Plagiarism?

Factual Questions
1

Okay, dopers, I need your help.

A student turned in a poem to me for the quarter’s second writing assignment (I’m waaaaay behind on grading). It’s too good, and it’s got that cutesy teenage love flavor that my eighth grade girls just love. She has a history of plagiarizing. I caught her at it last quarter during a teacher edit - another poem. The student used to be an all-A student, but in the past semester, her work has fallen off drastically. The other teachers and I have talked about this, and we’re about ready to talk to the parents.

I’ve searched google.com and not found anything. My trial membership at turnitin.com is used up, and my school has basically told me to ask for a school license for NEXT year. If anyone can find a published version of this poem, I’ll be very grateful. It could very well be her own work, but I doubt it. Her rough drafts have only a couple of small mistakes and some lines swapped around.

Thanks in advance. Here’s the poem:

That’s When

When rubies never shimmer,
And flowers never grow,
When diamonds never glimmer,
And rivers fail to flow.

When all I feel is sorrow,
And I want to feel divine.
When there is no tomorrow,
And the sun never shines.

When the sky is no longer blue,
And rainbows have no hue.
When God alone tells me to,
That’s when I’ll stop loving you.

2

That’s a real nice poem…maybe she exerting all he creative juices in a relationship. For some reason it reminds me of the song “Scarburough Fair.”

Forget that, here’s you link:

A difficult google search

3

Sounds a bit similar to this

Man, I hope Kim is your girl. Otherwise, this makes me feel bad.

4

I see now that NotMrKnowItAll found it as well, although in a different place. Tell us it’s Kim.

5

Please forgive all the typos in the first. The preview was not functioning. Here’s another link to that poem

Love from London England.

6

Yeah - preview bit me, too. That poem’s all over the place. Has some appeal in that if a six was nine kind of way.

7

Crap.

No, she’s not Kim. She’s a stupid kid who thought her Writing teacher wouldn’t catch her the second time around.

Last time, I caught it during a teacher edit and told her to throw it out and start over, and that if she did it again, it was an automatic zero, and I’d contact her parents. Looks like it’s time to do that.

Bugger.

Thanks, guys! (Wonder if my principal will find the money for a turnitin.com membership now . . . )