Helen A.

Cruz Cancel
INGL3135-001
Prof: Cynthia Pittmann

Jim Cooper in this paper presents the helping concept as a factor that affects the
communication between the teacher and the student. This misunderstanding is developed
because students have their own concept of helping others which could be considered cheating
from the point of view of the teacher. Because of this miscommunication, there are many
situations where the students feel that the teachers are unfair because of the way they approached
the situation of helping another students. The author also comments that the misunderstanding of
helping others educationally is based in the cultural background that the students receive
whiles them were growing up in their lower grades.
In chapter eight, Jim Cooper gave some examples about his experiences with their
students helping each other. He states that, helping for the students is not cheating, rather it, is
just helping a friend. This behavior occurs in a cooperative manner in which if a friend needs
help, you can give it and it is not necessarily cheating, I decided that a little group effort
certainly would not hurt any, he said. He also mentions that in Puerto Rico, we educate children
to help and to receive help from their friends and neighbors. A faculty member, who was Puerto
Rican, offered his point of view and said that it was really important for his students to learn the
correct answer to the questions. If he or she did learn the answer from the neighbor it would not
have made any difference because the point was for learn. If they can learn more easily by
copying from a neighbors paper than they can from me, what difference does it make? - said the
Puerto Rican professor.

I've gone through various experiences guarding helping behavior, for example the last
semester, I took the general biology class and I had to complete some online quizzes which were
supposed to be made individually, but I always did them with a friend in the company of another
friend of ours who was also taking the class. We discussed doubts about the material and we
didnt consider it a form of cheating. Also, during the exams if I was given the opportunity to
help a friend, I would do it because if I knew the answer it would not have felt right if I denied it
the help because those same friends helped me before in some situations where I needed them.
Another example that I have about helping behavior was when I once got the opportunity to
watch a group of third graders and I witnessed how the teacher explained to them in the middle
of the exam how to answer the test so that their students would not fail.
Jim Cooper talks about two models, the competitive and the cooperative model. The
competitive model prevails in an American student, the opposite in a Puerto Rican student.
Personally I think that if the education system evaluated Puerto Rico through exams and because
I think there are better ways to evaluate a student, you have to respect, and perhaps you can help
in another question the important thing to take courses in college is to learn in order to practice
your profession. If you show consideration to a friend, during an exam whereas the cooperative
model shows, the competitive model would not help his competition because he wants to get the
higher grade of the class, inciting selfishness. For that reason I support the competitive model, as
this is that it evaluates the education system in Puerto Rico, in order to create in the future
capable and prepared professionals to carry out their profession. It is good to help, but there are
times when it is cheating, but there are times when teachers let us share the information in a test.