Q: As a high school teacher, I’ve always been cognizant of students’ temptation to cheat. I’m pretty empathetic to them, too. As a society, we continue to put so much pressure on kids to achieve, achieve, achieve, and this last year in particular has been brutal and miserable. And don’t even get me started on the craziness of college admissions right now, particularly during the pandemic. The option to withhold standardized test scores has created even more pressure on kids to earn high grades.
Anyway, like many teachers, I turned a blind eye — mostly out of a sense of helplessness — to much of the cheating that occurred during the pandemic and virtual learning. Yes, I tried to adapt my assessments and projects to focus on critical thinking skills and decrease students’ ability to Google answers to questions. But that really didn’t work out all that well. Kids worked in groups rather than do projects or take assessments independently; they got their parents’ help answering exam questions and writing papers (parents are often complicit in cheating!); they took extra time on timed assessments without permission, and they recycled work from other classes or plagiarized. The list goes on, and it was just so hard to prove anything, so for the most part I stopped trying. Sure, some of these temptations won’t exist in the physical classroom, but I feel like cheating will continue to be a huge challenge, far more than in past years. It’s almost been normalized. How can I address this issue as school returns to normal, whatever normal looks like this year, other than simply watching my students like a hawk and tracing their digital footsteps? I want to teach them, not police them.
A: You’re right that students’ ability to cheat will diminish when they return to the physical classroom, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. I’d keep it real. As students return to the building, tap into your empathy. Initiate a conversation about the uptick in cheating during virtual learning. Ask them to share their insights. Do they think, for instance, that kids cheated more because they struggled with time management, felt overwhelmed, and panicked? Or maybe some found it easier to cheat and succumbed to the temptation. Or perhaps their parents were around more and were overinvested in their achievement. Or maybe their grades took on added importance because they’re applying to college without standardized test scores, and they felt desperate. There are a million reasons why kids cheat, so put them on the table and validate their feelings. Validating doesn’t mean you think cheating is acceptable; it simply means you understand the underlying reasons for the behavior.
Once you have a handle on what might be feeding students’ temptation to cheat, talk about ways to diminish their anxiety. If they’re struggling with time management, for example, then you could help them break up large assignments into smaller parts. You also could brainstorm relaxation strategies, such as taking a few deep breaths before getting started on an exam, or circling test questions they can’t answer and coming back to them later. If a student is too overwhelmed to even get started on something, they might need professional help for clinical anxiety. Similarly, a student with a “foggy brain” might be struggling with clinical depression. Students who feel tremendous pressure to achieve might be afraid to admit they need academic or emotional help, so normalize help-seeking behavior and share mental health resources, such as the school counselor. Let kids know when they can see you individually, too, and provide plenty of opportunities to ask clarifying questions during class. Students will be less likely to cheat if they’re comfortable admitting when they’re confused.
In addition to discussing the underlying reasons for cheating and crowd-sourcing better coping strategies, talk about the downside of the behavior. What do they lose when classmates cheat? Does it add to the overall stress? Does it create a toxic atmosphere? Do they find the unfairness infuriating? Does it bring out the worst in them? Perhaps they’ll acknowledge that cheaters don’t learn or feel a sense of accomplishment when they achieve high marks. This is a good time to review the honor code and bring up the consequences of violating it. You could even write a separate class contract. What do they want from themselves and from one another?
Beyond these steps, I’d continue to lower students’ temptation to cheat. That doesn’t necessarily mean watching them like a hawk. You might, for instance, try to lower the stakes, whether you provide opportunities for retakes, give kids multiple ways to demonstrate their learning, or write exam questions and assign papers that require critical thinking. Changing the culture in your classroom won’t happen overnight. As one survey showed a few years ago, nearly 30% of U.S. high school students admitted to using a connected device to cheat on an exam or project. The pandemic might have exacerbated cheating, but this is not a new problem.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phyllis L. Fagell
Phyllis L. Fagell is the school counselor at Landon School in Washington, D.C., a therapist at the Chrysalis Group in Bethesda, Md., and the author of the Career Confidential blog. She is also the author of Middle School Matters and Middle School Superpowers, available at https://amzn.to/3Pw0pcu.
