At Least She Remembered to Change the Name

April 2, 2008 in Darndest Things
Tags: assignment, cheating, copying, grade, higher, homework, lower, lowering, master teacher, points, score, student teacher, three, trek

I generally score classwork assignments pretty fairly. If I ever assign questions, I’ll have each important component worth a maximum of three points. Each of those points is awarded in case of effort, correctness and completeness.

Though the system is wholly fallible, only one student so far has bothered to hound me for points.

It was just the other day, and my master teacher came up to me with a curious look on his face. He told me that two ladies in the back corner — any further from the teacher’s desk and they’d have to jump out the second-story window — had an issue with their grades.

Why did she get a better score than I did?

I looked at their papers. Sure enough, while they were identical down to the word, one assignment had earned two more points than the other. It didn’t faze me because both recieved pretty low scores to begin with. It wasn’t aesthetics, either — the handwriting on the better scorer was, if anything, worse.

I was unsympathetic — these papers are identical down to the word, remember — but I played it off like I really meant to help them out the way they wanted.

“I’ll take a look at this.”

Once I had made my 12-mile trek back to the desk, I immediately adjusted the higher grade to match the lower grade on the computer, making the appropriate change on the paper itself.

They each looked disgruntled once I showed them the new scores. The higher scorer found it in herself to laugh at the situation.

I told you he’d do something like that.

I knew there was a reason she got a higher score. 

Moral of the story? Students’ copying helps them little. I should make a note of telling them that.