NaNoWriMo is Upon Us

National Novel Writing Month has begun. I'm already behind. Personally, I think there should be a national student paper reading month, and every single person over the age of 30 should have to read at least 60,000 words of student writing within that month. Ughhh. Do you know how much mushy brain would be out there if this actually did happen? The world as we know it would be no more.

One bright spot from one of today's classes: students were completing peer responses. One of the better students was responding to the paper of one of the weaker students. After reading the paper, Better Student pulled me over and said, "Please read my response. If I'm out of line tell me and I'll change it." I read the response and smiled. Better Student didn't mince words and basically told Weaker Student the paper was plagiarizing another person's work and would fail if proper citations were not given. In addition, Better Student told Weaker Student the paper was unorganized, having disregarded all of the teacher's suggestions written on the first draft. "You just did my job," I told Better Student. I love it when one student gives it to another student. Sometimes this actually works better than if I had been the one to make the comments. It'll be interesting to see what Weaker Student does with the paper now.

And now, now I am into the second batch of papers that I've been avoiding for the past few days. It's like a fresh, new wind filled my sails this afternoon; I just felt ready to tackle these papers, and I'm finding they actually are pretty good. I'm really enjoying reading them.

As for NaNoWriMo, I guess I'll have to wait to start the next great American novel until tomorrow.

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