Stupid w/ a Cherry on Top

I just caught one of my students cheating/plagiarizing today. Last week, I gave an essay quiz over Song of Solomon. Three prompts, choose ONE. They could even USE THEIR BOOKS and any notes they took themselves. The top of the sheet clearly stated that Spark Notes or other outside material was NOT allowed.

So, Idiot Student X, is often out of class and is more concerned about making his baseball practices on time than school work. He was gone from class the day of the quiz. Standard practice at Dwight* H.S. is to place those students' tests in the testing center for them to make up, which I did. I picked up some that were taken, including X's.

EPIC FAIL. He can't even get answers right when CHEATING. The first thing I noticed was he had basic data wrong - INEXCUSABLE given it was an open-book/note quiz. And then...his writing style completely changed and I threw down my marking pen in disgust. He had basically copied down verbatim some sections from Spark Notes regarding cases of magical realism in the text. I didn't even need to Google it to know as I HAD READ THE SPARK NOTES PRIOR TO STARTING THE BOOK IN CLASS. Still, I googled some phrases and BINGO. Spark Notes.

I printed off the corresponding pages and highlighted all the similarities and then put a copy in his advisor's box (left that dude a VM, too). Kid gets a big, fat ZERO. Oh, and that drops him down to an F overall in the class, too, which means precious can't play baseball as he'll be on academic ineligibility.

Cry me a fucking river, kid.

1) get your data right so you don't look completely inept at everything, including cheating
2) your teachers know all about the internets and spark notes
3) when you don't fucking over ANYTHING intelligent in class and suddenly come off like Einstein, IT THROWS A RED FLAG, moron

And THEN....THEN! In class today, he had the fucking gall to tell me that 1) he took the test and 2) his essay was OMG, so AWESOME.

I had to restrain myself. I looked at him and went, "Yeah." He kept on going on about his awesomeness. I was like, "Yeah, that's something we'll need to discuss" in the displeased teacher tone. That sobered him up. He wanted to talk right then and there and I was like "No, I am not getting into it now. You need to see me after class."

"I can't." (Baseball, which again, he WON'T be playing once his coach gets his academic report.)

I shrug my shoulders. "Well, then, you're going to have to see me some time." Supposedly, he will try to see me tomorrow.

Of course, by then his advisor will have already talked to him. I also left another VM telling his advisor about how low his grade dropped as a result. I probably should have called the parents this afternoon, but I forgot. I'll do that tomorrow.

FUCKING STUPID. It's JUST NOT WORTH IT, SO DON'T CHEAT.

More than that, if you ARE going to cheat, try not to get caught, genius. Do NOT try to pull some cheap, tawdy two-bit crap over on me. How flippin' stupid do you think I am? That's what offends me the most: thinking I am so stupid that I won't catch your shit.

EDIT: He's a fucking team MANAGER. He doesn't even PLAY. *smacks forehead*

* Not school's actual name, for OBVIOUS REASONS

Bad Day for a Quiz

For the students, really, but I don't feel so hot either! So, I administered my first quiz today. It was on the first half of our parts of the sentence schtick. It's a darn good thing my C.T. told me to make it worth a lot less. If not, these kids would all be failing.

I guess now I get to tell these kids that this is what happens when you don't take notes like you're supposed to. They were all "lah de dah" half the time. And they were like "you're not going to have the diagram models up on the wall????!!!!" Uh, no. The point is for you to KNOW this stuff, Einsteins.

I don't know how many times I've told them, you will NEVER EVER EVER infinity find your subject in a prepositional phrase. So, I put in what I thought was a "gimmee" question on the quiz. "True or False: You can find a subject in a prepositional phrase. " The second class all go it right, but my first class? It's like I never even taught them. Half the time they're not awake anyway.

A lot of the diagrams were atrocious, too. I'm going to have to inundate them with diagramming homework for the next four days. I know diagramming is the ass-end of exciting, but come on. When did I ever show you diagram models with crooked lines? YES, it DOES matter if your line for an adjective or adverb is straight or if you make it "L" shaped because the L shape means something completely different! Like: indirect object!

My C.T. was astounded when I showed her some of the quizzes. I told her I felt so bad and was wondering was it me? She told me to go over the stuff again, assign more diagramming, but that she thought I gave them every opportunity to ask questions and they were the ones not taking notes. Hell, I practically begged them to ask me questions.

Today, I told them that if I wrote it up on the board, then they'd better be taking notes. They grudgingly took out their notebooks. (Don't even get me started on this one kid who habitually doesn't bring a freaking pencil or pen to class. Seriously, I'm going to start keeping tabs on how often he does this in the next week. If it gets insane, I will forbid him from asking someone else for a pen, and then I'll tell him he's got a choice. He will either serve a detention for habitually coming to class unprepared, or he can take a detention and either get a pen from someone or from his locker.) Tomorrow, when they get their quizzes back, especially the first class, I am going to tell them again: 1) TAKE NOTES and 2)ASK QUESTIONS.