Day 120: Define "Collaboration"

 [I started this post weeks ago and never finished, so sorry for the out-of-order chronology! This is from February 28th]

On Wednesday, one of my AP students selected this article to do for her bell work about the number of high school students who admit to some form of cheating. It launched a spirited argument about what cheating was, how it should be treated, and whether or not it was wrong. Most of my students argued something to the effect of, “Since everyone pushes us to get As and we’re so busy sometimes cheating seems like the only option.”  I found this view somewhat comical given the number of C's and B's I give out regularly (they can’t be trying THAT hard), but mostly I was disappointed in them, and I told them so.

I always believed cheating was an integrity issue; a person willing to pass off work as his own that he didn't do is a liar.  A scary number of AP students looked at me like I had two heads and they had never thought of it this way before. We try to scare them with threats of getting kicked out of college or losing jobs, but perhaps the argument that a cheater is untrustworthy may be stronger.  I asked if they'd want to marry someone who cheated his way through high school, or when their teen was struggling with calculus and asked how they go through it, if they'd want to answer, "Oh, we copied every morning."  One girl unexpectedly thanked me after class for giving her a new view of the issue.

Ironically, as I was grading the quiz they took just before we had this discussion, I noticed three of my ladies all had the same very wrong answer on question #7.  It was an open book quiz of their Brave New World reading, and these three were absent that day and took it home to finish.  I inquired – didn't accuse, just inquired – as to their thought process of collaborating on an open book quiz.  They didn't deny it, obviously, but one girl told me that since I let them take it home, she didn't see an issue with collaborating; another openly admitted she hadn't read that far and needed to catch up.  They all immediately assumed looks of contrition, though I wasn't punishing them – it was only one question, and true, I TECHNICALLY didn't clarify the need for secrecy…although on something called a “quiz” I didn't think I needed to...after instructing them with love that when something is labeled a "quiz" it should be done on one's own, I took a bit to reflect on this new cheating issue...

This week I have learned a lot about the importance of precise language.  I will be drawing up exactly what I believe to be cheating for my classroom website, and clarifying it for all my classes.  In my emails home to parents through our school network I will give exact deadlines.  We will spend a class during the beginning of school drawing up a collaboration policy and reviewing it regularly.  It worries me that my students don’t see cheating as a moral issue.  We have a large percentage of our students who must take remedial math and science classes in college because they copied their way through high school; I guess until they receive that tuition bill, it doesn't sink into any of them  that their decisions do not have positive consequences…