I like frightening the students who cheat. It seems an intelligent strategy because if you can’t prove what you sense to be true, a student who is lying can insist you are falsely accusing them and even launch complaints against the teacher which could encumber you in bureaucracy and gossip. No thanks. My vote is playing dumb and asking the student for a meeting. Then I read back their Grammarly or Chat GPT generated essay, stopping on 3 or 4 syllable words they never ever uttered in class, “what did you mean when you used that word?” I’ve done it four times so far and they crumble, they do not know the definition sometimes of words they used and get teary eyed and want to flee. When admitting it wasn’t their words, etc., it’s my opportunity to say please just write with your own words? I prefer it, really I do. This other stuff doesn’t sound like you so what’s the point of us being in this learning class together?

Sometime in the 1980s I read John Irving’s The World According to Garp. At one point, a character (Garp’s mother?) said you get more respect from embarrassing people than you ever do being super kind and nice. Had a piano teacher once who agreed to let me take his course even though I’m self taught and can’t read music. I don’t know if he forgot or not but in our very first class at a certain point he asked me to play something for the class that required sightreading. I was too young and insecure to speak up but didn’t I just tell him three days ago and he agreed to let me in? So stumbled badly and horribly before the class. Maybe he wanted me to feel awkward or maybe not, but for the rest of the course I kept my distance from him. I knew he could be wicked which he regularly was to others in the class. Fortunately, because he played amazing, I also realized then it doesn’t matter if someone’s personality is a power trip or dysfunctional or tyrannical because for a certain kind of artist, just being around a great artist, is good enough for opportunities to absorb a lot of their talent.