Tag: misery

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No good deed

A former instructor blew the whistle on an English as a Second Language program that apparently tolerated substandard work and plagiarism from full-tuition-paying international students.  The whistle-blower photocopied plagiarized student papers as evidence for her claims.

She “was charged by SUU police for misdemeanor theft of lost property on Monday, and barred from campus upon threat of arrest.”

Thanks a lot, Turnitin.com

Southern Utah is not to be confused with Utah Valley, where a professor lost his job after committing such offenses as asking (senior level) students questions in class “even when they didn’t raise their hands.”

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So I come to school with my shirt inside-out

…after going to my early morning community meeting, also with my shirt
inside-out.  But the day was only starting. So I was in my office and I decided to take a break and read Gawker but just as I pulled the page up a student walked in to
ask about registering for a class, and when he left I realized that
this headline was prominently displayed on my 21 inch monitor.

 

I’m just going to make myself a cup of coffee and pretend that nothing
ever happened. And by make myself a cup of coffee I mean literally
become a cup of coffee so that when anyone comes looking for me
they’ll look in my office and say, “Nope, no one’s here, but someone
left a cup of coffee on the desk.”

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“If you don’t have enough jobs….you cannot train your way to victory.”

 

Higher ed is great.  It’s a public good and a private good.  If it weren’t for higher ed, I’d have to set my murder mysteries somewhere else.

But training displaced workers doesn’t make jobs magically appear; not only that, the time spent retraining may have been better spent looking for employment:

“What is more surprising — because no one else has looked at this question lately anywhere in the country — is that the laid-off people around Janesville who went to Blackhawk [Technical College] are faring worse than their laid-off neighbors who did not.”

 

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The Next Big Thing

As a New York City public school teacher, I’ve been attending meetings for almost three decades. There’s always an urgent problem that absolutely cannot wait.

Students need more test prep. Students need less test prep.

Teachers must stand. Teachers must not read aloud. Teachers must sit in rocking chairs and read aloud.

Students must do all writing in class. Students must do all writing at home.

Whatever the Thing is, we must do it immediately.

Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, and iTunes.

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