Very cool work, Judy! If there is ever anything your students are tracking that you are stuck on, I'd be glad to pitch in. What kind of institution do you teach for?

Wow Judy! It's sad that some of your students made it all the way to college without knowing how to properly research a paper. I guess that just proves how much our education system is lacking in certain areas. At least they are hard-working and willing to learn. Good luck with your class!!

As an update on my paper for those who have been following my progress, I found a really awesome treatment method called Parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT). It is similar to play therapy, but both the parent and the child are involved. Sometimes the parent leads the interaction and sometimes the child does. This is facilitated by a licensed professional who guides the interaction, reinforcing positive behaviors and helping to eliminate the negative behaviors which are emotionally abusive. It is guided by the attachment theory (children need a secure, loving, and supportive parental figure in order to develop properly) and the social learning theory (children learn best by being social, interacting, and watching others). It's focus is on children 2-7 because this is when the parent-child attachment is most impressionable and when children "model" the behaviors of others (You're all familiar with this...when they play house or "cook food" with play dough or try to do everything that mommy and daddy do, they are modeling). Very interesting method, I think!

Most of my students make it all the way to college without knowing how to write a paper! It's amazing how much they cheat.

They do cheat! They think downloading some words from a site and cutting and pasting them into a paper is fine. I teach at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY. I only teach once/week for 3 hours so it's not like real work and they pay well.

Angie, those are wonderful you're talking about. You're going to be terrific at this!

As a tutor it stuns me when right in front of me they cut and paste someone else's writing into their papers. With one boy I did get him to credit it all to the original author - he still got full credit for the paper having written none of it himself.

Wow! At my school, if you are caught cheating ONCE, you get kicked out of your major and possibly kicked out of the university if the teacher decides to pursue it further. I wouldn't chance that. Besides, how would you ever learn if you just turned in someone else's work??

These were high school kids - it's amazing. The teachers have mostly given up, I think. If a student takes the time to turn in almost anything, they pass. The system doesn't support the teachers if they start failing kids either.

Sad.

Exactly! Once I started to feel that way, I got ready to retire. It's called "teacher burnout."

Why I am trying to tutor older folks more this year... I want to like my students and support them 100%!

Hey now! Younger students can be fun too. lol :p

Yes - but the ones I get asked to tutor are often having problems because of the way they are being raised. It is very hard to deal with when the parents can't hear what you are saying that might help at home. And I have physical limits that make it exhausting sometimes.

Ah, I see. That must be very difficult to deal with.

The little ones are adorable Angie, but different people just like different age groups.
I could never spend a whole day with little ones. They're too dependent for me, but that's just me.

You can tell a class of high school students that they're annoying you and had better keep the noise down. You can't do that to little ones! They'll cry if you tell them they're annoying you.

I love when I have the middle schoolers with special needs - they are so excited about life!

I am just getting crotchety lately - too many things on my plate. Plus my expectations of myself with small fry are pretty big - I loved having gangs of kids at our house all the time - but I can't do it anymore.

But it's the high school kids who cheat and the college kids who don't care that really get me down.

Now I am more established in this field I can pick and choose my students sometimes - such a treat.

So as an update on Illiad, it sends the article or book to your electronically. It looks like it's just been scanned in as a pdf rather than actually typed into a pdf so you can't search for specific words or copy/paste text, but still, you have the article you need in only 3 days! It worked very well!