Check this one out,
One of my goof-off"s decides he wants to get serious now that it's at the last end of the first nine weeks and he's failing. So he comes in after school, makes up a quiz and we have a little chat about his grades, future, etc. He comes into class the next day. I tell him "Okay, you can make up the small hands-on project" that he didn't do. I even offered to let him come after class to finish it if he wasn't able to during class. Next thing I know (maybe 15 minutes later) he's finished! He starts pressing me to grade it right then and put it in the gradebook so he can see his new average. I tell him I'll do it after class. After class, upon thorough examination, I find that he had snuck out to the back of the shop, retrieved one of the other student's same project that was thrown out, brought it back in, spruced it up a bit, brings it over and says "here you are Mr. Connors, I'm done". We'll be having a little chat about that one today! Ya'll have a good one!
Wow! That's quite a story. I often wonder if kids ever stop to consider that it's actually more difficult to cheat or find an easy way out than it is to do things the "right" way in the first place. At least this student is enterprising, he just needs to channel his, uh, skills in a more honest and ethical direction.
ReplyDeleteDwayne, I'll be interested to know how you handle this. I agree with Jessie. Yes, sometimes kids spend much more time and energy trying to cheat or cut corners than it would take to just do it right from the get go.
ReplyDeleteGood that you DID NOT grade the project right that minute like he wanted you to do.
Yes, all of a sudden he's in a hurry to get his grade up. Guess he still hasn't realized that maybe he should have thought about his grades from the first week of school.
Let us know what happens.
Connie