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What "electorate" are you talking about? And yes, I think there are some pretty stupid elected officials.
I was discussing the topic from within this context:
Quote:
The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President
I'm not an english teacher. I can't teach them things like APA formatting that go with research papers.
Next year we're starting with two rules. 1#. NO .com references. If it says wikipedia anywhere on the page, it's getting burned . #2. All information must be supported by a peer reviewed source. My kids looked at me like deer caught headlights this year when I told them they had to have a reference that didn't come from the internet. Apparently, "Research" means type it into google. I find myself scratching my head as to what they've done for research papers in other classes. Surely, they cannot have gotten to the 11th grade without writing one.
Why couldn't they? I was never given a research paper until college. You certainly can teach proper formatting. You've written the papers before, so you know the correct format.
I was discussing the topic from within this context:
Then why are you referring to an electorate? I was talking about students. They're not elected to anything.
As my mother used to say "If wishes horses then beggers would ride". Roosevelt's vision has not come to fruition . The more information we make available, it would seem, the less informed our society becomes. We take information for granted. It's something we can always go get if we need it and Google makes it easy to find. The end result is a lot of ignorance and misinformation is floating around. I'd be willing to bet most young adults don't know how to assess whether or not a source is valid. Older adults would. We spent time in libraries finding reliable sources. My students didn't even know books counted as sources. Most of the works cited pages turned in were three or four .com addresses and they even used Wikipedia after I, specifically, said they could not.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 01-17-2010 at 05:11 AM..
Why couldn't they? I was never given a research paper until college. You certainly can teach proper formatting. You've written the papers before, so you know the correct format.
I repeat, I'm not an english teacher. The only thing I ever got marked down for, in college, on papars I wrote was mistakes I made in MLA formatting. I don't even know APA and I'm supposed to teach it?
When I was an undergrad, we weren't required to use any particular formatting. We were told that anything we would write would go to an editor to be placed in the proper format before it was published and not to worry about it. Then in grad school, everything was MLA and I never had a perfect paper again. I've never lost points for the content of my papers or the quality of my writing. Just for formatting. No, I can't teach APA or MLA or any other formatting. The manuals for the formats are half the thickness of our text book. This would be a class unto itself.
I can't teach what I can't do. I am not an english teacher. When I read a paper, I read for quality of information being conveyed and clarity of ideas. I really don't care if the authors name was properly italicized (or is that the title of the work that gets italicized...or the journal????). Heck, I'm not even looking for complete sentences. In industry, it wasn't unusual to write in a bullet point style using what an english teacher would gig as sentence fragments. You say what needs to be said and are not required to use more words than necessary. At least in report writing. Of course, our reports were not being published and if they were, they would be sent to an editor first.
What I will do next year is ban all .com references. I don't know what I'm going to do about plagerism. I have several papers I KNOW were not written by the student in question. They're, clearly, copied from some source but I can't find the source and the students in question insist they wrote it. I have nailed 3 students for plagerism (I spent hours on line to find THE source used by one of them so this is a costly process). One denied it but the proof was overwhelming (we're talking an entire paper word for word identical to one on the internet including the typo's and misinformation, ugh and the other two didn't realize it was plagerism to copy and paste if they had the web link in their bibliography page. I'm running into a lot of that. My students see nothing wrong with copying someone elses work and passing it off as their own. It's really sad.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 01-17-2010 at 05:16 AM..
I repeat, I'm not an english teacher. The only thing I ever got marked down for, in college, on papars I wrote was mistakes I made in MLA formatting. I don't even know APA and I'm supposed to teach it?
When I was an undergrad, we weren't required to use any particular formatting. We were told that anything we would write would go to an editor to be placed in the proper format before it was published and not to worry about it. Then in grad school, everything was MLA and I never had a perfect paper again. I've never lost points for the content of my papers or the quality of my writing. Just for formatting. No, I can't teach APA or MLA or any other formatting. The manuals for the formats are half the thickness of our text book. This would be a class unto itself.
I can't teach what I can't do. I am not an english teacher. When I read a paper, I read for quality of information being conveyed and clarity of ideas. I really don't care if the authors name was properly italicized (or is that the title of the work that gets italicized...or the journal????). Heck, I'm not even looking for complete sentences. In industry, it wasn't unusual to write in a bullet point style using what an english teacher would gig as sentence fragments. You say what needs to be said and are not required to use more words than necessary. At least in report writing. Of course, our reports were not being published and if they were, they would be sent to an editor first.
What I will do next year is ban all .com references. I don't know what I'm going to do about plagerism. I have several papers I KNOW were not written by the student in question. They're, clearly, copied from some source but I can't find the source and the students in question insist they wrote it. I have nailed 3 students for plagerism (I spent hours on line to find THE source used by one of them so this is a costly process). One denied it but the proof was overwhelming (we're talking an entire paper word for word identical to one on the internet including the typo's and misinformation, ugh and the other two didn't realize it was plagerism to copy and paste if they had the web link in their bibliography page. I'm running into a lot of that. My students see nothing wrong with copying someone elses work and passing it off as their own. It's really sad.
You could teach them how to do what you did in industry. Can you show them examples of papers that you did when you worked in engineering? Unless using APA style is one of your subject's objectives, I don't see any real need for you to be the one to teach it to them. What does your curriculum tell you to do?
As far as getting to the 11th grade without doing a research paper, I'm afraid that is very common. I never did more than a report out of the encyclopedia before then. I don't remember anyone ever mentioning plagiarism until we did a literary term paper in junior English. And that was back in the 70s.
At the school where I have been teaching for 18 years, it has only been in the last few years that seniors had to do a year-long senior project, which includes a research paper. The juniors are supposed to do a paper too, but the teachers have to limit the topics because the students are on such a low level.
When I first started there, research papers were required for both those grades and for honors 10th grade English. The standards slid over the years, and many students graduated without ever doing a paper at all.
Just because you teach chemistry doesn't mean you can't teach anything else too. I'm sure you spend a lot of time teaching the math and reading that students need to be able to do just to understand the subject. Imagine that young Ivorytickler is in your class, and she is planning to be a chemical engineer. Then teach her everything you know she'll need to be successful in her chosen career as you teach the curriculum that is your mandate.
Tell them stories about the experiences you had at that job--product development and testing, meetings, problems you had to work out with the tasks and with the people. It makes the lesson more relevant to the students when they can hear you say, "We used this principle when I was working on...." This might also have the added benefit of helping the students build a relationship with you. This is one of the keys of being a successful teacher in an inner-city school. I can imagine where it could be useful when dealing with your precious snowflakes too.
You could teach them how to do what you did in industry. Can you show them examples of papers that you did when you worked in engineering? Unless using APA style is one of your subject's objectives, I don't see any real need for you to be the one to teach it to them. What does your curriculum tell you to do?
As far as getting to the 11th grade without doing a research paper, I'm afraid that is very common. I never did more than a report out of the encyclopedia before then. I don't remember anyone ever mentioning plagiarism until we did a literary term paper in junior English. And that was back in the 70s.
At the school where I have been teaching for 18 years, it has only been in the last few years that seniors had to do a year-long senior project, which includes a research paper. The juniors are supposed to do a paper too, but the teachers have to limit the topics because the students are on such a low level.
When I first started there, research papers were required for both those grades and for honors 10th grade English. The standards slid over the years, and many students graduated without ever doing a paper at all.
Just because you teach chemistry doesn't mean you can't teach anything else too. I'm sure you spend a lot of time teaching the math and reading that students need to be able to do just to understand the subject. Imagine that young Ivorytickler is in your class, and she is planning to be a chemical engineer. Then teach her everything you know she'll need to be successful in her chosen career as you teach the curriculum that is your mandate.
Tell them stories about the experiences you had at that job--product development and testing, meetings, problems you had to work out with the tasks and with the people. It makes the lesson more relevant to the students when they can hear you say, "We used this principle when I was working on...." This might also have the added benefit of helping the students build a relationship with you. This is one of the keys of being a successful teacher in an inner-city school. I can imagine where it could be useful when dealing with your precious snowflakes too.
What part of I'm not an english teacher don't you understand???? Yes, there are other things I can teach, but, trust me on this, english is not one of them. Not even remotely. I can teach math, physics, chemistry, astronomy, statistics, business, computers, CAD, engineering ,even art but not english, or history. I'd suck at biology too. I know what I can't teach and english is one of the things I can't teach.
As to teaching what I did in industry, I'd get fired. That's not even remotely close to APA or MLA. In industry, formatting was considered irrelevent because it was assumed an editor would put anything being published into the proper format.
What part of I'm not an english teacher don't you understand???? Yes, there are other things I can teach, but, trust me on this, english is not one of them. Not even remotely. I can teach math, physics, chemistry, astronomy, statistics, business, computers, CAD, engineering ,even art but not english, or history. I'd suck at biology too. I know what I can't teach and english is one of the things I can't teach.
As to teaching what I did in industry, I'd get fired. That's not even remotely close to APA or MLA. In industry, formatting was considered irrelevent because it was assumed an editor would put anything being published into the proper format.
I'm not suggesting that you be an English teacher. Go back to this part of my post:
Quote:
You could teach them how to do what you did in industry. Can you show them examples of papers that you did when you worked in engineering? Unless using APA style is one of your subject's objectives, I don't see any real need for you to be the one to teach it to them. What does your curriculum tell you to do?
Is it a requirement of your curriculum to have them do a research paper using APA style? What's wrong with telling the students that the standards in academia and industry are different? That seems like a valid part of career education. (I had to take an entire course in CE, where every lesson involved infusing instruction with career education--GAG) You don't have to put as much emphasis on mechanics as an English teacher would be expected to.
Did you ever have to mentor a new employee? Or a younger student when you were in engineering school? Did that ever include trying to help them with their own research reporting? In a way, this is similar, but at a lower level and on a larger scale.
If doing a research paper is not a part of your curriculum, then you have a choice. In your situation, I might drop it entirely. I'm sure our district does not require research papers in chemistry. For those college-bound students who could benefit from doing one, I might choose to have it as an optional test grade or two, one for the research itself and one for the finished product. That might make it more attractive. When I've done things like this, I may only have three or four who choose to do it, because it is a lot of work. But I guarantee an A, dependent on the product being acceptable, so it can make a big difference in a student's grade.
I'm not inclined to give many opportunities, and only if all the regular work is completed will I even consider granting the chance for extra credit. I do not add points to a student's grade. I only average in an additional test grade that I can easily exclude from the other students' grades.
If you want them to learn about research, you may want to start out by teaching them how to review the literature, perhaps using one of the professional journals that your former industry uses. You could start with just one article per month, to let them see how literacy skills work in the science field.
Our school's "push" for this year is literacy. We've gone back to the mantra I learned in teacher college: Every teacher a teacher of reading. (That was another of the classes I had to take, Reading in the Content Area. Second gag.) Every classroom is supposed to have a library nook. The students still haven't bought into that. They hate reading. And the pacing guides don't allow time for it. It's another emperor's new clothes thing to me.
I teach literacy skills because my students need them and don't have them. I teach numeracy, geography, science, literature, art, music, and anything else that I can squeeze in and still teach my subject. It would be different if I were still teaching math, but I used to always try to incorporate general education into my class whenever I could.
I used to have my students do research papers. When we went to block scheduling and lost 15 hours of instruction per class, it was one of the things I had to drop. It was not a priority the way other objectives in the curriculum were. Perhaps you could drop it in your beginning chemistry class.
Are you the only chemistry teacher at your school? Do they do research papers in the other science classes? Maybe having them do a paper is still a bit beyond them and more relevant to the Advanced Chemistry curriculum.
If you have to do a paper based on your curriculum, then you could ask their English teachers to do some common lesson planning. That is the usual practice at my school where the English, history, and humanities teachers often teach common units. That way, you could guide the students in the research gathering and reduction, and the English teachers could assist them with the actual drafting and revision of their papers.
Just some practical ideas to help. I know that if I had to teach chemistry in conjunction with my own subject, I would definitely need help!
Then why are you referring to an electorate? I was talking about students. They're not elected to anything.
As my mother used to say "If wishes horses then beggers would ride". Roosevelt's vision has not come to fruition . The more information we make available, it would seem, the less informed our society becomes. We take information for granted. It's something we can always go get if we need it and Google makes it easy to find. The end result is a lot of ignorance and misinformation is floating around. I'd be willing to bet most young adults don't know how to assess whether or not a source is valid. Older adults would. We spent time in libraries finding reliable sources. My students didn't even know books counted as sources. Most of the works cited pages turned in were three or four .com addresses and they even used Wikipedia after I, specifically, said they could not.
Simple recourse to an online dictionary is usually sufficient to illustrate most concepts.
Quote:
electorate
Main Entry: elec·tor·ate
Pronunciation: \i-ˈlek-t(ə-)rət\
Function: noun
Date: 1620
1 : the territory, jurisdiction, or dignity of a German elector
2 : a body of people entitled to vote
I'm not suggesting that you be an English teacher. Go back to this part of my post:
Is it a requirement of your curriculum to have them do a research paper using APA style? What's wrong with telling the students that the standards in academia and industry are different? That seems like a valid part of career education. (I had to take an entire course in CE, where every lesson involved infusing instruction with career education--GAG) You don't have to put as much emphasis on mechanics as an English teacher would be expected to.
Did you ever have to mentor a new employee? Or a younger student when you were in engineering school? Did that ever include trying to help them with their own research reporting? In a way, this is similar, but at a lower level and on a larger scale.
If doing a research paper is not a part of your curriculum, then you have a choice. In your situation, I might drop it entirely. I'm sure our district does not require research papers in chemistry. For those college-bound students who could benefit from doing one, I might choose to have it as an optional test grade or two, one for the research itself and one for the finished product. That might make it more attractive. When I've done things like this, I may only have three or four who choose to do it, because it is a lot of work. But I guarantee an A, dependent on the product being acceptable, so it can make a big difference in a student's grade.
I'm not inclined to give many opportunities, and only if all the regular work is completed will I even consider granting the chance for extra credit. I do not add points to a student's grade. I only average in an additional test grade that I can easily exclude from the other students' grades.
If you want them to learn about research, you may want to start out by teaching them how to review the literature, perhaps using one of the professional journals that your former industry uses. You could start with just one article per month, to let them see how literacy skills work in the science field.
Our school's "push" for this year is literacy. We've gone back to the mantra I learned in teacher college: Every teacher a teacher of reading. (That was another of the classes I had to take, Reading in the Content Area. Second gag.) Every classroom is supposed to have a library nook. The students still haven't bought into that. They hate reading. And the pacing guides don't allow time for it. It's another emperor's new clothes thing to me.
I teach literacy skills because my students need them and don't have them. I teach numeracy, geography, science, literature, art, music, and anything else that I can squeeze in and still teach my subject. It would be different if I were still teaching math, but I used to always try to incorporate general education into my class whenever I could.
I used to have my students do research papers. When we went to block scheduling and lost 15 hours of instruction per class, it was one of the things I had to drop. It was not a priority the way other objectives in the curriculum were. Perhaps you could drop it in your beginning chemistry class.
Are you the only chemistry teacher at your school? Do they do research papers in the other science classes? Maybe having them do a paper is still a bit beyond them and more relevant to the Advanced Chemistry curriculum.
If you have to do a paper based on your curriculum, then you could ask their English teachers to do some common lesson planning. That is the usual practice at my school where the English, history, and humanities teachers often teach common units. That way, you could guide the students in the research gathering and reduction, and the English teachers could assist them with the actual drafting and revision of their papers.
Just some practical ideas to help. I know that if I had to teach chemistry in conjunction with my own subject, I would definitely need help!
Yup. APA is a requirement for papers. I am hopeless when it comes to formatting. I'm great with things that make logical sense. Don't ask me to remember when you italicize and bold face or underline whatever it is that I always got marked down for in college. No matter how hard I tried, I always lost 5% for not using MLA correctly( I, finally, just gave up and accepted that I was losing 5% up front and quit frustrating myself becuase I'd swear I had it right and still get it wrong.). Fortunately, those were the only points I ever lost. While I may not be able to explain english, I know how to use it. If it sounds right to me, it, usually is right. I lose it with formatting because I really don't care if the authors name is bold faced or whatever it's supposed to be
It's very difficult to ask english teachers to do common lesson planning since we don't have the same students. IMO, the paper for this project should have been written in english class, since they want it in APA (this was mandated to me not chosen by me) but only science students have to do the research project so they decided they'd do it in their science class. I made it clear I'm about as far from an english teacher as you can get. In fact, it's even worse because sentence fragments are allowed in industry. Most of my reports were written using the fewest number of words possible. It's not unusual to simply bullet point the important information without proper punctuation. NOTHING I learned in college prepared me for writing reports in industry. At least nothing I learned in english class or about formatting. I didn't even cite references because they were, usually, propietary. What was done in my corner of industry won't fly in school.
No, I never mentored anyone though writing reports. It's trial and error in industry. You turn in a report, it's read by the approver and sent back for revisions until it's right. I was never an approver, just a writer. If you don't know how to write them when you enter engineering school, you either figure out really fast or you drop out. I recall learning about research papers in english in high school. In classes like chemistry I was expected to already know how to do one. It wasn't taught in college. They assumed we knew how to write one coming in.
I don't know what format we were taught in high school. Quotes were double spaced with quote marks around them or single spaced if they were long enough with a number for the reference in parentheses after the quote. I don't recall having to have specific formatting for the bibliography page. Just having to have enough information that the reader could find the quote.
Honestly, I had no idea my students had no idea how to write a research paper. They don't even know what research is and think it's ok to cut and past off of a website without giving credit to the source. I had one student, who I caught doing this, tell me "But YOU gave me the website" as if I had blessed plagerism because I gave him a site for the information he needed.
I am the only chemistry teacher at my school. Looking at my student's work, I'm gonna have to say other science teachers don't do research papers with them.
We push reading and writing across the curriculum. I have to admit that I'm lousy at grading english. It Word doens't pick it up, I probably don't either. I'm just not an english teacher. I catch blatant errors but you have to smack me in the face with them. I hear others complain about english usage on this board and I see few issues. Misuse of the english language just doesn't hit my radar. My only concern is that I understand what is written.
They need a new chemistry teacher if they want me teaching APA format. I don't see it happening during this century. I know my limtations and this is one of them. It blows me away when I see teachers who have dual degrees in chemsitry and english or math and english. To me the two are just so opposite I can't fit them both in my head at the same time. If I ever publish, I'm sending my writing to an editor first. I've always thought that's what editors were for.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 01-17-2010 at 02:55 PM..
Simple recourse to an online dictionary is usually sufficient to illustrate most concepts.
LOL, the students I speak of are too young to vote so they are not an electorate.
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. #2. All information must be supported by a peer reviewed source. My kids looked at me like deer caught headlights this year when I told them they had to have a reference that didn't come from the internet. Apparently, "Research" means type it into google.
I find myself scratching my head as to what they've done for research papers in other classes. Surely, they cannot have gotten to the 11th grade without writing one.
