CHEATERS

Today, out of 51 kids, 29 of my 7th graders admitted to me with raised hands that they cheated on the morning's quiz. Let's do the math, shall we? 29/51 = 56.8% of my students cheated this morning and the ones that didn't, mostly scores 0/10. I much prefer a 0 than a C in my grade book, but I think the problem with my students is that they've told me that they much prefer seeing 10 falsely earned checks on their papers than a 0 that they earned. I don't think you understand, in China, students don't have grades - they only have midterm and final scores - so the grades that I give on a daily basis mean NOTHING.

I've told them time and time again that their quiz grades only matter to me. It's a measure of my performance as a teacher and that I've promised that I wouldn't get mad if I saw that they were earning zeros. It just meant that we would need to cover the material over again. I'm glad that my students feel like they can admit openly that they cheated and I promised that I wouldn't tell the principal. I'm still trying to figure out a way to teach them that cheating is meaningless and harms them more than it disappoints me without losing their trust. 

I didn't grade their quizzes and I put HK sad faces on them. I see them in 3 hours and what I've figured I'm going to do is reward those that didn't cheat and have the rest of them write an apology and explanation letter to me. Talk about a day deflator.