“There will never be another chance later”- exactly why I am feeling this stress over it all. Once the grade is in its done.
I do feel bad for this other family…they are friends of ours. This girl is one of my daughters closest friends. She made a mistake, I do not think she thought she would get caught or that it would come down to this. She is a 15 year old child. It is important to also teach my own daughter to show some grace and forgive her as well.
I hate to see kids caught in semantics. I only mention it because I’ve known others caught in the same manner, but the consequences were much higher in college. I would hope given this was a first offense, that there would be a review board/appeal process available; does the handbook outline an appeal process?
I find this thread very interesting. My kids are older now, but so much of their early schooling included being told over and over that they needed to help their fellow students. The “help” was often what kids do when they don’t really understand what it means to teach (after all, THEY didn’t go college to get a teaching degree, but they are told to teach someone something). Personally, I saw a lot of kids just copying their peers when I worked in the classroom (elementary and middle school). If there is never any education to help students differentiate between helping and allowing plagiarism as they progress in school, how do they know the difference? My kids went to schools that did an excellent job of teaching the difference, so I know it can be done. But not all schools do that … and if expectations are so rigid, it’s on the school to provide education to all students so that they understand the rules.
Did the other girl record the FaceTime conversation?
Turnitin, a popular plagiarizer detector, generates an originality score that is based on the similarity of series of words. It doesn’t focus on similar ideas - there needs to be multiple instances of identical series of words. If the student read her paper to her friend and the other student later paraphrased the content, this would not be picked up as plagiarism.
Since they have different teachers and it was caught by a plagiarism program it sounds like there were strings of words that matched. I’d want a copy of my kid’s essay with all the shared phrases highlighted so I could see how much.
How long did your daughter have to do the essay? Did her teacher assign it the night before too? If not, it’s unlikely the other teacher did. It would be unfair to give one class a week and the other class 24 hours to do the same assignment
I wouldn’t feel badly for the friend. It sounds like she waited until the last minute then used your daughter to cheat. I’d want to know how she got enough similar phrases to trigger the plagiarism checker. Did your daughter send her a copy or share the screen? It only takes a second to take a screenshot. Recording Facetime is even easier.
Here is what it says for the appeals…keep in mind the supervisor did not share this with me, it was shared by a teacher in our corner
" If the pupil is not in agreement with the disciplinary action imposed by the administration, he/she may appeal the action to the Superintendent. If the pupil is dissatisfied with the Superintendent’s disposition of the case, he/she may grieve the action in accordance with Policy No. 5710, Pupil Grievance."
I really don’t know if she did and I certainly don’t want to ask the parents and accuse her of doing that either.
nobody said the ideas were similar. I did not read both. The mom has since read both and said that there were a few sentences exact with maybe a word or two changed but she did say it wasn’t a complete copy. She did as well as her daughter admit there was plagiarism. Not one single person has said otherwise.
Yes they have different teachers. My daughter clearly had enough time to do hers as she did it and turned it in when it was due and it had already been graded. I can only go by what this other parent said regarding her daughters teacher, if she is being dishonest or looking for excuses then thats on her. But she said her daughter was under a ton of stress with all things that were due because it was the end of the marking period. She was given this assignment with a due date of midnight. At some point the teacher realized it wasn’t enough time and moved it to 8am the next day. She said she tried to reach out to the teacher and the teacher wasn’t available. I can only go by what they said and truth is none of this matters to me because it isn’t my responsibility to say if they are being truthful. Do I think its possible she waited until the last minute and then made a bad choice? Of course I do. But do I have some empathy over a bad choice being made? Yup that too. She is human. Sadly the more this drags on the more resentful my daughter is getting towards the friend and that does make me sad as well.
I’m a middle school teacher and have dealt with plagiarism recently. I think your district’s policy is actually lenient. It’s comparable to my middle school’s policy and more lenient than our high school’s policy, which would require suspension.
The whole essay doesn’t need to be an exact copy for plagiarism to occur. If there are “a few sentences exact with maybe a word or two changed”, that is plenty of evidence of plagiarism. Since the two girls had the assignment at different times, it is pretty obvious who copied off whom.
My issue would be the weighting of the assignment for your daughter. If the maximum grade she can attain for the marking period is a C with one of the assignments’s grades being 50%, then the teacher is not assigning a sufficient number of grades. A single 50% should not be enough to doom her to a C, assuming that the rest of the grades are an A. What was the weighting for this assignment?
I don’t buy the friend’s story of only having one night to do the assignment.
Your daughter was not in the wrong. Coming from a high school student, friends helping each other understand the assignment makes so much more of a difference. Her intention was never to let her friend copy but give her an idea of what she could do. The other girl knows better which is why she’s is accepting accountability for it. No matter the details lets really look at intentions. And also… it may seem like the end of the world now, but situations like these build character and it could be something she writes about in her college essay. How this whole situation happened and the way she stood up for herself while still being a good friend might just be the type of person a school is looking at. And if she’s an excellent students already the C won’t do much to her GPA especially if she is taking weighted classes!
Yes I know thats what makes this so much worse. The way this is weighted and the lack of other things makes this a big impact on her grade. Sadly the other girl said it won’t impact hers as much due to her current grades. Again, its just frustrating, sad… that my daughter is going to be hurt even more by all of this then the person who actually committed the act.
thank you. In my daughters school where they have been virtual 75% of the time, they do reach out to each other for help. They reach out for social interaction and its just not uncommon to FaceTime for hours while you both are doing homework.
This didn’t happen by accident. I’d get a copy of both and ask my child how she thinks her friend was able to copy multiple sentences pretty much word for word. What it looks like right now is that your daughter gave her essay to her friend. It appears that she either sent it, screen shared it, or read it slowly enough or enough times that the friend was able to get the phrasing down.
If she did none of those things then she’s going to have to come up with an alternate reason (that an appeals committee will accept) that explains how her good friend came up with several identical sentences. It didn’t happen with a single reading or by your daughter explaining how her friend could expand her essay. Before you get a lawyer involved or file an appeal you should understand how it did happen.
Holy jeez. Please read the entire thread. As I stated numerous times both girls said my daughter read hers to this girl. I have said that multiple times. My daughter read hers to the girl. She read parts of it, she read sentences she explained how long it was. The pace she read it at is not relevant when we already established she read it.
And as I said she was trying to show her how she answered. Was that wrong? Clearly!!! Did she do it with the intent that the girl would copy it? Of course not. She was blindsided
I am chiming in OP because I disagree with what seems to be the mainstream opinion on this thread, that your daughter “did something wrong.” Maybe because my kids don’t go to public school, but the amount of collaboration I see on the regular, doesn’t make this an unusual situation. The problem is simply that the other girl copied.
I’m sorry you’re daughter is going through this. And I’m sorry so many people are telling you she was wrong to try to help her friend.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
It does me no good to fabricate anything as I truly am trying to figure out the next steps
I stated my daughter was trying to help her and explained how she answered and yes that involved reading parts of her paper. The mom stated there are similar as well as a few exact short sentences. She admitted she copied.
The question I am trying to get help with is that enlight of this what do I do next. She didn’t tell the girl to copy. She didn’t ask her to. She didn’t know she would. How is that her fault someone decided to do that. Was she wrong for sharing. Yes. So now what?
I think the reason people are focusing on exactly how the same string of words got to be in two separate papers is that this may very well come down to intent, which will be determined both by words and actions. It is in the interest of your daughter to get a copy of both essays and give them to her lawyer.