As promised, this story is for Tink. It’s not so much about me as one of my students from when I taught high school, so I’m going to write her another one this week that is about me.

I have tons of great plagiarism stories, but the best one of all of them happened when I taught high school. I can’t imagine what it would take to top this.

When I taught high school, I loved teaching the 12th graders, and I really liked my one class of 11th graders. Teaching 10th graders, however, was awful. My dear friend Caiti being excepted from this rule, 10th graders are proof that Satan’s spawn walks among us. I had two sections of 10th graders when I taught. My last period class that became notorious and will be the subject of several future stories and my 8th period class that had some good students in it and one very large pain in the ass, also known as the star of this little tale. This kid was obnoxious as could be, rarely tried, and had parents, including a father who was a professor, who could not conceieve of their precious little angel doing anything wrong. Perhaps if they spent a day as his English teacher, they would have felt differently, but whatever.

One of the things I was supposed to spend a month teaching the 10th graders was how to write reviews. I don’t know why, but I was. I thought it was a stupid thing to teach, but at least it came with some pre-planned classes built in. Anyway, when we got to movie reviews, I showed the class Return of the Jedi and then assigned them to write a two page movie review. This assignment was supposed to be practice for the book review that was due 10 days after that.

I got the movie reviews and Mama and Papa’s little bundle of joy had plagiarized his. He had downloaded it from the Internet. He had changed a couple of things, such as changing unsatisfactory to crappy, but he had still plagiarized one of the easiest assignments I have ever given. I turned him in to the Dean who told me that I had to give him an 80 on it, but that if it happened again, the school would get tough. I told the Dean that I didn’t think that something that used the word crappy deserved a B, even if it was original, but the Assistnant Principal intervened, and since I was in her office for punishment more than any student, I elected not to fight that battle and save my pissiness for other issues. Side note: I may be the only teacher in history to actually be called to the office over the loudspeaker during morning announcements to be punished. That happened three times. I’m kind of proud of that. End Side note.

Anyway, the kid turned his book review in, a review of Tom Perrotta’s The Wishbones. Right away, I knew the review was plagiarized because it was titled “The Wishbones by Gary Klimt.” That’s right, folks! He got the author of the book wrong and wrote down the author of the review he plagiarized instead. So, I looked for where he got it from and found the source text. This time he had plagiarized the New York Times. I turned him into the Dean, expecting that a serious punishment awaited him. The Dean even requested that I be present at the meeting this time.

The kid came in and we presented him with the evidence. The kid took one look at the evidence and without batting an eye proved he had balls that even make Unc’s look small. He looked the Dean and I square in the eyes and said, “Wait a minute! This guy cheated off of me!” I was speechless.

The Dean asked him to wait and outside and asked me what we were going to do about this new possibility. I asked what he was talking about and he looked at me and said. “Well, we have to explore the possibility that this other guy cheated off of B. In fact, I say we give him the benefit of the doubt.” Now, I was really speechless.

I somehow managed to explain that my student was getting a C in his 10th grade English course and that this other guy wrote for the Times. I pointed out that he could probably bang out his column without B’s assistance. The Dean agreed with me and decided that B had to be punished and punished severely with a 70. A 70!! Two plagiarzed essays in 10 days and he was getting a 70. I protested and was told that his parents simply donated too much money to the school.

This time, I did fight back and gave him a 0. When his parents called to protest me giving him a 0, even threatening me with my job, I didn’t yield. I simply told them that if I had my way, he would have failed the course. It took mutliple phone calls and a meeting with Administration, but I won. Then, two weeks later I signed my acceptance letter to go teach at UK, after I got in trouble for what I decided was going to be the last time. Not for one second have I missed teaching at that school.