General

@telvanni: u sell ur soul on the black market. i don't remember what it's called. it's a royal hair. it's not in rotation right now.

off topic but @momijii what hair is that and where do u get it :o

This same thing happened to me in high school and yes I got flagged for plagiarism.

If you're in a small high school, they normally have staff meetings weekly. If you're in a larger school, there's probably an English department where they have their own meetings. If these are both English courses, I would not recommend it. If one mentions how great of a paper it is and another teacher realizes it's the same one they received, you would be in trouble.
Though, it is unlikely that your teacher would remember a paper from the previous year if it was mediocre. You could modify it so that the thesis is very similar and modify the body so that your examples prove your new thesis.

if you're in highschool, go for it, but if you're in university/college, I wouldn't recommend it.

if you already did the assignment, you can just redo the whole thing from scratch since you already know the topic. you'll end up with something slightly different, but the substance will still be the same. http://media.giphy.com/media/3xz2BH2JO1oqX6OUpy/giphy-downsized-large.gif

Well... you have the option if you really want to take it. However, they might penalize you for using the older assignment.

When I was in high school, I had a class taught by a teacher in two different years (grade 9 and grade 11). After about a month or so, I started catching on that he was teaching the exact same class with the exact same lectures and tests... and it really began to piss me off... mainly because this was a computer class and he wasn't actually teaching us how to use computers other than how to write letters in WordPerfect... and no, it wasn't a typing course either. For example, we had a class teaching us about the dangers of smoking... or we watched his slideshow about his time in Japan teaching English to Japanese students. Then we got tested or had to use the computer to write a letter about it. This, again, was a COMPUTER class. I think we did one or two weeks of actual coding... ever.

In the first year I took the course, I almost aced the thing. The next time I was stuck with this nonsense, I got cynical as all heck. I began asking how what we were learning had anything to do with computers. I either got stupid answers or no answers at all. In the case of the smoking lesson, when I asked what computers had to do with anything, he replied "Well, you can be as great as computers as you want, but if you smoke, you'll die.", to which I responded with "And what does THAT have to do with computers?!?" which was ignored completely. It came to the point where I began leaving "Nothing to do with computers" next to test questions (though I would answer them).

Ultimately, I did pass the class with a lower score, probably because I had 0 crap to give. Though, for the record, in grade 10, I did try and take a more advanced computer class seeing as how I did so well in the previous one. But, because this twit didn't teach me anything that I would need to know, I was barely able to pass the grade 10 course (which is why I dropped the difficulty back down in grade 11, not expecting this level of laziness).

Honestly... it really depends on the assignment (getting back to your answer). If you think the old assignment fits the parameters of the assignment to the letter, I would consider submitting it. If you fail the assignment, you could do what I never did in my situation - go to the principal and challenge the grade. You can argue that you did do the work (albeit in a previous year) and that it does follow the criteria of the assignment. At the very least, you can argue that it deserves a passing grade. If not, you can apologize and request to re-submit the assignment within a week or so.

since you're in high school, i doubt anything would become of it. in university you would be punished for it (if you got caught).

It does fall under Academic Dishonesty, however, there is no way to prove that if its in a physical copy. I, personally, would not do it OP because if you don't get caught this time, you'll feel the need to do it again later on.

Self-plagiarism is an actual thing. I'm not condoning it, but I did do it before my first year of uni. Nothing came out of it except for my grade. These were hard copies like you said though, so you choose what you want to do. If the professors are in the same department I would avoid it though.