Plagiarism

After doing some grading to try and catch up before exams, I found something truly extraordinary. I opened a Word document from one of my students. On the document, there was a piece of text obviously cut and paste from a website. The first hint was a powder blue background behind the text. I found that a mite bit suspicious. So I did what any self respecting teacher would do. I entered the text into Google. Low and behold...

PLAGIARISM!

So... I wrote to my student, telling him that he failed the assignment. He had the guts to write back, saying that hed do the assignment again (smilie face). So, I had to tell him that I was failing him. Which is a stressful thing for a teacher to do for the first time. I mean, there's a level of authority required, that I haven't quite internalized.

Anyway, the problem is that now I'm overly suspicious of every time my students do extraordinarily well. But at least one of my students will be a bit of an example to the others. I have so much power!