Many years ago I used to grade while students took a test. But over the past few years I had to stop doing so because the only effective method of preventing cheating has been to watch students test for the majority of the exam. If students use watches, phones, their neighbor’s paper, or any other means I can tell when I watch them. It is a tiring game of cat and mouse and I dislike it very much. One thing that has worn on me recently as a teacher is the mounting pressures for students to find a way to get admitted into a University. That pressure is often an unhealthy one that stems from a variety of sources. And that pressure translates to the teacher. It becomes our job to be perfect, and sometimes better than perfect, or else did we really truly care about the student? If we let them down, we are a bad teacher and a bad person.
If I didn’t say something often enough, or if I didn’t round a grade, or if I was absent too many times, or a million other things can all be the blame for why a student didn’t get a grade that’s going to keep them out of the college of their dreams. This hyperbole is infrequent relative to the number of students, but consistently present these days. And it’s exhausting. Along with that pressure on the teacher, there is another consequence. Students are being pushed to achieve these goals as a primary objective, not as a secondary. They aren’t trying to be good enough to get admission into a University, they are just trying to get the admission. This is a shame because I see too many students that are brilliant, but they get the idea that the only measure of importance is something that sometimes they end up discarding later in life. I’ve seen students stress so hard about going to the University of Michigan only to end up being admitted and choosing another path that worked better for them. This toxicity pervades the schools now. And it devalues learning and ethics. Cheating is a frequent result.
Students cheat in a variety of forms. They seek out information about exams and quizzes. They do not consider this cheating, but rather strategic. They are taught that completion of assignments takes precedence over learning. They are taught that learning takes place outside of the classroom. So when they get to a test and struggle, it is easier for them to find a reason to cheat. I don’t have the solution to this problem. I’m against it, I will work against it, I wish more people would push back against it, but I don’t know that it can be eradicated. But we did something to share the burden on individual teachers and it is worth sharing.
Academic Honesty Council
We formed an academic honesty council. When students are suspected or caught doing something that violates our terms of academic honesty they can be summoned to meet in front of a group of teachers. I was able to serve on our initial council. It was wonderful. The teacher who is directly involved was prohibited from the council. We took on part of their burden for them. When students cheat there is a mix of feelings for a teacher. There is a guilt that stems from the discussion above and there is also a feeling of hurt. On some level it is not possible to not take cheating personally. We put so much of ourselves into our teaching that when someone tries to circumvent the system it hurts.
The council avoided both of these. It allowed us to examine what took place, listen to evidence, and have discussions with multiple teachers. From there we were able to work impartially to assign consequences that were fair, consistent and were productive. Because of the novelty of the council we had met previously with administration to seek advice on what to do in terms of enforcement, potential consequences, and seek general advice. This allowed us to work with students to learn from what happened and it avoided the isolation of being the only teacher involved.
This can also help preserve the relationship between the teacher and student. A student caught cheating is having the investigation, verdict and punishment all coming from a teacher. And even teachers that try hard to be fair can be perceived as being inconsistent from a student’s perspective. Hard feelings toward that teacher can develop that can interfere with the student’s ability to learn in the future.
The time that a teacher must dedicate to dealing with consequences is intensive. There are contacts to make, forms to fill, conferences to have and potentially even more. By having a council we absorbed some of that requirement. It allows the teacher to share the pertinent information that they have and the burden from there is split into multiple parties.
Student Follow up
After our initial academic honesty council, we held a follow up meeting with the entire group of students in our cohort. Students shared a variety of thoughts that were noteworthy. Many felt resentment from their peers for cheating and sometimes just for being overly competitive. In my opinion, many students had diverging opinions on what is and isn’t cheating amongst themselves and relative to expectations of their teachers. Some students had honest questions about how teachers perceive cheating. Teaching can be overwhelming and sometimes it becomes necessary to seek out someone else to change things for the better. But I felt that this council as a good step in the right direction for a group of teachers to help improve things in a situation that could use more consistency and attention.
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