Cheating, a commonly practiced habit among some students, can be done in many ways, and results from students looking for an easy path to complete tests or assignments.
Oftentimes, students cheat because they are in need of help, not because they lack morals,
English teacher Ginger Roy said. “It doesn’t mean that they’re bad people; it just means that
sometimes they’re in desperate situations,” Roy said.
“Desperate people will sometimes make desperate choices.”
Sometimes, students find it intimidating to ask teachers for help on something they don’t
understand, especially if they struggle with personal issues such as shyness or family-related issues, Roy said. This is why teachers need to encourage students to ask questions, she added.
Tests on subjects like chemistry can be difficult for some students, chemistry
teacher Jason Marino said. “I try to make sure that they [are tested on] everything that we’ve learned in the unit,” Marino said. “And I know that, generally speaking, math is a little bit harder, and we do a lot of math in the class.”
To prevent cheating, Marino requires students to use their chromebooks for tests and quizzes, he said.
“On the chromebooks through the MUSD app, there is a link for Socrative, which is my main testing software,” Marino said. “It prevents students from being able to use the chromebook for anything other than the test itself.”Marino has caught students trying to cheat in other ways, he said. Some instances include not logging onto Socrative, using cell phones during the test, or having small slips of paper hidden up sleeves or elsewhere, he added.
Over the years, the methods which students use to cheat have changed, physics teacher Charles Schletzbaum said.
In “2004, the kicker for the football team turned in one of the linebackers’ lab reports with the
photocopy with the name whited out,” Schletzbaum said. “That was not impressive. Then, there was
somebody in 2009 who turned in a paper in June that their girlfriend had turned in. I’ve been more impressed with how spectacular students fail at cheating.”
In comparison to other, previous years, the school’s punishments for students who cheat has gotten lighter, Roy said. “I definitely think the student getting a zero and a referral and then having to do some sort of educational work on cheating and plagiarism and all of that is good, but I also think it’s not really helpful, because most students know what they’re doing,” Roy said.
Students should receive a punishment that will make them think twice about cheating, but the teacher could also be considerate and understand what situation the student is coming from, Roy said.
This punishment is a learning experience, Roy said. Getting punished for cheating is not the
end of the world, it is the start of something new, she added.