S., who earned himself an earlier post, is paging through his binder for a paper he has lost about nine times. The binder reminds me of a molting adolescent songbird, stuffed to bursting and shedding. (The discovery of clear plastic sheaths to protect individual papers has saved this boy’s hide, and I would recommend that any teacher who has recurring problems with wrinkles, rips, food stains and footprints have an available stack of these in the classroom.)
As he riffles through the binder, without looking up, he asks, “Ms. S, what is that thing where you’re super organized? It’s like a, I don’t know, a disorder?”
I try to put myself into his synapses, and then grab it. “You mean, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?”
“Yeah,” he says matter-of-factly, papers flying everywhere. “I ain’t got none of that.”
Awhile back a student of mine, in seventh grade English, turned in an assigned poem. I loved its simplicity, its rhythm, the way the lines broke on the page. What made my heart even more glad was that it was from a kid I’ve been trying to reach for several years now.
Anyway. I was so proud of him that I posted the poem on my teacher blog earlier this week. And that’s where I found out he hadn’t written it at all. He had plagiarized “Kick, Push,” and confirmed that he had done it deliberately when I asked him about it. And not knowing your rap until this week, I had no idea.
It’s been an interesting journey, these past few days. I’ve cried once or twice. I’ve rethought how I give and support assignments for second language kids. I’ve been surfing your sites, pulling up your stuff on Youtube. I’ve fallen in love with your work. And I’ve rejected completely the punitive coercion that could serve as the consequence for plagiarism in my school. That stuff won’t work. This kid is too smart.
The only thing that will work, I’ve come to realize, is if, somehow, he talks to you.
This might strike you as overkill. What is plagiarism, after all, next to cheese heroin addiction, or teenage pregnancy, or gang bangs? But I would argue that it’s just this kind of tiny, critical choice, and how it’s handled by the adults involved, that can tip the balance in a pre-adolescent kid. Towards a life that is ruled by a living sense of the dignity of human beings, or suffocated with the stale mediocrity of selfishness. Towards a life fortified against amorality, or one that invites it in—in small ways now, and perhaps much worse ones later.
So now is the time.
I don’t really know what I am asking you for. Five minutes on speakerphone would do it. Perhaps a letter. Something that makes you real to my kid. Something that it is not yet, or may never be, within my power to do– try as I might.
Because you see, it’s not enough that you’re like a god to him; it’s not enough that he listens to you constantly and can recite your raps with passion and accuracy from memory in the middle of class. None of it matters—not the poetry, the positive role model, or the message—unless he internalizes it enough to know that in the destructive habit of taking the short, easy way out, he cheats everyone. You. All of us. And most importantly, himself.
I can’t guarantee that this will save the world. Maybe not even this kid. But it might. Will you bank on hope, with me?
Please give me a call.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’ll be sending this via snail and email to Lupe’s production company, 1st and 15th Entertainment. Anyone else got any bright ideas? Contacts I can use? How much does a full page ad in the Chicago Times cost?
“Would the fact that a character swears a lot be an internal or external characteristic?” asks my student S. today.
“Well…” I respond. “Is swearing something he is, or something he does?”
“Something he does.”
“Then it’s external. But it’s a clue as to what is internal.” I try to bump up his Bloom’s Taxonomy a bit. “What is inside the character that makes him swear a lot?”
S. thinks. Then he looks at me and literally twinkles.
“The devil,” he says.
Perhaps I should have titled this post “How To Hide Giggling Silently During an Entire Class.”
Next up: Ed Deci’s Intrinsic Motivation Theory.
The line of words fingers your own heart.
~ Annie Dillard
The writing, uploaded or embedded material, material linked to via this blog, and any other content whatsoever on or linked to this blog, is content approved by and/or representative of myself alone. It is not representative of my district, its employees, or my students or students' families.
