In the community where I teach, walking the stage at graduation is one of the proudest moments in a student's life. Not only is it important for the student, but the family celebrates this simple act. There is a strange dichotomy in the community: possessing the high school diploma has a high value, yet students and parents do not necessarily believe that it is important for the recipient to earn it.
Seniors have only six school days left, and I am kept busy with scoring the last few assignments before grades close. Recently I have been confronted with two dilemmas involving seniors and graduation.
Neal is a 19 year old IEP student who did almost nothing in my class for two quarters. Third quarter he somehow pulled a D; he needs a C fourth quarter to be eligible for graduation. He had that C until he submitted his Lord of the Flies paper: a student who can barely write a coherent sentence suddenly had the ability to craft sentences using words outside of his vocabulary. Within moments I found these same sentences on Spark Notes. Standard policy: zero on paper, notify parents. Done and done.
The next day I received a passive-aggressive email from Neal's mom that basically asked for a handout. After consulting with administration, my department chair, and the special ed department, I decided (against my better judgment) to allow Neal to resubmit the paper with late penalty.
When I sat down to score Neal's second essay, I could not believe what I read: Neal plagiarized this paper from another section of the Spark Notes website. I sent a short, blunt email to both of his parents stating this and that the zero will stand. My husband asserts that there is no way that the parents can argue, but I'm not so sure. Any logical person will conclude that if Neal fails English for fourth quarter, it is really his own doing. A parent fixated on her son graduating, however, may not think so clearly.
Next there is Kyle. Kyle is reasonably intelligent but lazy. He also needs to pass fourth quarter with a C to not have to pass the final exam. Immediately after reading (and responding to) Neal's plagiarized essay, I read Kyle's, which was strikingly similar. Kyle, however, was smart enough to cheat "better": he consulted Spark Notes, but paraphrased the ideas so that they sounded like they were written by a high school senior. This is still clearly cheating: the ideas weren't Kyle's, he did not attribute them to another source, and the assignment was a garbled, unfocused piece of trash.
Before I circled a big fat zero at the bottom of his page, I needed to carefully consider the ramifications of my actions. If Kyle's essay is a zero, then he fails fourth quarter and automatically fails for the year. This means he doesn't walk across the stage. This means that his parents, who have been labeled as Walking Nightmares by administration and teachers alike, will wage war against me.
My knee-jerk reaction for cheating—always—is an automatic zero. It's clearly unacceptable. However, Kyle's eligibility for graduation literally hinges on this one essay. Objectively, I think the motherf*cker doesn't deserve to graduate if he is stupid enough to pull such a stunt the week before his final exam. In this community, however, the teacher is often held more accountable than the student in these cases.
To get some moral grounding, I called my colleague/mentor/friend who has also taught this student and is familiar with his family situation. Together we figured out that if Kyle's essay grade is 38%, he will have a 60% for the quarter, and his graduation will come down to his ability to pass the final exam. On his rubric I made a note stating that it is clear that the ideas are not his own and that those 38 points are a gift; I also wrote that it is his responsibility to be sure he passes English so I could see him graduate in June. Smiley super perky teacher note! :)
As I recount the events of this evening, I am sickened with my own "best judgment" to compromise my moral values and award Kyle those scant 38 points when clearly he has earned none. My manipulation of points and a rubric (that is supposed to be objective) is despicable, and this represents everything that I loathe in my profession. Yet I have succumbed to it anyway. Although I still have many ideals about teaching and education, I realize now that even the best of us fall short of these on a regular basis.
It is more than likely that I will watch Neal and Kyle walk across the stage on graduation night and reach for their diplomas; their parents will beam with pride, and I will smile and clap for these students as though they had accomplished it themselves.
Follow-up Blog on Neal: Celebrating Mediocrity
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