An MLA Nightmare

Teaching sophomores how to research is such a hard task. As teachers, we take for granted the fact that we’ve been doing research papers for years and we and it is innate within us to cite sources, and end with a works cited page that shows the standard MLA documentation. This week I found out the hard way that sophomore students are not yet equipped with this tool and need much guidance. If plagiarism were a sin my whole class would be going to Hell on scholarship with gasoline underpants. They had to do a research project on a Chinese dynasty that was set up for them with guided questions to answer. Though the students did an excellent job of regurgitating information in essay form they neglected to give anyone credit for their amazing thoughts and ideas.

I think this is the first time this year that I had to completely re-teach something because I did an absolute poor job because I assumed the students were aware of a skill that they had never been taught. I took this as a lessoned learned because I had to reflect on myself as a student and when I was introduced to this skill. I had realized that even as a college student I never really grasped how to effectively use internal citation and I never (still to this day) knew how to use correct formal documentation in my works cited page as I have to look it up on MLA online every time I do a paper. I could I expect my students to perform a task I continually need help with myself.

Aside from the MLA issue, the students have truly gotten a lot better with their researching skills. Their key words they use in different search engines have become much more specific and relevant to the topics that they are studying. The sites that they use for sources are a lot more credible and they can, for the most part, decipher between relevant and irrelevant material, leading to a much more analytical focused paper.

In my African American Experince class we are teaching a unit on teh African American oral tradition. One aspect of oral tradition that I will be presenting will be on the history of rap music and the roles that it has played and the purposes that it serves for African Americans. Once again I am not the most technologically incluined but I felt that it would be best to let rap tell its own story through lyrics of integral records over teh course of its 25 year history. I was fortunate enough to have a fraternity brother who had a huge library of hip hip music from the birth up to more recent tracks of today. He showed my how to loop the music, fade in and out from song to song so I could get the portion of each song that I wanted to help best tell the story. Being able to mix the songs in chronological order, cutting the lyrics and picking up with another song that completes sentences, allowed students to show the interconnectedness of hip hip music and its ability to tell teh story of a people. Presenting various eras of hip hop will allow the students to better understand how rap music serves as a form entertainmentas well as a vehicle for social political consciousness. Because the studnets are immersed in hip hop culture daily in tehis age of technology, using this type of technology to burn, and stream music to use as a teaching tool will have the students feelt that they are learning culturally relevant material in through a meaningful instructional method. I'm looking forward to presenting this information because I can show off my music "cutting" skills and teach the students something they will be highly intriugued by.