One of my students turned in a science fair project that turned out to be his sister’s project from last year. I find it amazing that he thought he could get away with it. His sister’s project won second prize in last year’s fair, so a lot of teachers remember it. I was one of the coordinators this year, so I had more reason than most teachers to consult last year’s list frequently. I also happen to have a graded copy of his sister’s report from last year, which was in a folder I inherited from last year’s science fair coordinator, of examples of well-written reports. “His” report was an identical copy of hers, with a replacement hand-drawn cover page. He didn’t even bother to fix the typos.
This will result in his failing two classes this quarter. The science project is 25% of his grade for third quarter. Because he is taking two honors-level science classes, the science fair counts as 25% of his grade in both classes. He’s not a good enough student to be able to pass either one after losing 25% off the top.
Some of the clues he left:
- He suddenly changed his project about a month before the due date.
- Though he’s usually a kid who needs a lot of prodding to get going on anything, he made plenty of “progress” on his project after he switched.
- His display board reflected a lot more attention to visual impact and neatness than I would have thought him capable of.
- His logbook contained several pages of entries on the new project that were much more neatly written than the pages from his first idea, with no cross-outs or corrections. The entries contained more detail than he usually includes in his regular lab notebook.
- Parents’ night was a couple of days after he presented his project in class. He came in after school and retrieved the display board just before parents’ night, once he knew that his parents would be coming.
- When I nonchalantly asked his sister (whom I teach in one of my other classes) how much she helped him with his project after he switched, she said that she discussed it with him early on, but after that he would go over to (name of friend)’s house to “work” on it with her. This was a complete fabrication; the friend wasn’t part of the project at all. However, it conveniently explains the story he gave his family.
I’m going to break the news to him on Monday, after which I need to call his parents. In the words of a 1990s-era Gelman Sciences cartoon, “The E. coli is going to impact the air recirculator.”
