Teenagers everywhere are pissed at me

I feel pretty bad about myself right now. The main assignment for my seniors for the semester - this was for most of the marbles - was to write a research paper about a country of their choice exploring the literary culture of that nation. The basic question in the prompt was what aspects of the culture lead to certain literary habits? For example, in Nigeria European colonization lead to a surge in literature in indigenous languages, and inspired Chinua Achebe to write work that countered the white perception of his people.

I talked about how to cite sources and develop a works cited, but I don't think I went over it enough. I did one lesson on it and gave them all samples, but I sometimes forget these kids tend not to remember something unless you've explained it to them five times.

At least half the class didn't cite a single source. One girl copied and pasted and didn't proofread, so her paper ended with the line "Now he joins us in the studio today."

You can tell when people copy/paste most of the time because the stuff they copy is so much better written than the stuff they write on their own. Most of my students have a lot of trouble with sentence structure and grammar so when they copy it jumps right out at you, especially when they use textbook vocabulary. And since most of the kids didn't cite sources, I assumed if one thing was copied, it all was.

By the time I got to the sixth paper in a row to do this, I was pretty pissed. My notes were getting meaner.

And that's how I ended up with poor Erin in tears.

Apparently she did not copy and paste her whole paper and in fact spent a lot of time on it, and that's why it was so well written. But she had failed to cite her sources so I assumed she copied the whole thing.

She ripped her paper up. She ripped up her friend's paper who also got a fail for copying.

I told them all they could rewrite their paper and I would change the grade. In some cases, they just needed to cite where they got their info. Unfortunately for Erin, since she ripped up her paper, she can't just write it in the margin. I hope she saved that thing on a computer somewhere.

Another student who wrote a shitload of information about her country but neglected to devote a single word to literature left her paper on the table and stormed out when the bell rang.

Both Erin, the girl who stormed out, and three other girls I accused of copying are girls who are very close to me. They eat lunch in my room every other day.

So now I feel very very bad. I should have explained this better. I should have done more than one lesson on citation and given them better examples. I should have had them turn their papers in earlier, and I should have stopped grading when I realized I was angry.

Never grade papers while you're angry. It makes children sad.