A story.
I made a student cry....
He was one of the most outgoing and brightest students in my class, tall for 12 and always smiling. On Friday morning we had a test. As it was nearing its end, I looked up to notice him looking at his hand and writing on his test paper. I was surprised to see this happening, but it looked rather suspicious, so I went over to him and checked his hand. Sure enough, there were vocabulary words written on it. I calmly took away his test paper. I tried to get the Chinese teacher's attention so that she could ask him to explain in Chinese, but she was chatting with a team leader. By the time she went to go talk with him, he was in tears at his desk. I guessed then that there might be another explanation. The teacher took him into the hallway to talk and I graded the test with the class. He scored 100%.
The teacher came in and explained to me that he hadn't been cheating. The first question on the test required students to unscramble vocabulary words, and he had decided to write them on his hand instead of working it out on the paper. He didn't want to return to class because he was afraid of what his classmates would think. I went out into the hall and talked to him (through a translator) and told him that I believed that he wasn't cheating, and that I was sorry. I told him he was one of the smartest students in the class and that he got 100% on the test. I asked him if he would come to the front of the class so I could apologize. He agreed, and I explained what had happened to the class, and then had them applaud him for his test score.
I felt like such a terrible person.... As I was talking to him, I very nearly started crying myself.
Anyways, he was smiling again by the second hour of class (the test was at the end of the first hour) and wanted me to sit with him and his friends at lunch where we sang a bunch of the camp songs together. There didn't seem to be any hard feelings. I hope he's not traumatized for life.
In retrospect, it would have been wiser for me to have asked the Chinese teacher to handle it from the start so he could have explained right away, but I think if he really had been cheating, my actions would have been appropriate.
Anyways, it's a story I shan't forget.
He was one of the most outgoing and brightest students in my class, tall for 12 and always smiling. On Friday morning we had a test. As it was nearing its end, I looked up to notice him looking at his hand and writing on his test paper. I was surprised to see this happening, but it looked rather suspicious, so I went over to him and checked his hand. Sure enough, there were vocabulary words written on it. I calmly took away his test paper. I tried to get the Chinese teacher's attention so that she could ask him to explain in Chinese, but she was chatting with a team leader. By the time she went to go talk with him, he was in tears at his desk. I guessed then that there might be another explanation. The teacher took him into the hallway to talk and I graded the test with the class. He scored 100%.
The teacher came in and explained to me that he hadn't been cheating. The first question on the test required students to unscramble vocabulary words, and he had decided to write them on his hand instead of working it out on the paper. He didn't want to return to class because he was afraid of what his classmates would think. I went out into the hall and talked to him (through a translator) and told him that I believed that he wasn't cheating, and that I was sorry. I told him he was one of the smartest students in the class and that he got 100% on the test. I asked him if he would come to the front of the class so I could apologize. He agreed, and I explained what had happened to the class, and then had them applaud him for his test score.
I felt like such a terrible person.... As I was talking to him, I very nearly started crying myself.
Anyways, he was smiling again by the second hour of class (the test was at the end of the first hour) and wanted me to sit with him and his friends at lunch where we sang a bunch of the camp songs together. There didn't seem to be any hard feelings. I hope he's not traumatized for life.
In retrospect, it would have been wiser for me to have asked the Chinese teacher to handle it from the start so he could have explained right away, but I think if he really had been cheating, my actions would have been appropriate.
Anyways, it's a story I shan't forget.
I agree that if he was cheating, your action was appropriate. We talked a bit about cheating and plagarism in our clasroom management sessions this week and its a big problem in China! So, your suspicions were really pretty good. But, its unfortunate that you were wrong. Another thing we learned this week--to be a good teacher you have to be able to fail!
ReplyDeletewo char i havn't been here in a while . I miss you and It is awesome to read all that you have done :)
ReplyDeletedrop me an email sometime k ?