Repeat Offender, by Catherine Dorian : A Teacher's Story
A month or so ago, my good friend and one of my forever favorite English teachers sent me this write-up, and I loved it.
Miss Dorian was one of my teachers when I was the principal of a small-town high school. She has since moved on to the east coast where she is continually challenging herself, improving her profession, and making an impact on the world of education and in the lives of young adults.
What I love most about this piece is the raw honesty with which she writes. Every teacher can relate to this story as every teacher has lived it. What makes Miss Dorian exceptional, though, is her ability to internalize these moments. Instead of pointing fingers or consuming herself with bitterness, she strives to be better. A better teacher for sure, but also a better person.
Instead of taking it personally, she makes it personal. And in doing so, she gains compassion for the other side. She builds a bridge of understanding, of empathy, rather than discord.
And I just love that.
Repeat Offender, by Catherine Dorian
The other week, I spoke to the mother of a student who plagiarized a portion of an assignment. The mother was really not happy with me and “really not happy about this.” Clearly, her daughter hadn’t plagiarized. Clearly, I was making an unprecedented accusation.
I gave her some context for the assignment. Her daughter had earned an 80% on a two-paragraph rhetorical analysis of one of the most important speeches on the abolition of slavery in the United States. I have a policy that any student can revise or rewrite any writing assignment before the end of the quarter, a policy designed to teach students to make use of feedback, to experience how time away from writing brings perspective and clarity, and to reflect on their revision process: a policy intended to offset a grading system that fails to teach mastery. Her daughter wants an A in the class, so, in the last week of the quarter, I encouraged her to revise the assignment. If she did, she may be able to improve her cumulative grade; moreover, she would be able to apply the significant strides in her analytical thinking that she has made since writing the original assignment.
“Yeah, I’m aware of your policy,” the mother said. “My daughter has had to rewrite assignments for you on several occasions.”
On the final day of the quarter, her daughter turned in a revision. When any student submits any assignment online, the Google Classroom algorithm does a full sweep of the assignment, checking for areas where the students’ writing is a word-for-word match with an online source.
“Yes, I’m aware of Google Classroom’s plagiarism checks. I’m an educator,” the mother reminded me.
I outlined my evidence: when her daughter turned in her rewrite, Google Classroom flagged it for plagiarism. According to the Google Classroom algorithm, her daughter pulled portions of the assignment from an online source without properly quoting or citing them, five days after I’d taught a detailed lesson on plagiarism and MLA citation with her class.
“Well, she swears up and down that she didn’t do it. I just can’t believe that you won’t believe her.”
I reiterated what I had already explained in my email to her earlier that day. When I spoke to her daughter about the assignment, she admitted to plagiarizing, apologized, said she understood that there were consequences for doing so, and assured me that she wouldn’t do it again. In tears, she explained that she was stressed and just wanted to do well.
“Well of course, my daughter was stressed.”
Luckily, her daughter plagiarized on an assignment that was already a rewrite of an old assignment. Instead of earning zero points on the assignment, she could keep her original grade of 80%, which would not drastically bring down her cumulative grade, which was an 85% for the quarter.
But my attempt at reassurance only made this mother more indignant.
We’ve had “countless conversations” about her daughter wanting an A, and yet again, she’d be getting a B on her report card.
That’s true.
And we’ve been talking “for a year” about what her daughter could do to improve.
That’s also true.
Her daughter’s done “everything” to get an A in my class, and I've never once given her the grade that she deserves.
That’s not quite true. I've given her child several sample assignments that have earned high marks, and I've compared/contrasted these assignments with her work, pointing to where she needs to go further in her analysis, add evidence to support her claims, elaborate on her analysis. I have modeled what A-level work looks like (I have a personal policy that I would never ask my students to do an assignment that I wouldn’t do myself, and more often than not, I write the assignment along with my students or show them a comparable essay that I wrote in college), along with several strategies to achieve A-level work. I spend anywhere from 15 - 45 minutes writing her daughter feedback on her assignments, explaining everything that she did well and explaining where she could improve. I've offered her weekly meetings, where I would give her personalized help on all of my assignments; she’s come for extra help only a handful of times in the last ten weeks.
But my class is the “one class” that is bringing down her daughter's GPA.
My class is the “one class” that's preventing her daughter from getting a scholarship to college.
Ever since her old teacher left, she’s been struggling with English.
“It’s been an entire year with you—” the mother said, “and still, you’re not giving her an A. Good God, give the kid a break.”
At this point, I was getting tired. It was past three o’clock, her daughter is one student, and my other fifty-nine students still needed me to prepare their lesson for tomorrow, answer their emails, and give them feedback on their assignments. After that, I had to go home and complete a task for my second job, which provides enough supplemental income so that I can afford to keep my teaching job.
So, I did the only thing that I could think to do.
I apologized for my shortcomings and thanked her for her feedback. I promised to do more to help her child, and I promised that from now on, I would schedule 45 minutes of weekly extra help time with her daughter, where we would do her assignments together and I would ensure that she was doing everything that she could to get an A. I would follow-up with her on every writing assignment and walk her through how she could revise it. I would learn more about her learning style. I would acknowledge how hard she’s working, and make sure that I give her the recognition that she so greatly deserves.
She thanked me. “I’m sorry if I seemed aggressive at first,” she said.
No, no, she wasn’t aggressive.
“I’m just very defensive of my daughter, especially when I know how hard she’s working.”
That’s understandable.
She had to run and get her youngest to a dentist appointment. She thanked me for my time and consideration, said she was “really glad we had this talk,” and hung up.
Downstairs in the guidance office, I updated the school counselor and the Dean of Students. A few colleagues swapped stories and strategies:
“Once, I complimented her daughter’s dress and asked her to wear a cardigan so that she’s adhering to the dress code. Not ten minutes later, I open an email, and her mom’s written a 1,200-word essay about how I was ‘too obsessed’ with policing what the girls wear.”
“The other week, she emailed me at 1 PM: ‘Call me now.’ Yeah, ‘cause I sit I around all day and wait until she needs me.”
“Oh, her? I’ve discovered that you just have to smile and take it. Don’t interrupt, don’t tell her the facts. Don’t defend yourself. Just let her rip.”
The plagiarism debacle wasn’t unique. I’ve been apologizing for things that weren’t my responsibility since I started teaching. Once, a mother berated me for assigning her daughter—an AP student—“over sixty pages of reading in two nights.” I pulled up the assignment, counted the pages three times, and, in a phone call that would take thirty minutes out of my day, confirmed with her that the assignment was, indeed, thirty pages, but that I would be more cognizant of the workload that I assign next time. Another time, I apologized to a mother for assuming that it was reasonable to ask a seventeen-year-old to check his email and ensure that he’s completed all of his assignments so that he could be eligible to play in what was supposedly the most important basketball game of his high school career. I also apologized to her for my failure to remind her to check his grades in the online gradebook—the gradebook that I updated three times a week, and the gradebook that she’d had access to all year.
I love teaching English because you get to teach about logic and rhetoric. You get to evaluate the strategies of some of the most celebrated speakers and writers of the past and the present. You get to empower students with the skill of supporting their ideas with evidence, with reasoning, with proof that prevails against the tyranny of delusion. You get to refine your own skills as you model the art of rational argument and civilized discussion with students, colleagues, parents, administrators, and school board members. You get to entertain the conviction that language can be a tool for disputing, deliberating, and resolving conflict.
You’d think that after seven years teaching English, I’d have mastered the art of persuasion. But as I encounter more repeat offenders like the mother pictured here, I understand that no matter the amount of preparation I do for the difficult conversation – no matter Google’s algorithm which confirms the plagiarism, no matter the relevance or rigor behind the curriculum that I teach, no matter the extra hours I put in, no matter the one-on-one help that I offer, no matter the safety nets I rush beneath students who are dangerously close to hitting the pavement—there will still be parents who assume I hate their kid. So I really can’t and shouldn’t take it personally when parents insult me. I can’t and shouldn’t take offense to their skepticism or scrutiny. The best I can do is take it, absorb it, and assume that their frustration comes from their lack of faith in a school system that doesn’t set their child up for success. On that much, we can always agree, and for that much, I can always apologize.
Thank you, Miss Dorian, for being so open and transparent with your thoughts and struggles! We can all relate. But also, and more importantly, thank you for leading by example on how to show grace and understanding to others. On how to move towards reconciliation and grace, rather than a strong defense.
Truly.
You can connect with Miss Dorian and follow more of her work at her website: catherinedorian.com.
If you want to hear how Miss Dorian’s words inspired a two-part podcast discussion, check out Schurtz and Ties: a Podcast about Education and culture, Curse of Knowledge vs Gap of Knowledge (Part 1): Analyzing the gaps of misunderstanding between teachers and parents.
Lastly, if you have an idea you’d like to share or someone you believe we could all benefit from, please reach out and let me know! I am eager to share your story.
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