Pressures of college admission, academic competition, and parental pressure — may lead your students to cheat. What will you do about it?
It’s no secret that the rising expectation and competition to get into good colleges puts tremendous pressure on students. This pressure—pressure to get into a good school, be the smartest person in the class, impress their parents, etc.—may lead students to cheat.
To discourage cheating as the only or easiest path to success, I open up a dialogue year-round using the following tactics:
Emphasize Knowledge, Not Grades and Schools
Education should be about genuine learning and knowledge, rather than chasing the most prestigious college. We should recognize that success does not depend on the prestige of that person’s alma mater. It is your knowledge, your work ethic, and your ambition that gets you far in life.
Involve Your Students in the Honor Code Process
Students rarely have the opportunity to engage in discussion surrounding school policies. If they are brought into these conversations and help create policy, they will better understand and appreciate why the rules exist.
When a student of mine cheated in an AP class, it affected all of my classes. Other students were extremely upset that there wasn’t accountability or consequences in place. To help them feel heard and have a place in the conversation, we developed an honor code for the AP program at our school. All of my students—including the one who was caught cheating—contributed to the honor code that was then signed off on by the principal. Every AP student and their parents now sign it at the beginning of every school year.
When I did this in my classroom, I asked every student to submit one honor code that was most important to them into a hat. As a class, we went through each and worked together to compile agreed-upon rules into a complete honor code.
Talk About Cheating
We shouldn’t be afraid to talk about cheating with our students; there are ways to discuss cheating without seeming accusatory or untrusting. And this conversation shouldn’t just happen at the beginning of the year or be one line in a syllabus.
If there is current news about a student caught cheating in college, (which, unfortunately, is common), I like to discuss it with my students. It shows that cheating can have real consequences. I ask them why cheating should be punishable, and how it affects others.
Talking about cheating and giving students a voice in the process empowers them to fully consider and comprehend the potential consequences. My students understand not only what will happen if they cheat, but why they shouldn’t, and how it hurts themselves and others.
