Cheating has become so high tech these days it's almost ridiculous to expect that I'm going to catch all of it. With phones getting smaller and teens' fingers getting faster, they can get five answers off the phone, have it off and returned to their pocket before I've even finished raising my eyebrow a la Mr. Spock and begun to cross the room.
With six identical classes, it's often not easy to come up with six different versions of the same assessment either. I can usually manage 3 different versions, and I stay mobile throughout the testing to keep them nervous. Still, it happens.
Last week, because we were in the library all period, I had a very quick quiz for them to take, and I'd gotten the versions scrambled up with everything else we were doing. (A computer reading test, checking out books, etc.) So I ended up using just one version of the test, the one I had the most copies of. Students got wind of it, of course.
I saw a girl repeatedly glancing down into her lap. Because we were in the library, I was behind her, and she didn't notice her table-mates had suddenly begun shifting nervously and clearing their throats to announce my approach (so subtle, these kids!). So I came up behind her and held out my hand, expecting to get a phone in return.
She handed me a tiny piece of paper with the answers hand-written on it. I swear, I haven't seen one of these since maybe my first year of teaching in middle school. I'm thinking of framing it, so I can show it to students some day when we're all jacked into the mainframe and paper is extinct. See kids, we used to cheat with paper! And had to brush our teeth by hand!
We then had to have the inevitable talk, where I inform her that she will receive a zero, she cries, then begs to retake the test, which I do not allow (there will be two more of these quizzes, so she can make up for the zero). I then asked her (as I always do), what she was afraid of, because I know cheating is a fear response though it may not be recognized as such by the student. She told me she hadn't studied. She then asked me if I was going to make her tell me who she'd gotten the answers from, and I said no. It sounded more like she wanted to confess, but I wasn't letting her off the hook that easily. It's one thing to choose to give out answers, it's another thing to choose to use them. In the end, it's all about you and the choices you make, I told her. Then she started crying again.
Gah. Why are some lessons so painful?
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2 comments:
Sometimes I'll write "Test B" on a test and make a big deal out of having the students check that they have test b. This leads them to assume there's a test A. But you can only do that once in a while.
Computers make jiggling question order a little easier than it used to be. I'm old enough to remember when we didn't have them. Don't tell anyone, though.
On the brighter side, if all your classes are the same you only have one prep. I can't recall having fewer than three.
>>Computers make jiggling question order a little easier than it used to be. I'm old enough to remember when we didn't have them. Don't tell anyone, though.<<
I won't, if you promise not to tell anyone I typed my school reports on a typewriter until I was 20. Then I got a word processor. At 25 I saw my first computer lab at AZ state - the internet for the first time! I couldn't figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with it. :)
>>On the brighter side, if all your classes are the same you only have one prep. I can't recall having fewer than three.<<
This is the first year I've had only 1 prep (3 or more is familiar to me!) and, since I was the newly "knighted" English III team leader, I volunteered for it when the schedules were being made during the summer (to alleviate some pressure off other teachers who wanted more than 1 prep).
I have to say, I'm really enjoying it. I was afraid I would get bored, but I haven't yet. Each class adds something to my experience in teaching the literature and skills. (Go figure - practice makes perfect.)
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