Question with Cheating on quizzes during online school

[Kitty]

During online school my teacher gave a quiz, it was multiple choice (it was on quizzizz.com, looks like a kahoot) I did the work on paper but without really thinking I used a website it check my work. It was an easier quiz than usual (like is this graph negative or positive) and I really did not need to use the website to check my work but I did it anyway. I was used to searching up answers to help me with homework because school encouraged it if we were having trouble with the work. Months after I took the quiz I kind of feel bad about it because it was basically cheating. The quiz did not matter too much on my grade.

The question is when I plan to confess this during confession, do I absolutely have to confess that I cheated to my teacher?? Fyi I was in middle school, 7th Grade, I didn’t think it really mattered that much. I’m really worried because I don’t want to be in sin but I am very anxious about talking to teachers and I never participated in class so it would be very awkward to confess about it, especially because I took it quite a while ago. I am scared that my teacher would be disappointed in me and I’m quite terrified of speaking to this particular teacher because after I took the quiz she told us to not cheat in a post and I immediately realized what I have done was worse than I thought ((

Since it is summer grades are set in stone and I’m pretty sure nobody can change it. I can’t even access the website that shows my grades.

Please help. I don’t want to be in sin. Is it sinful NOT to tell my teacher about this???

 

[HomeschoolDad]

During online school my teacher gave a quiz, it was multiple choice (it was on quizzizz.com, looks like a kahoot) I did the work on paper but without really thinking I used a website it check my work. It was an easier quiz than usual (like is this graph negative or positive) and I really did not need to use the website to check my work but I did it anyway. I was used to searching up answers to help me with homework because school encouraged it if we were having trouble with the work. Months after I took the quiz I kind of feel bad about it because it was basically cheating. The quiz did not matter too much on my grade.

The question is when I plan to confess this during confession, do I absolutely have to confess that I cheated to my teacher?? Fyi I was in middle school, 7th Grade, I didn’t think it really mattered that much. I’m really worried because I don’t want to be in sin but I am very anxious about talking to teachers and I never participated in class so it would be very awkward to confess about it, especially because I took it quite a while ago. I am scared that my teacher would be disappointed in me and I’m quite terrified of speaking to this particular teacher because after I took the quiz she told us to not cheat in a post and I immediately realized what I have done was worse than I thought ((

Since it is summer grades are set in stone and I’m pretty sure nobody can change it. I can’t even access the website that shows my grades.

Please help. I don’t want to be in sin. Is it sinful NOT to tell my teacher about this???

You might mention it to your priest in confession, but in all honesty, I don’t think it is that big of a deal. Especially since the grades are already established, and the quiz made no real difference in your grade, I definitely would not mention it to the teacher. Just let it go and refrain from this kind of thing in the future. I really do not think this gets anything near mortal sin. It’s more a lapse of good judgment than anything else, especially since you apparently knew the material anyway.

I have always been a stickler for academic honesty, and I never allowed other students to copy off of me on tests, copy my homework, and so on. That is dishonest, and it reduces school and education to a joke. Unless it is a group project, everybody should do their own work. The closest I ever came was in a high school chemistry class, the answer just wouldn’t come to me on one question, and I involuntarily glanced at another student’s test paper, she’d written the right answer, and it came to me, “aha! - that’s the right answer, I knew that!”, and I wrote it down. In retrospect, I should have left the answer blank. It’s ridiculous even to entertain the thought, but I have no intention of contacting the school (that’s been 42 years ago!) or the teacher — who, strangely enough, I was Googling just last night, she’s a Sister, she’s still very much alive and active in her order, and on top of that, she has become a CPA! Pretty amazing lady.

 

[Kitty]

thank ya dawg,
honestly I might have been a little loose about it being not really a significant part of my grade, it was categorized within “test/quizzes” which is 30% of my grade however it was with 4 other quizzes so it averaged out (one of the quizzes I did not do so well on… even if I tried checking my work with the internet… It was 40 questions!! but, gah!! I gotta stop doing that!!!) so all it did was probably boosted up that average by a few points. When you’re in middle school nowadays it’s incredibly easy getting into stupid stuff like this… I’m not tryin to downplay what I did but, with the amount of resources there, it’s easy to fall into that type of pressure especially when there isn’t a teacher looming over you shoulder 7 hours a day. I’ll definitely try not to get into that again!

Also, about that thing about copying homework, while I have rarely copied homework myself a lot of my friends were emailing me to get answers and I usually give in to pressure .-. From now on I’ll probably try to help them instead, saves me from getting accused of copying homework instead

 

[HomeschoolDad]

honestly I might have been a little loose about it being not really a significant part of my grade, it was categorized within “test/quizzes” which is 30% of my grade however it was with 4 other quizzes so it averaged out (one of the quizzes I did not do so well on… even if I tried checking my work with the internet… It was 40 questions!! but, gah!! I gotta stop doing that!!!) so all it did was probably boosted up that average by a few points. When you’re in middle school nowadays it’s incredibly easy getting into stupid stuff like this… I’m not tryin to downplay what I did but, with the amount of resources there, it’s easy to fall into that type of pressure especially when there isn’t a teacher looming over you shoulder 7 hours a day. I’ll definitely try not to get into that again!

What’s done is done. My best advice would be to go back over the material, and make sure you know it. What you learn in school, and what you retain, is far more important than the grade attached to it.

Also, about that thing about copying homework, while I have rarely copied homework myself a lot of my friends were emailing me to get answers and I usually give in to pressure .-. From now on I’ll probably try to help them instead, saves me from getting accused of copying homework instead

Everybody needs to do their own work. It is always a good thing for more talented students to help others think through the work, and show them how to learn it. But copying work doesn’t help the learning process one bit.

 

[LisaB]

I hope you are able to let this go, learn from it and be at peace. Confessing it will probably give you the peace of mind you need.

While obviously I don’t condone cheating of any kind, it amazes me how teachers in this country don’t cheat-proof graded assignments! Why a teacher would give a quiz in an online school setting is beyond me. Does he really think students won’t look up the answers on the internet? It’s his responsibility to make sure assessments are designed in a way that makes it hard to cheat. In an online school either do open book assignments or even better, do papers and essays where answers can’t be looked up.

That said, since you ultimately answer to God and not to the teacher, don’t cheat anymore.

 

[Mrchatsworth]

I’m not sure how one can go to a website and cheat without knowing it. In my children’s homeschool curriculum they must sign and pledge practically under pain of sin that their work is their own and they did not cheat. You should confess this.

 

[Kitty]

thank you all for your replies.
yeah sorry, my wording was a little funky (it was late at night and I really didn’t reread my post haha), I definitely knew what I was doing was cheating at that time. I’m planning to confess this later on when I do my first confession for rcia