Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for January 29, 2013

Do some “Cut & Paste” and a little REMIX and… you’re done. Just make sure to Proof-read it…

Be sure your name is the only one on it!!

No sympathy for Holly whatsoever. With this type of attitude, the best Holly might aspire to will be manager of a fast food restaurant. Here in Asia, Asians will gladly “eat her lunch.”

I’m not thrilled with this story line. Like others, I think she should have been punished more harshly.

Well, ghostkeeper, she is going to school to learn, and I think she is learning about the error of her evil ways.

Most teachers will break major projects into smaller due dates: topic sentence, 3 sources, outline, …Don’t just throw the kid back into the same situation, but structure for success.Sure, do restrict the kid’s activities until the job is done (no trips to the mall), but the kid was overwhelmed.Easy to make it hand written to reduce the cut and paste syndrome.

First, who says the original project wasn’t structured in such a way as to break it down into manageable parts? Holly is one of those kids who try to fly through and probably ignored her outline.Second, this is not college. I don’t believe that a child in middle school should be punished to the fullest extent. They don’t think of consequences. Having to re-do it and getting half credit is enough. Most middle school teachers do not think that these kids will plagarize to that extent and just remind them to site their sources. In high school they start letting you know the consequences.Finally, severe punishment without looking at the student is a sign of zero tolerance going out of control. One size does not fit all. A student who cheats once cannot be given the same punishment as someone who cheats on a regular basis.

Yea, 10 pages does seem like a lot. But if kids learn how to write well for ten pages with out long quotes and repeating themselves then they’ll be doing a great favor to their education later on. I had one teacher say in college that he never assigned a paper longer then three pages because any paper longer then that was usually gibberish.

If we expect more of kids and teach them how to meet the damands we expect then they’ll be able to handle high school and beyond much better.

She ought to learn a valuable lesson here. If she’d done the work the way it ought to have been done, it would be over with now and she may have gotten a good grade. This way she still has to do it and the grade will be an F as some have pointed out. She ought to be thankful to the teacher since now she has to go out of her way to read and grade a paper late after she ought to have been done with them.

again i was always more afraid of the punishment and shame at home than from school.

Too bad it didn’t work out for Holly.

“No easy way through life…”On the contrary, there ARE many easy ways through life. It’s just that not many are willing to share or tell…-People everywhere accidently finds or purposely hunt for them and share while as other keep it all to themselves…-Depending on one’s Wits/Resolve, whether to do or do not, all depends on the spur of moment.In many written and unwritten moments in history, it’s all a matter of who, where, when and how… LUCK also plays a monumental role, if one is ever to be successful, a passing shadow or purposely both.-Lucky you, if life sometimes drops you in the right places at the right times, deserving or not, your easy way handed over on a silver-platter.At other times, life screws around with you, this is where your Wits/Resolve/Luck (all three) comes into play. -The easy ways have always been there, hidden or openly in plain sight… How willing and ready are you to get your hands dirty, be it right or wrong, what is one to do? Simple, bide your time, aided with wisdom and a little luck… Who knows, a person is only limited by his/her’s imagination…-Anyone else who says “No easy way through life…”, has either a very limited imagination and has never tried or is just purposely trying to give you and everyone else a very hard time.

Yeh, with the F she wouldn’t have had to learn anything ordo any work.

@ squirrelchaser – “Who manages fast food restaurants in Asia?”

I couldn’t say for certain, but I will say in all sincerity the answer is probably the elderly. I would say that at least half (and prolly closer to 2/3s) of all fast food employees out here are near retirement age if not older. Most younger employees of fast food restaurants tend to be motorcycle delivery boys, and even there we’ve had a few who were middle-aged. Fast food is not where most kids go for their first jobs in Asia like it is in the US.

A couple years ago I was unemployed for a while and met another American expat who asked me what I was doing for a job. I told him and he said, “Too young to work at McDonalds?” And I was like, “Yeah.”

PLEASE tell me a 50% is still considered an ‘F’!

yes, fifty percent is still an F, but when it’s averaged, a zero will bring a hundred to a fifty percent. Fifty percent will only bring down a hundred to seventy five. It’s how much it brings down the average overall.

Half credit (50%) is still an F. A better F than 0, but still an F.