THE TURNIP TRUCK????

The Turnip Truck?

     Honestly, do they think we just fell off the turnip truck? What are they thinking--those students, the kids in biology class, those choir students, the math geniuses with their calculators, those modern living classes, and CAD guys, and the ones over in the band room, blatting away.

There's the usual homework excuses--

I gave it to my friend and she lost it.

I had it in my bag in my mom's trunk and she's at work now.

I accidentally left in on the car trunk and it fell off on the way to

school

The dog……………(of course)

We had a little fire in the kitchen last night.

I left it in my dad's truck--he left this morning for California.

One youngster started the game early in second grade by bringing my fellow teacher a sandwich bag full of little bits of paper, explaining that this was all that was left of his homework assignment, the rest having been eaten by his little brother.

The taking of tests--you hope they don't cheat, and you keep a watchful eye. In addition you make the classroom seating such that it may be a little difficult to look at your classmate's paper. However, by high school, teachers sometimes think they've raised some pretty ethical students by the end of the year.

There was my biology genetics test with four discussion questions. Most of the students had a pretty passable understanding of the material. One table of four boys turned in identical test papers, using exactly the same phrases, which were of course, top notch answers, seeing as one of the four was a class brain, but a sneaky kid at that. I could have seen the other two of them passing the test admirably by themselves, but the fourth had no chance of passing. He was a miserable as well as a lazy student. He of course scored with the others. I flunked all four of them and called them all in. The smart three 'fessed up" and took the grade. They could still get a B in the class. The fourth insisted he did not cheat, did not copy, called in his mother, (a "believer" in anything that boy said), and she and he called for the principal to change the grade, as he had sworn on his grandfather's grave, which he would not do if he was lying, and she cried, and I flunked him.

The coming of the computer has brought great new challenges to teachers who want to make sure the kids are learning. As we all well know, the computer makes it easy to research your subject ! Wait a minute! Turn it in on time? Unheard of for certain select kids. Yet suddenly they have turned over a new leaf, including no misspelled words, sentences that are complete, maybe even a compound sentence and some prepositional phrases in them. There are foot notes in the proper places, and title page and some three- syllable words used properly. A quick check on the library computer on the plagiarism program has the paper found verbatim on "TERMPAPERQUICK.com." ---I really wrote most of it myself. I just used it for a few ideas to help me get started.

On the other hand the computer also does not produce the homework.

We ran out of computer paper and we live too far from Circuit City

The printer ate up all my homework , really!

I pushed "save" and the whole report was gone. I couldn't get it back.

I'm grounded off the computer and we don't have lined paper at home to write on.

We've got a virus at home

My dad took the laptop on his trip.

So what does the future hold for teachers and the turnip truck? Will we finally get off the turnip truck or will we continue on the ride to the market?