How Cheating Hurt My Stomach
~Duke Kelly Education Illustrated LLC
So there I was...teaching high school geometry and loving every minute of it (well...loving most minutes). One sunny day I was administering a test. Behold! I saw a young lady cheating by balancing what she thought was an invisible sheet of notes on her lap. Then the moment came. We made that uncomfortable seemingly endless lock of the eyes. She knew that I knew. I did not want to embarrass her in any way. After all, she might be cheating because I failed her in some way...right? I did not want to call her out in front of her peers and did not want to make her feel alone. I wanted each of our interactions to help her grow as a person. (These are general rules of mine. Are they unreasonable? These principles certainly warrant a separate article. Coming soon...) With my "don't make students feel terrible" rules tying my hands, I had a sudden flash of genius! Here is how I chose to handle the situation and address all of my concerns...
I went to the chalkboard and drew a large piece of notebook paper. I began to write a "letter" on the imaginary paper. Here it is (click to enlarge or read text below photo):
"Dear Students who know that I know you are cheating,
I know that you know that I know. You have until the start of seminar (a study period following that class) to come discuss your options. If you neglect to do so, your paper will be returned to you tomorrow with a score of "0" and no further discussion.
Love, Mr. Kelly"
That note encouraged her to do the right thing, made her feel less terrible (the letter was to a plurality of students) and did not identify her personally. I was thinking..."SCORE!" Little did I know that nothing remotely interesting, in comparison, had happened yet.
After class, she came to me with a quite typical story with details such as, "It was just on that one problem," etc...She obviously felt extremely embarrassed and diminished. We arranged for her to take some portions of the test again and she agreed. Isn't that a nice ending? Wait...
Behind her was standing a que of five other students with similar stories! One exception was a student who came up and just said, "Hello." I responded with a similar greeting and we continued to stare. He broke the silence and said, "To be clear, I am not here with them, but is there anything you need me for?" Classic, just classic. My stomach muscles were clenching more than I could bare while attempting to stifle my truly "gut busting" laughter. I, of course, immediately ran to the teacher's lounge to provide some relief to my abdominals and share the technique and story.
On the way back to my classroom, ANOTHER student stopped me in the hallway to confess! After lunch, ANOTHER student stopped me and said with a mix of almost eager excitement and anxiety, "Mr. Kelly, I KNOW it is after the deadline, but is it too late to tell you I was cheating?"
Now, this takes the cake. I will be telling this story for years. Ironically, I only noticed a single student cheating. Some students explained (and I believe them) that they only briefly, and inadvertently, glanced at another paper while concentrating on their own test. That has happened to ME before as well, by the way. You don't even realize you are doing it!
That is how cheating made my stomach hurt...a case of severe laughter.
Have you used or invented any creative solutions for cheating? Please share by providing your comments below!
Regards,
~Duke Kelly
