In ELA (English Language Arts) class, I've just finished a book called A Step From Heaven, about a Korean family that emigrates to the United States. Tomorrow we start The Samurai's Garden, by Gail Tsukiyama. That one's a real interesting scenario. It's 1937. A young man from Hong Kong named Stephen contracts tuberculosis. His father is a businessman who lives and works in Kobe, Japan (although he himself is Chinese). He owns a beach house in the coastal town of Tarumi. It is decided that the young man will travel to Tarumi in hopes that the environment there will help him recover. He makes friends with Matsu, the middle-aged Japanese man who takes care of the house and its garden. As they get to know each other, Matsu introduces Stephen to Sachi, a woman who is Matsu's age and with whom Matsu is in love; she has Hansen's disease (leprosy) and lives in a town of lepers up on a mountainside. Their backstory unfolds; meanwhile, the Japanese are advancing through China, so there's that whole angle too. I'm looking forward to reading it with my class.
In Social Studies, we've been studying Hinduism. Since I don't have a textbook on the subject, I've been using the magazine Hinduism Today's resources for teaching about Hinduism, which I have found to be quite good. The readings are really solid, and are followed by questions. I've selected just a few of these for the kids to read and answer questions on.
I was correcting one such assignment last night when I found an interesting anomaly: one of my student's names in the upper right hand corner of a page, in his normal, crabbed handwriting, with writing on the page in a different hand--much neater, feminine-looking. Just by comparing the writing of the answers to his name, it was obvious they were written by different people. I happened to have a longer sample of this student's writing, one he'd done in class, and there was no doubt that the two did not come from the same hand. It's reasonably common for these kids to have tutors, some of whom will give them more homework help than is appropriate.
I confronted my student about this in class today. I showed him the handwriting on the two different papers and asked him to explain himself. He insisted that he had written both of them. I don't remember exactly how it went from there, but it was something like this. I told him I thought he was lying to me. He insisted all the more and became upset. He complained of being sleepy, or of a headache or something. I asked him how the two pieces of writing could be so different if he had written both of them. He replied that the one had been written much more slowly and carefully; it had been his only piece of homework for that night, and he had taken extra time on it. (He's never done anything like that before--all his handwritng has looked the same, up until now.) I asked him to rewrite the last line of text on the paper to prove to me that he could write like that. After a false start, he managed to write something that was indeed neater than his normal handwriting and looked something like his tutor's handwriting (he had the tutor's writing in front of him while he was doing this). But it wasn't convincing--a's differently shaped, letters connected differently, "y" drawn differently. I told him I still didn't believe that was his handwriting. He continued to flatly deny any impropriety.
I didn't know what to do. I've had plagiarism situations before, and when caught the students have confessed immediately. I told him to sit down, and I would figure out what to do with him. I kept the papers. He sat down, and shortly afterwards asked to go to the nurse. I pretty much always honor requests to go to the nurse, and didn't want to make an exception here, though perhaps I should have. He remained in the nurse's office for the entire rest of the block class period and into the next--about an hour--and returned after the next period had begun to collect his things. I spoke with him briefly and he said he was going home. I wished him a swift recovery and sent him on his way.
Having talked with my mentor teacher and the secondary principal, the plan now is to require him to redo the assignment; he will also be sent to the principal's office at the beginning of the lunch period tomorrow (assuming he's back in school).
This has been troubling me all day. I was very surprised that he would lie to me like that. It's also such a piddling little assignment. And the tutor didn't even do it very well! She (he?) answered only three of the five required questions, and only barely satisfactorily. The student's lying to me also has had the effect of escalating the situation: I probably would just have had him redo it and not gotten the principal involved, but once he started stonewalling like he did, I didn't know what to do other than go to the principal. It's disheartening to me that he cheated in the first place, disheartening that he lied about it, disheartening that he made such a big deal out of a really small assignment, and disheartening that he now seems to be running away from the consequences. Does he think I'm going to let it just blow over now?
Odd. Sad. In any case, I'm baking cookies. The batter's in the freezer chilling. I should probably get them in the oven so Leslie can have some before she goes to bed.
UPDATE: No, it's gotten too late. She's going to bed. It will have to wait until tomorrow. She says the batter is really good, at least.
