Pearl Story

"Pearl" cheats. It doesn't matter what we are working on, I can say with certainty that she has never done anything w/o copying some portion from someone else. At first I believed that she was trying to cover up reading difficulties or was just really lost but over time I realized that my Pearl is just a scammer. One of the first things you pick up as a teacher is the "Lingo": Scammer, Dude, Trippin', my personal favorite, "Eskippiando". Pearl has taken scamming to a artistic level. Cell phone cheating, little scraps of notes cheating, have to move all students away from her during tests cheating, paper on the floor cheating, writing on leg cheating, you always lose my paper scamming, tapping answer on desk cheating, copying from papers taken from my inbox, taking papers from other kid's binders, someone stole my paper scamming, emergency in the bathroom cheating. The best was the surprise visit before school to say hello and then taking a test off my desk to fill out and pass off as her own later in the day. Too bad she grabbed one of my SPED modified tests for my Foundations kids. That incident was actually kind of amusing. Pearl is not a morning person and she had to get up early for that. She probably spent more time trying to scam than it would have taken her to actually do the work or study. Pearl's many scams did make me realize several things about myself.
1.) Despite it all, I still trust my kids. I do believe that the majority of my kids will do the right thing.
2.) I am not stupid. I do have to do a little more work like multiple tests to prevent cheating. I have also moved my in-boxes next to my desk.
3.) The best thing to do is monitor my kids constantly. Not just in case of cheating. In case they need help, in case they don't get it, in case they just need a little attention, in case they don't believe they can do it on their own w/o cheating, in case they don't how to do anything w/o cheating.