What's the matter with kids today? So my tenth grade class has been reading To Kill a Mockingbird aaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllll semester (that is more than four months). We finally finished the book and yesterday we had an exam and they turned in thier notebooks. The exam was okay. I made up four different versions and shocked the boys who didn't read anything and counted on copying from each other. Though they cheated anyway. One kid used his cellphone to message another kid in the other half of the class for answers. As for the homework that was due, all I asked of them was one journal response for each week of reading and three vocabulary words per chapter. Some kids did this and more. Some kids (perhaps four) really tried and made an honest effort in their own honest words. The majority of the class downloaded notes from the internet and wrote them down as thier own. As if that wasn't dumb enough (I am native speaker, do they think that i can't tell) they all used the same internet site and the same notes. I mean come on if you are going to plagarize at least be a little sneaky about it. I even had four or five kids not show up to the exam. The other kids asked what would happen. I said that i would gives those kids two's in the gradebook (you can't give lower than a two in romania, even though they deserve zeros). The kids then complained that i couldn't do that because they didn't take the test. I said in reponse that was exactly why i was giving them twos. Just because they didn't show up doesn't mean there are no consecuences and no grade. I am so tired of teaching and this corrupt, dysfunctional system. I told the kids to tell the one's playing hooky that they could make up the test today at 1:30. They of course don't show but come early and left "their" notebooks...more plagarism from the internet. AAAAAAAAAAh one more week folks. Today i have the test with the ninth graders. I hope that they don't do the same thing but I'm sure they will. It's hard to stay positive when stuff like this happens. I try and concentrate on the kids who really worked hard.