My wife is a middle school counselor and between her and her friends I'll have enough doozies to put up here.

First one is from a rugby teammate of mine that teaches High school English in Indiana:

Quote :

"Conversation with a student this morning: Her: Can I just copy and paste a whole paragraph if I put it in quotes? Me: No Her: Why? I am putting it in quotes and citing it. Me: Yesterday I said that your quotes are to be not longer than three lines of your paper. Her: That is soo dumb. Her friend: How is she supposed to put facts and things with out copying them? Me: You, hold on. You can't just copy someone else's stuff. It means you did not work. Her: Who says I can't do this? Me: Me yesterday... Her: You don't make the rules for writing essays in English classes. Her friend: I would just do it, don't ask him questions anymore. Just ask me. Me: I make the rules for essays in my class, and if you do this, I will fail you. Both at once: You can't do that. What is she doing wrong. Me:... I just told you. Try rewriting it in your own words. Her: That's dumb. I want to use what they said (this would be like a good half of their 400 word essay in one paragraph.)I'm going to ask someone else (for directions on my paper???) She gets up and goes to the librarian to ask her from help, or pretty much for the ok the copy and paste this thing. She came out looking all sad and such... then I hear her friend say just do it, he can't fail you. I proceed to yell from like 50 feet away, "Watch me.""

3/3/2017 10:45:12 AM

I once showed a compilation video of ancient Rome as depicted in 20th and 21st century media. There was a black and white clip of Ben-Hur. One child asked me if that was original footage.

No, he was not trying to be a smart-ass.

[Edited on March 3, 2017 at 1:17 PM. Reason : daff]

3/3/2017 1:17:35 PM

let's be serious here guys. People are stupid.

3/3/2017 1:24:31 PM

Wrong thread

[Edited on March 3, 2017 at 1:36 PM. Reason : .]

3/3/2017 1:35:04 PM

Word counts for papers are stupid. The less words it takes to effectively express and idea, the better.

3/3/2017 3:31:07 PM

^I think that opinion is stupid. If you told some kids that, they'd write a sentence or two.

Reminds me when I was in middle school, and we had to read a book, and get up in front of the class and tell the class what we found interesting about it. A kid I knew got up and said "I read _________, and I didn't find anything interesting about it." And then he sat back down.

3/3/2017 4:40:36 PM

I failed to mention that these were 9th graders.

3/3/2017 5:19:03 PM

^^and if they didn't meet the objective of the assignment with their two sentences, then they would still fail. Derp.

3/3/2017 6:38:32 PM

give them homework over summer vacation, that'll show them

3/3/2017 6:47:54 PM

Quote :

"Her: Can I just copy and paste a whole paragraph if I put it in quotes? Me: No Her: Why? I am putting it in quotes and citing it."

So, this part of the conversation has taken place multiple times in my graduate school seminar.

Granted I go to a barely accredited military staff college, but it's still an MA granting institution.

3/3/2017 7:05:09 PM

Quote :

"Word counts for papers are stupid. The less words it takes to effectively express and idea, the better. "

Nope. They're much better than page counts, since most students will write an underdeveloped essay, fuck with the margins, font size, and spacing, and call it a day and get pissed when you tell them their "5 page paper" is really only 2.5-3.

If you're a semi competent teacher, you should know about how many words is takes to adequately express an idea or convey information about a given topic.

But you're obviously not a teacher, so...

3/3/2017 11:54:41 PM

Quote :

"Word counts for papers are stupid. The less words it takes to effectively express and idea, the better. "

I generally ignored word counts in high school and my teachers didn't seem to care. If the paper wasn't complete dogshit that's all they wanted. Word counts force dumber people to use more effort, is all.

The story in OP is kinda dumb too. That teacher did a piss poor job of explaining why you shouldn't just submit a quote as a paper-- it's a question I wouldn't have been able to answer until I took a history class in college.

3/4/2017 12:43:03 AM

"You are supposed to be formulating your own argument otherwise people would just read that dudes paper. If you can't learn to formulate your own ideas into a cohesive message then you should not be passing this English class."

Is how I would have handled that situation. Telling her she can't do it just because she can't is also lackluster education.

3/4/2017 12:36:10 PM

dealing with a 28 yr old at work who doesn't understand % solutions/dilutions

3/4/2017 2:03:56 PM

When I was a graduate student at NC State I was required to tutor undergraduates in math a few hours each week. One time this girl was working through a problem and one step was to do 16+1. She typed it in the calculator, got 18, and kept on going forward with it. I stopped her and said, "Try that again". This time, she got it correct, 16+1=17. She said, "That's strange, sometimes the calculator does that to me".

That's probably the best example I've seen of calculator dependence, but I've seen this kind of thing happen LOTS of times over the years. I swear, some college student are so dependent on their calculators, they could type in 2*3, get 5245, and not see a problem.

3/4/2017 6:53:31 PM

When I was still on active duty and instructing in flight school, you'd be amazed at how some students would struggle with mental math in the jet. Granted, they were under pressure, doing lots of things at once, and/or put on the spot by their instructor, but shit, you'd be amazed at how a few of them struggled. They usually didn't last long.

3/4/2017 10:36:33 PM

My wife teaches kindergarten.
She's ESL-certified so the school puts her in a class with 8 Hispanic kids out of a total of 20.
During the last round of parent-teacher conferences (amid all the "build the wall" shenanigans):

Me: Do the Hispanic parents actually show up? I figured they wouldn't if they didn't know English.
Her: YES! ALL my Hispanic parents came and were genuinely interested in their kids' education and supporting it at home as best they could. We had a translator.
Me: Did all the American parents show up?
Her: I had two no-shows.

*Wah wah waaaah*

3/6/2017 8:27:38 PM

Another math anecdote:

In my calculus classes, we're required to do at least some calculus with Maple software. One time I had the students use Maple software to approximate the Gaussian integral, which, somewhat surprisingly, evaluates to the square root of pi. I then told them to square the result and asked if they recognized the number (this result was at least as accurate as 3.14159).

One student--and this was a college undergrad MATH major--had no idea what the number was. I gave him a hint and told him it is usually associated with circles; he then guessed, "e?" Finally, I think I had to tell him it was pi.

3/6/2017 8:46:23 PM

^
I actually just read about the Gaussian integral yesterday, in this

http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/Alien%20Copies,%20Gaussians,%20and%20Inter-universal%20Teichmuller%20Theory.pdf

it's by this Japanese guy who compares evaluating the Gaussian integral to mastering his own ridiculously hard theory, which like 15 people in the world understand, and which he used to prove https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abc_conjecture

3/7/2017 12:22:35 AM

^^^ a Mexican is a great American, as far as I'm concerned.

I wish we could deport about a quarter of the country in exchange for immigrants.

3/8/2017 1:49:38 AM

^

3/8/2017 10:39:45 AM

Have a few anecdotes regards to Mexican students from teachers.

-First one is from the worst date I'd ever been on. Girl was a kindergarten teacher at a rural school near Greenville, Belvoir. You could tell she was beaten down and had given up hope in her profession and she was maybe 25. Most of her students were Mexican and it was "the parents don't give a shit about their children".

-My wife is at a middle school in northern Indiana that's about 25% Latino. The city is the home of the American orthopedics Manufacturing pretty much but her school still qualifies to have all free lunches. Mexican Parent calls her one day angry and rails about the bad influence on her son from...other Mexicans. She came legally, did the paperwork, cares about her child's wellbeing, the other kids' parents don't, so on. The funny kicker line was "I didn't move to Indiana for my son to continue thinking he was living in Mexico!"

My wife says Latinos are most of the fights she has to deal with, girls actually.

[Edited on March 9, 2017 at 8:52 AM. Reason : .]

3/9/2017 8:46:39 AM

Quote :

"Telling her she can't do it just because she can't is also lackluster education."

I mean, this is middle school. At some point you just have to tell the kids they can't b/c this isn't nam and there are rules.

Quote :

"When I was still on active duty and instructing in flight school, you'd be amazed at how some students would struggle with mental math in the jet. Granted, they were under pressure, doing lots of things at once, and/or put on the spot by their instructor, but shit, you'd be amazed at how a few of them struggled. They usually didn't last long."

Fuck that Duke... My weight-on-ass switch was connected to all of my math and general knowledge questions when I was a flight student in primary... I couldn't tell you my fucking name when I got the bow tie from the missed off the ILS to the BC LOC to the reciprocal runway.
But yes, I saw the exact same thing when I was an instructor in Corpus.

3/10/2017 10:53:48 PM

oh yeah, everyone gets about 80% more stupid once you strap them into a jet. it's just a matter of building up your baseline to the point where you're still OK at 20% functionality, hahaha.

I'm talking about the ones who go absolutely brain-dead and can't do even the most simple math:

"So how much fuel will we land with?"

"Uhhh...uhmmmm...

...

..."

"OK, we're 30 minutes from home. We have 3200 lbs of fuel, and we're burning 600 pph, per side. How much gas will we get home with?"


"Uhhh...uhmmmm...

...

..."


"Dude, we have a half hour to go. Just look at one flow gauge and subtract it from our total."


"Ahhhhh...

...

3080?




"Nope. OK, by the way, do you have any fucking idea where we're going right now? We'll come back to the fuel thing..."

[Edited on March 11, 2017 at 1:04 AM. Reason : ]

3/11/2017 1:03:31 AM