Student/ Teacher conference

I had my first student teacher conference yesterday. I was a little nervous about what I was going to say. I spent almost 5 days grading 25 papers and many of them were really bad. I had written on one paper that the student needed to make an appointment to discuss. I suspected that the student plaigarized and I was concerned that she would cry when I confronted her about it. After class she asked if I had time to discuss right then so I didn't really have any time to prepare. It actually went really well and she did not cry but was visibly upset. She did admit to plaigarizing, which I told her was a violation of the honor code and she could get kicked out of school. We went through the whole paper line by line. Ahh, I survived my first student teacher conference. So I guess it's official, I am a teacher.

As far as my own dissertation is going, I haven't written anything in awhile. The director of the Survey Research Unit (the folks that I contracted out to do the actual survey for me) called to say they were experiencing some problems during the pilot testing. The survey was supposed to take 15 minutes and when they tested it took 50 minutes. Yikes! So I met with him earlier this week to shorten the survey and he is going to test it again. I just get to wait to see how it goes. I am anxious for them to start and finish the whole thing so I can finish writing my dissertation. I've been so busy teaching this class and at work that I've had little time and motivation to write anymore. The clock is ticking. I want to be finished writing my disseration by the time baby #2 arrives and I'm nervous that he or she will be popping the oven early like Laine.