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My students were impressed with me today.

They were not impressed with me when I told them about my poetry award from Writer's Digest. Boring. Ho hum. Even worse than math.

They are not impressed with the karate tournament trophies I bring in. They did ask if they were old, as in, I couldn't possibly be winning them now, but nothing other than polite congratulations.

Today however, I made my 8th period stop in awe, with mouths open, then gather around my desk to find out how I did it.

What did I do that so impressed them?

A student turned in his project LATE, WAY LATE today, during midterms. The assignment had been a math poem.

I took the paper, sat down at my desk, searched a key phrase from the poem, clicked on the link when I found it, and said, "Fasil, come here." He did and when he saw "his" poem on the screen, I thought he'd be upset that he'd been caught plagiarizing.

Instead, he says, "Whoa!!! How did you do that?" I was still focused on his plagiarism and couldn't figure why he was grinning rather getting all defensive. I asked him what I had done. "You found that in about 30 seconds. That's amazing!"

The rest of the kids all gathered around and he started bragging, pointing at "his" poem, and pointing at the screen, "Look, she found where I got it from in 30 seconds flat!"

I wasn't sure if I should be flattered or upset. In either case, I would bet I don't get as much plagiarism in the future.