BackStage

15% of my students plagiarized on their final exams (take homes / summer course). I’ve dealt with plagiarists before, but my role at that time was a teaching assistant. All decisions about how to handle it and what not was up to the professor in charge. Largely, confronting those students was up to the professor in charge. Now I’m in charge.

What shocked me this time was my response to their plagiarism. My emotional response. I feel sick about it. Mostly, I feel betrayed. Like some bond between us has been broken. But it’s this abstract bond. There is this implicit trust that these students broke. And when this 15% broke it, it was gone between me and my entire class. I became paranoid that all of my students were cheating. That they are all trying to pull one over on me.

I know, on an intellectual level, that they were doing nothing to ME. It wasn’t really about me. But my feelings say otherwise.

I have been fighting to keep my teaching innocence. To not conclude what others that have gone before have — that most of these students don’t care, just want the credits, just want to finish. I’ve been holding on to the one or two students who I know are really invested. Those who do care, try hard, want to learn. This makes doing that even harder. Perhaps it wouldn’t have done if my class was larger and the students who did this were anonymous forms in a 90+ student classroom. But I had a small class. I remember the questions these students asked, their interest in the theories… At least one of the 15% had me believing that he/she was one of those few who do care.

How do you handle the battering that our students give us sometimes? How do you keep the faith when students continually beat you down? Not turning in assignments, making up excuses, not showing up, not doing the homework and (worse of all) cheating?