Grades 10/12 Integrity in English Class

One of the pillars of personal values for a St. Mark's student  is integrity. Your integrity is your honesty, your truthfulness, and most importantly, your commitment to the Gospel values.

Integrity is most important in English class for it will provide an honest relationship with me so that I can help you to learn.

So this year, I hope that you resist the temptation to use Internet sources like Sparknotes instead of reading your assigned material.  I hope that you try to formulate your own opinions and questions on your readings instead of using these sites or "borrowing" your classmates' ideas. If you take this course with integrity, you will gain a personal confidence and satisfaction in the joyful struggle of education, which cheating, well, cheats you from enjoying.

So in using on-line sites like StudyWiz and Schoolsville for our class, I trust that you will respond with your own words and ideas, not ones copied or paraphrased from another source. I trust that you will complete your assignments on time when using these sites,  even if you have to sometimes overcome certain technological problems by doing things "the old fashioned way," like calling up a friend to get your assignment and writing out your homework with paper and pen for the next day's class.

I will trust that you embody integrity in all that you do in English class this year. However, for those of you who might lose my trust, penalties for are spelled out in the Student Handbook for acts of dishonesty, like plagiarism. Let's hope that we never need to review those penalties.