I’m currently a junior and taking an American Lit class. My teacher assigned a test on the book “As I Lay Dying.” Since she doesn’t teach and sits behind her computer all class period trying to get her master’s degree, I had to use online resources to help me understand the book. I stumbled upon a practice test with answers and studied them, then test day comes and the test is the exact same thing I found online (She prints out all of her tests online and has used other teacher’s teacher material before). Is this considered cheating? Should I bother talking to my counselor about it since the whole school’s faculty has a unanimous hatred for this teacher as well? What should I do?
So you were accused of what?
I was just accused of cheating on the test.
I would explain your situation exactly as you explained it here. Prove that you had no idea she was using that practice test. Show through your history that you accessed/took the test before you were aware she was going to use it.
If she doesn’t believe me then how will it impact me?
I am guessing that your answers too closely resembled the answers provided online. I would explain to your teacher and advisor that this info is available online and you studied it in advance not having any idea that your teacher would use publicly available test materials. Leave out your personal feelings about your teacher.
It was a multiple choice test though and literally every other teachers hate her, I’ve asked what their opinion is about her. She is also one of those teachers that never believes students.
If you told her right after you took the test or while you were taking the test, then there should be no problem. That doesn’t appear to be the case, so…
Because the materials were readily available online, everyone has equal access to them. While you may have had an advantage over some other students who did not find these question, this advantage was caused not by your malicious wrongdoing but rather by your efforts to study and learn the material. At worst, you should be forced to retest.
How did you know she gets all her tests from online sources? It never occurred to me to try to find out where my teachers got their tests. If it was a multiple choice test, how did she find out you’d seen it beforehand? I could understand if it was an essay test and your answers were too similar to those online, but I don’t know how a teacher would know if a student studied for a multiple choice test online. Is the problem that you used online study materials or that you somehow had prior access to the exact test she gave?
Most teachers are careful about how they talk about other teachers to students. ALL of the other teachers not only don’t like her, they actually HATE her? Why is that?
I don’t think so. The teacher is lazy. But it’s not what I think that matters.
The same thing happened to me. My parents went to the counseler and she said technically I didn’t cheat. How does she even know you cheated?
There must be more to the story. Why would doing well on a MC test make your teacher accuse you of cheating? It doesn’t make sense.