Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater

Before I accepted this position at EGT, I was warned that the students cheat - shamelessly. I was a little shocked - but not much, after all, students in America cheat too. Unfortunately, in Slovakia, teachers have accepted this behavior as part of the culture. You see, in Slovak schools, the students are divided into grade levels and then each grade level is divided into classes. Students begin school at EGT in one class and they remain with that class taking every course together until they graduate five years later. During this time, our students develop a strong sense of class identity. They are a little family and they are fiercely loyal to each other. They often "help" (read: CHEAT) the members of their class with tests and homework. They care about each other's grades, AND it is important for the students that their class is seen as being intelligent. (I think this is perhaps a holdover from communism - the idea that the class identity is stronger than that of the individual).

Last week, I had two back-to-back experiences with cheating in my classes. One caused me to smile. The other one made me angry.

At the end of sixth hour on Tuesday, I watched as Marek sprinted out of the classroom well ahead of the other students. I was a little surprised by his hurry out of my class. "Ondrej," I asked, turning to one of the only remaining students. "What's wrong with Marek?"
"Oh," Ondrej answered, "He wants to get to next class before Kubo does. He wants to sit next to Denisa but Kubo does too."
"Ah," I said knowing that Denisa was a really smart student. "Do you have a test next class?" "Of course," Ondrej smiled.

Then, the very next day, I gave by 2A2 Old Testament students their third test.
I watch my students like a hawk when they have tests. They are not allowed to have anything but a pencil on their desks. Sometimes students will write on the inside of the paper label surrounding their water bottle. For this reason, no water bottles are allowed on test days. Even their bookbags are located in a different place in the room so that they are not tempted to "help" themselves. I often will make several versions of a test - usually anywhere from 2-4 depending on the particular class. I try very hard to make it difficult to cheat.

On this particular day, my 2A2 students were in a mood. I saw four of them sharing answers with each other from across the room. I'm not quite sure how they developed a system to do this - especially since the students did not know who would have which version of the test; however, they managed it. For these four students, the decision to cheat meant an automatic zero. I walked up to them, but a big "x" on the front of their paper in black marker and then let them continue working. At the end of the class, I announced that whoever had an "x" would receive the grade of "zero." The students were not pleased and collectively lamented the unfairness of it all.

The next hour of class, I was actually serving as a substitute for the same 2A2 students. I told them at the beginning of the hour that they had worked hard last class and I was not going to make them do work. They were welcome to study, read, etc. as long as they were quiet. About five minutes into class, I looked up from grading their tests and saw that one of the girls had writing on the inside of her arm. I called her name and asked, "Did you get a tattoo?" "No," she answered surprised. "Oh," I said, "I think you have some dirt on your arm then. "Here, let me show you." And I walked up to her desk and tapped on the writing. Sure enough, there were names of Old Testament characters and bizarre numbers written on her arm. "What do these numbers mean?" I asked the student. "They are pages in my dictionary," she answered. I told her I wanted to see her dictionary, and when she pulled it out, I flipped through it. There were notes from class scrawled in the margins of the different pages of the dictionary.

I do not often let my students use dictionaries; however, because most of their tests have at least one essay question IN ENGLISH, I will occasionally let them look up words. Apparently, this was a bad idea. I asked the rest of the class to produce their dictionaries. And very quickly, I realized I had been had. It seemed the situation called for zeroes all around.

Oh, the joys of teaching.