Students will be able to analyze a text for main idea, details, author purpose, perspective, argument, and evidence.
I could tell you about the struggle to get kids to give a one-minute group presentation over an article they read. Instead, here is a snapshot of some conversations I had throughout my Thursday:
Me: John, why did you pack up? There’s ten minutes of class left.
John: I didn’t pack up.
Me: Where’s your study guide?
John: I don’t have one.
Me: I passed them out twenty minutes ago. Everyone else is working on theirs. What did you think they were all doing?
John: I d’know.
Me: Why didn’t you ask for a study guide?
John: You were busy.
Me: See the pile under the board that says, “Study guide” with an arrow?
Me: That’s where I put them. Please go get one.
John: But the bell’s gunna ring.
Me: Jose, where are your notes to fill out the study guide?
Jose: I lost my bag two weeks ago. I don’t have them.
Me: The notes were from this week and last week. Where did you put them without a bag?
Jose: I don’t know. My pockets, I guess.
Me: Are they at home?
Jose: I don’t know.
Me: Okay. Let’s brainstorm to remedy this situation. What can we do to help you get organized? I gave you notes. I told you you’d need them. This can’t happen again. You need a new bag.
Jose: Give me money, I’ll buy a bag.
Me: You know I can’t do that. Do you have a binder on my shelf?
Me: Why didn’t you put your notes in there?
Jose: I didn’t know we could.
Me: Jose, it’s YOUR BINDER with YOUR NAME on it. It doesn’t leave my classroom. Why wouldn’t you put your English stuff in your English binder? We did it all first semester.
Jose: Yeah but you said you weren’t going to do binder checks anymore.
Me: Because I expected you to know how to keep track of your things by now. I shouldn’t have to threaten you with a grade to make sure you keep your stuff. Just…never mind. Ask Kathy if you can share her notes.
And the one that really irked me…
Me: Yugi, why aren’t you working on the study guide? You can work on chemistry if you finish early.
Yugi: But miss, I’ve got a 58 in there and an 85 in English. I have to do this.
Me: Yugi, you are copying off Jennifer’s worksheet.
Yugi: She let me.
Me: Copying won’t help you pass.
Yugi: Yes it will.
Me: Yugi, this paper got a 95. If you have a 58% in the class and suddenly turn in a 95%, won’t your teacher figure that out? How will you pass the test? Do you want to be sitting in chemistry tutorials next year because you flunked the state test because you never learned the material in the first place?
Yugi: I’m going to tutorials next week. I just don’t get any of it.
Me: You need to talk to your teacher. She needs to know you don’t get it, otherwise she’ll think you cheat because you’re lazy.
[Boy Yugi probably shouldn’t be friends with]: But he IS lazy! He can’t do any of that.
Me: [ignoring] Okay, let’s look at this a different way. Picture yourself ten years from now. You’re 26. Describe yourself to me.
Yugi: Oh. This is hard . I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to do after high school.
Me: Forget the job. Tell me, are you married?
Yugi: Yeah, probably.
Me: Tell me about your wife. Is she pretty?
Me: Why did she marry you? What did she fall in love with?
Yugi: I don’t know…’cus I’m attractive?
Me: Do you want your wife to marry you just because you’re attractive?
Me: Is she proud of you? Does she feel like you make her a better person?
Me: Does she think you’re honest? Do you stand by your word?
Me: Do you see where I’m going with this?
Me: Jennifer, why is Yugi copying your chemistry homework?
Jennifer: He said he just was going to copy the equations.
Me: Look over there. Does it LOOK like he’s copying the equations?
Me: Jennifer, why do you do all the work, then let Yugi make it look like he did? He’s pretending to know what he’s doing, masquerading with your intelligence.
Jennifer: [blank look]
Me: Jennifer, do you plan to go to college?
Me: What if, on the off chance, you are competing with Yugi for a slot to get into college. Turns out he copied from someone even smarter than you in math and his GPA is higher than yours. He could get your spot at your top school.
Me: Don’t let him use you. Never, ever give him or any other boy your work to copy ever again. It cheapens your effort, and it COULD affect you in the long run.
…it also affected both of them in the short run, seeing as I emailed their chemistry teacher to tell them what was going on. I felt bad too; it was the chem teacher’s birthday…
I realize that in the grand scope of their life or even their high school education, copying one worksheet won’t make a difference. Unfortunately, it seems like it’s not one worksheet. The other sophomore English teacher discovered that the grades on quizzes got significantly better between her morning and afternoon classes, because they were telling each other the test content. Turns out the students have a deal with each other; the kids with morning chemistry swap answers with the morning English students before they take the other class’s tests.
I don’t see much cheating in my class, mostly because it’s hard to cheat on in-class handwritten essays. However, it’s rampant in the math and science departments. It seems like our kids just don’t care; it doesn’t seem to occur to them that they’re in the wrong. We try all sorts of tactics to try to deter them: In the honors classes, they point out that the state schools only take the top 7% of the graduating classes; if they help their friends cheat, their friends with whom they’re competing could get their slot in college. I pointed out today that 70 Harvard students recently had to withdraw due to collaboration on a take-home exam. When they expel you from college for cheating, you typically don’t get your tuition money back. Sixty-three MBA applicants at Penn State and UCLA were just rejected for plagiarizing parts of their admissions essays. Heck, the minister of education for Germany (yes, the whole country!) was just stripped of her Ph.D for plagiarism and was encouraged to resign.
Sure, it’s important to understand how to work a certain system to get ahead, but it seems like the ideals of honesty and integrity play zero part in the fact that they’re cheating. What’s really bad, is that the classes they are taking are relatively easy compared to anything they’ll be asked to do in college or the real world. At some point, they will either be held accountable for blatant copied or fired because it’s discovered they don’t know how to do basic tasks because they never bothered to learn. I tried to explain to them that I use grades more as a measure of my own teaching ability than their ability to learn; maybe their focus on getting a passing score is what drives them to cheat, when instead their actions just further obstruct their ability to learn. I don’t have a right answer, and our school does need to have the conversation about how to attempt to tackle this. Thankfully our kids aren’t quite as thoughtful as this kid that New York Magazine detailed last fall, but the total disregard for any inkling of academic honesty is incredibly depressing, especially to this first-year teacher who has never, ever had the inkling to cheat. I can’t imagine my parents’ reactions if they ever received THAT call home. As a result, I don’t understand what drives them, especially when so many of my students don’t have plans to go to college. It’s not like they need to keep their grades up for admissions. It just seems so much easier to learn the material the first time. I wish I didn’t feel so alone in that regard…