the AR cheating ring.

When I was in 8th grade, our English teacher was in a bad car wreck and was out most of the year. We had a long term substitute teacher, who was nice enough but a total ditz. She didn't know a comma splice from a hole in her head.

We had this program called Accelerated Reader (or AR for short). The point of the program is to encourage students to read. Books were given point value (most middle school books were 4-6 points and books such as Gone With The Wind were upwards of 50). Each student had to get 20 AR points every 6 weeks of class. I never had a problem doing this as I am a book worm. I would go through the approved list of books and check for ones I had already read, take the test on it and voila! I had my A.

Well, I sat right next to the test computer. I noticed kids weren't getting the points they needed to get an A in the class so I had a genius idea. I got a group of about 10 of my closest friends together. We each were in charge of reading a book (you could pick as long as it was at least a 6 points). We would read the book and then take the test for ourselves and the other kids in the group. That way, people wouldn't bust their ass to read, would get the points they needed & get bonus points by going over 20.

We were famous. Every student wanted to be in the group. Once kids found out about our plan, cheating rings were formed in every English class in the middle school, the 6th graders even started doing it. People would flock to us in the hallways between class periods. They knew we wouldn't take a test for them (make your own ring, bitch!) but they loved us anyway because we figured out a way and executed a plan that could get the entire school get an A. I can imagine it's the same type of high the kids in the movie 21 felt while ripping off the casinos; but we just ripped off the middle school. People admired us.

We were sly, or so we thought...

The plan worked for quite a while. Until the real teacher came back, noticed the huge increase in AR points in our class (since we were the first to do it, our points were massive. We didn't just stop at 20 points, we wanted 50, 100 or more!). She had heard word on the street of our little scheme.

We. Got. Busted.

A group of us were called into the principal's office; most from 2nd hour English (my class), but some from 1st hour. The principal informed us that our cheating ring had been busted. All of us with high points from those two classes had to write a statement (I'm not shitting you. We had to write what we had done and who all was involved in our plan). Once the principle left, we all agreed to write down only the names of the other kids in the office. No point in bringing down the entire middle school.

I remember going home and telling my mom, but I don't remember her being upset at all. I think her exact words were "Even with those zeros, you better still make honor roll." A few days after we gave our statement we were each called into a panel of teachers. I walked into the class cool as a cucumber. "Yeah. I did it. I organized one of the groups." I said to the 5 teachers.

The English teacher burst into tears: "Why? Why you Rose? I know you love to read. You have such good morals, what happened? I just don't understand what would possess you to do such a thing. I wasn't surprised when I saw the rest of the names on the list, but when I saw yours I was completely floored."

"Because I think that AR is a big pile of crap. A lot of people in our class read extremely slow and are lucky if they can finish a single book in 6 weeks. We don't get class time to read and on top of that no one wants to be forced into reading every single day when they get home. I love to read, but by you making me do it, I despise it."

They didn't know what to say. Needless to say, I got my AR privileges revoked and received three zeros in the grade book instead of my normal A. The teacher also had to watch as we logged in to take our test to make sure we weren't doing it for anyone else.

I'm still surprised I didn't get suspended. Or that my mom didn't kill me. However, from then on out, during English we got to spend 10-15 minutes a day reading and the entire class period about once a week.

<3, your ring leader, Rose.

P.S. I still managed an A in English for the year!