Confessions of a Blogaholic

It doesn't seem to surprise me anymore to catch students cheating on essays and research papers. It's unbelievably easy to catch, and I try to express to my kids that I WILL catch them--it may not be this paper or the next, but if you are cheating on papers, I will eventually catch you. And yet, they don't believe me.

On one essay I assigned last quarter (a persuasive, informal essay--something I THOUGHT would be fun to write), I caught four students who literally copied and pasted word-for-word text from websites. It's not hard to figure out that someone who can't correctly use "their, there, and they're" is probably plagiarizing a paper in which they frequently use the words "Zeitgeist" or "methodology." It's disappointing that they think I'm too stupid and/or unwilling to do the simple google search that will produce their entire paper.

So, no, I'm not surprised by cheating. I almost get a sick joy out of catching kids and giving them zeros. After all, if they would USE the exorbitant amounts of time I give them IN CLASS to do the work, they wouldn't need to cheat in the first place!!

What I do find surprising is my reaction to the cheating at this point in the year...I have several students failing, and failing MISERABLY with grades like 12.6% and 24.3%. So much of my class is based on completion credit that to get this insanely low scores, one would have to be TRYING to not do anything. As I'm grading the papers of these individuals, I may get the sneaking suspicion that plagiarism is happening, and I think to myself, "Do I catch them and give them a zero? Or do I ignore it and give them a D? At least they turned SOMETHING in."

Then I remind myself that I am a hard-ass teacher. I'm the one who KNOWS which students are missing assignments. I'm the one who sends their behinds to detentions to get the work completed, and I'm the one who MAKES SURE they go to these lunch detentions. I've set a precedent for myself as THAT TEACHER, and NOT calling them out on their cheating makes me look bad.

So, I give them a zero, highlight all the copied info, and send them to the principal.