Friday, May 11, 2012

It wound up that it took me a day and half to document and report the incident -- thanks a lot! The funniest (if academic dishonesty can ever be funny) part of this saga is that the student would have failed the class even without the dishonesty, or if it had gone undetected. Not even enough effort was put into cheating to pass.

One thing I have been meaning to write about is that I believe the toleration class showed the most growth over the semester in terms of learning of any semester since I started teaching it in 2005! Also the discomfort zone presentations as a whole were the strongest batch ever. The class had rough patches, caused primarily by immaturity (to be expected when the class has a lot of freshmen) and that there were at least two large-ish groups of friends enrolled. That doesn't happen when there are a lot of freshmen in the fall, as they don't know each other when they register during summer orientation. For a few years I didn't restrict the class to half+ freshmen in the Spring, only in the Fall. A few semesters ago, the restriction was placed on the Spring class as well, but this was the first time the freshmen friend groups issue surfaced. So the evidence of strong learning was even more of a surprise.

Samsonville weekend, going with my mother and my sister to the Saugerties Historic House Tour tomorrow to celebrate Mother's Day. Bob took a vacation day today and totally cleared away the bamboo grass colony behind our fence in Castleton. It's an enormous job that he last did in 2003! I have done it twice since then, in 2004 and again in 2008 (that last time I didn't do a very good job). It is a losing battle in a way, as bamboo grass can't be truly eliminated. But at least this will tamp it down. He did a very good job, so it will be a while before it can really get a foothold again.

Tomorrow he is going to LI to visit his mother' grave. Very sad.

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