The first email at this page is from May 10, 2016, the day after the school had scheduled a meeting for me at the Dean's office in response to my reports of being harassed and stalked by a student from my Chinese class. The meeting was scheduled on and for May 9th. After the meeting was scheduled, I was sent an email with a letter charging me with disruption and harassment. What I had thought would be a meeting in which I could talk to the Dean about being harassed and stalked was instead a meeting in which I tried to defend myself against lies and counter-accusations. Even my attempts to defend myself were initially characterized by the Dean as her "not being able to get a word in edgewise," and therefore a sign of mental instability.
I already published the emails that were exchanged between me and the male teacher who falsely accused me of harassment; they are at my YouTube blog. I published them last year.
I was cleared of the harassment charge; if I weren't, I would have left the school then. Although I didn't really agree with the disruption charge, I knew that I had to accept the verbal warning for it to end the conflict with the administration.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Elkins,
While you are calling me crazy, and despite every euphemism, that is what you and the college are doing, you are piling an inordinate amount of stress on me and on my support system.
You might not realize that my advocate gets up every morning at 5:30 a.m. She gets her children to school. Then she works all day with homeless women, providing a service to them and to the world by giving them a place to be. She also spends a huge amount of unpaid, personal time and effort on the needs of her clients.
She and I are both scrambling to meet all of the college's demands. I was already having trouble concentrating for weeks before our meeting yesterday, because of the imploding situation in my Chinese class and my concern that it could send my college career careening if not into ruin. Contrary to the story of which you seem to be implacably convinced, several times over the past weeks I have thought about seeking help at an impatient, psychiatric crisis unit. It is horrible to be bullied, to ask for help, and for the abuse to be denied and then turned around on the target; that's what has happened to me, as far as the Chinese class is concerned.
I have already sent you an email saying that I was disappointed by the 94 that Professor Reed gave me, but that I'm not worried about my overall grade. All I was doing when I sent him the email about that paper in particular was saying that I was disappointed. I suppose, considering the cordiality of our email correspondence just before I got that grade, I could have simply asked "Why did you take 6 points off my paper when it was so much better than my last paper and I did so much work for it?" I wasn't ever going to write to him again, anyway. If how I stated my disappointment about my grade was an overreaction, his response was a vicious overreaction. He gave me no warning at all for it; not then, or at any time during the semester. It is one thing for a student to write an upset email that threatens nobody; it is quite another for the teacher who gets that email to deflect all of the student's objections by damaging her academic career.
I don't know if I'll be able to get my tests done well and also get ready for the hearing next week that will have such a huge impact on my academic career.
I slept for 3 1/2 hours last night.
Lena Kochman
_________________________________________________________________________________
Ms. Kochman,
Thank you for your follow-up email. Yes, I would like to receive a copy of the email to the class. I am available to talk via phone today between 3pm and 5pm,,, the 9:45 time was for this morning. I attempted to reach you at that time but it said I did not have a working number. I look forward to talking with you this afternoon if you are available. I can be reached at 617 228-2436.
Sincerely,
Julie Elkins,Ed.D.
Dean of Students
Bunker Hill Community College
jelkins@bhcc.mass.edu
617-228-2408
-----Original Message-----
From: Lena Kochman
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2016 11:13 AM
To: Julie Elkins
Subject: Thank you.
Dr. Elkins,
Thank you for your email of today. I really appreciate it.
I will call you tomorrow at 9:45 a.m. I hope that it's all right if I try to work out the logistics of a meeting for next week after you and I have spoken tomorrow. It means phone calls that I have to make and emails that I have to send.
I also got an email today from Professor Huo, which she sent to the entire class. It has been my impression for a while that she and the main student perpetrator of bullying in her class email or otherwise talk to each other and that he truly has taken over her class. They really seem to have formed an alliance and I think he "informs" her based on whatever mischief he wants to perpetrate.
It was appalling how little interest he had in the class or in anything other than being disruptive and getting a feeling of power from it.
Really, I only spoke out in class a few times about his behavior, and that was after him loudly clearing his throat and coughing literally every few minutes for an hour or two hours at a time. It seemed as if all he was there to do was make loud noises. I suppose there's something to be grateful for that they weren't the fart and burp noises that perhaps he made throughout classes a decade or so ago. That last sentence is speculation.
I never thought that this situation needed to get as bad as it did. He doesn't seem physically dangerous, although if the result of the school decides to make me the official culprit of the situation in one way or another, I know that a lot of students will hear about it and I will be vulnerable to a lot more harassment by a lot more people, and I will also be vulnerable to worse things than harassment. Youth is not just about not being as focussed as an older person; it also about judgement. Even older adults have to sort through narrative perspectives to get an understanding of a situation. As much as younger people might sometimes like to act as if they have no respect for authority on their own behalf, that doesn't mean that they don't automatically accept the official story about someone else whom they don't really know.
I'll forward you the email that Professor Huo sent me today. She can't dictate to me what the terms of the class from which she has gotten me functionally removed are going to be.
Lena Kochman
__________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________
From: Julie Elkins
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 10:34 PM
To: Lena Kochman
Cc: Kevin J Stevens
Subject: Re: Retaliation for objections to harassment and unfair grading
Ms. Kochman
I am available tomorrow at 9:45 am to talk via phone. It would be fine to meet again next week after you have completed your finals. It was my understanding from your emails that you were requesting a board hearing. We can meet again in an administrative meeting as we did this week instead of the formal hearing format. Either format is available to you. This is a choice that all students have per the code of conduct. I am confident that we can work this through together via the process.
Dr. Julie Elkins
Dean of Students
> On May 10, 2016, at 9:41 PM, Lena Kochman <lkochman@bhcc.edu> wrote:
>
> Dr. Elkins,
>
> My advocate and I need more time to address the college's accusations. When we left your office yesterday, our understanding was that we would schedule another meeting with you next week, not a hearing.
>
> Suddenly today, you sent me a letter that was truly offensive in its tone and everything that it said about me. There was nothing about my email to Ms. Liriano this morning that was threatening, rude, or wordy.
>
> It seems to me that Bunker Hill made its decision about whom it was going to believe before my advocate and I ever walked into your office.
>
> I have a psychiatrist. I have worked with her for some time. I am not some mad elephant running around campus, but that's how you're treating me
>
> You also seem to be pressing very hard for the stereotype of "bright person who has social interaction problems and doesn't have the insight to admit it" to be applied to me. You are wrong. You are mistreating me. You are ruining my academic career.
>
> If you insist on playing the crazy card, there is also such a thing as discrimination based on the perception that someone has a disability. I could be crazy as a loon and that would be no guarantee that I wasn't getting bullied by malicious and dishonest people; in fact, it would make their behavior and the administration's subsequent hounding of me and destruction of all of my hard-won achievements even more despicable.
>
> There's no reason for any of this. All I asked was that the harassment in my Chinese class stop, and that my writing teacher fairly grade my papers. What's happening to me is retaliation, not appropriate disciplinary action.
>
> Lena Kochman
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Dr. Elkins,
It seems to me that the main bully, and perhaps one or two of his friends in Chinese class, are guilty of the following violations of the Massachusetts Community College System:
14: Breach of peace
17: Disruption
20: Acts of dishonesty, b. and c.
22: Abuse of the disciplinary process, a. and h.
I have thought about what you said to me during the meeting at your office on May 9th. It sounded as if some of the students who went to talk to Ms. Liriano said positive things about me, which Ms. Liriano excised in their entirety in her written report. There is not one positive thing about me in Ms. Liriano's written report, which it seems to me is going to be a part of my permanent school record. It doesn't seem to me that anything positive that was said directly to Ms. Liriano by anyone will be there, in writing, in my school file to counteract the false, distorted and overwhelmingly negative things that are written in that report.
I was never going to try to get Professor Huo fired. When I told her "I hope you get fired; it's what you deserve," it was after weeks of trying to resolve the situation through appropriate channels. It could have been that I should have met with Ms. Liriano and Ms. Satham when Ms. Liriano had offered that chance to me in her email on May 2nd, but I was thinking then about how much studying I needed to do that week. I also felt that all the situation needed was for the main perpetrator in Professor Huo's class to be told, by a real authority, to behave appropriately for a college setting, for any college setting. I thought that Professor Huo was the appropriate authority to tell him that, and it was of concern to me that not only did she not seem to want to take responsibility for keeping order in her classroom, she had raised her voice to me in class and gotten angry at me for asking her to do what the chair of her department had told me that he would tell her to do, which was to say what she needed to say to the bully and his friend to get the disruptive noise to stop.
What Professor Celis, the chair of the language department, thinks now is something I can't know. He probably wants to support his staff, has never gotten an unpleasant side from Professor Huo, or from the student who persistently bullies me in her classroom, and has heard from her that I'm in trouble. Professor Huo's email from today indicates that she is making sure that the entire class knows that it's my behavior that's being scrutinized, and that I am the one who is being accused of doing something wrong, not her. If anyone in the class was thinking about contradicting the bully's story about me and Professor Huo's story about me before today, I'm sure that nobody from that class is going to risk contradicting those stories now.
It could be that my having forwarded the email that I wrote to Ms. Liriano yesterday to Professor Celis and to Lee Santos Silva, the chair of the English department, has created some difficulties for me. I hope those difficulties will be temporary. It could be that neither of the chairs knew that I was being accused of harassment by two teachers, and that information made them question if I weren't really the problem. However, the way that Ms. Liriano's report characterized me made me think that it was unlikely that she would be as diplomatic about me to other people as she was in her only emails to me, and, considering the seriousness of what the school is charging me with, it seemed worth the risk. I'm sure that Professor Santos Silva has never seen most of the email correspondence between Professor Reed and me, and it also seemed to me that Professor Celis should know what I had to say about Ms. Liriano's report, which is mostly about Professor Huo's class.
It could be that Professor Reed impulsively sent the email about me to Ms. Liriano. As long as he withdraws his accusation, and my reputation isn't harmed by it, I don't think more needs to be done about it.
Section 19 of the Code of Conduct says nothing about needing written permission from anyone to make either an audio or video recording in a classroom. I had Professor Huo's verbal permission, which I had asked for at the beginning of the semester. I had made that request in class, in front of everyone in the classroom. When I recorded, which I didn't even do for the first half of the semester, because the class was not problematic then, there was nothing secret about it. I had the tape recorder visible on my desk at all times. I often picked it up and showed it to people who got to class late, in case they hadn't noticed that it was there and recording. I was far from being disliked by everyone in that class, and I'm sure that nobody was afraid of me. Professor Huo's tone of voice on May 6 was not the tone of voice of someone who was fearful; it was the tone of voice of someone who was angry and who was also sure that I would have to do what she said.
I turned the recorder off on May 6th as soon as Professor Huo said "You won't be allowed to record any more." I did not say anything to object to her direction not to record any more.
I didn't turn off the recorder so that I could yell "I hope you get fired," or obscenities, or anything else. I knew that the rest of the class time on that day would be consumed by the main bully's bad behavior, his enjoyment of the power given to him by Professor Huo's enabling, and an intolerable escalation of his disruptions, so I left.
When I left, I went directly to the library so that I could write an email to Ms. Liriano. I told her what had happened, omitting nothing. I also wrote that I thought the situation in that class needed an intervention, and I asked to meet with her. I am happy to send you that email, or any other, and I enclosed a copy of it with the letter that I brought to the meeting at your office on Monday of this week.
The recordings from April 29 and May 6 are objective. They show what really happened, which couldn't be farther from what was described in Ms. Liriano's report.
It could be that some of the students who went to Ms. Liriano's office went there hoping to have some conflict resolution, rather than to accuse me in my absence. From what you said in your subsequent meeting with me, it sounds as if more than one of them described me as being intelligent and motivated. Considering how those statements were finally told to me by you after going through Ms. Liriano, it seems as if what might have happened was that Ms. Liriano was offended by my original refusal to meet with her and that perhaps her feelings had interfered with her ability to hear positive things about me from anyone.
Nothing in either of her emails to me ever indicated the vehemence of her feelings toward me.
Professor Huo can't tell me after the fact what I have to do with the recordings that I made before she told me to stop recording on May 6th. I had her permission, no objections by other students, and also, it seems to me, the legal support of the Massachusetts Community College System's Code of Conduct.
Thank you for all of your time and help.
Sincerely,
Lena Kochman
__________________________________________________________________________
From: Lena Kochman
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2016 6:42 PM
To: Julie Elkins
Subject: I have not behaved inappropriately.
Dr. Elkins,
Did Professor Reed ever send you the part of our email conversation from February 4, 2016, of which the last line of his email to me is "Anyhow, thanks for your thoughtful consideration to all of my emails!"
In the February 4, 2016 email conversation, I had included the information about the possibility of his doing volunteer teaching for homeless men because he had, in a previous email on February 3, 2016, told me that he and his wife were planning to try to volunteer at a homeless shelter in Boston. I have that February 3, 2016 email from him, to which part of my response was:
"That seems like a good idea. Do me a favor and don't volunteer at the Pine Street Inn until I have moved out of there; it would be weird for you to be serving meals to me and my homeless friends. I'll probably visit the place after I move out, and might also get dinner there sometimes. I don't know if you and the missus have heard of the Women's Lunch Place. That is an amazing organization with an interesting history. They are a day program for homeless women that is open from 8-2, Monday-Saturday. (I think those are their hours; I haven't gone there for a while.) I won't be there, so there won't be a conflict of worlds for me with it. I also think you'll be amazed by the place; it started in the basement of the church where it still is, but it got renovated a couple of years ago and you wouldn't believe how nice it is and how much they do."
Did Professor Reed send you my February 7, 2016 email to him, which was part of an ongoing email conversation between us, in which part of what I wrote was:
"All of that being said, I think that I should also say that I think that you and I have been sending a lot of emails to each other. You haven't made me "uncomfortable," but I think that it's important that we respect teacher-student boundaries. Even without the male-female factor, email makes it easy for people to develop a personal relationship online that can set them up for misunderstandings and even things like hurt feelings. If I tell you something personal, for example, in an email about being homeless, and then you say something in the classroom that seems callous to my personal situation, which you don't mean to be offensive but that is something that you say while not keeping in mind every last thing that I have ever written in an email, then one or both of us could be burdened by anger or worry or something that has nothing to do with the subject of the class. That problematic dynamic could also happen the other way, if you start to think of me as a confidante or a friend. I think that we should keep our emails school-related and as sporadic as possible."
I did not bombard him with emails after that, or at any time. We had a lot of email correspondence at the beginning of the semester, which my email of February 7, 2016 addressed, to which he agreed and we both respected. If I have fought for my grades, that's my right as a student.
After what you told me today, I would be surprised if he has sent you absolutely every email that he and I ever wrote to each other, or even most of those emails. I am happy to provide you with the entire record of my email correspondence with Professor Reed, and also with copies of my two formal, academic papers for his class, to which he respectively gave an 88, in February, and a 94, in May of 2016.
In class on February 29, 2016, Professor Reed told the class, and I quote, that he had "stopped the grades at C-," and that he had given academic credit for "effort." I sent him an email after that class, on February 29, 2016, when I saw that he had given my paper an 88. Even if he had given the February paper a low A, I would not have objected. For him to give it a B, when it was one of the few grades we were going to get all semester, and when he had announced to a classroom of people, of whom I knew the majority to be almost illiterate, that he had "stopped the grades at C-" upset me. I felt that I had a right to be upset, and I don't think that I expressed my disappointment inappropriately at that time, or at any time.
Not having access to a computer other than the computers at school throughout the entire semester meant that writing papers was the most difficult part of my school year, logistically. However, my second formal paper of the semester was much improved over the first one, and for him to give it only 6 points more than the first paper of the semester seemed to me to be unreasonable, especially because I'm sure that his standards for grading the other papers in class did not change.
I have not accused Professor Reed of anything except applying a grading standard to my writing that he did not apply to anyone else's writing in the entire class.
It is outrageous that he has accused me of harassing him.
Of course I'll never contact him or Professor Huo ever again; why would I want to?
Lena Kochman
________________________________
From: Justin M Reed
Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2016 12:09 PM
To: Lena Kochman
Subject: RE: Helpful opinions
Hi Lena,
One other thing--I want to emphasize that I truly enjoy teaching and that my priority as a teacher is to help improve my students' writing. I hope I didn't come across too harshly when saying teaching was my day job, etc. What I wanted to emphasize is that I am first and foremost a writer, and thus that I am on the side of your writing (as opposed to your grade). I want to put my writing skills to use to help my students above all else--that's my end goal in the classroom, even before bringing appreciation to literature. But that's a close second :).
Anyhow, thanks for your thoughtful consideration to all of my emails!
Best,
Justin
________________________________
From: Lena Kochman
Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2016 11:43 AM
To: Justin M Reed
Subject: Helpful opinions
Hi Justin,
I have a tendency to lecture people. Sometimes I don't know if I'm doing that or just giving a helpful opinion.
I read your email to the class about class participation. I understand that it's awful to try to teach a class when only half the people are listening; that's a problem that teachers have all over the world. I don't think your demeanor in class is apathetic or condescending. I will say that you made it clear on the first day that you think of teaching as your day job and that what you really want is to be a writer. I also don't know that you can blame people, particularly young people, for being the products of a system that hasn't consistently succeeded at engaging them.
During the first workshop that the class had, when we gathered in groups that were formed by the people around us, there was a young woman whose paper concerned me. Every sentence had several grammatical errors. I wrote all over the paper; I wasn't rude to her, I just corrected all of the grammatical errors that I saw, and there were a lot of them. She doesn't seem stupid; it seems to me that what has happened is that no teacher has ever stopped the entropy of her learning process. She's not even writing at an 8th-grade level. I think she can do a lot better, but not if someone doesn't step in to address the problem. If she writes a grammatically correct sentence, it's probably by accident. I don't know how she would respond if you took her aside and expressed a serious concern that she has to improve her writing skills; she might be offended, but I think it's worth the risk because she can't write. The only way that she could have gotten into the class was that nobody has ever cared enough to stop passing her through without teaching her to write.
I also wanted to mention a program that I thought you might really like. It's the Glass House Shelter Project.
This is some information:
Ms. Julie Anne Batten
Massachusetts, United States
Julie Batten, Visiting Fellow at UMass Boston/Center for Social Policy, Visiting Professor of English at Salem State University, and Executive Director of the Glass House Shelter Project, brings accredited college level reading & writing courses into shelters in the Greater Boston area.
I think it was this lady who visited the shelter a few weeks ago. She seems to get a lot from helping homeless people to learn to write, and they have gotten a lot from it, also. She hasn't worked with homeless women before, which was why the director of the women's side of the shelter, Catita Perron, asked her to speak to homeless women at the Pine Street Inn. Some impressive things have happened; Ms. Batten said that one of her former, male students, whom she met at a homeless shelter, went on from her class and is now graduating from the University of Massachusetts with a Bachelor's in Neuroscience.
There's a poster for the project on a bulletin board at the Pine Street Inn. I got the email address and thought I would send it to you:
glasshouseshelterproject@gmail.com
It seems to me that you could bring a lot to homeless men in particular if you could teach for that program. Shelters are full of people who have never had the chance or never knew how to access opportunities to learn to express their thoughts coherently and meaningfully. It's dreadful how little the system does, for the most part, to encourage homeless people to think that an intellectual life is available to anyone who does the work to get it. Even places that have training programs focus entirely on service work; maintenance, housekeeping, culinary arts. There are people who are happy in those professions; however, to offer nothing except those opportunities is indicative of a system that does not think of homeless people as real human beings, no matter what it says to the contrary.
I don't know how the Glass House Shelter Project works, or who teaches for it other than Julie Batten. I just thought that you might like to send them an email to find out more about it and possibly do a few classes for them if you have time.
Lena
__________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________
From: Lena Kochman
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 12:39 AM
To: Julie Elkins
Subject: The Pine Street Inn, my academic career, and my future
Dr. Jelkins,
The men's and women's sides of the Pine Street Inn are separate. Professor Reed could have volunteer-taught homeless men at the Pine Street Inn, or any homeless shelter, without ever running into me, even if I had continued to be homeless, which I didn't. I have lived in my own apartment since March of 2016, and the apartment was pending when I wrote the February email to Professor Reed about volunteer-teaching, in response to his stated, written interest in volunteering at a homeless shelter.
I can bring a copy of my lease to our next meeting if you need proof that I am housed. I can also bring pictures of my apartment, where I pay my bills every month without fail, do my laundry, cook my meals, and do nothing to anyone.
The terms that you seemed to be offering me to be able to continue my education at Bunker Hill sound humiliating. I didn't object to your suggestion about how to finish my tests for Professor Huo's class, because there seems to be nothing to be gained by insisting that I cease to be treated as if I am the problem student during yet another futile few hours in her actual classroom, surrounded by bullies and those who have witnessed Professor Huo's enabling of the bullies and hostility toward me. However, what you also seemed to be saying was that my ability to continue at Bunker Hill past this semester will be contingent upon my being closely monitored, even to the point of having someone assigned to me to walk around the school with me to ensure that my supposedly erratic behavior doesn't disrupt school proceedings. If that's not what you mean, then it at least sounds as if you plan to assign me to someone to whom I will have to report on a regular basis, and to whom anyone else who wants to say anything negative about me, true or not, will also be able to direct his or her "concerns" about me.
Everything about the way that you talked to me today indicated to me that you had taken everything that was said about me before I walked into your office at face value. Your tone of voice, your characterization of me to me, your stated lack of interest in the objective observations that I was able to suggest, such as making sure that you had gotten all of the emails that were ever sent between Professor Reed and me or reading the papers that I felt he had graded according to a much more stringent standard than anyone else's paper, all showed me that you seemed to have no intention of investigating the accuracy of the perspective that I tried to share with you.
Even if the college's retaliatory charges against me are dismissed, there was nothing in our meeting today that indicated to me that my concerns about how I was treated in Professor Huo's classroom will be addressed. I'm not worried about my grade in Professor Reed's class; I was initially worried about the 88 that he gave me for my first formal paper in February, because we didn't have a lot of grades for that class. As I wrote to him in my email about it at that time, my transcript to a 4-year school will not have a description of his grading system which, as he said when he gave us the grades for those papers, included his "stopping the grades at C-" and giving academic credit for "effort." There is no way that he gave me academic credit for "effort" for the final paper that he got from me in May. I can live with the 94 that he gave me for the second paper; I just thought it was a mean thing for him to do.
If the accusation by Professor Huo and the students whom either she or one of the bullies in her class must have directed to go to Ms. Liriano's office after I left Professor Huo's classroom on May 6th is allowed to stand, every student in school who hears about it will either think that I truly was the problem, or will know that the bullies were successful and will decide to have some fun by harassing me, or worse. I will be totally vulnerable to that type of abuse for the duration of my academic career at Bunker Hill, which will probably end as soon as another bully or enabler makes another retaliatory accusation about me.
If Professor Reed's accusation is allowed to stand, I will be at a serious disadvantage in every class that I have, also for the rest of what will undoubtedly be my truncated academic career at Bunker Hill or anywhere else that might be persuaded to take me with all of this on my record. Having been a working adult for years, I know that whatever anyone says about confidentiality will not stop Professor Reed's besmirching of my reputation from following me and endangering my academic career and professional future.
I freely admitted to Ms. Liriano and in my letter to the Dean's office when I gave you today that I shouldn't have told Professor Huo that I hoped she would get fired or that she deserved to be fired. Having tried for weeks to get the harassment addressed through proper channels, and being confronted first by Professor Huo's denial, and then her anger, and then what seemed to be her attempt to make the entire situation appear to be something of my doing, and then to be harassed by the same student as soon as I walked into the classroom on May 6th, and to be spoken to so abruptly by her while she ignored the perptrator's behavior for the 4th week in a row; it was a bit much. However, there is not on word in the report of what those students told Ms. Liriano that is true. I never swore in class. I never ridiculed Professor Huo. I never tried to dominate other students or rearrange the class structure to my personal liking. There are so many vicious lies in that report, as it was related to Ms. Liriano and then to you, that it would make this email much longer if I tried to refute them all. It was shocking.
Despite what most of the public's perception probably is, homeless life requires a lot of interpersonal skill. People who are hypersensitive, unaware, or prone to being gratuitously argumentative don't thrive.
I hope that I'm be able to continue my education at Bunker Hill without being harassed or retaliated against for asking to be treated with a normal amount of respect. I am already registered for Precalculus for the first summer session and for Introduction to Geography for the second summer session. I also had hoped to get some work study hours this summer; my hope that I could work at the school is why I chose only to take one class per summer session. I know that work study opportunities are sometimes possible, and I didn't use up nearly all of my work study hours during the Spring 2016 semester. I thought that 18 1/2 hours of work plus 4 classes while living in a homeless shelter would be a lot. Although I applied at the Language Lab at the beginning of the semester, and was fortunate enough to be hired, my supervisor, Carmen Magana, was nice enough to let me wait to start working until I had moved. I never told her I was homeless; I told her I was moving. As soon as I got the apartment, I emailed her and told her I could start work.
Lena Kochman
__________________________________________________________________________
From: Lena Kochman
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 7:16 AM
To: Raquel Liriano
Subject: I couldn't believe it.
Ms. Liriano,
I had a meeting with the Dean of Students and the Director of Student Services yesterday, where I was given a copy of your report about me.
First of all, I want you to know that I know that you are not responsible for the things that other people tell you that aren't true. Also, because of what was told to you, you probably feel uneasy about having me write to you, so I want you to know that anger is not prompting this message; my shock at the lies that were told to you is.
Did you ask the students from Professor Huo's class who went to your office on May 6, 2016 how they all got your name and knew where to go to talk to you? There were only a few students in class on that Friday morning; one of them was the main perpetrator of the bullying, and at least one other was another male student in the class who has done some of the bullying and encouraged the behavior of the main perpetrator. Professor Huo enabled the bullying for weeks. She also got angry with me in class on April 29 and on May 6 when I tried to get the bullying to stop; she raised her voice to me during both of those classes, and her behavior showed clearly to me and everyone witnessing the situation that contradicting her denial about what was happening would jeopardize any student's reputation in her class. Probably what happened after I left class was that she then gave the bullies total run of the class to say whatever they wanted about me, and the other students, having seen what had happened to me, felt they had to agree. Then, she or one of the bullies who had the name and office number from Professor Huo's previous contact suggested that everyone go over to your office to tell or support horrible lies.
I never swore in that class or any other that I have had this semester. I didn't have "random in-class outbursts"; I ignored the bullying for hours and entire Chinese class sessions at a time, for weeks, before I said something to the main perpetrator about it. My verbal attempts directed at the main perpetrator to get the inappropriate and deliberate, disruptive noise to stop were brief, clear and as respectful as possible considering how vicious the behavior and how dishonest and jeering all of his responses to my request that it stop were. I never "rambled on cursing." I never stopped other students from asking question. I never refused to participate in in-class exercises with other students. I NEVER "disrespected and insulted Professor Huo for her limited English" or did anything else of which I was accused as was reported to you.
When I saw from your report that Professor Reed had contacted you, I asked the Dean if she had gotten from him the entire email correspondence that he and I had during the semester. It is not my impression that either you or she has copies of that correspondence. If you had, he never could have successfully made his accusation about me, which was truly out of nowhere and terribly damaging for no reason.
I understand that the matter is now designated for the Dean's Office to address. I wanted to thank you for the time that you have spent trying to address it, for your polite and professional emails to me despite whatever you might have been thinking of me as a result of this situation, and to tell you that I am saddened by how inaccurate the perception of me that you have been given by others is.
Please feel free not to respond to this email if you would rather not. I wrote it so that you'd be able to have my perspective, not to accuse you or to interrogate you.
Lena Kochman
__________________________________________________________________________
rom: Julie Elkins
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2016 5:12 PM
To: Lena Kochman
Subject: Re: Possible harassment by another friend of the bully
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2016 5:12 PM
To: Lena Kochman
Subject: Re: Possible harassment by another friend of the bully
Lena. I am sorry this happened today. You can report this incident to campus police for an immediate response or to file a formal report. Let me know how I can be of assistance
Dr. Julie Elkins
Dean of Students
On May 12, 2016, at 4:40 PM, Lena Kochman <lkochman@bhcc.edu> wrote:
Dr. Elkins,
I am at the Language Lab, trying to get my essays and oral presentation done for my Chinese class. I have been sitting at the computer that I have used for the past several hours.A few minutes ago, I heard throat-clearing from behind me. I looked behind me. A young, Chinese or Chinese-American male student was sitting directly behind me at the table that is behind the table where I'm sitting.He grunted 3 or 4 times, getting louder each time, within a few minutes.There are a lot of empty seats in the Language Lab right now. There are only a few people in the entire Lab.I sent a couple of emails about it to Carmen Magana, my supervisor at the Language Lab. I also asked another staff person at the Language Lab to try to observe the situation. That staff person was kind enough to ask the student to move to the other room in the Language Lab.This is the third time over the past few weeks that I have been harassed by a male Chinese or Chinese-American student in the Language Lab, my place of work at school. Once, it was the main bully from my Chinese class who also harassed me at the Language Lab; I described that incident in the letter that I brought to your office on May 9th. The two other times, including today, it was the same pattern, of a Chinese or Chinese-American, male student choosing to sit directly behind me and making throat-clearing, coughing and grunting sounds over and over.I didn't recognize the student or students who weren't the bully from my class, or look closely enough at him/them to know if it's one person or two people who have done this on these separate occasions. It seems at least possible to me that these other Chinese or Chinese-American students who seem to have harassed me at the Language Lab this way are friends of the main bully from my Chinese class. They really think it's funny.Lena Kochman
_________________________________________________________________________________
Dr Elkins,
I'm sorry that we have crossed signals this week. My phone often doesn't get emails for my school email account, I don't have a working computer at home, and I felt that I should be at home yesterday to try to recuperate from what's been happening and also to try to practice for the Chinese oral presentation that I have to record today.
Professor Huo has never before had any policies like those that she has uploaded to Moodle in the past week. I also think that her policies are in conflict with what the school's Code of Conduct says about which types of recordings are allowable.
I would like to take the Wednesday, May 18, 12:00-2:00 p.m. meeting time.
I was glad that you offered me the opportunity to speak to you on the phone, and I am sorry that I wasn't able to do that.
Today, I'll be in the Language Lab all day, practicing and then recording my oral presentation, and also writing my essays for the written part of Chinese class. Tomorrow, I will probably have to buy a flash drive and upload everything to it before 12. Then, in the afternoon, I really have to study for the math final that I have on Saturday, which I haven't had a chance to do all this week.
If you wanted to talk on the phone next week, before the meeting, I'm sure that I will have the time to do that. It might be easier if you called me to try to set that appointment time. I changed my phone number last week. My number is (617) 995-5282.
I called your office this morning, and was told that you wouldn't be there today or tomorrow. I hope that you have a good weekend.
Lena Kochman
__________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Elkins,
I can't know what the administration's thoughts are at this time about my situation, so I think I should restrict what I say to my thoughts about what I would like to happen.
It has seemed to me from the beginning of the semester that Professor Huo is neither a bad nor unintelligent person; I think she is insecure. She mentioned frequently that she didn't think her spoken English is very good, and I think her insecurity about it probably makes it worse. If I were to speculate, I would say this:
-China being a place not known for human rights or support of the individual, teachers in China maybe aren't very nice to students generally. It could be that she isn't sure how to approach a classroom in the United States, not wanting to be the sort of teacher that she had but not knowing what to do consistently.
-She mentioned that she was at Harvard for a while. Having some knowledge of what elite schools are like, where obvious brilliance is what everyone strives for to such an extent that someone who is not yet proficient at something will not be able to do anything except suffer, my guess is that Harvard was painful for her.
I think that her insecurities made her susceptible to ingratiation from the bully and also made her incapable of risking being disliked by applying discipline to the people who actually needed it. I think it was easier for her to blame me, which she shouldn't have done, but nobody's perfect.
Even before things got so bad for me in her class, I was thinking that it might be good if someone from the administration approached her to try to help her make her teaching methods more effective and more consistent. I also thought that anyone who tries to talk to her about it has to be careful because she is so sensitive about it, and she might just quit if she feels like she's being thought of as a failure.
The main bully is someone whom I can't pretend to like. His total lack of concern for how disruptive he was, his obvious enjoyment of my distress, the relentlessness of his behavior week after week, and the fact that he was only ever stopped by some sort of display of power, rather than by empathy or reason, prevent me from liking him. However, many young people do not have the perspective to understand what it means to be my age and to have had a lifetime of setbacks. He is not honest, but he might not have realized how damaging his lies were going to be to me, or why it matters when you make a real attempt to get someone kicked out of a class or a school for no reason other than that it amuses you to try to do that. How the school wants to address his lies and the lies of those who supported him is at the school's discretion; as long as he never bothers me again, I don't have an investment in what specific disciplinary action is taken about him. Sometimes people can be helped to develop into better people if they are dissuaded from continuing to be truly awful at a young age.
Unfortunately, his behavior is not of his own mental creation; other forces are at work that are larger than me and larger than the school. It is difficult for many people to know right from wrong when the powers that be are confusing them. If I were to choose an adjective for how I would like him to be approached, the adjective that I would choose would be stern rather than severely punitive. That's for his sake, and for my safety and to prevent future retaliation, if not from him, than from whoever hears about it and prefers to continue the dishonest narrative that portrays him as the victim and me as the aggressor.
I am not accusing anyone of having intent to physically harm me; I want to be clear about that.
It is getting to be late. I think I'd rather not write about anything else at this time.
Thank you for your help.
Lena Kochman
__________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Elkins,
In one of my first emails to you, I told you that I would forward you the couple of emails that I sent to Professor Santos Silva at the beginning of the semester. I don't think that I did that before today.
Lena
From: Lena Kochman
Sent: Friday, February 26, 2016 1:49 PM
To: Santos Silva, Lee
Cc: Justin M Reed
Subject: Public grade school
Sent: Friday, February 26, 2016 1:49 PM
To: Santos Silva, Lee
Cc: Justin M Reed
Subject: Public grade school
Professor Santos Silva,
It seems to me that the language problems of the average Bunker Hill student are foisted on the college by the public grade school system. The students should know how to write better than they do by the time that they get to college.
I went to public schools from 1st grade until the end of high school; however, I did that in Vermont, where I'm from. Vermont is known to be one of the whitest states in the country, in terms of demographics, which probably has something to do with the startling inequities between their public schools and those around Boston which are producing college students who don't know how to write a coherent paragraph.
I have also talked to people who work in public grade schools in the Boston area. It seems like the resources aren't there to graduate literate students; it's not fair to the students and it's not fair to the teachers who get all of those students in college.
Lena
_________________________________________________________________________________________
From: Lena Kochman
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2016 8:00 PM
To: Santos Silva, Lee
Cc: Justin M Reed
Subject: Illiteracy
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2016 8:00 PM
To: Santos Silva, Lee
Cc: Justin M Reed
Subject: Illiteracy
Mr. Santos Silva,
I am a student in Justin Reed's College Writing II class on Monday and Wednsdays at 1:00 p.m. I like the class. I am a biotechnology major, which is a change for me. I am taking College Algebra for STEM majors, which is a prerequisite for my other science classes. I am also taking a couple of language classes. It's a lot of work, because I don't have the math background to do anything except plod through the work every week without ever leaving anything to the last minute.
Although I like all of my classes, and am able to understand and finish the material when I have the time to do it all, I don't always have the time to do it all. I know I'll pass everything; I do tend to feel sad that I'm not able to do as well as I'd like to be able to do.
That aside, I feel like I have to tell someone this; every piece of writing that I have read by other students so far in the writing class is not college-level work. It's not Professor Reed's fault; these students are passing through their other writing classes without knowing how to write. At first, I thought it was just one student who wasn't even writing at the level of a student in his or her first or second year of high school. As the weeks have passed, and I have read things written by other students, I have yet to read anything written by another student that is free of serious grammatical errors, let alone cogent as a paper with a theme and supporting arguments.
I am not complaining on my behalf; I am concerned that the students in the class should already know a lot of things about writing that they don't know. The class is College Writing II; it's not supposed to be a class about basic reading and writing skills.
I also don't know how I would address the general illiteracy of those students if I were trying to teach the class. Clearly, the standards that have been applied to their work before they got into the class are epidemically low. They all passed their previous writing classes because the majority is illiterate, so the least illiterate person always gets an "A," and that's what has set the standard; I don't know how else it could have happened. If I were trying to teach the class, I would feel pressure to pass people whose writing is terrible, because failing most of the class would cause an uproar. The students who failed would turn to the administration, saying "Nobody ever had a problem with our writing before," and then my job would be jeopardized.
It doesn't really help students who can't do the work to tell them that their work is good, though.
It's upsetting. After reading several more papers by people who do not know how to write anything, I asked how far along they were in school; they told me that they were in their 3rd semesters. They're not even beginning students at this college.
Nobody asked me to write this message; Professor Reed hasn't complained to me about anything or said anything to me about the painful illiteracy of most of the students in the class. I just wanted to mention it to someone; it's not fair to the students or to society for the situation to continue, and yet I know that it's a monolithic problem.
Lena
__________________________________________________________________________
Good Afternoon Lena,
This email is to concern that we are in receipt of the envelope that you dropped off. Thank you for your assistance and cooperation throughout this process.
Best regards,
Kevin J. Stevens, M. A.
Director, Veterans Center and Student Services
Bunker Hill Community College
250 New Rutherford Avenue, Bldg. B Room 206
Boston, Massachusetts 02129
Disclaimer: This email may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If you suspect that you were not intended to receive it, please delete the message and notify the sender as soon as possible.
From: Lena Kochman
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 11:32 AM
To: Julie Elkins
Cc: Kevin J Stevens
Subject: Chinese final
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 11:32 AM
To: Julie Elkins
Cc: Kevin J Stevens
Subject: Chinese final
Dr. Elkins,
I left my Chinese final with the administrative assistant at your office a few minutes ago. I'm sorry if that was the wrong contact person. I know that you had sent me an email specifying who the contact person was a few days ago, and I knew when I read that email that I should make an note and not depend on being able to find that email an hour before the final was due. It was my mistake.
Lena Kochman
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Elkins,
Thank you for your message. I didn't have previous knowledge of what it discusses; it could be that you sent me an email about it that got deleted from my phone before I read it.
I am truly grateful for the attention that you giving to this issue.
I hope I'll be articulate in this email; I was awake for most of last night, trying to study for my math final.
My situation is really unusual. I feel like I make the same mistake over and over, which is not to try to talk directly to the people who are in charge of a place where I have never been before, as soon as I get there. If I had gone to talk to you at the beginning of the semester, maybe some of the issues that have developed during this semester could have been avoided.
People can't really know what I'm like until they spend time with me in person for a while, and, in some situations, the reputation that precedes me is so negative that, if there are other issues inherent in the situation, the negative perception takes over. Although it's always unfortunate when that happens, this is not the first time that a sort of frenzy or hysteria has taken over a few people who are then able to cause me problems.
If Professor Huo didn't accurately read the situation in her classroom, and placed blame on me when she shouldn't have, she's not the first authority figure to do so and she probably won't be the last. It's always a struggle; all it takes is one really malicious person to disrupt everything, which is what happened with the male student who is so childish and the couple of students in the class whom he incited. Nobody from that class ever harassed me outside of the class, in other parts of school, except for him. Hopefully, an intervention with him will put a stop to his behavior toward me outside of that classroom, which will also cause the behavior of people who were not in the class and who are possibly his friends outside of Chinese class also to stop. Once they hear that he's been told to stop, they'll probably stop; I think the fun of it for them is pretending that nothing's happening and even getting me in trouble when I tell them to leave me alone. If they know that they can't get away with the behavior or with pretending that it's not happening, from the example of that main bully being spoken to, they'll probably stop.
The situation escalated for weeks, and I think the other students didn't know what to do; it's never good, but it's not a unique situation that the authority figure decides to try to address a bad situation by just trying to get rid of what seems like the polarizing person, and Professor Huo decided that was me. She made the wrong decision, but I feel like being very punitive toward her is only going to make her and possibly other faculty resentful in the long-term; a lot of people outside of this school hate me, and she's not the first adult or authority figure who hasn't known what to think. It's true that the people out there who hate me, hate me for terrible reasons, but society does not always develop in a positive way, and when that happens, it can be confusing for people observing it.
I tried to do as much of the assigned work for that class as I could. In addition to the recordings that I uploaded to Moodle throughout the semester, with my final essays I included all the workbook pages that I did in the character workbook this semester; she had assigned at least one row of copied characters for each character, for Lessons 1-5. I filled in everything, several lines' worth, of every character for Lessons 1-4.
I included those pages because I felt that I should supplement my essays and presentation by showing how much work I had done this semester. I think that most people in the class probably didn't do most of the assigned work.
I don't know if you'll be able to accurately assess my work if you can't contrast it to other work that was turned in by a representative sample of the class, both from the students for whom Chinese or another Asian language is the first language, and from the students for whom English or another, non-Asian language is the first language.
Thank you for your help and all the time that you are spending on this issue.
Lena Kochman
From: Julie Elkins
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 5:47 PM
To: Lena Kochman
Subject: CHN 101
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2016 5:47 PM
To: Lena Kochman
Subject: CHN 101
Dear Lena –
Thank you for submitting your final materials for CHN 101 today. As you know I have been working closely with Dean Catalozzi regarding the issues you have raised in this class. After consultation we have determined that the best course of action is for the college to develop an alternative method of assessing your work and assigning you a final grade to ensure that you are graded fairly. As a result please be aware that you will not be able to access your grades on line over the weekend. This should be remedied during the early part of next week.
Have a good weekend and good luck on your math final tomorrow.
Dr. Julie Elkins
Dean of Students
_________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Elkins,
While I was leaving the school a few minutes ago to go home and study for the math final that I have tomorrow, a young, male, Asian student walked past me, holding his hand over his nose as if he smelled a bad smell. I don't recognize him.
It seems to me that it ought to be clear to everyone that racism from me has no part in this situation. Why would I take a Chinese class if I hated Asian people?
Right before that incident, a female student from my Chinese class walked past me without acknowledging me at all. She is someone whom I never really got to know, but we were friendly for the first half of the semester, until the male student whom I have told you is a bully began to bully me in class. I don't know why he made such an effort to take over the classroom and make my life painful, but he did, and the teacher took his side.
What's happening to me is not just about my grades being jeopardized. It's a quality of life issue. Nobody has the right to bully me or to damage my reputation for no reason and make people dislike me, to isolate me socially.
Lena Kochman
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Elkins,
Women were on the receiving end of bad treatment in story after story that we read in Professor Reed's class. No matter how awful the mentality of any author clearly was, this teacher made every excuse about it all being "just fiction."
Even the stories by female authors are almost all focused on all the bad things that ever happen to women. Many bad things have happened to women, but that's not all there is to literature written by women.
I also think there was a day when he started to try to harass me out of his class. He stood at the front of the classroom and coughed loudly, over and over. After a few minutes, I said "Could I please record the class," and he said "I'd rather not." Then he seemed to realize that all I could do was either sit there and take it or leave the room, and he stopped. It seemed that he was actually sick for a while, but I don't think that's what happened that day or that it's what was happening every so often after that, although never so badly as that time.
There was no warning at all for him to be mentioned in Ms. Liriano's report. I had no idea. For it to go as far as a No Contact Order seems damaging to me for no reason. I don't care about ever having contact with him again, but neither that order nor the one issued against me for Professor Huo is warranted and it seems to me that they are bad for my record.
I don't think that a full disclosure of my entire email correspondence with Professor Reed would lead an objective person to think that I harassed him or that he is or ever was in danger from me. We also had no other contact outside of class.
I should have been more thoughtful about what I said in my emails to him, since I didn't know how much hostility he had built up about me, but there was nothing threatening about what I said or did.
I have the right to have a personality and an opinion.
My recordings of Professor Huo's class prove unequivocally that everything that was included in Ms. Liriano's written report about me in that class as was told to her is so false as to be shocking. It seems to me that the recordings are legal. I'm not trying to make them a point of contention; they are an objective record of what happened.
I think that word of what is happening is getting around the school, and there are people who are antagonizing me, without any provocation, because of it. They know that I'm in trouble, and if I try to tell them to leave me alone, they can report me.
I have some things that I have to do at school this weekend, including my math final tomorrow. There's no reason that I should be defenseless to tell people not to hassle me because I'm carrying the burden of other people's lack of honesty about me.
I send this email with some trepidation, because I don't want you to think that I'm asking that you remove these No Contact Orders because of wanting contact with those professors. What could I possibly have to say to them? They have ended a semester of my work with unneccessary bad feeling and serious accusations that are negatively affecting every part of my time at school. Like everyone else, I should be feeling relieved and proud that the semester is over and thinking about the summer. Instead, these past weeks have been fraught with anxiety about my academic career and professional future.
I will spend as much time talking about all of these issues with you as you ask me to do.
Lena Kochman
Women were on the receiving end of bad treatment in story after story that we read in Professor Reed's class. No matter how awful the mentality of any author clearly was, this teacher made every excuse about it all being "just fiction."
Even the stories by female authors are almost all focused on all the bad things that ever happen to women. Many bad things have happened to women, but that's not all there is to literature written by women.
I also think there was a day when he started to try to harass me out of his class. He stood at the front of the classroom and coughed loudly, over and over. After a few minutes, I said "Could I please record the class," and he said "I'd rather not." Then he seemed to realize that all I could do was either sit there and take it or leave the room, and he stopped. It seemed that he was actually sick for a while, but I don't think that's what happened that day or that it's what was happening every so often after that, although never so badly as that time.
There was no warning at all for him to be mentioned in Ms. Liriano's report. I had no idea. For it to go as far as a No Contact Order seems damaging to me for no reason. I don't care about ever having contact with him again, but neither that order nor the one issued against me for Professor Huo is warranted and it seems to me that they are bad for my record.
I don't think that a full disclosure of my entire email correspondence with Professor Reed would lead an objective person to think that I harassed him or that he is or ever was in danger from me. We also had no other contact outside of class.
I should have been more thoughtful about what I said in my emails to him, since I didn't know how much hostility he had built up about me, but there was nothing threatening about what I said or did.
I have the right to have a personality and an opinion.
My recordings of Professor Huo's class prove unequivocally that everything that was included in Ms. Liriano's written report about me in that class as was told to her is so false as to be shocking. It seems to me that the recordings are legal. I'm not trying to make them a point of contention; they are an objective record of what happened.
I think that word of what is happening is getting around the school, and there are people who are antagonizing me, without any provocation, because of it. They know that I'm in trouble, and if I try to tell them to leave me alone, they can report me.
I have some things that I have to do at school this weekend, including my math final tomorrow. There's no reason that I should be defenseless to tell people not to hassle me because I'm carrying the burden of other people's lack of honesty about me.
I send this email with some trepidation, because I don't want you to think that I'm asking that you remove these No Contact Orders because of wanting contact with those professors. What could I possibly have to say to them? They have ended a semester of my work with unneccessary bad feeling and serious accusations that are negatively affecting every part of my time at school. Like everyone else, I should be feeling relieved and proud that the semester is over and thinking about the summer. Instead, these past weeks have been fraught with anxiety about my academic career and professional future.
I will spend as much time talking about all of these issues with you as you ask me to do.
Lena Kochman
__________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Elkins,
What I have just sent you is an example of my interactions with other students in Professor Reed's class.
The first two pages show that I am neither antisocial, nor snobby, nor humorless about school, nor aggressive; the rest of it is a rough draft of the February paper. The students to whom I sent the paper were assigned to me by Professor Reed, who put the class into workshop groups for that paper. I have never refused to participate in class exercises with other students, whether those exercises were supposed to take place in the classroom or out of it.
There is NO TRUTH AT ALL to the accusations about how I behave at school.
Lena Kochman
_________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________
From: Lena Kochman
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2016 8:20 PM
To: Justin M Reed
Subject: RE: Presentation
Thank you.
________________________________________
From: Justin M Reed
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2016 6:29 PM
To: Lena Kochman
Subject: RE: Presentation
Hi Lena,
Thanks for your response. I'm giving you a 10/10 for the presentation.
Well done,
Justin
Sent from Outlook Mobile<https://aka.ms/qtex0l>
On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 3:24 PM -0800, "Lena Kochman" <lkochman@bhcc.edu<mailto:lkochman@bhcc.edu>> wrote:
Justin,
Thank you. I liked class today; she's a good writer, which made it fun and interesting.
I wasn't sure that Flannery O'Connor was a Southern Gothic writer until I did the research about her. I knew that I had heard the term "Southern Gothic" before, so I did a Google search about it. I also was helped by that succinct and interesting presentation that was one of the first results for a search of "Southern Gothic" at YouTube.
Poor Dave; perhaps he suffers from perfectionism and won't go to class if he feels underprepared.
Guervans cooperated with everything that I asked him to do, was easy to work with and asked insightful questions. I had ideas about what to do from the beginning and asked him if he would do the quiz, which he said he would. I got the multiple choice questions online from shsu.edu, from doing a Google search for short story quizzes. He probably would have talked more during class today if I had talked less, which doesn't mean that I shouldn't get an A.
I wasn't trying to take over the group. I finally am living in my apartment, which will help me to have far fewer restrictions on my time, especially once I have developed a schedule and severed my dependence on things like my meals being provided by shelters. If I had felt that I had more time, I probably would have tried to meet with Guervans and Dave another time before class and to work with them so that they were more part of the presentation.
They're both about 20 years younger than I am and probably did not have mothers who were once high school English teachers. I wanted to be sure that the presentation got a good grade, so I did what I could to achieve that goal.
I wanted to mention also that I am not interested in rearranging how formal, academic papers are written. There would be no reason for me to take a writing class if I were going to insist that my middle class verbal skills be considered good enough to get an A because nobody else in the class can write. I would have liked to write a better first draft for the Salesman paper than I did, but the computer access was an issue. It was upsetting for the weeks to pass without my being able to work on the paper. What I sent was what I could do. I don't think it's as lazy and presumptuous an effort as you seemed to think it was; I also felt that there were places in the paper where a question that I asked WAS the transition and the statement and the quotes that followed it were supportive of the argument.
I hope that I'll be able to revise it. I have my Chinese midterm this Friday, another math test on Saturday (I had one last Saturday) and my math midterm after spring break. I'll also start working at the language lab during spring break. Unlike English class, I am not able to extemporaneously talk for an hour about math or Chinese and get an A. I have to study for those classes, no matter what. For them, there's nothing that I can do in bits and pieces for a couple of weeks and then spend a few hours on the night before and the day of testing and pass.
Lena
________________________________________
From: Justin M Reed
Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2016 3:13 PM
To: Lena Kochman
Subject: Presentation
Hi Lena,
Thanks for a great presentation. I have one question I ask my presenters before I give them grades: please offer a brief assessment of your group members; what was their level of involvement in making the presentation, etc.?
Thanks again,
Justin
__________________________________________________________________________
TO BE CONTINUED
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, July 1, 2017 @ 12:17 p.m.
