Helicopter Parents

About a month ago I scored a set of essays for a couple of classes of sophomores responding to a prompt about sustained allusion to "myths, the Bible, or other works of literature" as a way to enhance meaning. The novel they were studying was The Grapes of Wrath and one young lady wrote an essay about Steinbeck mentioning John Dillinger. Now this essay wasn't badly written, but try as I might I couldn't accept John Dillinger as a sustained allusion to myths, the Bible, or other works of literature. I wrote a note on the student's paper indicating that she had not addressed the prompt meaning she didn't answer the question she was asked.

Her mother came in to the school to raise holy hell with the teacher. "I teach writing at the university and this is a good essay!" The teacher said that after she got rid of the parent she took the essay to a department meeting to solicit other opinions on whether my judgment was correct or whether the mother's wrath would necessitate a change in the score. The faculty agreed with me that the parameters of the prompt were specific and the student had strayed too far outside the lines. Well, this week the teacher brought more essays to my house and told me what had happened. That probably wasn't such a good idea since the first action I took was to pull out the student's current essay on the use of setting in The Scarlet Letter to enhance meaning. Once again, the student wrote something sort of out of sync with the prompt though not to the same degree as the previous essay. This time her claim is that Hawthorne uses New England and England as primary settings to show that harsh judgments stifle humans. I had not read The Scarlet Letter in a couple of years (I do try to re-read all these texts periodically to refresh my memory), so I dragged out my copy because I couldn't remember any action taking place in England. Sure enough, Hawthorne makes references to England but the characters do not reside in England during the action in the book. It is a setting but the exiguous references treat England more as a notion of a utopia than a physical place. The student never indicates that at all, writing as if the characters were in England at least some of the time. Beyond that there are more obvious and apposite settings that fit with Hawthorne as a Romantic novelist and a transcendentalist with a strong bias against Puritan views. This student could have written a stronger essay making a different comparison. Still, given the mother's reaction to the last score her daughter received I was torn between scoring this essay as I thought it should be scored or puffing up the score a couple of points. Deciding that the extra points would not mollify the mother I gave it the score I thought it merited but if I hear that the mother complained again I think I might just resign my position. Since my husband and I are lucky enough to have plenty of money for our retirement, I don't do this job for the money. My net pay for scoring essays after our tax bite is well below $7 per hour and the tutoring I offer is free.

Anyway, another frustration is the Froggy quilt. My husband picked the background fabric and I don't think there is enough value difference. I will have to add a great deal of embroidery to make everything show up. Besides that it seems to lack sparkle. Look at the picture and let me know what you think. There is still one flower and a large fish in the water to add to what is here already.