But We Think in Portuguese

"Teacher teacher, you are too hard. You give us texts and then questions, but the answers to the questions aren’t in the text."
"Yes, I realize that."
"But then we have to think."
"That is the whole point."
"But we think in Portuguese, not English."

Deal.

I have said this before, but teaching critical thinking is like pulling teeth. American teeth. Not these African teeth that haven’t really been brushed much in their short, undernourished lives, and would probably pop right on out with just the slightest tug.

S0 when I assigned my 12th grade classes their first take home exam, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I gave a text, then asked questions like:
1. What is the problem?
2. What should or shouldn’t the person do?

Well, apparently it was too hard. And so instead of asking for help, or really just trying to write something in English, over half of my students cheated. They literally copied about three different smart people's tests, word for word, misspelled word for misspelled word, incorrectly conjugated verb for in correctly conjugated verb.

Really, if your going to cheat, be a little more creative about. Creative cheating I can at least sort of appreciate in a strange way. Obvious, unintelligent cheating is just sort of offensive.

And that is why over half of the 12th grade currently has a 0 in English. When I broke the news that I am not an idiot, and caught on to the little scam, I got mixed reviews.

"good teacher! yeah! they should get 0's"
"no teacher, I didn’t cheat!" (mentira)
"haha, you are so funny, we cant fail" (well it looks like you just did.)
"but english is hard!" ( I just started learning Portuguese five months ago, and it's already better than your English... Ok, I am not really this mean, unless they are being particularly disrespectful or laughing at my language skills.)

Well, they all have a make-up assignment... but I suppose I am going to have to re-think compositions from now on. Perhaps I will broach the realm of group testing. It’s worth a shot.