Long story short: This semester all of my classes are female. Today I found one class cheating in a stupid way. My short fuse was lit and I blew up at them, "I expect this when I teach the guys. I give you more freedom because my female classes don't do this! Fine. If you act like the guys and cheat like the guys I will treat you like the guys from now on." (I thought of typing this in all caps to demonstrate my shouting.)
My rant was quite a bit longer than that but you get the idea. This is the first time I've had a blow up on the female campus. On the male campus it is at least once per semester and I use much more colorful language.
The funny thing is that as I was winding down I noticed nearly every one of my good students had a smile on her face. It was almost as if, "Thank you for finally waking up to the cheaters we sit next to..." They knew I wasn't talking to them so my blow up didn't really bother them.
When I get angry I know how to make a room quiet; you could have heard a pin drop - and this is a carpeted room, no less.
What is "cheating in a stupid way"?
ReplyDelete~Matt
Good question. On the first draft of this post I explained it and in explaining it I realized it is one of those, "you had to be there" moments. Suffice to say it was the equivalent of cheating on attendance (in a system where they go to school for free but the one thing the U asks is that they go to class). In the US I don't care if students attend, but since it is free I have no problem enforcing the rule here.
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