kids didn't do their homework--the ball-on-a-rubber-band kind of paddle.   My missus used to buy those for stocking stuffers at Xmas--but I guess KP had a different view after a year or two with Sister C.  Doubt his kids ever got a chance to play with them....

This is live-blogging!  I'm teaching and I'm telling you about it, in real time, as I do it--so now back to KP.  I say, "How you doing?"

He says, "I'm working."  He doesn't say, "Leave me the heck alone."  I'm the best teacher he's had today (sadly, also the worst.)  At least I left my paddle at home.

March 5.  5:30 am, up with bad dreams--dreamed I was fired and had to go to work in a high school.

I've written my opinion of high schools right into my syllabus, but in my dream the comparison wasn't exactly between high school and jail.  I was sort of a Nazi Gestapo torturer, trying to extract information from brave freedom-fighters, my students.  And their job was to resist as long as possible, then give me what I wanted when it was way too late for me to use it to find the other members of their freedom-fighter group and stop them from blowing up the bridge or whatever.

In other words, in my dream, students saw teachers as torturers trying to extract homework and papers and saw themselves as doing the honorable thing by resisting.

And if they had to give in, giving in at the last possible second.

Could my dream have anything to do with midsemester warnings which I have to generate soon?  I will have students come to me after they get warnings--students who are angry and hurt, feeling betrayed--and they will say: "I thought you didn't care if we came to class just so the work got done in the end!  I was going to do it, if you'd just give me some time.  I'm a very fast writer."

In other words, they will be working off the view expressed in my dream: their job is to resist as long as possible--don't I know that?  What is my problem?

My problem is that I'm not a Gestapo torturer, and it isn't okay as long as the writing comes in the end--writing improves incrementally over time.  Students need four months to do this class, not one big write-em-up the night before the last day.

If I were a Gestapo torturer, inflicting pain would be fun, and I could count myself a success if the last day of class I exited the torture chamber to the sound of my students' screams but with a bunch of essays in my blood-spattered hand.

In fact, I furiously resent having to play cop, to be a student's conscience, to be mommy-and-daddy, to be cast as a torturer.  I want to read your writing, sit down and talk with you about it, and I want to do that about 45 separate times.  We call them 'class periods' in Gestapo training.

March 5.  Of course, the other thing students who get warnings will say to me that drives me crazy is this: "How am I supposed to know what my grade is in this course?  How can you tell me I'm failing!"

This from a student who may not have done a lick of work in weeks--how was he supposed to know that just because he's blown off class and writing for a month or two and is continuing along that path into the foreseeable future he will fail?   Words tend to fail me at that point....

March 3.  Not sure why my blogging has slacked off lately.  I'm not particularly depressed...or, oh yeah, wait a sec....

I do get depressed sometimes about classes--feeling like everything would collapse, no one would write a word, people would just wait to fail or whatever--if I wasn't there pushing every second.

Sometimes it's almost like a job.  That's depressing.  Maybe that's bleeding into blogging.

March 3.  How long does it take to improve?

I have several people writing isearches about pumping iron, which it sure doesn't look like I know much about, but which, in fact, I've been doing for longer than these students have been alive--around 21 years.

These young fellas in the gym can do amazing things--guys a fraction of my size can press weights I never dreamed of, even in my prime; they are ripped, buff, shredded, and altogether in fine shape.

Alas, my days of giant pecs, eye-popping delts, and 23-inch biceps are over.  My days of straining, groaning, and shouting to push that big bar past the sticking point are over.  My days of big gains are over.  My days of any gains are over. 

Just trying to slow the rate of inevitable decline is all I hope to do up there, with superslow sets and lighter weights, which, when the lifter is undisciplined, turn into quicker lazy sets with light weight and no point.  That's me, most days....

I'm also trying to build stamina and an aerobic base for a spring walking tour, where I expect to carry a pack and walk 15 miles a day over varied terrain.  I've been walking to the store--two miles downhill, two back up with some groceries on my back.  I've been walking the Upper Oak Hill Rd/141/131/Upper Oak Hill Rd route by Swan Lake.  Six miles.  A hill at the end whether I start north or south (I live on Marden Hill).  Otherwise pretty flat.

This spring I expect to do about 2 mph on my walking tour.  On the Swanville route I describe, no pack, I can do 3 mph.  What worries me is that I don't see any changes yet.

I'm trying to teach my body, but I don't feel any better or worse--and certainly no faster--, today after walking six miles than I did the last time I did it or the first time I did it a few weeks back.  I guess to improve, to feel the burn, to get better, I've got to increase the stress, either with a pack or with more distance, but I get nervous that I'm courting injuries if I do too much more or too much harder, and I won't do much walking if I get plantar fasciitis.

Same problems come up in teaching every day--how hard should I push reluctant writers?  No pain, no gain, but, on the other hand, if I push too hard, people give up, stop trying, get exhausted, funk, flunk, fail.

Feb. 21.  Coming on eighteen years of reading student writing at EMVTI, EMTC, and EMCC--going back to 1987.  Hundreds of thousands, millions of words--each year I assign more writing and read more and ask that it all be individual, something no one else could possibly sign his or her name to.  So, I find out a lot over time about my students.

Reading in today's paper about the death in a car crash of Early Childhood student of Jenna Wyse, by the luck of the draw not a student I knew.  But I know a lot about her peers.

I'm constantly astonished at how familiar they are with death, with sudden and violent death in car crashes--how many yearbooks are dedicated to people dead in wrecks.  I'm still after all these years astonished at how their lives revolve around the internal combustion engine in a way unimaginable to the college students of 40 years ago. 

They expect tragedy, dislocation, troubles and trials, blows to their happiness, and terrible pain.  I think they hope that the security a degree from EMCC represents might free them from some small part of life's hurt and hard living. 

And that's what we're all working for.