How I Got Engaged

Some of you responded with curiosity to a certain comment recently left on my blog, in which I was accused of the vice of deceit. I guess I'll fill you in on the news of my recent engagement.

It all started when Claire emailed me with a message from a former professor both of us had in college. The message was that this professor wanted to get together with me for coffee or something sometime. Claire then proceeded to inform me that she dreamed I had gotten engaged, then drank so much wine I died before she had a chance to give me this message. She warned me to beware of wine.

Not one to let such advice pass without some sort of comment, I responded to her email by thanking her for the warning, and suggesting she might have some sort of sixth sense, because I was just about to announce an engagement with a girl who drinks wine.

I thought my former classmate--at one time sharp enough to detect my rare bursts of sarcasm--would appreciate the humor. Instead I got a response along the lines of "WHAAAAT?" combined with a request that I spill the beans, and a threat that she'd kick me if I was joking.

This was too tempting. Did she really believe that I could possibly be engaged? Seizing the opportunity for a little mischief, I found the name of what seemed to be a single, female social studies teacher in my district (just in case Claire tried to google the name to confirm its authenticity), and proceeded to spin a little tale about meeting her at a conference, starting to go out with her, becoming more serious, and finally getting engaged just recently. I told Claire I didn't want her to tell anyone but Brad before the official announcement, but also realized it might help to get a few more details about it all from me, since she was at a distance, and the announcment would seem a little bizarre on its own. And even though my fiance was a drinker, it was just socially. Since I had never seen her drunk, I implied that Claire needn't worry about the status of my soul.

I then received assurance from Claire that her lips were sealed, but she also expressed some doubts about the story, saying she needed to see a picture of us with the ring, and my Dad in the background smiling his approval. What was even funnier, however, was a second email sent about a half an hour after the first one. It was a "covering my tracks" sort of message, saying that if my story was true, congratulations and that sort of thing. (A classic "let me pretend to be happy for you, though I'm shocked" kind of message, me thinks.)

At this point I thought it best to reveal my little joke. Claire responded by claiming she smelled a rat the whole time, but how was she to know that I hadn't changed my ways since she had moved south, etc. She also said she "felt like there was some gigantic hole torn in the universe when I considered that this whole thing MIGHT POSSIBLY be true." Ha ha ha. She can now rest easy that, at least for now, no such gigantic hole in the universe exists.

I might also add that I will be staying out of her kicking range for some time.

The End of a Saga (I hope)

Well, the cheating thing has blown over. I think. But let me tell you, there was quite the storm over it all. Things were quiet over the long weekend after I gave the lecture to three of my classes. Then it seemed that all hell broke loose.

I had parents trying to contact me to complain. I had two guidance counselors contact me about irate parents who had complained through them. I had students writing me notes of various types. These included:

Apologies and admissions of guilt, with explanation of pressure to succeed, how my class is their most challenging one, etc.

Admission of guilt and half-hearted apology, but claim that they thought the punishment of a zero was unfair.

Admission of hearing what to study, but feeling it was unfair because they had studied really hard on their own, and suggested they would have done ok even if they hadn't been tipped off about what to study.

Complaining about the process, admitting being told what to study, but justifying it as the natural thing for any student to do.

Apologizing and claiming that they didn't know it was wrong to be told what to study (this from a student who answered an impossibly difficult question correctly, so I strongly suspect the shared info was more than "look at the sidebars closely." Might as well call it the apology-for something-less-heinous-than-the-crime-I-committed note.)

Challenging my claim they cheated, saying I had no evidence they cheated, they had studied really hard, etc. etc. (This from a so-so student who had almost all of the impossibly difficult questions correct. Consequently, unless divinely directed to think otherwise, I will go to my grave suspecting they cheated, and saddened by the gall evident in a student who is caught red handed, yet insults my intelligence by claiming innocence.)

That about runs the gamut of responses. I felt chastened by some of the interactions/notes. After all, it is possible that some innocent students got caught looking guilty, but really were not. So I decided to give a replacement quiz to anyone who felt their punishment was unfair or that they had been unjustly accused. I also apologized profusely to anyone who I had wrongly accused. I told them the quiz would be a difficult one, but if they had studied hard enough to do ok on the first (i.e., answered questions legitimately) then they should do ok on the second.

Enter the principal. I got a note in my mailbox to go see him. Uh-oh. Sure enough, an angry parent had called him directly to complain, instead of first trying to reason with me, or even get my side of the story. The principal told me what he had heard, which sounded preposterous, and asked me for my side. I tried to explain my rationale. To make a long story short, he suggested I drop the quiz entirely for everyone. He said unless I had hard evidence of cheating, like witnessing it happen, I couldn't give a student a zero. I won't say more here, except to add that I submitted to his decision, he told me he thought my intentions were noble, and not to worry about it too much. (Ask me more about this sometime, and I can fill in some details better left unsaid here.)

So that about ends it. I made some comments about lessons to be learned from the whole experience (what cheating includes, that I don't tolerate it, etc.) then told students I had dropped the quiz in fairness to everyone. Through the experience, I pretty much learned never to give the same tests to different classes ever again. Sad that it has to come to that, but that's how it stands these days with America's teenagers. And I also know firsthand that there is violent reaction to being accused of cheating--understandable if you are not guilty, less so if you are. But despite some students getting off the hook, I think/hope some of them have been properly chastened, and turned at the reproof.

Others are more hardened sinners, in need of more help than I can give them. It's probably a good thing to be reminded of that. It's also a relief. Guess I can't save the world on my own. It'll have to be done by someone else.

Cheating Results

I decided to do more than just reprimand the cheaters in my class. I did this partly because I did some research on cheating, found that it is rampant, and that students are rarely punished severely. I decided to take a stand and make sure my students knew that I would not tolerate it. I'm not sure that this will modify their behavior significantly, though I hope it does. Whether they change or not, at least I can say they have had someone in their life model for them intolerance toward dishonesty. And they can't justify cheating by saying that nobody will ever catch them.

Out of 68 students who had the opportunity to cheat, 20 of them did. That is almost 30 percent, and is sickening. I suspect it would have been higher, except for the fact that some of the students in classes at the end of the day didn't have any friends from earlier classes. You might be surprised to know that many of the cheaters are some of my best students. In addition, the proportion of cheating males to females was 2 to 1, despite the fact that the ration of males to females in these three classes is about 3 to 4. So shame on the men.

For the first class, which had students who shared answers, I told them that if the other classes had done poorly, then they would have all received 100s on their quizzes. But since I knew that some of them had cheated by sharing answers/information with other classes, they now had a pop quiz to replace the other one. This was the best way I could handle a class in which I didn't know specifically who the cheaters were.

For the other three classes, I read a lecture I had written the night before. For at least two classes I told them that some of their professors would deliver lectures like this in college, and hopefully they wouldn't have many who did, but it was a formal method of delivery. Word of this lecture spread fast. I heard one cheating female in my last class of the day warning a boy who had not yet taken the quiz about the lecture they were going to get. I had given this lecture for the first time just two periods previous. In my talk, I laid into the cheaters like I had never done before. I read the lecture, and made eye contact with students throughout various parts. I didn't yell or do anything dramatic. It didn't take anything like that to communicate my message. After I got going, and students realized what this was about, the room was deathly silent.

For those of you who are curious to know just exactly what I said, here is the draft of the words I wrote up. I modified them slightly for clarity, or if I thought I was going to run out of time I skipped a couple of things (it would have been bad to be engaged in the most serious lecture of the year, and have the bell save them from hearing the rest of it!) I won't keep the words of my speech up for long, so read them now if you wish.

How Should I Punish Them?

I conducted an experiment today, an experiment designed to expose the cheaters in my classes. I heard of this trick from a veteran teacher who had known another teacher who did this, so there's good precedent for this trick. You may think I'm cruel. But now I know some students who should not be trusted. Yet I also need advice on how to deal with them.

This is what happened. I have four classes of the same subject and level. I came up with a wicked hard quiz for them. I gave the same quiz to them all. The first two questions were easy enough if they had studied, just to keep them from getting too suspicious. But let me assure you that the other four (which included an extra credit question) were absolutely impossible. Only someone with a photographic memory could have answered them correctly without having cheated. I made sure of this. They were all questions related to material found in graphs, sidebars, and insets in the text, which I know few students read. Some of them were numbers questions, along the lines of "How much did Americans spend on Christmas trees during the 2005 holiday season?" and "How may copies of Little Women had beend sold by 1893?" and "How much did Rockefeller give to research mouse intestines?" Another question (and this was the real one) asked students to identify the two states that had a poll tax and literacy test for voting, but no grandfather clause or property tax. This question ensured that even the most rabidly fanatical numbers people, who might happen to have read the sidebars and remembered the figures would not have been able to answer it.

At the end of the first class I posted the answers. Then I gave the quiz to each of my three classes at the end of the day, after enough time had passed for those students who wanted to cheat, both talkers and listeners, to commit their sins. Sure enough, several students accurately reported the numbers and states. A few of them had a couple right, but not all. This suggests that: A. they were trying to be sneaky and pretend they hadn't really cheated by purposefully missing a couple, or B. had only cheated by learning that they should study the sidebars and graphs really hard, so had crammed some figures into their heads but not all of them, or C. their friends who fed them answers didn't have time themselves to remember either all of the questions or all of the answers, so they could only be of limited help. Again, it is conceivable that a student could have legitimately answered one of the questions correctly without having cheated. It is theoretically possible someone could have remembered more than one, but highly unlikely. And it is absolutely incredible that someone without a photographic memory could remember several, or all of them.

That some gave the correct answer to several of these impossible questions is, quite frankly, both a disappointment for how it reveals their character flaw, and is also an insult to my intelligence. I continue to be amazed at how some of these students operate. How stupid do they think I am? Did they really believe I would think they are brilliant scholars by correctly identifying South Carolina and Missouri as the two states that fit the aforementioned question, and not suspect cheating? I feel like I'm in an insane asylum or something, for insanity is the best descriptor I can use for such blatant dishonesty.

Now the question remains: how shall I punish them? And should I reward the honest ones? My general idea was to not count the quiz at all, and make it a stern warning against cheating in the future. Yet that probably wouldn't do much good, as the exposed cheaters have no reason not to do the same thing again, unless they can somehow be shamed in front of their peers out of repeating their transgression.

I might add that a lot of students were very frustrated with the quiz, and understandably so. Some of the honest ones--though not trained to refrain from profanity--ones are probably cursing me in their mind even as I write, thinking how awful a teacher I am to give them such an impossible quiz. They have yet to hear me tell them how proud I am of them for their honesty, though maybe they just didn't have the "right" friends to help them cheat. Should I name this group and say how pleased I am with their performance, by omission condemning the others? Should I give zeros to all the cheaters and 100s to all the others? Should I give them a stern rebuke and tell them they've lost my trust, and that in order to rebuild a relationship a written apology might be in order? Or should I make all the cheaters stand in the corner and write on the blackboard "I will never cheat again" 200 times after school? As you can see, myriad possibilities concerning how I could proceed, some more ridiculous than others. I have yet to decide. Any suggestions?

Tax Refund--How do you use it?

In contemplating tax season (I bought tax software the other day to prepare for the eventual day when I have all my W-2's and Z-3's and whatever else is necessary at hand to file my taxes), I have stumbled upon a question worth polling people about. How should you spend your income tax refund? This question is, of course, predicated upon the assumption you will get a refund. For those of you so rich that you actually have to pay Uncle Sam more than he withheld, well, you just don't have much part in this conversation. But for those who will get something, what do you do with that windfall?

For those of us who have a budget, this is a dilemma. Does it go into the "party" category (or some such comparable column), to be frittered away on frills and toys? Does it go into savings? Should it be spent on needs alone? Or should it be divided up into several different categories?

Personally, I'm a bit torn on this. It's a problem about which I need advice. I mean, it seems too boring to divide this windfall up like a normal paycheck, into categories like "food," "house," "transportation," etc. Moreover, my budget is created on the basis of not expecting anything back from Uncle Sam, so all of those needs are already covered. Should I just give it all away? Now there's a bold thought. Anybody in need of some extra cashola? And why is it that I feel like I've won the lottery when I get tax money back? I mean, whose money is it in the first place?

I'm all about giving to Caesar what is Caesar's, but the fact that I do rejoice at a tax refund tells me a lot about the depths of degradation to which my thinking about this has succumbed. I shouldn't be rejoicing, but angry that I'm finally getting my money back when I am, shouldn't I? I mean, why does Uncle Sam have to withhold money from us before it's due? Withholding should really only be done for people who failed the very basic math it takes to calculate how much money is 10 percent of your income (or whatever tax bracket you are in), or who fail to have the self-control to not spend money that will be owed in taxes. And those who volunteer to have withholding done for simplicity purposes could also do so. But to have the government demand that they take money from you before it's due? Sounds like Communist Korea to me. Sigh.