Make Positive Contributions

• Be cooperative and collaborative; we are a team.

• Be a good listener and take turns; if you notice someone not participating, be sure to include them.

• Be respectful towards others; a good rule is to treat others how you would like to be treated.

• Respect each other's time; we all have a lot going on and we need to use our time wisely.

• Use appropriate language for a professional setting.

• Partake in appropriate activities during class sessions. 

• Respect the privacy of others by not recording class sessions nor taking photos of other students without permission.

Practice Academic Honesty

Life can be stressful and it can be very tempting to take short-cuts, but the language you use and/or submit in assignments and assessments needs to be a reflection of what you have learned and how well you can express yourself in Spanish. We  want to be able to accurately see your progress so you can receive appropriate feedback. If you do take short cuts, you will unfortunately rob yourself of the complete learning process. To ensure that you can practice academic honesty, I recommend the following:

• Understand that you are still learning how to express yourself in Spanish and you will not be able to say things at the same level and with the same ease that you can in your native language.

• Embrace messiness. You do not have to use perfect language to communicate your ideas nor for them to be understood. Also, our goal is not to be perfect or impress others.

• Use the vocabulary and grammar structures currently being studied or in previous chapters of the textbook.

• Avoid translating and using online translators. Instead, if you do not know a word, try to express your idea with other words you do know.

• Be careful when someone helps you. Many times they will give you the right answer, but not understand why it is correct. If you then use this language, but do not understand its usage, it is not a reflection of what you know nor what you can do.

• Trust in your capability to learn and be successful, and take pride in all the work you complete.

• Speak with me if you do not understand any directions, or if you feel overwhelmed or underprepared to complete any task.

What happens if we do not follow through with these student responsibilities?

If there is a physical or verbal disruption, depending on the severity I will do the following:

• 1st time: Ask you to refrain from using the language or the behavior and send you a follow-up email. If the behavior is more severe, I will skip this step and go to the next.

• 2nd time: I will ask you to leave the class session in which the behavior occurred. You will not be allowed to attend the next class session nor will you be allowed to make-up the missed work from the day/s you were removed. Lastly, if you are removed from a class, it will be reported to the college disciplinary officer for follow up.

• Removal from class is intended to give you time and space to reflect on and/or discuss the current problem/s with the appropriate campus staff so you can return to class and continue with your learning. 

If there is evidence of plagiarism or cheating, such as someone else completing or editing a task and/or if your work includes material that does not reflect your current skill level such as abundant new vocabulary, advanced structures, and/or sentences taken directly from the internet or created by AI (such as ChatGPT), these are the steps I will take:

• 1st time: I will hold off on grading the assignment and ask that we speak about how you went about completing it. Perhaps you took Spanish in high school, but did not focus on what we are currently studying in this course or you had your Spanish-speaking friend edit your assignment and you made all of the suggested changes without completely understanding them. After speaking with you, I will then consider revising your score.

• 2nd time: I will inform you that this is the second time you have not followed through with your responsibility of practicing academic honesty and you will receive a zero on the assignment. If this continues to happen, I will follow the college's recommended procedure of referring the student and incident to the college disciplinary officer for follow up.

All of these actions align with the San Diego Mesa College Student Affairs Student Policies, which you may view below.