On cheating

Last week the kids at my middle school had midterms. Before handing back the students' tests one of the English teachers made copies to try and see which questions were too difficult and what could be improved. Some of the students said she made a mistake which, in several cases, was true. However, for at least one student (perhaps three, I didn't quite catch it) it wasn't true and he was caught red handed trying to change answers after the fact.

The English teacher talked to his homeroom teacher who talked to him today in a room typically used by students making up missed tests. Whatever was said in there got pretty heated; I could hear the homeroom teacher yelling and other teachers would pretend to read newspapers near the door to listen in. When they were done the teacher was actually in a good mood and only restrained herself from laughing until after he was out of earshot from the office. She told us that the kid denied everything outright, said it was impossible that the test was changed (despite having a copy from before the change), and even tried to blame someone else.

It's interesting to see these kinds of things from the teacher's perspective. I don't know what, if any, punishment the kid got for trying to cheat, but the teachers viewed the incident as a comically failed attempt at cheating. They preferred ridiculing his ineptness to scolding his bad habits, at least in front of the other teachers.

One of the other teachers was telling me about the second years' tests and showing me individual students grades. I don't know too many names because I see hundreds of students every week, so she gives me physical descriptions instead. She didn't get my joke of describing a student as "black hair, dark eyes, medium complexion, and kinda short" (a generic depiction of Japanese people), but does manage to come up with unflattering details. My favorites are "the one with the face of a horse," "the one who looks like a bird," "the girl who looks smart, but is not smart" (she had a pretty low score), and, the absolute best one, "the fat one who the other children make fun of." He really isn't that fat, especially by American standards.