With the increased merging of technology and education comes countless new ways for students to cheat on assignments and tests. Lower Dauphin is no exception to this trend, and teachers have had to come up with creative ways to deal with this new problem.
Recently, Ms. Stephanie Maurer experienced students cheating on an AP Statistics test. In response, she told her students that she wanted to be approached with honesty by the person who did it, and until this happened she would be suspending the monthly extra credit options for everyone in the class. This response created a situation of peer pressure that quickly resulted in a confession.
Maurer says she feels one of the most important things here is “having a healthy student-teacher relationship.” If the students respect the teacher, they are much more likely to want to support them. Maurer cites one instance in which one of her students jokingly stole her stamper, and Maurer told her class that stamp was her favorite, even though it may seem small. Feeling bad for her, they immediately returned it and apologized. Maurer isn’t intimidating and always shows her students grace, making her very approachable and welcoming for her students to talk to, even when they do something wrong.
Sra. Emily Markley notes that cheating “is a very serious offense. School is a time that we can learn and grow.” In terms of her own methods of dealing with cheating, she emphasizes that she tries “not to just write a student off, but integrity is something that is really important to me.” Markley says that cheaters aren’t bad people, but they are someone who has made a mistake. For this reason, she treats different situations differently.
In one instance, Markley was out with the flu and her substitute accidentally passed out the quiz. The substitute collected the quizzes back, but some students had already taken advantage of the slip-up. One of Markley’s coworkers told Markley that her quiz was out, so when Markley came back, she had created a new quiz. One of the quiz’s tasks was to translate sentences, including one that said something along the lines of “Sra. Markley knows that her students saw the test.” After they took the quiz, she remembers hearing the commotion of the surprised students in the hallway, and was able to have a laugh even in the unfortunate situation.
Above all, Maurer and Markley speak on the importance of showing students that cheating on the test is doing a disservice to their own academics later on, but that they prioritize respecting their students and keeping a good relationship in order to inspire honesty and improvement.
