Nabbed a Cheater!

Posted on October 15, 2010 | 67 comments

My cyber-friend, fellow blogger and educator, Clay Morgan, recently wrote a very funny blog about how we teachers notice when our students cheat. And I laughed because it was true: There are “peekers” and “sneakers” and “giraffers” and folks who try to write everything they can on their pencils and their shoes and their arms.

And then yesterday, I busted one of my students for some crazy, overt plagiarism, and suddenly it isn’t so very funny anymore. Well, it’s a little funny because the person copied from Wikipedia and left in the hyperlinks. But still, when you get down to it, it’s not that funny.

I hate this part. I hate this part. I hate this part. I hate this part of being an educator.

Let’s assume for the sake of ease that the cheater is male. Then I can avoid all the he/she stuff.

My thought is to have The Despicable One take a look at his paper along with a copy of the Plagiarism Contract which he signed earlier in the semester and ask him to respond in writing to three questions: 1) Why did he choose to copy directly from the source rather than paraphrase or summarize it? 2) Why didn’t he use in-text citation and include a Works Cited page at the end of his paper? 3) What does he think the most appropriate course of action would be in this situation?

When he is done writing (read: documenting the offense in his own handwriting), I will listen to what he has to say, explain to him how serious an offense this is, (because it is serious), and then I will think about it for a while.

So today I’m feeling a little snarky. A little annoyed, even.

Why? I guess because I feel plagiarism is just so dang silly. It is the laziest of all academic infractions. I can predict The Plagiarizer will say something like: “I didn’t know how do to it the right way, so I just didn’t do it.” That is what lazy people say. I guess I’m noting something of a character flaw in plagiarizers (as if other flaws aren’t obvious enough). I keep thinking, if I didn’t know how to do something, I would do my damndest to figure it out.

In this specific instance, for example, if I didn’t know how to cite properly, I would have called a classmate for assistance. I would have stopped playing BeJewelled on Facebook and looked online for tips of how to cite a paper. (There are a zillion free websites offering advice.) I might have looked in the style book which I was assigned to purchase at the beginning of the semester. If all that failed, I would have tried to indicate that I knew I was taking information from an outside source. I could have written:

Dear Professor-In-Charge-Of-My-Grade:

I am getting this information from reallycoolandfakewebsite.com, but I’m not sure how to cite it properly. (*hangs head in shame*)

When you get a chance, can you show me? I hope you won’t deduct too many points. (*lame attempt at humor*)

So so so sincerely,

Ashamed One

If I knew in advance that I were going to be in trouble with citation, I would have made at least one appointment with the folks at the college’s Writing Center (where one can schedule a free 30-minute tutoring session to really get some help on a paper). I might have even asked my teacher to meet with me. Because teachers want to help their students. Some will even skip lunch or blow off grocery shopping to help their students.

So I can tell this student started really, really late on this paper.

Like eleven o’clock at night: too late for phone calls or in-person tutoring sessions.

And, frankly, because of his procrastination and poor decision-making, I now have to make difficult moral decisions. And now, depending on how far I want to go with this, I will have a boatload of extra paperwork to handle. And copies to be made in triplicate. Because my Department Chair will need a copy. And so will Student Services. And I’ll probably have to hold on to this paper for the rest of my life. (Hubby, I have another important document for the fire safe…)

I guess you can tell that I have strong beliefs about integrity and honor and honesty. Basic values which everyone agrees seem to be on the decline. Interestingly enough, judging from the reaction that I’m getting from some of my students, they don’t see plagiarism as a big deal. I’ve tried to explain that it is a big deal. A very big deal. Because when you turn in something with your name on it, you are claiming to have authored those words and, when you haven’t, it is a lie.

In my eyes, The Despicable One is a liar and a cheater. Does he understand that I think of him as a person who steals ideas? That I can’t trust him or anything that he says? Ever? That I would never vouch for him for anything? How could I? He signed a banana-yellow piece of paper promising not to plagiarize, but he did.

I’m worried about this generation. So maybe my tone is annoyance with a side order of panic.

There have to be consequences for this transgression. This is not kindergarten, folks. I teach at the college level. This is where people learn life lessons. And sometimes people have to learn the hard way; after all, you don’t always get a second chance when you screw up.

So I have options.

Put on your thinking caps for a moment and consider this.

If you were me, would you:

a) Allow the aforementioned student to write a new paper with proper citation by a certain date for a maximum grade of D. (If the paper doesn’t come in, or there is evidence of future plagiarism, the student would be failed.)

b) Not allow the student to rewrite the paper. Give him a zero, but allow him to stay in the class with the warning that if this happens again, he will be failed.

c) Tell the student that he has done irreparable damage to the student-teacher relationship and fail him from the course as well as report him to Student Services. (This could impact his entire financial aid package, but he might learn a lesson.)

d) Make him babysit my child every Saturday for free from now until the end of the semester.

e) Ask him what he thinks should happen.

I’m definitely leaning in a particular direction, but I’m open to suggestions.

What would you do if you were in my shoes? Can anyone think of other options?

10/17/2010: ***Note: Read the  interesting, varied and intelligent comments to learn the difficult decision that I had to make, and the thought processes that teachers have to have to consider every day above and beyond our course material!***

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Should Kids Be Using Cell Phones? Should Any of Us?

Posted on October 13, 2010 | 22 comments

I knew a child who wouldn’t stop asking her mother to buy her a cell phone. Daily, this kid was working her mother over. Negotiations took place at the breakfast table each morning (before coffee) for weeks until, finally, my friend cracked and bought her daughter a basic cell phone which came with the caveat: Use this in emergencies only. The child seems to have been appeased.

I have somehow managed to avoid the whole “cell phone conversation” by getting my child an iPod Touch (which, by the way, he is currently not allowed to use for an undetermined period of time due to the fact that Boy was so enthralled with his new “toy,” he failed to respond to his father’s clearly audible, repeated request to go and brush his teeth. )

But I digress.

But it’s not a huge digression. I know kids who have had cell phones as early as the 3rd grade. Children have become the earliest adopters of our newest technologies. They pick up on how things work quickly, and we are awed by their abilities to understand what seem to many adults to be such complicated devices.

In an article by Marguerite Reardon, the writer asks the big question: Are cell phones safe? For years, studies have provided conflicting conclusions, and today, there is still no clear answer. One professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, Dr. Henry Lai, has been studying the effects of cell phone radiation on humans since 1980 and says: “There is cause for concern.”

For years, researchers and scientists have debated whether radiation from radio frequencies used to wirelessly transmit phone calls could adversely affect the health of cell phone users. And as more people throughout the world use cell phones and make these devices an integral part of their lives, concerns have grown as to long-term public health issues.

In 2009, it was estimated that in the U.S. alone, more than 270 million Americans (more than 87 percent of the population), now owns a cell phone, according to data compiled by the Marist Poll Marketing Group.

A handful of studies that have looked at the long-term effects of using cell phones suggest people who use a cell phone for at least an hour each day over a 10-year period are at an increased risk of developing brain tumors. This research also suggests that tumors are more likely to be on the side of the head where the phone is most often used.

More recently, researchers have grown particularly concerned about the adverse effects that cell phone usage could have on children. Some research indicates that children are five times more likely to get brain cancer if they use mobile phones, but other research efforts have found results inconclusive.

So here’s the paradox: Everyone worries about the “safety” of his/her  children; of course we do. What parent doesn’t? But are we thinking long-term enough? There is concern that children who start using cell phones at a young age will be exposed for a longer period of time over their entire lifetime to cell phone radiation. Researchers are particularly concerned about the risk of cell phones with children, because children’s nervous systems are not fully developed, their brains contain more fluid than brains of adults, which allows for deeper penetration of radiation.

There has been enough concern among public health officials in various parts of the world to warrant warnings. For example, the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK), a government regulatory body located in the home country of Nokia, the largest cell phone maker in the world, is urging parents to restrict cell phone use for children, suggesting parents encourage kids text rather than talk.

France has proposed banning advertisements encouraging children younger than 12 to use cell phones, and it has also warned parents that children under age six are particularly at risk. The Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. does not go so far as issuing a warning, but the agency recommends minimizing potential risk by using hands-free devices and keeping cell-phone talk to a minimum.

Finland, France and Israel have all issued warnings on their government websites about children using cell phones, while the U.S. has issued no such warnings.

I am certain the day will come when my son will get a cell phone. I don’t know what the moment will look like or what the trigger will be: an event like a birthday, or an actual breakdown in the systems that we currently have in place. I do know that when he gets a phone, that phone will be his responsibility and if he loses it, it will not be treated like a sock or a paperclip. And it will be when it is abundantly clear that he really needs a cell phone. Right now, the school he attends is in our backyard, so if he forgets something at school, the answer to almost any question is some variation of “Well, why don’t you just run back there and see if you can get in the school?” One day, perhaps when he is in high school and starting to drive or if he starts going to huge fencing competitions without us (or if he figures a way to argue his case and win), he can have the most basic cell phone of his choice. Until then, I’m going with the Europeans and the Israelis.

Have a quick listen to this podcast by Dr. Devra Davis, Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Institute, and see what you think:

What do you do with all this information?

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Posted in Parenting, Technology

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Making Peace With Reading Glasses

Posted on October 11, 2010 | 26 comments

 

photo by kiwikewlio @ flickr.com

 

Allow me a vanity moment. It has happened. My husband – an ophthalmologist – warned me that the day would come, and it finally did. I now have reading glasses.

It happened quickly. One day, I was churning through my students’ papers unencumbered, and the next well . . . we were sitting at a restaurant and I was complaining about the fuzzy print on the menu.

“Fuzzy print?” husband asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “Can I see yours?”

He generously handed over his menu.

It’s blurry, too. I’m confused.

“Time to make that eye appointment,” he guffawed.

Six months later, I have reading glasses stashed all over every corner of my life: the night-table drawer, the kitchen desk, in the computer room, in the library (read: bathroom), in my car, in my purse. None of these reading glasses are pretty as I purchase them in Val-U packs of three (or more) from Target. I have this one pair of thick black frames that I would never wear in public because when I wear them I seriously look like Drew Carey‘s sister.

I have to admit, I feel notably less sexy with my glasses on. I’m sorry, but it is true. I would rather look smokin’ hot in my red dress and stumble into the dessert table at somebody’s wedding than wear my glasses. And I don’t need them for distance, so I can’t wear contact lenses — and I am not a good candidate for LASIK, so you can stop right there with those suggestions. I am simply a latent hyperope. I don’t exactly know what that is, but it sounds very high-maintenance. Apparently, there is nothing for me to do except try to “make nice” with my new reading glasses.

“Eventually you are going to need to be fitted for a lovely set of bifocals,” my husband recently teased.

Alas, I didn’t know what I had until it was gone. 😉

What surprises have you learned about yourself as you’ve grown older?

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Stuck Behind a Bus

Posted on October 6, 2010 | 17 comments

photo by Thomas Hawk @ flickr.com

Ever been stuck at a red light behind a school bus? Of course you have. You know that moment when the kids suddenly realize, Hey! We’re not moving! And there’s a car back there with a person in it! And then they all start frantically waving?

It’s definitely a decision moment.

There are non-wavers who live among us.

I just don’t happen to be one of them.

Recently I found myself stuck behind a school bus, facing The Rowdy Boys, and I had one of those flashback moments a la Wayne’s World when I remembered my time spent at the back of the bus. These days, most school buses (in these parts anyway) have two parallel rows and an aisle with an emergency safety exit in the back; in the 1970s-80s, on the buses at my district’s alma mater, the back seat of the bus was one long row that extended from one side of the bus to the other. (If there were ever an emergency, I think we were supposed to kick out the rear window with our feet and jump out.) Or something.

A “walker” from kindergarten until fifth grade, I wasn’t introduced to school bus culture until middle school. In sixth grade, I made sure to sit in the front of the bus — close to the driver, but by eighth grade, I was definitely back seat material. I was soooo cool, wearing my cool jeans that pressed against the aged, red cushion where generations of cool kids sat before me. I sat with the smokers and the naughty girls and the angry boys. I read graffiti scribbled on the walls, watched people carve their initials into the metal bus walls, felt the bus move and sway beneath me. We tried to figure out the lyrics to The Sugar Hill Gang‘s “Rappers Delight.” We exchanged dirty jokes. We made plans to hang-out out after school.

But the bus I trailed the other day was peopled with elementary school aged innocents who smiled and laughed  and acted like goofballs, making faces and sticking out tongues. Separated by a little metal, glass, and asphalt, they probably felt like I did in eighth grade: Cool. Maybe a little bit naughty. Waving to a stranger in her car? What would their mommies say?

I made them work for it a little bit. They flapped their arms furiously, and I smiled. Eventually, just before the light turned green, I waved. Because I always wave back. And, of course, they loved it. I saw them whooping it up, high-fiving each other, as if they’d placed bets on whether or not I’d return their advances. (Maybe I am underestimating those elementary schoolers. Maybe they did place bets! Maybe that kid in the red Old Navy shirt won a lot of money because I actually waved.)

For kids, the bus is a buffer, a zone between the world of school and home, and the ride serves a dual purpose. It is a convenience (read: Mom doesn’t always have to be the chauffeur), but the bus-ride also provides time for kids to mentally shift gears from school — the land of increasing independence and increasing work and increasing expectations — and home, the land of dependence, where they are not the boss and there is homework to be done and sports to prepare for and instruments to practice and parents who still want to hear about every detail of the day, even if the kids themselves aren’t interested in sharing.

When you see kids on a bus, know they are between worlds. Time-traveling, if you will. And, if you are stuck behind a bus and the kids actually recognize your acknowledge in a positive manner, be glad. Just like adults, some of them have had fabulous days filled with glitter-glue and rainbows. But some of them have had lousy days. Dark days. Days where they have been mistreated and misunderstood. Maybe they have been bullied or made to feel small.

I say everyone should wave to kids on school buses; it’s such a little gesture, a little reaching out. It doesn’t cost anything, and it can bring so much joy.  Oh, but here’s a quick tip; only do the waving thing if the kids initiate it first. Otherwise, you’re just a creepy dork in the car behind the bus.

What do you remember from your school bus days?

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The Teenage Years: It’s All in the Brain

Posted on October 4, 2010 | 29 comments

photo by c.a. muller @ flickr.com

My son just started middle school after Labor Day, and everything seems to be going really well. So why am I already battening down the hatches? Because I remember how I was in middle school. I was evil. Just impossible. Everything my parents did was horrifyingly embarrassing. My friends were my world. I wanted the blue Fair Isles sweater that Jodi wore, the Bermuda bag that Marla carried, the clogs that Melissa had on her feet. I wanted to hang out with Dina and Noelle and Todd and Adam as much as humanly possible. We lived to torture our poor, pathetic French teacher. Every moment was filled with emotion and drama. I look back sometimes and wonder: Seriously, what was I thinking?

Apparently in the last decade,  a fair bit of research has been conducted to gather biological evidence as to why teenagers go a little bit haywire. Apparently, the teenage brain begins a massive shift around the prefrontal cortex around 12-13 years of age. The pre-frontal cortex is the thinking part of the brain that allows us to consider the consequences of our actions, and that part of the brain kind of stops working as well as it had before. Parents don’t always understand the neurological changes that their children’s brains are undergoing: changes that can cause their once docile children to take big risks and make big mistakes. The following article is an excerpt from a fabulous piece of reporting by Patti Neighmond for npr.org. You can read it, or you can listen to it here.

Laura Kastner, who along with Jennifer Wyatt has written a new book, Getting to Calm: Cool-headed Strategies for Parenting Tweens and Teens. For more than 30 years, Kastner has helped parents and children work toward greater calm in the home. In the book, Kastner presents a typical scenario:

Your child goes to a sleepover. The kids sneak out, go to someone’s house, and spray shaving cream all over the house and cars. The police come, give them a tongue lashing and send them back to the host family, who promptly delivers them home to you in the middle of the night.

“Sometimes, parents say, ‘What were you thinking?'” says Kastner. “And the joke’s on us. They weren’t thinking. They were running like wildebeests in the canyon. Just go, go, go. You know, they were flooded and excited and not really thinking through the consequences of their actions.”

In situations like this, Kastner says the first line of defense for parents is to stay calm. Tell the teen to just go to bed and that you will deal with consequences tomorrow. Ask them to write a note of self-reflection — about their regrets, why they went off track, what they would do differently if given another chance, and what skills they might need to avoid the situation in the first place.

Kastner suggests even writing a letter of apology to the host family, the family that got shaving-creamed, and maybe even the police officer who wasted his time responding to the incident. Based on the quality of this self-critique, Kastner says, parents can then determine discipline or consequences.

“It will be small, medium or large, based on the quality” of the self-critique and how much the parents believe their children learned from the mistake, she says. Parents might even have the teenager suggest their own discipline. And there’s an added benefit to the teens’ writing. It engages the “thinking” part of the brain, and gets the teenager away from the emotional frenzy of the night.

I, of course, love the idea of integrating writing as a way of getting kids to connect with thoughts to their actions. This is a strategy I have used in my classroom when students have been misbehaving. I simply hand the offending student a pre-written sticky note which instructs that student to sit out in the hall and write a full-page explanation as to why he/she has been asked to leave my class.

The exercise works for several reasons: First, it immediately eliminates the distraction from the classroom. Second, the student has to go outside and really think about what he/she was doing. Sometimes it is the first time the student has ever had the opportunity to even consider that what he/she has been doing might be considered annoying/bothersome, anti-intellectual, etc. Third, once the student is done, he/she returns to the class where we calmly conference. There has been time to cool down. I get to read the student’s words. The student generally recognizes his/her behavior as problematic to the larger group dynamic and we come to some kind of understanding. Sometimes, adjustments need to be made: maybe we decide to move the student’s seat so he/she is closer to me and further away from a friend or a loud hallway. Always, we have a clearer understanding of the other. And last, I have a piece of paper documenting the student’s infraction so if the behavior recurs, well . . . I have proof from the student’s own hand that establishes there has been an ongoing problem.

I have done all this for years, however, until I heard this report on NPR, it had never occurred to me to use this same kind of writing technique as a kind of disciplinary technique with my own child. (Not that I have had to. Yet.) But I love the idea of it.

So guess who has a blank composition notebook in the kitchen cupboard ready to go, should that moment of crisis arise. (Note: if you act fast, those notebooks are twenty-five cents at Target. If your peeps are just entering middle school, I suggest you pick up a few!)

And while we’re on the subject, anyone brave enough to share an example of a “wild and crazy thing” you did when you were between the ages of 13 and 17 years old? Anyone? Anyone?

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Posted in Education, Family

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Turn Down The Noise

Posted on September 29, 2010 | 8 comments

I am reposting an article that was published on August 17, 2010 by Carla K. Johnson, a medical writer. I cannot tell you how many times I have sat in the halls at the community college where I work, and have heard students approach before I have ever seen them coming. So many of them wear their ear buds between classes, to get from point A to point B, I have often thought the constant noise has to be having some kind of impact on their hearing.

Turns out, it is.

Study: 1 in 5 US teenagers has slight hearing loss

CHICAGO — A stunning one in five teens has lost a little bit of hearing, and the problem has increased substantially in recent years, a new national study has found. Some experts are urging teenagers to turn down the volume on their digital music players, suggesting loud music through earbuds may be to blame – although hard evidence is lacking. They warn that slight hearing loss can cause problems in school and set the stage for hearing aids in later life.

“Our hope is we can encourage people to be careful,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Gary Curhan of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

The researchers analyzed data on 12- to 19-year-olds from a nationwide health survey. They compared hearing loss in nearly 3,000 kids tested from 1988-94 to nearly 1,800 kids tested over 2005-06.

While the researchers didn’t single out iPods or any other device for blame, they found a significant increase in high-frequency hearing loss, which they said may indicate that noise caused the problems. And they cited a 2010 Australian study that linked use of personal listening devices with a 70 percent increased risk of hearing loss in children.

“I think the evidence is out there that prolonged exposure to loud noise is likely to be harmful to hearing, but that doesn’t mean kids can’t listen to MP3 players,” Curhan said.

Loud music isn’t new, of course. Each new generation of teenagers has found a new technology to blast music _ from the bulky headphones of the 1960s to the handheld Sony Walkmans of the 1980s. [But] today’s young people are listening longer, more than twice as long as previous generations, said Brian Fligor, an audiologist at Children’s Hospital Boston. The older technologies had limited battery life and limited music storage, he said.

[And] some young people turn their digital players up to levels that would exceed federal workplace exposure limits, said Fligor. In Fligor’s own study of about 200 New York college students, more than half listened to music at 85 decibels or louder. That’s about as loud as a hair dryer or a vacuum cleaner.

Bottom line, if you can hear someone’s music playing while their earbuds are in, they are probably listening to their music at too loud of a decibel. And while they may hate you, you would be doing them a big favor in asking them to dial down the noise.

Do you let your kids use ear buds? Do you feel they use them at a reasonable listening level? Would you feel comfortable asking a stranger to turn down his/her music?

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The Empty Blue Desk

Posted on September 27, 2010 | 44 comments

photo from Google images

Fall Semester 2009. Last year. He sat in the back row. In the only blue desk in a room filled with brown desks. He wore a button up shirt every day. He was quiet. Kept to himself. Initially, he was studious and handed in each assignment. His grammar was impeccable, his writing strong. He had a wry sense of humor and wrote about a time when he had worked in a Styrofoam factory. How the white stuff stuck to him, went up his nose, in his mouth, made him sneeze and sputter. He learned quickly he didn’t want to ever work in a Styrofoam factory. We all laughed when he read his piece aloud. Not at him: at his material. He was funny.

I expected great things. In fact, I was so sure he was going to produce great things, he kind of fell off my radar.

About six weeks into the semester, we hit the argumentative research paper unit, and he started to fall apart. He didn’t hand in his intentions for his topic, thus he never had a topic approved. I worried because he didn’t seem to be moving forward. While other students worked on paraphrasing and interview questions for their “experts,” he sat still in his blue chair, looking stiff and uncomfortable.

Finally, I asked him to stay after class. I went to his desk. I asked him if he had started the research paper. No. Did he have a topic? No. Did he need help selecting one, I implored. It was not too late. No. Could I help him? No. Would he let me know if I could help him? No. That was the one that stopped me. Chilled me, actually. No? I tried to look into his face, his eyes for something, but he was looking down, angry at being detained, at the questioning.

“You won’t contact me if you need help?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

I tried to explain to him that up until the research paper, he had an A — the only A grade in the class! He shrugged, underwhelmed. I told him he could still save his grade, the semester, but without the research paper, it would be impossible to pass, especially since he had not met any of the deadlines during the process. I told him I was worried about him.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I understand what I’m doing.”

The next day I received an email from Records and Registration that read:

We regret to inform you that we have been notified of the death of one of your current students (name here, and student number). We have noted this in the student information system so that all parties reviewing the student’s record will be informed.

Please make the appropriate notation in your records.

I was stunned. The appropriate notation? Was there a code I was supposed to put in my book? “D” for deceased? “S” for suicide? I knew I had to have been among the last to speak with my student. I replayed our conversation in my head endlessly. “I understand what I am doing” suddenly sounded much more ominous. I had missed it. I had missed a strong student’s decline from excellence into despair. Something was going on with him, and I had missed it. Maybe the better notation was “IF”: I. Failed. Or IF I had only known.

Later, I learned that my former student’s chosen method was to wrap his car around a telephone pole. He had been driving very fast. Very intentionally. He understood what he was doing.

Meanwhile, I was devastated. None of my students noticed the sudden absence of their classmate because students come and go all the time at community college. People drop out for many reasons: job or family obligations, financial issues, poor grades, poor attendance.  I spent the remaining weeks of the semester staring at that lone blue desk amidst the sea of brown desks and felt desperate.

I have had former students die – through illnesses, accidents, even at their own hand — just not during the semesters I taught them. Last year’s experience was a first for me. I have long known that I cannot transform them all into English teachers (nor would I want to), but I guess I always thought out of all their teachers, I would be the one they might come to if they needed help. I would be the one they would choose.

Last year, I learned that was a ridiculous idea, and that I cannot save them all.

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Posted in Education, Memoir, Sadness/Anxiety

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What My Fingernails Know

Posted on September 21, 2010 | 20 comments

photo by rocket ship @ flickr.com

When every fingernail on both of my hands has broken, I know it for sure: summer is over. It happens to me every year over a two or three-day period. It’s a physical thing; parts of me grow brittle and fall off. Long before the leaves ever change to yellow or orange, my body knows: autumn is in the house.

There may be a rogue “warm day” where the temperatures skyrocket into the 70s. Children put on their shorts and short-sleeved t-shirts. Folks celebrate, go for bike rides and walks in the park. And while I, of course, appreciate the warmth, the glow, the sun in my eyes, I know it is all an elaborate ruse.

The corn has been harvested. My clematis has withered and turned brown. And because I am perpetually cold, I am the first to pull out “the winter bin,” which holds all the hats and scarves and gloves. And once this curly-haired girl puts her hat on, it stays on. Until April. My closest friends know this about me – that I wear hats for about half of the year – but I have to explain myself to each new batch of fall students.

I tell them that I am a summer girl, and while I love the change of seasons – apple picking, pumpkin carving, Halloween and snow-skiing – deep in my bones, I will forever long for those years in New Orleans, Louisiana, where summer was eternal and stretched well into November, sometimes beyond. I tell them that every boy I ever really loved I met in the summer, and it is hard for me to let go of the sun and heat of my youth; that each year, like some weird woman disguised as a tree, I actually feel myself growing a little older, that instead of rings around my trunk to reflect my age, I collect wrinkles around my eyes. Each September, I lose a little of my fashizzle, my sparkle, my shine. It comes back. (It always comes back. It just goes underground and hibernates with the raccoons and the bears for a few months.)

Some of them claim to understand.

(Some of them tell me there is medication I can take.)

Some of them tell me summer isn’t over yet, and that there are sure to be plenty of pretty, warm days ahead.

I don’t care what the calendar says.

My fingernails don’t lie.

It’s fall.

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Posted in Memoir, Sadness/Anxiety

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The Secret To Finding The Best Babysitters

Posted on September 20, 2010 | 10 comments

photo by margolove @ flickr.com

The best babysitters are, of course, the ones who love interacting with your children and know how to take care of them in any circumstance. But now that my son is older, I have found that the best sitters – the ones who not only take care of his physical and emotional needs – are the ones who like to linger around after my child (and usually my husband) have gone to bed so we can discuss life. And books!

Hilary was our first real babysitter. A former student of mine, I plucked her from my classroom (while I was on maternity leave) and asked if she would be interested in regularly watching my newborn on Saturday nights. By the time my husband and I came home, Hil would have cleaned the entire house and be quietly studying for some upcoming, major test. She would tell me some cute thing my child did, and then she would tell me what she was reading: usually something out of a ridiculously heavy science book she was toting around. Always diligent, Hilary was incredibly detail oriented, so I was not surprised to learn that Hilary became a pharmacist — and is now a mother herself!

I met Marioli while strolling at Nazareth College, determined to find another good babysitter, you know, for when Hilary was not available. I had my l’il dude packed into his stroller and was tacking up those little tear-off sheets indicating that I was looking for a responsible babysitter, with expertise in watching young children, who was willing to make my son priority #1 while my husband and I were out for a few hours. While pinning up my ad, Marioli stopped to chat, got down on her hands and knees and cooed at my l’il person. She made him giggle, so – of course, I liked her right away. Standing up, her brown hair bouncing, she said she was interested in the position. Turns out, she had a whole crew of siblings; people she missed while in college. She knew how to take care of children because she had always taken care of brothers and sisters. She was astoundingly entertaining, extremely reliable, my son loved her — and she turned me on to The Poisonwood Bible and we talked late into the night about Shakespeare and Dante’s concept of Hell in The Inferno.

The need for swim lessons brought me to Jen, yet another Nazareth College student. (By then, it had become abundantly clear that with their strong education department, I needed only to hang around the education department for a few minutes, and I would find a solid babysitter.) Jen taught my son to swim. She brought him games to play, books to read, new things to challenge his mind. She played endless hours of LEGOs with him. (Lord, love her.) And then, at night, she would discuss the new teaching standards and show me the rubrics she had designed. She talked about her student teaching experience, the politics – the up and the down days. I screamed with joy when she landed a full-time job, even though I knew it would pull her away from our family. I was just so stinkin’ happy for her.

My beloved Billy went from former student to one of my son’s favorite babysitters. After Billy graduated from college, he worked crazy hours. He worked three or four jobs. Maybe five. Seriously. I don’t know how he did it, but he had to make money to put himself through graduate school, so he worked. A lot. Billy and I would stay up waaaay too late talking about classroom stuff. He recommended books like I Just Want My Pants Back (which sucked) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (which rocked). More recently, Billy expressed frustration about how to get re-designated as “World’s Best Substitute Teacher” to Full-time Math Teacher in a classroom of his own. And, again, I screamed when I learned he just recently landed a long-term substitute position in the district he wanted. Okay, so it isn’t perfect, but it is a foot in the door. Foot. In. The. Door.

Now that my son is in middle school, we are needing fewer sitters. Luckily, Christina lives across the street. A voracious reader in 11th grade, her reading aptitude extends far beyond her years. In fact, everything about Christina is far beyond her years; she has an adult sensibility and has found an escape into the world of books. We have texted about whether or not Ordinary People possesses a “bildungsroman‘ motif. We’ve chatted about Wuthering Heights and Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and Death of a Salesman. As you can imagine, I adore Christina. She is like dessert after the dessert.

So my advice to parents looking for good babysitters? Go to your favorite, local college: one that has a reputation for its outstanding education program — and put up a sign. Ask the requisite questions: (What would you do if my child was bleeding? Choking? Knocked unconscious? Being a major pain in the butt?), and then ask:

What book have you really enjoyed?

If the person before you can’t pull a title out of his or her . . . um, brain . . . pretty darn quick, let ’em go. I don’t care how cute or nice she is, if she is the star of the field hockey team or the school musical. It’s all smoke and mirrors. But if you find a kid who says he has dozens of favorite authors, favorite books, how could he ever pick just one (and he starts tossing out a few titles), you have just stumbled onto a gold mine.

Hold on tight. You just might learn something.

What are your best tips on finding great babysitters? And what are you reading?

tweet me @rasjacobson

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What Our Actions Teach Our Kids About The Earth

Posted on September 18, 2010 | 5 comments

image by D. Sharon Pruitt @ flickr.com

Monroe Community College has a new greenhouse on campus and this past school year, more than 850 students enrolled in 11 courses — from botany to business management — with an agricultural component. Some of these classes made use of the greenhouse, where — with state-of-the-art heating and cooling systems — tomatoes potted in soil thrive near micro-greens cultivated hydroponically in nutrient-enriched water.

This summer MCC launched a week-long Agriculture Summer Camp for Kids. And this semester, MCC students — for the first time — are able to take an introduction to agriculture course. Much of the push for MCC’s closer ties to the agricultural community comes from Bob King, who is the founding director of the Agriculture and Life Sciences Institute at MCC, established in January 2007. “People are more and more concerned about sustainability and how to account for their carbon footprint. And what better way to do (that) than through agriculture?” King is quoted as saying.

I try to remain optimistic, but I find myself wondering if our efforts are merely an exercise in too little, too late? As thousands of gallons of oil oozed into the Gulf just off the coast of my beloved former home of Louisiana, I found myself thinking about how the more we try to fix things, the more we muck things up.

We teach our children they can be anything, that they can do anything. Do we teach them to sit quietly and listen to the earth? To appreciate a blade of grass? To understand how we are dependent on the oxygen produced by the plants and trees around us? Are we willing to spend the extra time to tend our own lawns rather than dump funky chemicals onto our properties to make our lawns look like golf-course greens?

My friend, Jennifer Hess, is working to make change in our local school district lunch program: To integrate healthier choices into the kids’ daily fare; after all, that is what the district health curriculum preaches. She has written an amazing blog on the topic of school nutrition. I am behind her 100%. How far are people willing to go to learn about the effects of hormones in meat and milk? About high fructose corn syrup and its relationship to the obesity epidemic? What do you do when you learn that supposedly vitamin packed soft-drinks turn out to be no healthier than sodas? And once you know, how willing are you to change your purchasing and eating habits?

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