Plagiarism ha ha ha

My last blog was sad, so I promised the next one would be funny. Thus today I'm writing about plagiarism. HA HA HA! Here's why this is funny: The other day, a friend of mine sent me an email about her former boss, Fareed Zakaria, being suspended this week from CNN and Time Magazine because he was caught plagiarizing. She wrote, "I'm just sick!"  I felt so badly for her, because she had liked and admired Zakaria when she was an editor at Newsweek, and she truly felt sick at heart. She separated who he was to her - a very fine editor and friend who deserved her praise - - from his plagiarizing, which she found unforgivable.

But as for me, let me tell you, I just relished that he'd been caught. Hooray! What a bum! String him up! He had written an article about gun control, inserted the work of historian Jill Lapore, and never mentioned her name. He just stuck her stuff in his article with no attribution, as if he'd done the research and labored over the sentences. And really, wasn't that just piggish? Couldn't this big shot pundit have shared the spotlight just the tiniest bit by citing the name of the historian in his article? Her name is Jill with a J, Lapore (not "poor" as in poor, but "pore" as in you get it). Not so difficult to spell. And omitting her name was not merely piggish and unseemly but also absolutely unethical and absolutely wrong and something for which, at Andover, we punish students all the time.

But the reason all of this is funny is that any time I hear of plagiarism, I'm reminded of my nadir as a teacher when, ten years ago, I accused a student we'll call Samuel of plagiarizing.

Samuel was in my 10th grade English class, so he was 15 or 16 years old at the time. He was handsome, and he wore big diamond earrings, and he was a wild ride in the classroom, with ideas all over the place - insightful, funny, reckless, sometimes completely brilliant. He lit up the room a lot, but he didn't really have study skills, so my job all year was to tie him to the chair and make him discipline his thoughts. During class discussion, I had him reel in his ideas when they swam away from the literature or the conversation at hand. With his writing, the same thing: he took off splashing, and for me that meant rough waters. I had to read his sentences several times before I could work out his meaning. I could grade his papers only in the morning when I was ON, fresh and alert. Able to struggle through. So Samuel and I had many, many writing conferences. Tell me what you mean, clearly and simply, I'd say. His paper would be on the desk in front of us, riddled with my turquoise ink, and he'd start to "correct" it right there. I'd say no, stop, don't write any more on this piece of paper. Just tell me, in words, what you mean, clearly and simply.

So this is how I taught him, which is a method I call: Bludgeoning the beauty right out of him. But it needed to be done - it wasn't going to help anyone if Samuel's most sparkling ideas fizzled in the muck of confusing syntax.

Thus, when in spring term the class attacked their final big essays, on Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth ("Lily's Demise - Suicide or Accident?". "Wharton's Male Characters - Does the Novel Have a Hero?". "Anti-Semitism in the House of Mirth"--  and by the way what was I thinking assigning these topics to 10th graders? Never mind, they pulled the essays off  - ) in any event, here came Samuel's, which I stuck at the back of the pile to grade in the morning, in the quiet of our empty classroom, with a fresh cup of burning hot caffeine.

The essay was so beautiful I felt nauseous by page 2.  The argument was compelling, written in fine, strong prose enlivened here and there by stunning little turns of phrase so lucid and elegant they honored Wharton. There was no way Samuel wrote this thing. I stood up and walked in circles. I think literally I was shaking my head. I went back and underlined the gorgeous phrases. Then I called Samuel's dormitory across campus. In 6 minutes he was in the classroom. A little breathless from jogging over, and clearly wary.

I said, "Samuel, I have to say something. This essay is extraordinary. It's very, very, well done. It is not, AT ALL, consistent with your usual work, and I'm so sorry, but I have to tell you I'm worried that it's plagiarized. So now, please, be honest with me about it."

Samuel smiled. His eyes filled with tears.  "Do you really think so?" he said.

"What do you mean?" I said. "Do I really think you plagiarized? Yes. I'm sorry, but I do."

"Do you really think the essay is extraordinary?" he cried. "I'm so happy!! I worked so hard on it!"

Okay what the hell? He was overwhelmed with pride, not with shame at all. He hadn't even registered that I'd accused him of plagiarism. But there was NO WAY he could have written this essay. And now, in the face of his reaction, how could I possibly ask him to prove that he had? What kind of a monster was I?

"Samuel," I said. "I'm so proud of you, too. (Oh, ugh. But I was not coping well.) Now I need you to go back to the dorm and bring me the early drafts of the essay. Okay? Can you run on back there and bring me the drafts? I need to see them."

I think Samuel ran back to the dorm to retrieve the essay's early drafts, while I sat in sickening suspended animation awaiting proof that he'd plagiarized or that I'd wrongly accused him. But it MAY have been that Samuel actually had the drafts with him, in which case I didn't sit in suspended animation while he ran back to the dorm, and it's only been in the decade since that I've mulled, a million times, that hideous moment of my own creation in which I waited for only bad news....

He was thrilled and excited to show me the drafts, so together we read them, starting with the first. My heart sank as I read the opening incoherent thesis statement, followed by long, winding paragraphs emphasizing who knew what, which in typical Samuel fashion were a charming hurly burly  of sentences containing lovely little turns of phrase ... and there they were. There were the gorgeous phrases I'd underlined in the final draft. He hadn't plagiarized them at all. They were the marks of his artistry. In the succeeding drafts, he whittled away the surrounding confusion until his points were strong and clear and his essay was beautiful. HIS essay.

Samuel didn't demand an apology from me. He THANKED me for working him so hard in our writing conferences. I, meanwhile, was a blubbering mess: So sorry to have questioned you but I just had to check because really nothing you'd done in the past and how absolutely wonderful after all and blah blah blah. I could have crawled beneath the building.

Every year, a few of my students plagiarize. Sometimes they haven't worked on an essay, they panic the night before it's due, and quite on purpose they cheat. Usually, though, they plagiarize by mistake - they forget they're not supposed to go on the internet AT ALL; they forget to put quotes around the material they find there, or forget to add the footnote. They're not well-paid, famous journalists writing for CNN. They are young; they're just learning.

And I am just learning, too, all the time, from my students. From Samuel I learned to NEVER call a kid in for plagiarizing unless I already have proof, so there's no chance of a mistake, and the kid and I can just face the music and figure out together what went wrong.

I also learned that if my house starts burning down, what I'll race inside to rescue is a basket that contains pictures of my kids and letters from my students, including a note I received this year from Samuel. I'm writing back to him: "No: Thank YOU for everything. Love, Ms. Scott."

My journalism syllabus is coming along, as, per usual, I'm trying to cram in lessons that show why a country needs a free press (it's not obvious to my students - they've never really thought about it before) with lessons in how to report a news story (skill work, legs on the ground, and utterly new to them), and then write it (tight, declarative sentences, no drama or grammar errors) with, now, new media added to the mix, plus guest lectures and films, and so, per usual, I can just feel myself spilling over the limit I have on their time.

My first teaching job wasn't even teaching, it was coaching a jv lacrosse team at Suffield Academy in Suffield, Connecticut. What a fantastic little school. Not so little actually. Anyway Bill was teaching math and coaching there, and when I married him and moved to campus, it so happened they needed a JV lacrosse coach, so I was recruited. We had a GREAT team, especially because of Courtney Robinson: fierce, fast, and skilled, this little maniac was an extraordinary athlete, and on the JV only because she was just a freshman. She had short dark hair and sparkling eyes and resembled Demi Moore young. And she was funny. A little wild. Anyway I had a brilliant coaching strategy - get the ball to Courtney, so we kept winning, and I couldn't wait for practice every day. Then one day, practice was lousy. Some girls showed up late, plus they didn't remember what I'd taught them the day before, and I was incensed. Bill sat me down. He said, Hey, you're a great coach, and your enthusiasm is priceless. But before practice, the girls on your team are thinking about Spanish class or math, and the minute they leave you, they have to switch gears and think about their art projects. Eh? You have to remember where you fit in. They have bigger lives; you're just a piece. Don't spill over.

This is why Bill's such a great soccer coach. He's succinct, he doesn't spill over, and his athletes tend to wish they had more soccer time, whereas plenty of athletes actually wish their coaches would back off a little bit, and their teachers too - because we all demand too much. We want the kids to be alive and ON IT in our classroom, and then to bear down on the homework we assigned, and then to think about our subject whenever - and often. My journalists this fall will have to read the assigned chapters and report and write their stories and blog about them and read the New York Times and follow Rachel Maddow and Mitt Romney and meet me on Sunday afternoons to watch "All the President's Men" and  it's already too much.

I have to, for the 25th time, go back and retool this syllabus. I can't spill over -- it's not fair to the kids, plus it's bad education: it's practically asking them to pretend they've read what they haven't, to pipe up in class with half baked comments, faking it. Let me tell you, Courtney Robinson did not fake anything, but she could royally fake you out on the lacrosse field. Once, I brilliantly decided (you can tell where this is going) to teach a defensive tactic by demonstrating it. Courtney, I said, cradle the ball past me here, and everyone, watch as I stop her by boxing her out thus - oh. Never mind. I did not stop her. I tried to move as quickly as she, stepping deftly, and I fell on my ass. Seriously it was like a movie. She blew past me so quickly she blew me over. Then she gave me a hand back to my feet without ever losing the ball from her crosse. She was so cool, this kid, and now it occurs to me that there's one area of teaching in which I've learned to spill over, and I learned it from Courtney.

Now, although it's entirely unrelated to any official teaching or coaching I do, I tell my students various things their parents have told them, little lessons they may have ignored, doing their teenaged job of ignoring their parents, so I try to spill the lessons into their little heads, just in case. After graduating from Suffield, Courtney Robinson was killed in a car accident. I never knew the details. I thought it was a country road, maybe, in Nevada maybe. I don't know if there was booze or excessive speed or what. I don't even know if she was driving.

It doesn't matter, what matters is I tell my students every year and I'm going to tell them this fall: Tonight please read Chapter 4 in your text, and work on your rewrites, etc. etc., AND ALSO: write me a promise you will do whatever it takes to be safe in a car. Who knows what maniacs are out there, speeding or drunk. Be on the lookout. Obviously you don't ride with booze in the car. But now also Do Not Text. Drive like an athlete - be alert. Who knows, if I had ever asked Courtney to write that down .... Who knows. Chances are nothing. But who knows.

Our team that year was undefeated. Our later defeat and grief was tempered the tiniest bit by Courtney's mom's creating The Courtney Robinson '88 Outdoor Leadership Program at Suffield, in Courtney's memory.

Here we go, my first real blog. I will now add to the stockpile of 500 billion of them out there on the internet already, which I have to wonder who reads. Everybody's so busy writing, it seems to me, they can't have much time for reading, but this fall in my journalism class I'm requiring my students to write a weekly blog, so I better do it, too.

I'm a little paralyzed at this keyboard since I've never published anything that wasn't revised a million times as I figured out what I was trying to say and to whom, and how to make the reader feel what I wanted them to feel about it and so on etc. The craft of writing - sit at the keyboard till little drops of blood pop on your forehead. Now on this blog, with no actual assignment or deadline or editor waiting, with me just flanging away at these keys, I seem to be saying anything in any old way, which I then of course delete delete delete, but that's not the way to write a blog. I must just let it rip. That's what I'll tell my students anyway.

The only blogs I read religiously, which my husband reads as well - we have a lively little competition about who can find the latest blogs first - are written by our son Nate, who's a 26 year old writer, whose blogs are about films and music and his young man's world, and they are so fine, and so funny, I can't really let him see me writing so badly here - I'm just too ashamed. But I know he'll see this, because he and his sisters are the only people I signed up to be alerted about the existence of this blog. Ha! And that's another thing: I don't know how the blog works exactly, either. I would like to embed the address of his blogs here but I don't know how, but you can find them if you google Nathan Savin Scott, and then the name of his blogs: "You Can't Go Home Again," (musings) and "Shouts from the Balcony" (movie reviews to crack you up), plus he posts on Thought Catalog and other places. I'll figure out how to import his blogs pretty soon, I hope. I need to learn how to work this whole blog before I start teaching in the fall....

The thing I want to import most is the song, "Honey, Come Home" by the band "The Head and the Heart." My three kids all connected me to this song, and it's GORGEOUS.  Nate introduced me to the song, and then my middle one, Tess, went to the concert last week in NYC, where the songwriter explained he'd written the song for his parents who are divorced. And then Haley, my youngest child, set me up with Spotify and put it on a playlist for me ("Mamala"). In the lyrics, the narrator says, "Come home," to a spouse who's left:

Honey, come home,
My stubborn ways are behind me now....

.....Do you remember every block, every minute of every walk/ 
we used to take/we were young/ so many years ago?
And I think of all this time/ that we've wasted with all our fighting
and I cry/ just want to die with the one I love...

Oh God I love my vices but they've taken me to places
that I never thought I'd go
And I am ready to be home...

I was jogging yesterday listening to this song, and I felt this enormous rush of gratitude for my kids, and their friends who were in my classes just a few years ago, and my students now, because they have the sensibility embodied in this song. And of course I felt grateful especially for this little genius of an artist, who wrote this song, whose lyrics are a poem of longing to repair a broken world. Never going to happen, really -- that is what a person my age would say   -- no kid's longing for his parents to reunite is going to fix a crappy marriage  -- but still. This young songwriter, singing to his parents, he just nailed them. Once upon a time his parents took those walks, and then they fell into their vices, and now they are old, and they are afraid, and they need each other. This is the human story. The Greeks taught us this.

Plenty of my students' parents are divorced -  ugly and complex messy divorces - and my students buck up against the pain of all that, and they also see how flawed and frail their parents are, and somehow this gives them hope. They will do better, plus they understand how it happens, how life brings out the worst in people, even people truly filled with love. They are so young, these kids, I don't quite understand how they get this wisdom. I think they must get it from being sandblasted with so much incoming information from the whole globe constantly that they instinctively triage what they can possibly know and understand, and they focus on understanding what's in front of their faces - the streets where they live, the friends they love, and us, their parents, so grown up, and so deeply, deeply flawed. They envision us singing to one another, and then coming on home.

They have so much to teach us. And that's the theme of my blog: it's going to be about the things my 3 kids, their friends, and my students at Phillips Academy teach me, which is a lot, all the time. (Okay one of you please start now by teaching me how to properly work this blog. Should I put it on Facebook? Or Twitter? I could do that - if I could figure it out).

 Hi to my very own children and the 4 of their dear pals who will read my blog. I'm starting a blog! I will require my journalism class to do so this fall, so I figured I'd better do it too. I will write the first proper blog later today, with content inspired by a story Haley told me yesterday in the car about the song "Honey Come Home."