Plagiarism in a Spanish class

I'm still about 5 months away from leaving for the Peace Corps. Right now in life I am working as a substitute teacher. I got a really good job too. A lady who teaches Spanish in a school less than a mile from my house went on maternity leave and left the classroom to me. Because I am a long term substitute, I get paid more per day. I also get to teach my subject and practice my classroom management skills. This is a very good thing for my life right now.

So, just like any class, there were some students that seemed to talk more than others. These are the students who can take an otherwise quiet classroom and turn it into chaos, creating problems that I can't yet handle as an inexperienced teacher. At the end of my very first week I started to remember who these students were, and I told one of them to meet me after class because I had an extra assignment for him.

At this point, I hadn't thought through what exactly I wanted to do with him. I knew that I wanted to give him extra work, something that would make him think twice before he started talking again. I said the first thing that popped into my mind; I wanted him to write an essay, about culture from some Latin American country. He picked Cuba, and I let him go.

As planned, he brought the essay in the next day. I thanked him, but didn't look at it till after class. When the time came and I sat down to look at it, it didn't take me long to figure out that it was plagiarized, and in about another minute I found that he copied almost 70% of his essay straight from Wikipedia. Immediately I took it to another teacher, John, to read.

John was kind of a mentor for me at this point. He taught Spanish, just like me, and he was right across the hallway. His suggestion was that I make the student redo the assignment. I then went next door to Frank's classroom, and he said the same.

The next day I talked to the student, told him that it was plagiarized and that he had to do it again. Understandably, he was a bit angry. He kept on claiming that he didn't copy and paste it from Wikipedia, but that he typed it letter by letter. I sat him down after class and explained that it doesn't matter if you copy and paste it or type it yourself, if you steal someone else's sentences it is considered plagiarism. I told him that all he had to do was to rewrite those sentences in his own words and he would be ok. He was angry when he left.

In the morning on the next day I was out monitoring the hallway and talking to Don in between classes when the assistant principal started towards us. He was visibly agitated and told me that he had a concern. A mother had called to let him know that her son did not plagiarize an essay. She knew this because she was right there helping him with the assignment. The assistant principal told me that it didn't matter whether the essay was plagiarized or not, he wasn't going to call her a liar and that I was to accept it no matter what.

I was a bit shocked, to tell the truth. After he had gone, John, who was right there the entire time, said that his decision was “crap.” Right or wrong, I decided right there to live with it and to not let it bother me. Later on in the day though, I decided that I needed to have a chat with that student.

As class was getting out I asked him to stay for a minute. He looked like he was preparing for the worst, like a poor animal trapped with nowhere to go. I said "Look, you don't have to redo the essay. Your mom called the assistant principal and made sure that you didn't have to rewrite it. I want you to know I'm not mad, and I don't think you are a bad kid." I told him that no matter what his mom said, his essay was still plagiarized and that I've seen people fail high school English classes and even get kicked out of school for less plagiarism than that. I let him know that it is ok to look stuff up on the internet but that he needed to write things in his own words and if he did that he would be fine.

I figured that night that the mom would probably call again because I mentioned something to the effect of "no matter what your mom says, it is still plagiarism." The next day came and I didn't hear a thing. Another day passed without incident. The student, though, had changed. He wasn't talking as much and he was no longer a disruption.

After class on the next day he came up to me with a sheet of paper. He had rewritten the essay, in his own words, just like I had asked. I was speechless, mainly because I wasn't expecting anything like that. I was also speechless because, all of a sudden, I admired this kid. Instantly I saw his good qualities, his energy, his usually cheery attitude and his character. It was the last thing that I praised him for. I couldn't quite say it right, but bumbled out that what he showed me was integrity and good character.

He left the classroom with a big, sincere smile on his face. I'm not sure if the mother had a change of heart, or if it was the student who genuinely wanted to do the assignment over again, but that almost doesn't matter. It made me feel like somehow, in those days, I did something right. I either taught an important lesson, or brought out a moral or an embodiment of correct behavior in this student.

In the end, the punishment was effective. The student wasn't a problem in class anymore. I learned something, he learned something, and we were both better for it. It was inspiring for me and because of that, I got the better deal.