I have quite an ordeal ahead of me, and it's driving me mad.
In one of my classes, my teacher assigned us some classwork in which we were allowed to collaborate and work with our partners. So, of course, my partner and I worked together on the entire packet, as did the rest of the class and everyone in the other class periods.
However, I looked at my grade, and it says "0 out of (a lot of points)," and a note next to the grade says that I cheated. It turns out that 2 of our answers out of the entire packet happened to be exactly the same (they were one-sentence factual answers). I don't cheat in any class, or allow people to copy my work. But, in this situation, I guess I showed my partner my answer (because we were allowed to work together), and he wrote the exact answer without me knowing.
To me, this is outrageous, because it was a very large assignment and there's a very strong chance that this will stop me from being valedictorian. Also, we were allowed to work with our partner and our teacher never said we had to reword the answers. Also, it's not my fault that he copied a couple answers word for word without me knowing when we were working. After all, how are we supposed to collaborate if I don't show him what I think is correct?
I spoke to my teacher, and I told her that it's not fair to punish us for having the same answers as partners on a collaborative assignment when she didn't specify that we couldn't. She responded "Oh, so I guess it's okay to copy answers on a test too then huh?" I was pretty stunned at this response, since it had nothing to do with group work. I also told her that we didn't know we were breaking a rule and that it doesn't benefit anyone to punish two people who strive to be academically honest, but broke an unspoken rule. However, she wouldn't budge.
Moreover, this teacher hates me for no good reason. She used to grade a lot of assignments incorrectly, so I would have to personally have her fix them, or correct her key. However, she despises people who ask her about their grades, even when she realizes she is wrong. Thus, on countless occasions, she has been exceedingly rude and mean to me, including one occasion where she tried to humiliate me by screaming at me in my face in front of my friends and then opening the door to the hall and screaming to the other teachers about me. Also, she sent me a nasty message on our class website once for no reason, and I have a picture of that. Finally, everyone I've spoken to said that they had the same answers as their partners verbatim, but didn't get zeros, whereas we only had two identical answers and are being punished.
Tell me your honest opinion on this and how I should go about this. Another friend of mine got accused of cheating in a similarly ridiculous way last semester, and never got his points back because the VP said he couldn't do anything about it even though he believed him.
Keep in mind, this assignment decides whether I can still accomplish my goal of attaining a 4.0 and being valedictorian, and that I've never cheated on anything in my life.
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