Gladly Would I Teach

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Yesterday I wrote about a student who had plagiarized part of a paper. I gave the student a zero for the assignment, explained how disappointed I was, and told him to see me later. This morning I returned the papers to students.

At the end of class, I took the student out in the hall and asked, “What’s with the paper you turned in?”

Without offering any excuses, complaints, or justification, he responded immediately, “I was just lazy.” He went on to tell me that he had waited until way too late to write the paper, and, in the end, he had just put something down — half of it copied from a book. I told him to explain what he did to his parents tonight and have one of them email me tomorrow so I know they are aware of the problem.

I’m frustrated with the student, but at least he didn’t try to deny it or put me through the ringer of having to arrange a parent conference to point out the similarities in the texts and to discuss the problems with plagiarism.

In the end, he simply said, “I was just lazy.”

I started to ask why he hadn’t just turned the paper in a day late and taken the punishment for tardiness, but I didn’t. Why push my luck?

Sometimes it’s better to just stop while you’re ahead!

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