Defensive students/families

[Painbow]

I haven't posted here before but hoping you all might have some advice for me...

I'm a secondary school teacher and I'm finding increasingly that I can't pull my students up on clear wrongdoing without them getting very defensive.

A few times recently in clear cases of plagiarism, the students have absolutely refused to admit they plagiarised, despite clear evidence being in front of them. One even said I made it up on purpose to get them in trouble.

In other situations, when I've had to contact families about ongoing problematic behaviour, they don't believe me, despite the fact that I've seen the child with the phone in their hand more than once etc etc

I've been accused of lying, favouritism, victimising etc by students. Our school policy is to contact the parents if the student might do something that would jeopardize their exams (ie plagiarism) but that the students don't have to face any consequences for what they have accused me of.

If anyone has any advice on how I can deal with this, I'd really appreciate it because it's getting me down. Thanks.

No consequences?! They'll have fun at uni when they get kicked out then 🙄

Does your school's policy go beyond contacting the parent? What have they put in writing?

I say this because in my last school here in Victoria the SLT got so pissed off with the scale of plagiarism at exam level, they went for broke with a policy that covered 7-12, all in writing, all official, with interviews, etc.and all on the student's record. It was ball ache to do, but my God it made the young 'runs jump. The theory was they'd get the message and not do it when it came to VCE later.

The consequence was the loss of the plagiarised work for assessment. Another tactic was to black out all the plagiarised stuff and assess what was left.

About behaviour? You just have to keep grinding on with such parents, though there should be an escalation level where it goes on to the next level. But be prepared for the next level to be "soft".

I suppose what I'm saying is that without SLT back-up in the shape of policies with teeth, it's very hard.

Good luck.