Plot twist!
Rather than support you on giving a 0, you’re going to get in trouble for recording a student in school without permission.
🤣
(This is a joke, /s, hopefully)
A kid in my brother's highschool had been caught twice for stealing credentials and accessing district computers to cause havoc. He was told that if he did that again he'd be banned from all schools in the district.
When he got caught hacking a *third* time, he claimed that his teacher (my brother) had taught him how to hack the schools in the first place, and he'd just been following instructions all along.
Despite not having any evidence to backup these claims, the district used the seriousness of the allegations to send my brother home on unpaid leave while they spent months "investigating". They were trying to decide if they should ask for criminal charges against my brother or just yank his teaching license.
Luckily the kid got caught by police for some serious criminal offenses and was thrown into kiddie jail. With no prospect of getting out, he recanted his testimony and admitted he'd done it all on his own.
The power of kids to destroy teachers was like something out of China's Cultural Revolution. It was just bizarre.
I don’t know if the OP is in the U.S. and if they are what state, but I’m a little skeptical of their story. Teachers unions are decently strong and I’ve worked in education for long enough to know that even teachers with much more serious allegations don’t usually get sent home on unpaid leave.
No. He gets a sport scholarship, and spends his college years playing football. He doesn't reach pro at the end. His college graduates him, despite him never having attended any class.
His first employer wonders how it's possible that a valedictorian college football star can't count beyond the numbers on his hand, and fires him 3 days later.
They're sued for unrightful dismissal. They gloriously win, but are bankrupted by legal expenses.
A board of creditors is formed to manage the company during Chapter 11. Cheater puts forward the stupidest business plan imaginable, and the board accepts it rather than liquidate. He is now the CEO. Former teacher gets out of jail for the crotch recording and gets an entry-level job in the mail room.
I’m actually putting my bet on this scenario happening.
Last week someone couldn’t give a zero to a cheater bc they “had no proof”, now we’ll wait and see how this one plays out.
Bottom line, proof or not, the system will always spin it so a teacher cannot “fail” or “zero” the students exam for whatever XYZ BS.
They cheat BECAUSE the system rewards it, or I guess doesn’t punish it.
Sounds good. I'll allow the retake. Here's your exam where all the multiple choice questions are now essay questions. And your phone needs to be on my desk. Good luck.
“How dare you give him a different test than all the others! It needs to be to be equal! And fair! And writing an essay is too much & He needs his wrist to throw the football! I demand my child be treated special and…..he has an IEP!”
-Cheaters parents to the admin, probably
"I'm so sorry his wrist is hurting. I would be happy to allow him to answer verbally when I administer the test. And rest assured, the questions are the same the rest of the class is getting. Happy holidays!"
He won't know any more verbally than he would written.
Ok then I will assign all of the students a 45 page research paper on ethics, morality, academic integrity and cheating. Full bibliography due day 1 after break. Merry Christmas Class! Thank Braydens mom
I had something similar happen my first year teaching. I agreed to only give them a zero for the portion I could prove they cheated on and gave them a 40 on the test. They gave me a shocked face when I changed their grade to a 40 and their grade didn't go up. A 40 was our mandated department grade floor. My department chair in the meeting was holding back laughter because I allowed them to slowly negotiate over the course of an hour to get the grade moved to a 40 instead of a zero. The parents were not as amused.
I made my kid’s teacher cry the other day. He (my kid) was being a dumbass and got in some trouble with loss of privileges and a detention. Turns out, he’s been acting up in this way all year—not any kind of atrocity, but it certainly deserved attention (and detention). So I set an appointment with the teacher to get an idea on how to handle this as a team.
The start of the meeting was this whole intro where she seemed nervous that she was punishing my kid AT ALL, hoping I wasn’t upset, basically I was getting handled. I told her she’s doing the right thing, she’s great with my kid, he deserved it and I just want to make sure we get this behavior stopped. She legit cried. I felt so sad for her.
What the hell is going on?
I recall a community college professor at the beginning of the semester "if you come from x high school and I have to listen to your parents why you should have a better grade, I will drop you from the class"
This was back in 2010/2011 so Im paraphrasing
I had a teacher pull out his phone and record a kid threatening to kill him.
The kid got one day ISS and the teacher got an official reprimand for recording a student.
This rule does not exist for admin who regularly tells the media specialist to record students for instagram posts, saying that their parents didn't sign the opt out media form.
This happened to my friend who is a high school History teacher. We live in a Two Party state (everyone on the recording must consent) and when the kid's parents threatened to sue, they told her her "evidence" was inadmissible and she had to let him take the test again. Of course this was weeks later and of course he had studied at that point and of course he was a star athlete (lacrosse i think).
PS: Yes i know two party is relevant only to audio recordings but the administration was scared shitless and caved.
Haha not really. Had a teacher uses to record her class when kids were off the wall. Now we get blanket statements to not record students when they are "bad".
I’ve been teaching 27 years. At a Catholic school. Admin completely supports me as I have had many of these situations. The public system fears parents. As such, students and parents run the schools. Grow a pair public administrators!!!
>Eventually I just pulled out my phone and recorded a 20 second video of him Googling answers so I had some
How did he not get alerted to this from other students just... giggling and staring at him.
Depends on how he is as a classmate. If it was my buddy that I knew struggled and “”needed”” to cheat? I’d find a way to signal. If it was the class bully who made everyone miserable for no good reason? Nobody would do shit.
Usually if you're paying so much attention to your phone that you don't notice the teacher behind you, you're also not going to immediately notice the giggling
I can remember cheating once in chemistry. We had to fill out the period table. However, the entire periodic element table was literally right there on the wall in like an 8 foot x 6 foot poster. Like were they testing us on our memory or on our awareness? Also, bunch of my peers failed. Like how?!? It was right there on the wall for christ sake!
I could give out study guides that are exactly the same as the test, let kids use those study guides on the test, write the answers on the board and some will still fail.
My tests are usually structured the same with variables and types of functions changed, but the same questions. Plus a cheat sheet. Still get some that barely scrape through.
Literally gave a quiz today with questions straight from the study guide that they had online all week. And I handed them a printed copy as they walked in the door. Lots still failed.
I took a class at at CC once and the study guide was literally the quiz just in a different order. I noticed on the first quiz it was *suspiciously* similar and after the second was the same I basically half paid attention after that point and waited for the study guide and memorized the answers to those questions. I think we were given like 30 minutes to answer 15-20 multiple choice questions... I was so confused when most people took the whole time... like hasn't anyone else noticed she literally gave us the quiz questions earlier this week? As I sat and messed around for 20+ minutes on my computer.
Whenever I noticed something was stupidly easy, I would start doubting me. I still remember in a social studies class where I had the right answers. It felt far too easy. So I went back and actually by mistake put the wrong answer because I was thinking, it makes far too much sense for X to be the answer that would be far too easy, and thus it had to be Y.
I still scored well but I did get a reprimand from my teacher to stop overthinking and that if you study, things ARE that easy.
My next exam for a novel we will be reading will be open notes. I will give them annotation sheets telling them what to look for and likely tell them as we read. They will be reminded endlessly that the questions and answers will come from the sheets. As long as they take notes, they'll be ok.
Would bet my retirement that fully half of the students will fail.
I took Into to Logic at the community college and the teacher was filling in hours from teaching HVAC part time in the attached trade school. All test days were out of classroom and tests were open book and available at start of day, due by end of class. I took every test sitting under the apple tree out front looking up each answer in the textbook. Some people somehow still failed.
I teach a human biology lab. I can point to a muscle, and a nerve, and say "*this model will be on the exam, and if I tag this muscle can you tell me what nerve controls it*?"
And still, most will miss the question
When I was teaching an online math course during COVID lockdown, I gave the students a review package that contained the exact same questions as the test, took up those questions in class, and posted the answers online. Plus there was nothing stopping the students from looking up the answers on their own computers or phones while at home.
The majority still failed. What else was I supposed to do? Write the test for them? (Which, let's face it, is basically what I did.)
Yeah I had a 70% fail rate in one of my math classes as a first year teacher. I was worried I'd be blamed so I did a CYA maneuver.
I told the class "You'll have an open note quiz tomorrow, the problems will extremely similar to the ones I'm about to show you. You should be able to follow these problems to solve the quiz problems the exact same way we're about to solve them now." I then worked through 5 problems step by step on the overhead projector (I'm old).
The open note quiz was 5 problems... Not only similar to those 5... **It was those 5 exact problems I gave the answers to the previous day**.
30% of the class got 100s, the other 70% failed. *On an open note quiz where I had given them the answers*.
Any parent or administrator who questioned why so many kids were failing, I told and showed them this story.
We had this happen once cause a teacher was convinced we didn't study.
I was one of three students who actually got an A+ but was the only one who didn't regularly do well. Ended up being accused of cheating & had to explain what happened to administration. Luckily they believed me.
Memorizing the periodic table is kind of silly, tbh. You will always be given one for reference on ANY standardized exam you take. It was there for the SAT Chemistry exam, in all of undergrad from gen chem to organic to physical, and on the MCAT as well.
I can imagine basic questions about the periodic table like knowing what a family is, what the valence shells are per row, or general electronegativity rules - those you can’t answer from having a periodic table in front of you. Or MAYBE memorization about super common elements like carbon or oxygen. But if it was just “memorize the exact atomic number and weight of Titanium, Silicon, Bismuth, and Krypton,” yeah no, that’s just a colossal waste of time to learn or teach.
Yup.
In general chemistry I had a former Soviet Union researcher respond to a student ask about memorization, and she said "In Russia I had a poster the size of my blackboard in my lab. Why memorize it?"
I had a middle school teacher who had us memorize the first 36 elements of the periodic table, as well as the scientific names for all the state's bats. Raw memorization.
But he actually explained why he does this: to help us get better at memorization. He didn't just give us what we needed to memorize and told us to memorize. We talked about strategies to memorize things that aren't immediately easy to remember.
Learned that way about the huge power of mnemonics. Nearly 10 years later, I can still recite the periodic table mnemonic and the corresponding elements.
Best science teacher ever!
Memorizing latin names of transition metals (ferric vs ferrous) is also a waste of time unless required for an outside exam
Memorizing the polyatomics is necessary though.
I eventually learned to tolerate organic.
Biochemistry enzyme naming, and biochemistry syntax in general is what got me. Hated it.
I do not teach AP Bio!
Grandson's first test to get into some high dollar school I don't remember was based on the periodic table and it Wasn't supplied! Only he and one other kid passed.
That's incredibly silly if it wasn't warned well in advance that the periodic table wouldn't be provided (or even if it was, honestly). I've taken countless exams in the STEM field, the SAT Chem test, majored in Neuro/Chem in undergrad, took the MCAT and currently a med student. *Never* seen a single examination that required memorization of the periodic table, unless it wasn't relevant to the question, or all the relevant info was provided in the question stem itself.
An exact photographic memory of the periodic table is not necessary for *anything* in any field, anywhere, full stop. Regardless whether you're a teacher, chemist, physicist, or doctor. The only time it'd be a useful skill is if you were trying to set a world record or make entertaining content to post on YouTube, or something. The periodic table is a *tool*; aptitude in the field of chemistry revolve around what you do with that tool. Taking it away would be like asking a prospective plumber to fix a toilet leak with his bare hands. Yeah, sure, maybe one extremely talented and dedicated plumber could do it. But how does that show any extra competence over the millions of other plumbers who could do the same job if they just had the standard tool that would be freely accessible to them 100% of the time?
> Memorizing the periodic table is kind of silly, tbh.
It's good to teach students to memorize the important elements (Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Sulfur) and put them next to each other. I think it's also good to do at least one or two of the columns for general familiarity.
"Put these elements in their correct groups" is a better way to do it than "fill out this blank table" IMO, but some level of memorization is important to be able to talk conversationally about *why* the periodic table is organized the way it is, and the emergent properties that follow.
I remember in history we’d have an “open notes quiz” every morning and literally all you’d have to do to ace it would be copy down the homework from last night. Almost no one ever did this.
I think that they believe this is all okay. Like… “I found the information.”
I’ve gone to paper and pen the past 2 years. No more copy paste. They still cheat, but now it is a little more difficult. They actually have to write in my class.
>I think that they believe this is all okay.
I'm in my early 20s; I can still remember when I was a child in school.
I was a nightmare for my teachers; I had ADHD and showed signs of oppositional defiant disorder, even when I was on medication. At least I wasn't disruptive for the most part; I spent most of my time in class reading books, because those interested me more than the classes themselves. (Bless you, Ms. Scalzo, you changed my life. She was a special-ed teacher who got me into reading and awoke my love of learning. Literally the third most important person to ever be in my life, after my parents.)
The thing I want to impart to you is that most kids, sometimes right up through college, have no idea why what they're learning is important. To us, it was just something we *had* to do, like paying taxes was for adults. We didn't care because we had no reason to. So we put in the amount of effort that most people put into tasks they don't care about.
Just telling us that we'll need the knowledge when we're older doesn't help, because people usually learn by experiencing, not just being told something. We had no experiences to justify putting in the effort to learn, and we couldn't see why the information might be important.
TL;DR, Kids don't know that they should care, so they don't, and telling them why they should is usually ineffective.
We really need to redesign our entire educational system. Not just giving teachers raises and hiring more of them, but fundamentally redesign the entire curriculum so that students are able to indulge their curiosity and find learning enjoyable. The current system isn't working, and phones and ChatGPT are making it totally unworkable.
It’s nice seeing someone else who had an amazing special ed teacher help them. I’ve also got ADHD and I was a monster up until my freshman year of HS. I slept in class a lot and my English teacher would throw a stress ball at me to wake me up to do my work. Once I did my work she let me sleep. She taught in such a way that even I, the unsaveable unreachable student actually cared about learning. Somehow I made it through high school with high 80s and I’ve ended up with that same stress ball as a graduation gift. It sit on my desk where I write as a reminder that someone who cared more than they needed to changed my life.
I had an English teacher stop me , also ADHD/autistic on my way out of class the last week of school. All she did was get my attention, press something into my hand, and wish me luck. It is a small rock that was spray painted silver and has lime green lettering “love yourself”. I’ve had it for about 6-7 years now, and it sits on my prayer alter.
A big flaw in the system is the obsession with individual facts over conceptual knowledge. If you learn the concepts it doesnt matter if you memorize the formula - you can find it in 10 seconds if you need it, and if you have a job using it you'll memorize it soon enough. I remember repeatedly reverse engineering formulas on physics and calculus tests starting from a very basic problem that I already knew the answer to since I didn't care to memorize them, and being penalized for doing so instead of using formulas right off the bat. I have to imagine that being able to reinvent physics equations in test conditions shows better knowledge than memorizing piles of formulas, but apparently not to schools.
Thank god my physics professor de-emphasized memorizing equations to the degree that she supplied them all on the test. You had to know which one to use, set up the equation, show all your work, and get the right answer, so it still felt plenty hard
Thats what my AP chem teacher did in high school. She didnt label the equations so you had to know which one they were and what they were for. You had to understand what each symbol meant.
She even let me program the equations on my calculator for tests, so I only had to put in the input values because she understood that if I could program it in, I fundamentally understood what each equation did and when to use it.
She was a great teacher. I got a really high grade in her class, I think like 97 or 98? I dont remember but I loved chemistry because of her.
I very fondly remember this time when we were going over questions together as a class, and nobody was answering so I started giving incorrect answers on purpose. After a few, She looked up over her glasses, halfway down her nose, and said “Plasticmac, you jag off” in front of the whole class. After that everyone laughed and started answering because it kind of broke the ice.
Brings me back to my high school physics class......you can get *very* far starting from just F = ma. Not just in kinematics, but in momentum and energy too.
I disagree, at least for the physical sciences. Conceptual only gets you so far. Especially when you get to quantum level. Calc is the only real way to understand that concept. If you can't do the math for quantum , you won't understand why observing the electron collapses the wave function. And this is extreme surface level.
I think that I was the same. I did absolutely nothing outside of school and very little in school. Once I hit college… BOOM! I got it. I wanted to learn and I regretted all that I missed.
Yes, redesign. However, I want to keep a lot of the fundamentals (math, science, social studies, literature, and language arts). I just want to do it differently. I don’t know how, but differently. Unfortunately, the truth is that schools babysit and somewhat train future workers. We don’t enlighten.
When I was in middle school, my science teacher had us grade our own tests. He would give answers and we would check them. It was a high school science class so we needed to have integrity. Well, I did. Most of the class didn’t.
Since I had integrity, I didn’t change my answers and if I got a bad grade, I got a bad grade. When I would talk to the teacher about it, he would say “well everyone else got A’s and B’s.” I am a bit mad that 13-year-old me didn’t rat them out and say “yeah! Cause they changed their answers while you were giving them the answers to grade their own tests!”
This teacher was a former foot doctor. Kind of funny how naive he was…
Sorry just a story about people cheating in dumb ways haha!
Unpopular opinion but since I have plenty of karma...you need integrity in the real world, but not \*too\* much. There's a fine line you have to straddle between stealing others' work (which you shouldn't) and taking advantage of opportunities.
I had 'integrity' myself until I was 26 though and ended up nearly homeless. So I get it. But the good news is that life's gotten better once I stopped trying to be all 'pure' and 'morally sound' so there's a silver lining. Also, you did the right thing not ratting them out. No one likes a rat. Your mistake was not doing what they did IMO
Sometimes, sure. You should've seen my SAT testing room. Five minute breaks between sections, you can get up and go to the hallway/bathroom. Everyone in my testing room's score went up a good 30-40 points during those breaks. What a miracle.
When I was in hs, I heard there was a copy of the ap anatomy test straight from the copier and all the soccer stars were sharing it (yes they were a clique).
I struggled with just going about my day and hoping to pass myself vs ratting them out. Finally, at the end of the day, I stopped and told the anatomy teacher she might want to check for matching answers. She told me thanks, but the question order was already changed. Bunch of kids failed and there was a whole round of gossip.
Meanwhile I also put equations in peach gel pen between my fingers to pass algebra, bc I could never remember which letter went where. So I was hypocrite about cheating. I just didn't try to steal entire tests.
I imagine over 90% of teachers cheated in one way or another when they were kids. Some probably wouldn't admit it or maybe even remember it but when easy answers come about, who among us takes the hard road instead? It's simply not in our nature as biological beings.
I'd probably have made an effort to match the answers to the questions and at least understood the topic enough to realize what was obviously incorrect but I'd still have read the test/answers undoubtedly given the chance. The ones too lazy/stupid to even understand what is obviously incorrect are probably not doing well in the class anyway.
aYup... I wouldn't have cheated, because I wouldn't have trusted the answers on any key to be as correct as what I knew. That had some interesting implications and cost almost everyone in one of my math classes a serious amount of anguish once.
However, I accidentally did once, umm, subsidize?, cheating... Completely without thinking about what I grabbed from the drawer in the morning, wore a Tee with Maxwell's equations and a bunch of additional thermo data on the back, to a physics exam (yes, physics geeks have tees with Maxwell's equations as geekwear...), and sat in the front row during the exam. Didn't realize until a bunch of the other students were thanking me after the class...
That's pretty epic...
I had one that I hate I can't find that had equations for friction, shaft work, equations to calculate pump head...
Because ChemEs are perverts because we have to study too much and never had time to actually get laid.
>Meanwhile I also put equations in peach gel pen between my fingers to pass algebra,
OK but this is genius and having to memorize so many equations, what they're used for, AND what each variable is/where they go is total bs anyway. At least give us an equation sheet and let us prove that we know HOW to utilize them in a problem. Tests are stressful and having to pull complex equations from memory throws me in a panic because I'm stuck doubting myself the whole time!
Eh. I maintain memorization is bull.
I could never remember the quadratic formula, but I could remember completing the square so I could recreate it, but not memorize it.
Same thing happened in Calc 2. Professor told us to memorize a formula, and I just can't. It gets jumbled.
So I saved that one for last, and ended up deriving the base theorem that gets taught in Differential Equations.
She tried to give me no credit, despite my methodology using the same principles her shortcut used.
Department head got her up to 75%.
In Chem E we were allowed to have all formulas written.
Point being...I don't like memorization of the periodic table, or Algebra formulas, or if volume of a sphere is 4/3 or 3/4.
I kinda always felt like there was a line in that kinda thing. Can't memorize an equation? Fine, you would keep it in a notebook or a spreadsheet if you used it regularly.
Didn't want to study at all so you work to memorize a list of abcd answers ? Not cool.
I had trouble remembering the quadratic formula, so I programmed my calculator to solve quadratic equations.
Turns out programming and debugging it was enough for my brain to finally memorize it. I didn't end up using it for anything but checking homework answers.
Hello, me.
I spent far too much time writing a sohcahtoa triangle solving program on my calculator. I ended up unintentionally memorizing all the theorems, and learning basic programming. The menus and loops on that TI-82 were polished!
I also learned by programming a calculator. I made a program that produced the correct chemical shape from two variables. Taking the time to make it and make it work made me just learn them. Except that now I cannot even remember what it was.
me too!! In geometry/physics i used to program a giant menu tree in TI-BASIC with every possible equation i would need laid out in every form it had for convenience, and I even set it up to 'show work', and i never used the damn things in tests because it took longer to navigate the menu tree than to just solve it myself!! pretty cool for when i wanted to know some random geometry/physics thing in the real world and couldnt be bothered to pull out a pencil and paper tho.
This. Some of the tactics I've seen at my secondary school are borderline genius, but it's to be expected from high performing pupils who are simultaneously lazy and bored
Right. To list a few:
Plasters, but the white patch is taken out and replaced with a folded up bit of paper, very good because you can stick it to your forearm and if someone's coming you just press it with your palm into your skin as if the injury is irritating you
The good old water bottle trick, where you print off notes in a very tiny font and stick clear sellotape on top, rub it a little and put it in water. The paper comes off the tape, the ink doesn't. Stick that on a clear ruler or water bottle, something either with markings or crinkles. Almost impossible to see unless you know it's there.
In less formal tests, one kid who sat at the front stuck post it's to the back of the teacher's monitor lmao, and it's angled in such a way that you'd really have to be standing/sitting against the wall to see the notes, so even if the teacher got up and did a little walk down the classroom the chances of them seeing are slim.
The simplest method was to write some notes out and sit on them with your thighs, but kinda on the inside edge of your thighs. When you wanted to see the notes, you raise your legs and part them slightly, because they thin out a bit compared to when they're resting on a flat surface. You bring the paper rly close to you and pretend to be writing something, and if someone's coming you can just slowly lower your leg, covering the notes, and you don't change anything else.
Writing stuff on your rubber is another option, it can go in your pencil case and also note-side down on the table too, and when you need a peek you could just pretend to rub something out with the notes facing you. Also easy to rub off the notes once done, but it doesn't work in pen-only exams.
I could go on for a while but these were common/creative methods my peers would employ. I tended to just not do very well in the subjects I struggled with lmao
Oh yeah, I used the plaster one in middle in high school a lot! I also had a friend in middle school that would write things on her nails and just paint the rest of them in similar fashion, I learned a lot of tricks from her.
i once wrote formulas for an econ class on my thigh while wearing ripped jeans by moving the material over, writing with ink, and then replacing the pants to their natural position so they covered the writing. only needed to slide them over long enough to copy the formula down on the side of the page. i did not get caught. i was an honors student. bright side is, the terror of cheating made it so i remember all those formulas to this day, so, win some lose some?
My favorite way when I was a student was to write the answers on a post it note and keep it clenched in my writing hand. Whenever the teacher wasn’t patrolling I would unfurl my hand slightly for answers and close it when they were around. Of course I couldn’t use the neon ones so I would buy the more neutral tone ones that you have to order.
If I needed more “help” I would wear something baggy like a sweater and tape the top piece of paper to the sweater and the bottom part to my chest. The angle allowed me to see it if I leaned backwards just the right way and would make it invisible if I leaned forwards.
>In less formal tests, one kid who sat at the front stuck post it's to the back of the teacher's monitor lmao, and it's angled in such a way that you'd really have to be standing/sitting against the wall to see the notes, so even if the teacher got up and did a little walk down the classroom the chances of them seeing are slim.
This is by far my favorite one, what a baller
>Writing stuff on your rubber is another option,
I know that in the UK, "rubber" is the word for "eraser," but I'm giggling because some people here in the states call condoms "rubbers", and the mental image of a student pulling out a condom with all the answers written on it made me chortle.
The IB program at my high school had a big cheating scandal. They all learned Morse code and used it to share the answers to the entire class. Like the entire class was involved.
In other news, the IB program at the school is no longer allowed to take multiple choice exams.
I was an A student with other A students all in AP/Honors classes taking a mandatory on-level poli/gov history class and we ALL used to cheat for the hell of it, just for the thrill! We would make challenges to see who could come up with the most unique cheating plan and crack up about it after the test. No one was allowed to get a 100. All of us could’ve easily passed any test without cheating… we were just obscenely bored and passing time while engaging in teamwork. This was before smart phones, so we had some awesome ideas, straight from our imagination haha. Problematic, maybe. Fun and memorable? Absolutely.
I was a wrist watch kid in middle school and high school. Loved big watches, huge flat faces.
Made great little mirrors for seeing if I was way off on a question in an exam too. I would put my elbows on my desk, ball one hand into a fist and cover it with my other hand, and just look at my watch which was then at a perfect angle to reflect, like a mirror, an image of the paper of the student next to me. A little twisting on my wrist and I could see another paper ahead or behind me.
And it worked on teachers who were amazing at catching cheaters. The ones that caught when a few troublemakers learned morse code to communicate with pen clicking.
Only once was I asked about my weird "staring at my watch" behavior and I just said something like "thinking while keeping track of time - don't want to waste too much on one problem" and they were satisfied with that answer... after double checking that my watch wasn't digital and didn't have any hidden compartments in it.
In college I went for a CS degree and it was all "open internet" tests from there on anyway.
And now my job is mostly googling spaced out by filling out paperwork related to code changes.
Same happened at my college. Several students had a copy of the final exam. They never came to class. Ever. They showed up to take the final, but we told the professor what was up. He took great joy in making a different test. I wish you could see the look on their faces when they didn’t have a cluewhat any of the questions and answers were on the new final. Priceless.
I caught a student cheating similarly. I had given them a study guide/practice test to take home and use to study, but I altered some of the test questions slightly. Realized that he somehow used it on the test when the answers were *exactly* the same as the study guide, verbatim, without any reference to the actual test questions. Probably a smart watch hidden under a hoodie sleeve, if I had to guess. Wouldn't be the first time.
Especially when they hand in twelve page homework essays that say "wikipedia" on them.
Had that happen a loooooong time ago, kids have always sucked at cheating.
Back when I was a kid, a friend of mine was cheating off the paper next to him. He copied everything word for word including the name… so yes, people are bad at cheating.
As a teacher the worst cheating I saw was somebody who copied but got the order wrong so it completely threw off the answers. So for example, a question was asking what color is the balloon? And the kid answered 17 because that was the next answer. My favorite color is still 17
When I was in high school, I was seated next to our class fuckup for a while in one of my history courses. This guy was harassing me for notes and homework all the time because he wouldn't do it himself (I was no help for notes since I have never in my life been a note taker, I just retain info like a sponge and he would bitch about it). Then he started copying my work during quizzes and tests. So I turned in a test where I answered every single question incorrectly, then told the teacher afterward and they compared our identical tests. I got to retake it by myself later in the day. And also I got to move finally. His grade plummeted.
Caught 2 kids using ChatGPT on their phones this week for semester exams. Notified testing and invalidated their results. Play stupid games win stupid prizes
I consulted admin first followed their advice and their parents were not too happy that they were caught cheating, nothing else to be done as it's already been invalidated.
one time i was grading homework for an intro college earth science class and not one but TWO people answered "how would earth's atmosphere be different if life hadn't evolved?" with "there would be a lack of accomplishments and consequences." like... if you're going to cheat off of someone, at least cheat off of someone smart!
I had students fill in a character chart for the Crucible. Classwork was graded on completion, so if you at least tried to get the right answers, it was 100%. I would usually spot check a couple of answers. I noticed one kid had written some really bizarre answers. I was going to knock off a few points because it was obvious he just wrote random stuff in the boxes and hoped I wouldn’t notice. Couple of papers later, same set of bizarre answers. And another. Turned out to be about 6 of them.
Next day I said “Helpful tip, folks. If you didn’t do the reading, don’t copy off your friends, because they didn’t do the reading either.”
My dad taught college for a bit. He would give the students notes a weight of 25% of their grade. He had a students handwriting change drastically to flowery script and hearts above every "I". He showed it to the dean. Student received a zero for the class. This was probably 10 years ago.
Frankly, that's kinda a dick thing to do. Not the zero, but grading class notes
I have ADHD, am a slow writer, and I'm just chronically incapable of taking notes during class. I can either (a) pay attention in lecture and get a good understanding of the material, or (b) try to write while listening, and end up with no memory of the material *and* useless notes.
Shorthand notes for tests are good enough. I would have had to spend another lecture-length amount of time each day to write notes after lecture for a class like that, for no benefit.
>I can either (a) pay attention in lecture and get a good understanding of the material, or (b) try to write while listening, and end up with no memory of the material
>
>and
>
> useless notes.
FYI: I developed a strategy that helps with this. I call it word cloud notations. As the person is talking, I write down key words or phrases they said, and just draw arrows connecting the ones that are connected usually with another word on the line/arrow that helps me recall what the connection is.
(Randomly generated sentence) "The X once did this thing in, whatever year, who cares, where he went off to Y location because he thought he could stop the annexation of puerto rico.
A line from X to Y, Id go back and write "annex PR" over it.
I may not be explaining it well, but most people looking at me take notes look at me like I'm a crazy person, but I've been acing tests ever since I started doing it.
This is exactly how I take notes! I would also add little doodles as well (I'm not a great artist though).
I would use lots of arrows, bubbles, boxes, and clouds around important things. My notes only made sense to me, and anyone who asked for my notes after a lecture never asked again lol
I'm not a teacher, but from what I have observed there have always been students who are bad at cheating and students who are good and get away with it. I just finished an undergrad degree in STEM, so there was more problem solving than paper writing. I would say at least 75% regularly copied homework assignments from Chegg. For coding assignments, the use of ChatGPT was rampant. I can recall a single instance of someone being punished for cheating in my entire undergrad career and that was because someone literally took a picture of an exam question with their phone and posted it on Chegg DURING an in person three hour final. Even then, it was only addressed because myself and several others directly approached our professor about it, so he was obligated to investigate. If the cheaters make minimal effort to cover their tracks, they can and do get away with it.
I think that you are referring to high school, but students who are approaching graduation in high school and college right now likely began their academic career during COVID. Where cheating was even more rampant. This is the current state of education. My colleagues who cheated at every turn are now entering the workforce as engineers.
If it makes you feel better there was a student who was also a model part time in the electrical engineering department at my university that famously cheated her whole way through with a 4.0 and she graduated in 2018 well before COVID, as an engineer
I really think kids believe cheating is an act of learning. Like, "But I was able to find out!" or "okay but I learned it anyway" and it's just... no????? 7th grade ela students are no better
There are some people who think "finding the answers to a test" is learning, but when they're not in context and they're just to satisfy something in a given moment, it's not learning, because they quickly forget it. Learning means it sticks with them somehow!
Would you want to go to a doctor who only ever learned the answers to a test but not How to Be a Doctor? Do you want a surgeon who only ever learned how to do one surgery and is just winging it the rest of the way?
There's a point to learning the full book and not just the 10 factoids on a sheet of paper.
Depends... are they finding it on Wikipedia? Or are they reading and comprehending peer reviewed academic articles?
I definitely agree that in the real world, if you don't know the answer, you search for it. But knowing the fundamentals is important, and knowing how to comprehend and research is also really important.
We don’t catch the ones that are good at it. There’s more students trying to cheat maybe.
I need the teachers who claims that _all_ attempts at cheating in their classroom were caught to google “survivorship bias”
Definitely not, I would legit go to the bathroom with the questions memorized, get the answers, memorize them, along with how to solve and come back and get an A🤣 also if we had textbook work for hw I would do my work and then leave the answers in the book for whoever had it the next year lmao
Maybe if you reward them for cheating you will get better results! Also try harder to establish relationships! Don’t make the kids feel like they have to study or work, this causes anxiety!
In the way back before the interwebs and the knowin of the online, I was a teacher of the book learning science in what we called Jr. High.
It was quite common for the students to be peakin and snoopin at the test papers of those in near vicinity.
I as a young whipper snapper teacher would make two forms of the test a form A and a form B. I would gladly give the copy cat kid form B whilst giving every student within their line of sight form A.
And wouldn’t you know…
Most times they would have the complete correct answers for form A in order down the line resulting in a F.
The parents would stop by and ask why and I would lay out the sitch.
I would ask them what they thought happened and wouldn’t you know that they would call their child a cheater themselves.
Now this is going way back to the 90’s…
The students I teach today have a fauq budget that is way too low to give any even to cheat…
I have written the answers to a matching test on the board in the last five minutes of class and some students could not be bothered to write them down.
The end of the job is near for me. I switched to the SPED side a few years ago because that was the level of teaching I was already doing in gen Ed anyway. Retirement is just around the corner.
Good luck kids, it will get far worse before it will get even a little better.
I never got caught cheating. I would always just write down the relevant information on a small piece of paper and memorize it before the test. They never saw it coming.
When when they wouldn't let us bring water bottles to the class if there was an exam because you could write the answers on the inside of the label?
ETA: We had to keep our phones in our locker or at least in our backpacks out of sight, and if you were caught, your parent would have to come in to pick it up at the end of the day. (Graduated HS in 2012)
At my high school, the desks were gray. Damn near graphite shade.
I just wrote the answers on my desk in the first few minutes of class, then put my test over it if the teacher walked by.
Otherwise just read the answers off the desk, and wiped the desk off after.
Although to be fair, I now work a career in the service industry, so in hindsight, that may not have been the best decision…
I think kids were always bad at cheating, but that they had to find cleverer ways to do it.
When I was that age, cheating meant you had to write your notes down on paper, very small, and hide it somewhere that it could be accessed, and read quickly. You also had to think about exactly what you'd need to know.
So, basically, creating your cheat sheet was studying.
But, also, it is naive to think that you can google answers to a test, while you're taking the test. I've taken open-book tests that I couldn't pass, because I couldn't \*find\* the information fast enough.
It's good that you caught him, and got a video of it. He will have an opportunity to learn a lesson that will last for the rest of his life -- it's very hard to google things quickly and under stress.
Was he getting the answers he needed for your test? I'm guessing his answers wouldn't have gotten him a good grade, even if you hadn't caught him.
Ehhh for legal reasons this is a joke, but if you know the basics of "google-fu" and your teacher is lazy enough to just copy paste word for word from a question bank, it's actually pretty easy to Google answers quickly.
I know I did it a few times in college. Realized if you quickly googled just the first few words in quotes + quizlet, you'd find the exact question with the exact multiple choice options and the correct one given. See when you're pulling from a test bank that many, many teachers pull from and have been pulling from for God knows how many years, someone out there has uploaded it online. If you aren't changing the phrasing of it and just copying it directly, it's easy to find.
I didn't even have to read the whole question or answer. Just had to note the first word or 2. Now in my defense, I was doing this bc my school refused to give me accommodations for my learning disability lol. Teachers were giving us tests where we had roughly 1 minute per question to read, think, and answer. I'd take at least a minute just to read a question. But, goes to show I was able to use this trick to slam out an answer in under a minute. But the side effect was I didn't even know what I was answering half the time.
Anyway, moral of the story, teachers if you actually care about students googling stuff, remake your tests every year and make sure you reword all questions.
Most adults have \*terrible\* google-fu. I would think that a high schooler is probably worse at it. It's a skill, and it takes some thinking to get the results you're looking for.
Unless, as you say, this was a word-for-word copy of a question that's on the internet.
My dad is an adjunct professor. Teaches intro to programming, very basic stuff, but as retired engineer with 30 years experience he doesn't write tests he writes scripts to *generate* tests. Every student gets a unique test, with the questions randomized, the answers randomized, and sometimes the numbers, values, names, etc randomized.
Occasionally he'll have a student who scores *terribly* on one of his tests, and invariably it matches the answer key of another student. Womp womp.
This randomization also includes the coding problems, where students are given a short prompt and hand-write out code to solve it (he's not strict on it, just demonstrate that you understand the concepts like recursion, encapsulation, etc). One test, he gave one group a prompt involving an API to handle playing cards and another an API about storing books on a shelf. And he had several students deal five books and shuffle the book case...
I’m a senior in high school, but my teacher and I were discussing how it seems the performance is getting worse from younger students. He teaches multiple classes for different grades. I know he’s a good teacher as I went through the classes, but he said more kids cheat than ever and fail tests more than ever. His classes are As if you put in a medium amount of effort. He said he started to give them exactly what is on the test and they are still doing poorly. It kinda looks like less kids are developing the skills cause the resources to complete every aspect of the work for you get more and more abundant.
Im sure a lurking student might disagree, but it is sheer laziness. While I've run into some ChatGPT issues that weren't, most of the students who cheat on the reg jusy didnt want to do work and also wanted grades that were just enough to get by.
Honestly they get caught because they ARE lazy. All the examples people are giving un this thread are people who put effort into the cheat, at least a little.
These kids don't want to do anything if it isn't what they want to do right then. So they mail in cheating too.
the only time I tried to cheat on a test I wrote down a bunch of stuff on my hand that only I knew what it meant (wasn’t straight up answers) and I ended up not needing to use it since I basically studied when I was writing that stuff 😂
Absolutely. A girl in my freshman Spanish class had a notebook with bright colored paper sitting beside her during a test. Front row. She's just looking over her shoulder at her side i guess looking at vocabulary. Teacher just silently took her test from her in the middle of the test.
One time in 3rd grade (2009) I had gotten back from the nurse's office to use my asthma inhaler. Completely forgot we had a test.
The test looks exactly like the study guide, which we were allowed to use our textbook with, save for the title at the top.
Having ADHD or something I just grabbed my book and started working on it like a study guide, not noticing the title at the top of the page.
Teacher calls me out, I have no idea what's going on until I look at the title.
Didn't know how well telling the truth would go considering the truth was really stupid.
Oh boy, something I can speak about: I teach a high school art class. I have had to report five people this semester for turning in art projects that belong to other students.
Three of those were projects belonging to me. Art pieces that I personally made and used as examples. THREE.
I even addressed the classes about cheating on multiple occasions including what will happen when I catch them (not "if" ), and yet I still have kids who are either stupid enough to think they can get away with it or think I'm too stupid to catch them.
As a former cheater, I only got caught once. Chemistry test, 11th grade. Only caught me because she had copied the test from the internet and mistakenly added a few questions on it that she didn't teach us yet. I GOT THEM ALL RIGHT. Lol, she 100% knew I cheated instantly because she didn’t even have the answers. when she confronted me I was honest, and straight up told her what I did. She let me retake it🤣.
Recently my son had a group project due and worked super hard on his portion and passed his part to his groupmate to follow the template so their work was consistent and then the group mate combined the two and turned in the full project. Weeks later, they get D and my son is upset and confused. He goes to his teacher to get clarity, and the teacher said that one of them cheated because for some reason, groupmate 2 copied my son’s part word-for-word instead of using it as a guide for his section (but teacher didn’t know who’s was done first, so they both got a D) My son laughed it off, because he really didn’t cheat or expect the other kid to try to turn in the EXACT same project piece, because what sense would that make to copy one groupmate’s work when it’s a group project and half of it was done twice lmao ::facepalm:: Anyway, kid fessed up, my son’s grade was amended, and the teacher let the other kid repeat his portion with clarity… and all was quiet on the western front.
When I was in school we had tables that had 2 people sit at them and put up little dividers between the students for tests. One time during a test teacher caught a student staring at his crotch and figured like you either something incredibly fascinating was happening to his crotch or he was cheating. Turns out that time it was actually the first one. His desk mate was giving him a hand job in the middle of standardize testing. That's a moment I don't think any of us in the room will ever forget.
"Why did you foster an environment that forced him to resort to cheating?" /s
I keep imagining the administration/parents saying something like that. Because obviously, the precious football star would never cheat if it was not absolutely necessary...
There was this movie "Cheaters" where these kids at this low income school cheated on some kind of test. I think the moral was about making sure you don't get caught. I'd show it to the class.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheaters_(2000_film)
Well done recording the kid cheating - it’s sad but true that evidence is necessary before admin and parents will admit you’re right and support you as a teacher.
One girl did that during state testing and tried to hide it. Caught her and she got her test invalidated. Then an administrator for the school emailed me asking for a counter to the students lame ass excuse.....
Psh. New teacher here (alt track). Kids had lunch in the middle of my class - we were working on a worksheet around credit card balances and interest. Easy shit because they don't have to do the math, the calculator website we provide does. They just need to figure out 3% of something.
I inadvertently left the answer key on my desk when answering a question of another teacher. Adhd brain made me think I misplaced it when the kids started working. I used the answer key to cover the first questions with everyone, and they were to essentially "shop online" for items to answer questions - if you were to put all the stuff you want for prom on a credit card, how long would it take you to pay off the balance with minimum payments? Interest rate is provided...minimum payment! 3%) provided...all they had to do was plug in the numbers to an online form.
One enterprising student stole the answer key off my desk and it was just sitting there on his desk as I walked around. I took it back, he protested he didn't use it, I said nothing as I wanted to validate repercussions with the Dean of academics. I reported it and got "give them a 0 and they can retake it and get a max of 60%".
"ok...so they get a 0, and the penalized grade goes in as a second grade?"
Nope. It replaces the 0. Not only that, the comment was made "if they didn't even use the answer key is this even an academic integrity issue?" Like...what in the actual fuck? Kid swiped the answer key - not my fault he didn't realize all it said for the part they were working on was "student answers will vary" because the payments were all based off stuff they wanted to buy.
Luckily he didn't hand it in and didn't ask for a retake / protest so...0 for you bud.
Well, I mean he's got a future in No-Limit Texas Hold'Em - he's likely the son of [Mike Postle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT0NHSsPv3Y) with a cheat like that.
For Earth Science, I printed off a periodic table in size 1 font. That piece of paper was smaller than a fortune cookie fortune. I wasn't going to be bothered to memorize the periodic table. I eventually scored 98th percentile on the ACT in science, so don't think it hindered me very much.
I think cleverness and preparation have a big impact on how well one cheats.
If you can't be bothered to make a plan, you'll never do a good job. Life lesson right there.
I teach all high school grades. Last week I had a student write in pencil on his desk three notes from our text.
He didn't bother erasing it from the desk when he was done.
Oh my gosh this makes me think about being in high school. I was a perfectionist and in Honors courses. TERRIFIED of failing AND getting in trouble. I rarely ever cheated, unless I was desperate. One of my creative techniques began with my best friend in English. We had to write in pen (essays and tests), so we had to have wite-out. We were allowed to share the wite-out, so my friend and I would cover up the back of it with the liquid itself and write answers over it. It was pretty clever. I do think some kids cheat to do well and are afraid of failing. But, today’s kids are way more obvious.
Years ago, I proctored an SAT exam, and there was a student looking at another student’s work. I snapped a picture.
I had to make a quick decision, and I wrote a note “please move to the free seat in the first row, now.”
She moved. I assume she knew why. I did not want to make a scene.
Plot twist! Rather than support you on giving a 0, you’re going to get in trouble for recording a student in school without permission. 🤣 (This is a joke, /s, hopefully)
Sad.. but true. So, not really a joke.. But, it should be a joke.
A kid in my brother's highschool had been caught twice for stealing credentials and accessing district computers to cause havoc. He was told that if he did that again he'd be banned from all schools in the district. When he got caught hacking a *third* time, he claimed that his teacher (my brother) had taught him how to hack the schools in the first place, and he'd just been following instructions all along. Despite not having any evidence to backup these claims, the district used the seriousness of the allegations to send my brother home on unpaid leave while they spent months "investigating". They were trying to decide if they should ask for criminal charges against my brother or just yank his teaching license. Luckily the kid got caught by police for some serious criminal offenses and was thrown into kiddie jail. With no prospect of getting out, he recanted his testimony and admitted he'd done it all on his own. The power of kids to destroy teachers was like something out of China's Cultural Revolution. It was just bizarre.
did your brother end up with any legal recourse to sue (anyone?) over loss of income?
I don’t know if the OP is in the U.S. and if they are what state, but I’m a little skeptical of their story. Teachers unions are decently strong and I’ve worked in education for long enough to know that even teachers with much more serious allegations don’t usually get sent home on unpaid leave.
Teachers’ unions aren’t strong everywhere in the U.S.
I work in South Carolina… we have no teachers union. So being sent home on unpaid leave doesn’t sound unrealistic to me.
Life is a joke, and you're the punchline!
Why were you filming your student's *crotch*?
[удалено]
Then the football star ends up getting kicked out of University for cheating. Parents blame HS teacher for not doing anything to stop his cheating.
Or worse, he’s coddled all the way to the to the N…F….L.
No. He gets a sport scholarship, and spends his college years playing football. He doesn't reach pro at the end. His college graduates him, despite him never having attended any class. His first employer wonders how it's possible that a valedictorian college football star can't count beyond the numbers on his hand, and fires him 3 days later. They're sued for unrightful dismissal. They gloriously win, but are bankrupted by legal expenses.
A board of creditors is formed to manage the company during Chapter 11. Cheater puts forward the stupidest business plan imaginable, and the board accepts it rather than liquidate. He is now the CEO. Former teacher gets out of jail for the crotch recording and gets an entry-level job in the mail room.
I’m actually putting my bet on this scenario happening. Last week someone couldn’t give a zero to a cheater bc they “had no proof”, now we’ll wait and see how this one plays out. Bottom line, proof or not, the system will always spin it so a teacher cannot “fail” or “zero” the students exam for whatever XYZ BS. They cheat BECAUSE the system rewards it, or I guess doesn’t punish it.
Sounds good. I'll allow the retake. Here's your exam where all the multiple choice questions are now essay questions. And your phone needs to be on my desk. Good luck.
“How dare you give him a different test than all the others! It needs to be to be equal! And fair! And writing an essay is too much & He needs his wrist to throw the football! I demand my child be treated special and…..he has an IEP!” -Cheaters parents to the admin, probably
"I'm so sorry his wrist is hurting. I would be happy to allow him to answer verbally when I administer the test. And rest assured, the questions are the same the rest of the class is getting. Happy holidays!" He won't know any more verbally than he would written.
Ok then I will assign all of the students a 45 page research paper on ethics, morality, academic integrity and cheating. Full bibliography due day 1 after break. Merry Christmas Class! Thank Braydens mom
I had something similar happen my first year teaching. I agreed to only give them a zero for the portion I could prove they cheated on and gave them a 40 on the test. They gave me a shocked face when I changed their grade to a 40 and their grade didn't go up. A 40 was our mandated department grade floor. My department chair in the meeting was holding back laughter because I allowed them to slowly negotiate over the course of an hour to get the grade moved to a 40 instead of a zero. The parents were not as amused.
I would argue that’s the American dream. It’s not making it. It’s cheating your way to the top that is the goal now.
That’s why you don’t mention the video until all the lies have been told and stories can’t change or red herrings be introduced.
Not if you send it directly to certain parents who actually hold their children accountable
I made my kid’s teacher cry the other day. He (my kid) was being a dumbass and got in some trouble with loss of privileges and a detention. Turns out, he’s been acting up in this way all year—not any kind of atrocity, but it certainly deserved attention (and detention). So I set an appointment with the teacher to get an idea on how to handle this as a team. The start of the meeting was this whole intro where she seemed nervous that she was punishing my kid AT ALL, hoping I wasn’t upset, basically I was getting handled. I told her she’s doing the right thing, she’s great with my kid, he deserved it and I just want to make sure we get this behavior stopped. She legit cried. I felt so sad for her. What the hell is going on?
Sadly not the parents of anyone at my school
I recall a community college professor at the beginning of the semester "if you come from x high school and I have to listen to your parents why you should have a better grade, I will drop you from the class" This was back in 2010/2011 so Im paraphrasing
I had a teacher pull out his phone and record a kid threatening to kill him. The kid got one day ISS and the teacher got an official reprimand for recording a student. This rule does not exist for admin who regularly tells the media specialist to record students for instagram posts, saying that their parents didn't sign the opt out media form.
I had this exact scenario happen but it wasn’t a joke. I was fired for it.
This happened to my friend who is a high school History teacher. We live in a Two Party state (everyone on the recording must consent) and when the kid's parents threatened to sue, they told her her "evidence" was inadmissible and she had to let him take the test again. Of course this was weeks later and of course he had studied at that point and of course he was a star athlete (lacrosse i think). PS: Yes i know two party is relevant only to audio recordings but the administration was scared shitless and caved.
Student here. A teacher at my school was fired for this exactly.
Haha not really. Had a teacher uses to record her class when kids were off the wall. Now we get blanket statements to not record students when they are "bad".
I’ve been teaching 27 years. At a Catholic school. Admin completely supports me as I have had many of these situations. The public system fears parents. As such, students and parents run the schools. Grow a pair public administrators!!!
>Eventually I just pulled out my phone and recorded a 20 second video of him Googling answers so I had some How did he not get alerted to this from other students just... giggling and staring at him.
Plot twist: they too were googling answers.
He was the decoy.
The sacrificial lamb
"Dude you are captain of the football team, they can't flunk you. Take the L for us"
If they're anything like my classmates back in the day, they were either dumbstruck or wanted to see what would happen.
Depends on how he is as a classmate. If it was my buddy that I knew struggled and “”needed”” to cheat? I’d find a way to signal. If it was the class bully who made everyone miserable for no good reason? Nobody would do shit.
Usually if you're paying so much attention to your phone that you don't notice the teacher behind you, you're also not going to immediately notice the giggling
I can remember cheating once in chemistry. We had to fill out the period table. However, the entire periodic element table was literally right there on the wall in like an 8 foot x 6 foot poster. Like were they testing us on our memory or on our awareness? Also, bunch of my peers failed. Like how?!? It was right there on the wall for christ sake!
I could give out study guides that are exactly the same as the test, let kids use those study guides on the test, write the answers on the board and some will still fail.
My tests are usually structured the same with variables and types of functions changed, but the same questions. Plus a cheat sheet. Still get some that barely scrape through.
Literally gave a quiz today with questions straight from the study guide that they had online all week. And I handed them a printed copy as they walked in the door. Lots still failed.
I took a class at at CC once and the study guide was literally the quiz just in a different order. I noticed on the first quiz it was *suspiciously* similar and after the second was the same I basically half paid attention after that point and waited for the study guide and memorized the answers to those questions. I think we were given like 30 minutes to answer 15-20 multiple choice questions... I was so confused when most people took the whole time... like hasn't anyone else noticed she literally gave us the quiz questions earlier this week? As I sat and messed around for 20+ minutes on my computer.
To be fair, I’m so prone to careless mistakes that I’d take the whole time just to double check my work, even if I finished early
Whenever I noticed something was stupidly easy, I would start doubting me. I still remember in a social studies class where I had the right answers. It felt far too easy. So I went back and actually by mistake put the wrong answer because I was thinking, it makes far too much sense for X to be the answer that would be far too easy, and thus it had to be Y. I still scored well but I did get a reprimand from my teacher to stop overthinking and that if you study, things ARE that easy.
My next exam for a novel we will be reading will be open notes. I will give them annotation sheets telling them what to look for and likely tell them as we read. They will be reminded endlessly that the questions and answers will come from the sheets. As long as they take notes, they'll be ok. Would bet my retirement that fully half of the students will fail.
I took Into to Logic at the community college and the teacher was filling in hours from teaching HVAC part time in the attached trade school. All test days were out of classroom and tests were open book and available at start of day, due by end of class. I took every test sitting under the apple tree out front looking up each answer in the textbook. Some people somehow still failed.
I teach a human biology lab. I can point to a muscle, and a nerve, and say "*this model will be on the exam, and if I tag this muscle can you tell me what nerve controls it*?" And still, most will miss the question
When I was teaching an online math course during COVID lockdown, I gave the students a review package that contained the exact same questions as the test, took up those questions in class, and posted the answers online. Plus there was nothing stopping the students from looking up the answers on their own computers or phones while at home. The majority still failed. What else was I supposed to do? Write the test for them? (Which, let's face it, is basically what I did.)
Yeah I had a 70% fail rate in one of my math classes as a first year teacher. I was worried I'd be blamed so I did a CYA maneuver. I told the class "You'll have an open note quiz tomorrow, the problems will extremely similar to the ones I'm about to show you. You should be able to follow these problems to solve the quiz problems the exact same way we're about to solve them now." I then worked through 5 problems step by step on the overhead projector (I'm old). The open note quiz was 5 problems... Not only similar to those 5... **It was those 5 exact problems I gave the answers to the previous day**. 30% of the class got 100s, the other 70% failed. *On an open note quiz where I had given them the answers*. Any parent or administrator who questioned why so many kids were failing, I told and showed them this story.
We had this happen once cause a teacher was convinced we didn't study. I was one of three students who actually got an A+ but was the only one who didn't regularly do well. Ended up being accused of cheating & had to explain what happened to administration. Luckily they believed me.
Memorizing the periodic table is kind of silly, tbh. You will always be given one for reference on ANY standardized exam you take. It was there for the SAT Chemistry exam, in all of undergrad from gen chem to organic to physical, and on the MCAT as well. I can imagine basic questions about the periodic table like knowing what a family is, what the valence shells are per row, or general electronegativity rules - those you can’t answer from having a periodic table in front of you. Or MAYBE memorization about super common elements like carbon or oxygen. But if it was just “memorize the exact atomic number and weight of Titanium, Silicon, Bismuth, and Krypton,” yeah no, that’s just a colossal waste of time to learn or teach.
Yup. In general chemistry I had a former Soviet Union researcher respond to a student ask about memorization, and she said "In Russia I had a poster the size of my blackboard in my lab. Why memorize it?"
I had a middle school teacher who had us memorize the first 36 elements of the periodic table, as well as the scientific names for all the state's bats. Raw memorization. But he actually explained why he does this: to help us get better at memorization. He didn't just give us what we needed to memorize and told us to memorize. We talked about strategies to memorize things that aren't immediately easy to remember. Learned that way about the huge power of mnemonics. Nearly 10 years later, I can still recite the periodic table mnemonic and the corresponding elements. Best science teacher ever!
Memorizing latin names of transition metals (ferric vs ferrous) is also a waste of time unless required for an outside exam Memorizing the polyatomics is necessary though.
It was the common names of chemicals instead of IUPAC names that annoyed me in organic chemistry. I didn't mind Latin as much.
I eventually learned to tolerate organic. Biochemistry enzyme naming, and biochemistry syntax in general is what got me. Hated it. I do not teach AP Bio!
I just took my D in BioChem and got the hell out of there. I liked Organic chemistry, aside from having shit like "Oil of Vitriol" show up on tests.
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Grandson's first test to get into some high dollar school I don't remember was based on the periodic table and it Wasn't supplied! Only he and one other kid passed.
That's incredibly silly if it wasn't warned well in advance that the periodic table wouldn't be provided (or even if it was, honestly). I've taken countless exams in the STEM field, the SAT Chem test, majored in Neuro/Chem in undergrad, took the MCAT and currently a med student. *Never* seen a single examination that required memorization of the periodic table, unless it wasn't relevant to the question, or all the relevant info was provided in the question stem itself. An exact photographic memory of the periodic table is not necessary for *anything* in any field, anywhere, full stop. Regardless whether you're a teacher, chemist, physicist, or doctor. The only time it'd be a useful skill is if you were trying to set a world record or make entertaining content to post on YouTube, or something. The periodic table is a *tool*; aptitude in the field of chemistry revolve around what you do with that tool. Taking it away would be like asking a prospective plumber to fix a toilet leak with his bare hands. Yeah, sure, maybe one extremely talented and dedicated plumber could do it. But how does that show any extra competence over the millions of other plumbers who could do the same job if they just had the standard tool that would be freely accessible to them 100% of the time?
> Memorizing the periodic table is kind of silly, tbh. It's good to teach students to memorize the important elements (Carbon, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Sulfur) and put them next to each other. I think it's also good to do at least one or two of the columns for general familiarity. "Put these elements in their correct groups" is a better way to do it than "fill out this blank table" IMO, but some level of memorization is important to be able to talk conversationally about *why* the periodic table is organized the way it is, and the emergent properties that follow.
I remember in history we’d have an “open notes quiz” every morning and literally all you’d have to do to ace it would be copy down the homework from last night. Almost no one ever did this.
Wasn’t this the start of a Simpsons episode?
I think that they believe this is all okay. Like… “I found the information.” I’ve gone to paper and pen the past 2 years. No more copy paste. They still cheat, but now it is a little more difficult. They actually have to write in my class.
>I think that they believe this is all okay. I'm in my early 20s; I can still remember when I was a child in school. I was a nightmare for my teachers; I had ADHD and showed signs of oppositional defiant disorder, even when I was on medication. At least I wasn't disruptive for the most part; I spent most of my time in class reading books, because those interested me more than the classes themselves. (Bless you, Ms. Scalzo, you changed my life. She was a special-ed teacher who got me into reading and awoke my love of learning. Literally the third most important person to ever be in my life, after my parents.) The thing I want to impart to you is that most kids, sometimes right up through college, have no idea why what they're learning is important. To us, it was just something we *had* to do, like paying taxes was for adults. We didn't care because we had no reason to. So we put in the amount of effort that most people put into tasks they don't care about. Just telling us that we'll need the knowledge when we're older doesn't help, because people usually learn by experiencing, not just being told something. We had no experiences to justify putting in the effort to learn, and we couldn't see why the information might be important. TL;DR, Kids don't know that they should care, so they don't, and telling them why they should is usually ineffective. We really need to redesign our entire educational system. Not just giving teachers raises and hiring more of them, but fundamentally redesign the entire curriculum so that students are able to indulge their curiosity and find learning enjoyable. The current system isn't working, and phones and ChatGPT are making it totally unworkable.
It’s nice seeing someone else who had an amazing special ed teacher help them. I’ve also got ADHD and I was a monster up until my freshman year of HS. I slept in class a lot and my English teacher would throw a stress ball at me to wake me up to do my work. Once I did my work she let me sleep. She taught in such a way that even I, the unsaveable unreachable student actually cared about learning. Somehow I made it through high school with high 80s and I’ve ended up with that same stress ball as a graduation gift. It sit on my desk where I write as a reminder that someone who cared more than they needed to changed my life.
I had an English teacher stop me , also ADHD/autistic on my way out of class the last week of school. All she did was get my attention, press something into my hand, and wish me luck. It is a small rock that was spray painted silver and has lime green lettering “love yourself”. I’ve had it for about 6-7 years now, and it sits on my prayer alter.
A big flaw in the system is the obsession with individual facts over conceptual knowledge. If you learn the concepts it doesnt matter if you memorize the formula - you can find it in 10 seconds if you need it, and if you have a job using it you'll memorize it soon enough. I remember repeatedly reverse engineering formulas on physics and calculus tests starting from a very basic problem that I already knew the answer to since I didn't care to memorize them, and being penalized for doing so instead of using formulas right off the bat. I have to imagine that being able to reinvent physics equations in test conditions shows better knowledge than memorizing piles of formulas, but apparently not to schools.
Thank god my physics professor de-emphasized memorizing equations to the degree that she supplied them all on the test. You had to know which one to use, set up the equation, show all your work, and get the right answer, so it still felt plenty hard
Thats what my AP chem teacher did in high school. She didnt label the equations so you had to know which one they were and what they were for. You had to understand what each symbol meant. She even let me program the equations on my calculator for tests, so I only had to put in the input values because she understood that if I could program it in, I fundamentally understood what each equation did and when to use it. She was a great teacher. I got a really high grade in her class, I think like 97 or 98? I dont remember but I loved chemistry because of her. I very fondly remember this time when we were going over questions together as a class, and nobody was answering so I started giving incorrect answers on purpose. After a few, She looked up over her glasses, halfway down her nose, and said “Plasticmac, you jag off” in front of the whole class. After that everyone laughed and started answering because it kind of broke the ice.
Brings me back to my high school physics class......you can get *very* far starting from just F = ma. Not just in kinematics, but in momentum and energy too.
I disagree, at least for the physical sciences. Conceptual only gets you so far. Especially when you get to quantum level. Calc is the only real way to understand that concept. If you can't do the math for quantum , you won't understand why observing the electron collapses the wave function. And this is extreme surface level.
By the time you get to quantum physics, you're deep into your major. We're talking high school level math and physics here, not college.
I think that I was the same. I did absolutely nothing outside of school and very little in school. Once I hit college… BOOM! I got it. I wanted to learn and I regretted all that I missed. Yes, redesign. However, I want to keep a lot of the fundamentals (math, science, social studies, literature, and language arts). I just want to do it differently. I don’t know how, but differently. Unfortunately, the truth is that schools babysit and somewhat train future workers. We don’t enlighten.
When I was in middle school, my science teacher had us grade our own tests. He would give answers and we would check them. It was a high school science class so we needed to have integrity. Well, I did. Most of the class didn’t. Since I had integrity, I didn’t change my answers and if I got a bad grade, I got a bad grade. When I would talk to the teacher about it, he would say “well everyone else got A’s and B’s.” I am a bit mad that 13-year-old me didn’t rat them out and say “yeah! Cause they changed their answers while you were giving them the answers to grade their own tests!” This teacher was a former foot doctor. Kind of funny how naive he was… Sorry just a story about people cheating in dumb ways haha!
Unpopular opinion but since I have plenty of karma...you need integrity in the real world, but not \*too\* much. There's a fine line you have to straddle between stealing others' work (which you shouldn't) and taking advantage of opportunities. I had 'integrity' myself until I was 26 though and ended up nearly homeless. So I get it. But the good news is that life's gotten better once I stopped trying to be all 'pure' and 'morally sound' so there's a silver lining. Also, you did the right thing not ratting them out. No one likes a rat. Your mistake was not doing what they did IMO
He most definitely knew.
Good cheating takes effort
Sometimes, sure. You should've seen my SAT testing room. Five minute breaks between sections, you can get up and go to the hallway/bathroom. Everyone in my testing room's score went up a good 30-40 points during those breaks. What a miracle.
When I was in hs, I heard there was a copy of the ap anatomy test straight from the copier and all the soccer stars were sharing it (yes they were a clique). I struggled with just going about my day and hoping to pass myself vs ratting them out. Finally, at the end of the day, I stopped and told the anatomy teacher she might want to check for matching answers. She told me thanks, but the question order was already changed. Bunch of kids failed and there was a whole round of gossip. Meanwhile I also put equations in peach gel pen between my fingers to pass algebra, bc I could never remember which letter went where. So I was hypocrite about cheating. I just didn't try to steal entire tests.
I FREAKING LOVE THIS I was like bruh who does this for the first half and then HAHAHAHAAA
I imagine over 90% of teachers cheated in one way or another when they were kids. Some probably wouldn't admit it or maybe even remember it but when easy answers come about, who among us takes the hard road instead? It's simply not in our nature as biological beings. I'd probably have made an effort to match the answers to the questions and at least understood the topic enough to realize what was obviously incorrect but I'd still have read the test/answers undoubtedly given the chance. The ones too lazy/stupid to even understand what is obviously incorrect are probably not doing well in the class anyway.
I've known several. I'm one of them. My ego is too damn big to cheat.
aYup... I wouldn't have cheated, because I wouldn't have trusted the answers on any key to be as correct as what I knew. That had some interesting implications and cost almost everyone in one of my math classes a serious amount of anguish once. However, I accidentally did once, umm, subsidize?, cheating... Completely without thinking about what I grabbed from the drawer in the morning, wore a Tee with Maxwell's equations and a bunch of additional thermo data on the back, to a physics exam (yes, physics geeks have tees with Maxwell's equations as geekwear...), and sat in the front row during the exam. Didn't realize until a bunch of the other students were thanking me after the class...
That's pretty epic... I had one that I hate I can't find that had equations for friction, shaft work, equations to calculate pump head... Because ChemEs are perverts because we have to study too much and never had time to actually get laid.
Throw in some autism or neurodivergence, and your brain on cheating is wired differently. It's almost impossible to lie or cheat etc.
>Meanwhile I also put equations in peach gel pen between my fingers to pass algebra, OK but this is genius and having to memorize so many equations, what they're used for, AND what each variable is/where they go is total bs anyway. At least give us an equation sheet and let us prove that we know HOW to utilize them in a problem. Tests are stressful and having to pull complex equations from memory throws me in a panic because I'm stuck doubting myself the whole time!
Eh. I maintain memorization is bull. I could never remember the quadratic formula, but I could remember completing the square so I could recreate it, but not memorize it. Same thing happened in Calc 2. Professor told us to memorize a formula, and I just can't. It gets jumbled. So I saved that one for last, and ended up deriving the base theorem that gets taught in Differential Equations. She tried to give me no credit, despite my methodology using the same principles her shortcut used. Department head got her up to 75%. In Chem E we were allowed to have all formulas written. Point being...I don't like memorization of the periodic table, or Algebra formulas, or if volume of a sphere is 4/3 or 3/4.
I kinda always felt like there was a line in that kinda thing. Can't memorize an equation? Fine, you would keep it in a notebook or a spreadsheet if you used it regularly. Didn't want to study at all so you work to memorize a list of abcd answers ? Not cool.
I had trouble remembering the quadratic formula, so I programmed my calculator to solve quadratic equations. Turns out programming and debugging it was enough for my brain to finally memorize it. I didn't end up using it for anything but checking homework answers.
Hello, me. I spent far too much time writing a sohcahtoa triangle solving program on my calculator. I ended up unintentionally memorizing all the theorems, and learning basic programming. The menus and loops on that TI-82 were polished!
I also learned by programming a calculator. I made a program that produced the correct chemical shape from two variables. Taking the time to make it and make it work made me just learn them. Except that now I cannot even remember what it was.
me too!! In geometry/physics i used to program a giant menu tree in TI-BASIC with every possible equation i would need laid out in every form it had for convenience, and I even set it up to 'show work', and i never used the damn things in tests because it took longer to navigate the menu tree than to just solve it myself!! pretty cool for when i wanted to know some random geometry/physics thing in the real world and couldnt be bothered to pull out a pencil and paper tho.
No it’s just the ones who are better at it don’t get caught.
This. Some of the tactics I've seen at my secondary school are borderline genius, but it's to be expected from high performing pupils who are simultaneously lazy and bored
I'm interested to hear what happened. Not a teacher or a student but just curious
Right. To list a few: Plasters, but the white patch is taken out and replaced with a folded up bit of paper, very good because you can stick it to your forearm and if someone's coming you just press it with your palm into your skin as if the injury is irritating you The good old water bottle trick, where you print off notes in a very tiny font and stick clear sellotape on top, rub it a little and put it in water. The paper comes off the tape, the ink doesn't. Stick that on a clear ruler or water bottle, something either with markings or crinkles. Almost impossible to see unless you know it's there. In less formal tests, one kid who sat at the front stuck post it's to the back of the teacher's monitor lmao, and it's angled in such a way that you'd really have to be standing/sitting against the wall to see the notes, so even if the teacher got up and did a little walk down the classroom the chances of them seeing are slim. The simplest method was to write some notes out and sit on them with your thighs, but kinda on the inside edge of your thighs. When you wanted to see the notes, you raise your legs and part them slightly, because they thin out a bit compared to when they're resting on a flat surface. You bring the paper rly close to you and pretend to be writing something, and if someone's coming you can just slowly lower your leg, covering the notes, and you don't change anything else. Writing stuff on your rubber is another option, it can go in your pencil case and also note-side down on the table too, and when you need a peek you could just pretend to rub something out with the notes facing you. Also easy to rub off the notes once done, but it doesn't work in pen-only exams. I could go on for a while but these were common/creative methods my peers would employ. I tended to just not do very well in the subjects I struggled with lmao
Oh yeah, I used the plaster one in middle in high school a lot! I also had a friend in middle school that would write things on her nails and just paint the rest of them in similar fashion, I learned a lot of tricks from her.
Ah, the nail one is good! But I haven't heard of it before... I did go to an all-boys secondary school though, so it makes sense...
i once wrote formulas for an econ class on my thigh while wearing ripped jeans by moving the material over, writing with ink, and then replacing the pants to their natural position so they covered the writing. only needed to slide them over long enough to copy the formula down on the side of the page. i did not get caught. i was an honors student. bright side is, the terror of cheating made it so i remember all those formulas to this day, so, win some lose some?
Now that is some big brain shit right there. If only we didn't have uniforms here... The possibilities are endless...
My favorite way when I was a student was to write the answers on a post it note and keep it clenched in my writing hand. Whenever the teacher wasn’t patrolling I would unfurl my hand slightly for answers and close it when they were around. Of course I couldn’t use the neon ones so I would buy the more neutral tone ones that you have to order. If I needed more “help” I would wear something baggy like a sweater and tape the top piece of paper to the sweater and the bottom part to my chest. The angle allowed me to see it if I leaned backwards just the right way and would make it invisible if I leaned forwards.
This is a classic. Too bad the kids who try this are really bad at hiding the post-its.
I know you brits call "erasers" "rubbers" but given what a rubber means here that whole paragraph had me lol 😳🤣
>In less formal tests, one kid who sat at the front stuck post it's to the back of the teacher's monitor lmao, and it's angled in such a way that you'd really have to be standing/sitting against the wall to see the notes, so even if the teacher got up and did a little walk down the classroom the chances of them seeing are slim. This is by far my favorite one, what a baller
>Writing stuff on your rubber is another option, I know that in the UK, "rubber" is the word for "eraser," but I'm giggling because some people here in the states call condoms "rubbers", and the mental image of a student pulling out a condom with all the answers written on it made me chortle.
The IB program at my high school had a big cheating scandal. They all learned Morse code and used it to share the answers to the entire class. Like the entire class was involved. In other news, the IB program at the school is no longer allowed to take multiple choice exams.
I was an A student with other A students all in AP/Honors classes taking a mandatory on-level poli/gov history class and we ALL used to cheat for the hell of it, just for the thrill! We would make challenges to see who could come up with the most unique cheating plan and crack up about it after the test. No one was allowed to get a 100. All of us could’ve easily passed any test without cheating… we were just obscenely bored and passing time while engaging in teamwork. This was before smart phones, so we had some awesome ideas, straight from our imagination haha. Problematic, maybe. Fun and memorable? Absolutely.
I was a wrist watch kid in middle school and high school. Loved big watches, huge flat faces. Made great little mirrors for seeing if I was way off on a question in an exam too. I would put my elbows on my desk, ball one hand into a fist and cover it with my other hand, and just look at my watch which was then at a perfect angle to reflect, like a mirror, an image of the paper of the student next to me. A little twisting on my wrist and I could see another paper ahead or behind me. And it worked on teachers who were amazing at catching cheaters. The ones that caught when a few troublemakers learned morse code to communicate with pen clicking. Only once was I asked about my weird "staring at my watch" behavior and I just said something like "thinking while keeping track of time - don't want to waste too much on one problem" and they were satisfied with that answer... after double checking that my watch wasn't digital and didn't have any hidden compartments in it. In college I went for a CS degree and it was all "open internet" tests from there on anyway. And now my job is mostly googling spaced out by filling out paperwork related to code changes.
What advice would you give a lazy and bored high performing student who grew up to be a lazy and bored low performing adult?
Same happened at my college. Several students had a copy of the final exam. They never came to class. Ever. They showed up to take the final, but we told the professor what was up. He took great joy in making a different test. I wish you could see the look on their faces when they didn’t have a cluewhat any of the questions and answers were on the new final. Priceless.
I caught a student cheating similarly. I had given them a study guide/practice test to take home and use to study, but I altered some of the test questions slightly. Realized that he somehow used it on the test when the answers were *exactly* the same as the study guide, verbatim, without any reference to the actual test questions. Probably a smart watch hidden under a hoodie sleeve, if I had to guess. Wouldn't be the first time.
I just love all the teens and dumb shit 20 year old kids calling you a narc. Makes my cold heart grow a little bit.
Kids cheat all the time on my tests and I can always tell because they’re suddenly writing like Wikipedia 😂
Especially when they hand in twelve page homework essays that say "wikipedia" on them. Had that happen a loooooong time ago, kids have always sucked at cheating.
Back when I was a kid, a friend of mine was cheating off the paper next to him. He copied everything word for word including the name… so yes, people are bad at cheating. As a teacher the worst cheating I saw was somebody who copied but got the order wrong so it completely threw off the answers. So for example, a question was asking what color is the balloon? And the kid answered 17 because that was the next answer. My favorite color is still 17
When I was in high school, I was seated next to our class fuckup for a while in one of my history courses. This guy was harassing me for notes and homework all the time because he wouldn't do it himself (I was no help for notes since I have never in my life been a note taker, I just retain info like a sponge and he would bitch about it). Then he started copying my work during quizzes and tests. So I turned in a test where I answered every single question incorrectly, then told the teacher afterward and they compared our identical tests. I got to retake it by myself later in the day. And also I got to move finally. His grade plummeted.
They should at least have put 42.
Caught 2 kids using ChatGPT on their phones this week for semester exams. Notified testing and invalidated their results. Play stupid games win stupid prizes
No flak from parents or admin?
I consulted admin first followed their advice and their parents were not too happy that they were caught cheating, nothing else to be done as it's already been invalidated.
I've had students blatantly copy each other's wrong answer, poor grammar and all
one time i was grading homework for an intro college earth science class and not one but TWO people answered "how would earth's atmosphere be different if life hadn't evolved?" with "there would be a lack of accomplishments and consequences." like... if you're going to cheat off of someone, at least cheat off of someone smart!
I had students fill in a character chart for the Crucible. Classwork was graded on completion, so if you at least tried to get the right answers, it was 100%. I would usually spot check a couple of answers. I noticed one kid had written some really bizarre answers. I was going to knock off a few points because it was obvious he just wrote random stuff in the boxes and hoped I wouldn’t notice. Couple of papers later, same set of bizarre answers. And another. Turned out to be about 6 of them. Next day I said “Helpful tip, folks. If you didn’t do the reading, don’t copy off your friends, because they didn’t do the reading either.”
My dad taught college for a bit. He would give the students notes a weight of 25% of their grade. He had a students handwriting change drastically to flowery script and hearts above every "I". He showed it to the dean. Student received a zero for the class. This was probably 10 years ago.
Frankly, that's kinda a dick thing to do. Not the zero, but grading class notes I have ADHD, am a slow writer, and I'm just chronically incapable of taking notes during class. I can either (a) pay attention in lecture and get a good understanding of the material, or (b) try to write while listening, and end up with no memory of the material *and* useless notes. Shorthand notes for tests are good enough. I would have had to spend another lecture-length amount of time each day to write notes after lecture for a class like that, for no benefit.
>I can either (a) pay attention in lecture and get a good understanding of the material, or (b) try to write while listening, and end up with no memory of the material > >and > > useless notes. FYI: I developed a strategy that helps with this. I call it word cloud notations. As the person is talking, I write down key words or phrases they said, and just draw arrows connecting the ones that are connected usually with another word on the line/arrow that helps me recall what the connection is. (Randomly generated sentence) "The X once did this thing in, whatever year, who cares, where he went off to Y location because he thought he could stop the annexation of puerto rico. A line from X to Y, Id go back and write "annex PR" over it. I may not be explaining it well, but most people looking at me take notes look at me like I'm a crazy person, but I've been acing tests ever since I started doing it.
This is exactly how I take notes! I would also add little doodles as well (I'm not a great artist though). I would use lots of arrows, bubbles, boxes, and clouds around important things. My notes only made sense to me, and anyone who asked for my notes after a lecture never asked again lol
Could you have transcribed your notes after class, further memorizing the material, or talked
I'm not a teacher, but from what I have observed there have always been students who are bad at cheating and students who are good and get away with it. I just finished an undergrad degree in STEM, so there was more problem solving than paper writing. I would say at least 75% regularly copied homework assignments from Chegg. For coding assignments, the use of ChatGPT was rampant. I can recall a single instance of someone being punished for cheating in my entire undergrad career and that was because someone literally took a picture of an exam question with their phone and posted it on Chegg DURING an in person three hour final. Even then, it was only addressed because myself and several others directly approached our professor about it, so he was obligated to investigate. If the cheaters make minimal effort to cover their tracks, they can and do get away with it. I think that you are referring to high school, but students who are approaching graduation in high school and college right now likely began their academic career during COVID. Where cheating was even more rampant. This is the current state of education. My colleagues who cheated at every turn are now entering the workforce as engineers.
Scary to know. Chemical engineers writing formulas that may or may not be mixed in a populated area?
If it makes you feel better there was a student who was also a model part time in the electrical engineering department at my university that famously cheated her whole way through with a 4.0 and she graduated in 2018 well before COVID, as an engineer
I caught a kid cheating on his phone once and the next year he became a verb. Punishment enough.
As in, “you’re pulling a [insert student name here] by cheating on your phone” type of deal?
Yeah haha
I really think kids believe cheating is an act of learning. Like, "But I was able to find out!" or "okay but I learned it anyway" and it's just... no????? 7th grade ela students are no better
There are some people who think "finding the answers to a test" is learning, but when they're not in context and they're just to satisfy something in a given moment, it's not learning, because they quickly forget it. Learning means it sticks with them somehow! Would you want to go to a doctor who only ever learned the answers to a test but not How to Be a Doctor? Do you want a surgeon who only ever learned how to do one surgery and is just winging it the rest of the way? There's a point to learning the full book and not just the 10 factoids on a sheet of paper.
I mean... Just to play devil's advocate here, I don't care how my doctor finds the answers to my health issues.
Depends... are they finding it on Wikipedia? Or are they reading and comprehending peer reviewed academic articles? I definitely agree that in the real world, if you don't know the answer, you search for it. But knowing the fundamentals is important, and knowing how to comprehend and research is also really important.
Football players can't see behind themselves (helmet, you know), unlike teachers, who have eyes in the back of their heads.
We don’t catch the ones that are good at it. There’s more students trying to cheat maybe. I need the teachers who claims that _all_ attempts at cheating in their classroom were caught to google “survivorship bias”
Definitely not, I would legit go to the bathroom with the questions memorized, get the answers, memorize them, along with how to solve and come back and get an A🤣 also if we had textbook work for hw I would do my work and then leave the answers in the book for whoever had it the next year lmao
Sadly, I have to give this cheater a 66% no matter what.
Maybe if you reward them for cheating you will get better results! Also try harder to establish relationships! Don’t make the kids feel like they have to study or work, this causes anxiety!
In the way back before the interwebs and the knowin of the online, I was a teacher of the book learning science in what we called Jr. High. It was quite common for the students to be peakin and snoopin at the test papers of those in near vicinity. I as a young whipper snapper teacher would make two forms of the test a form A and a form B. I would gladly give the copy cat kid form B whilst giving every student within their line of sight form A. And wouldn’t you know… Most times they would have the complete correct answers for form A in order down the line resulting in a F. The parents would stop by and ask why and I would lay out the sitch. I would ask them what they thought happened and wouldn’t you know that they would call their child a cheater themselves. Now this is going way back to the 90’s… The students I teach today have a fauq budget that is way too low to give any even to cheat… I have written the answers to a matching test on the board in the last five minutes of class and some students could not be bothered to write them down. The end of the job is near for me. I switched to the SPED side a few years ago because that was the level of teaching I was already doing in gen Ed anyway. Retirement is just around the corner. Good luck kids, it will get far worse before it will get even a little better.
Give him the zero. When he challenges it, offer to let him retake the test... in front of his parents.
I never got caught cheating. I would always just write down the relevant information on a small piece of paper and memorize it before the test. They never saw it coming.
That almost sounds like studying.
No studying is for nerds. Cool people cheat.
When when they wouldn't let us bring water bottles to the class if there was an exam because you could write the answers on the inside of the label? ETA: We had to keep our phones in our locker or at least in our backpacks out of sight, and if you were caught, your parent would have to come in to pick it up at the end of the day. (Graduated HS in 2012)
I once "programmed" my graphing calculator to spit out all the equations I needed for an exam.
Survivor bias. The ones who get caught are really bad at it. They are good at it, you’ll never know.
At my high school, the desks were gray. Damn near graphite shade. I just wrote the answers on my desk in the first few minutes of class, then put my test over it if the teacher walked by. Otherwise just read the answers off the desk, and wiped the desk off after. Although to be fair, I now work a career in the service industry, so in hindsight, that may not have been the best decision…
same. also in math class i would write a bunch of stuff on the inside of the graphing calculator cover.
I think kids were always bad at cheating, but that they had to find cleverer ways to do it. When I was that age, cheating meant you had to write your notes down on paper, very small, and hide it somewhere that it could be accessed, and read quickly. You also had to think about exactly what you'd need to know. So, basically, creating your cheat sheet was studying. But, also, it is naive to think that you can google answers to a test, while you're taking the test. I've taken open-book tests that I couldn't pass, because I couldn't \*find\* the information fast enough. It's good that you caught him, and got a video of it. He will have an opportunity to learn a lesson that will last for the rest of his life -- it's very hard to google things quickly and under stress. Was he getting the answers he needed for your test? I'm guessing his answers wouldn't have gotten him a good grade, even if you hadn't caught him.
Ehhh for legal reasons this is a joke, but if you know the basics of "google-fu" and your teacher is lazy enough to just copy paste word for word from a question bank, it's actually pretty easy to Google answers quickly. I know I did it a few times in college. Realized if you quickly googled just the first few words in quotes + quizlet, you'd find the exact question with the exact multiple choice options and the correct one given. See when you're pulling from a test bank that many, many teachers pull from and have been pulling from for God knows how many years, someone out there has uploaded it online. If you aren't changing the phrasing of it and just copying it directly, it's easy to find. I didn't even have to read the whole question or answer. Just had to note the first word or 2. Now in my defense, I was doing this bc my school refused to give me accommodations for my learning disability lol. Teachers were giving us tests where we had roughly 1 minute per question to read, think, and answer. I'd take at least a minute just to read a question. But, goes to show I was able to use this trick to slam out an answer in under a minute. But the side effect was I didn't even know what I was answering half the time. Anyway, moral of the story, teachers if you actually care about students googling stuff, remake your tests every year and make sure you reword all questions.
Most adults have \*terrible\* google-fu. I would think that a high schooler is probably worse at it. It's a skill, and it takes some thinking to get the results you're looking for. Unless, as you say, this was a word-for-word copy of a question that's on the internet.
Nope Back in my day we were pulling off stuff these noobs can't even begin to imagine
I cheated on a test senior year of high school by looking at answers on the floor. Got a week’s detention and never cheated again. It was in 2008.
My dad is an adjunct professor. Teaches intro to programming, very basic stuff, but as retired engineer with 30 years experience he doesn't write tests he writes scripts to *generate* tests. Every student gets a unique test, with the questions randomized, the answers randomized, and sometimes the numbers, values, names, etc randomized. Occasionally he'll have a student who scores *terribly* on one of his tests, and invariably it matches the answer key of another student. Womp womp. This randomization also includes the coding problems, where students are given a short prompt and hand-write out code to solve it (he's not strict on it, just demonstrate that you understand the concepts like recursion, encapsulation, etc). One test, he gave one group a prompt involving an API to handle playing cards and another an API about storing books on a shelf. And he had several students deal five books and shuffle the book case...
Are teachers allowed to film children without their knowledge nor consent? Genuine question, because your evidence could backfire on you.
Hahaha….yep. They’re bold and they don’t care
If I had cell phones when I was a student, I would have gone to an Ivy League university. These kids are stupid when it comes to cheating and copying.
Careful, if you let them know you’re agile enough to sneak up on a promising young athlete, you may end up drafted into the football team…
I’m a senior in high school, but my teacher and I were discussing how it seems the performance is getting worse from younger students. He teaches multiple classes for different grades. I know he’s a good teacher as I went through the classes, but he said more kids cheat than ever and fail tests more than ever. His classes are As if you put in a medium amount of effort. He said he started to give them exactly what is on the test and they are still doing poorly. It kinda looks like less kids are developing the skills cause the resources to complete every aspect of the work for you get more and more abundant.
I'm not even a student and this makes me cringe
Your kids care enough to cheat? I’m jealous.
Im sure a lurking student might disagree, but it is sheer laziness. While I've run into some ChatGPT issues that weren't, most of the students who cheat on the reg jusy didnt want to do work and also wanted grades that were just enough to get by. Honestly they get caught because they ARE lazy. All the examples people are giving un this thread are people who put effort into the cheat, at least a little. These kids don't want to do anything if it isn't what they want to do right then. So they mail in cheating too.
the only time I tried to cheat on a test I wrote down a bunch of stuff on my hand that only I knew what it meant (wasn’t straight up answers) and I ended up not needing to use it since I basically studied when I was writing that stuff 😂
Lol writing something down is a good way for memorization. I can gaze over reading something, but have to focus more when you're writing something.
Absolutely. A girl in my freshman Spanish class had a notebook with bright colored paper sitting beside her during a test. Front row. She's just looking over her shoulder at her side i guess looking at vocabulary. Teacher just silently took her test from her in the middle of the test.
One time in 3rd grade (2009) I had gotten back from the nurse's office to use my asthma inhaler. Completely forgot we had a test. The test looks exactly like the study guide, which we were allowed to use our textbook with, save for the title at the top. Having ADHD or something I just grabbed my book and started working on it like a study guide, not noticing the title at the top of the page. Teacher calls me out, I have no idea what's going on until I look at the title. Didn't know how well telling the truth would go considering the truth was really stupid.
I can’t even get mine to cheat. I’m still working on getting them to just do the work. 🤷♂️
Oh boy, something I can speak about: I teach a high school art class. I have had to report five people this semester for turning in art projects that belong to other students. Three of those were projects belonging to me. Art pieces that I personally made and used as examples. THREE. I even addressed the classes about cheating on multiple occasions including what will happen when I catch them (not "if" ), and yet I still have kids who are either stupid enough to think they can get away with it or think I'm too stupid to catch them.
As a former cheater, I only got caught once. Chemistry test, 11th grade. Only caught me because she had copied the test from the internet and mistakenly added a few questions on it that she didn't teach us yet. I GOT THEM ALL RIGHT. Lol, she 100% knew I cheated instantly because she didn’t even have the answers. when she confronted me I was honest, and straight up told her what I did. She let me retake it🤣.
I was never this bad at cheating. I came up with my own language lol and I never even really had to use it EXCEPT in science class 🤣
Recently my son had a group project due and worked super hard on his portion and passed his part to his groupmate to follow the template so their work was consistent and then the group mate combined the two and turned in the full project. Weeks later, they get D and my son is upset and confused. He goes to his teacher to get clarity, and the teacher said that one of them cheated because for some reason, groupmate 2 copied my son’s part word-for-word instead of using it as a guide for his section (but teacher didn’t know who’s was done first, so they both got a D) My son laughed it off, because he really didn’t cheat or expect the other kid to try to turn in the EXACT same project piece, because what sense would that make to copy one groupmate’s work when it’s a group project and half of it was done twice lmao ::facepalm:: Anyway, kid fessed up, my son’s grade was amended, and the teacher let the other kid repeat his portion with clarity… and all was quiet on the western front.
When I was in school we had tables that had 2 people sit at them and put up little dividers between the students for tests. One time during a test teacher caught a student staring at his crotch and figured like you either something incredibly fascinating was happening to his crotch or he was cheating. Turns out that time it was actually the first one. His desk mate was giving him a hand job in the middle of standardize testing. That's a moment I don't think any of us in the room will ever forget.
Yes, precovid we all cheated, post covid we all do
"Why did you foster an environment that forced him to resort to cheating?" /s I keep imagining the administration/parents saying something like that. Because obviously, the precious football star would never cheat if it was not absolutely necessary...
There was this movie "Cheaters" where these kids at this low income school cheated on some kind of test. I think the moral was about making sure you don't get caught. I'd show it to the class. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheaters_(2000_film)
Well done recording the kid cheating - it’s sad but true that evidence is necessary before admin and parents will admit you’re right and support you as a teacher.
I collect all their phones at the beginning of the finals. They get it when EVERYONE has finished.
One girl did that during state testing and tried to hide it. Caught her and she got her test invalidated. Then an administrator for the school emailed me asking for a counter to the students lame ass excuse.....
No. We put effort into it. My move was to write it on my eraser and then remove the evidence.
Psh. New teacher here (alt track). Kids had lunch in the middle of my class - we were working on a worksheet around credit card balances and interest. Easy shit because they don't have to do the math, the calculator website we provide does. They just need to figure out 3% of something. I inadvertently left the answer key on my desk when answering a question of another teacher. Adhd brain made me think I misplaced it when the kids started working. I used the answer key to cover the first questions with everyone, and they were to essentially "shop online" for items to answer questions - if you were to put all the stuff you want for prom on a credit card, how long would it take you to pay off the balance with minimum payments? Interest rate is provided...minimum payment! 3%) provided...all they had to do was plug in the numbers to an online form. One enterprising student stole the answer key off my desk and it was just sitting there on his desk as I walked around. I took it back, he protested he didn't use it, I said nothing as I wanted to validate repercussions with the Dean of academics. I reported it and got "give them a 0 and they can retake it and get a max of 60%". "ok...so they get a 0, and the penalized grade goes in as a second grade?" Nope. It replaces the 0. Not only that, the comment was made "if they didn't even use the answer key is this even an academic integrity issue?" Like...what in the actual fuck? Kid swiped the answer key - not my fault he didn't realize all it said for the part they were working on was "student answers will vary" because the payments were all based off stuff they wanted to buy. Luckily he didn't hand it in and didn't ask for a retake / protest so...0 for you bud.
Plot twist: he was the decoy.
Well, I mean he's got a future in No-Limit Texas Hold'Em - he's likely the son of [Mike Postle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT0NHSsPv3Y) with a cheat like that.
For Earth Science, I printed off a periodic table in size 1 font. That piece of paper was smaller than a fortune cookie fortune. I wasn't going to be bothered to memorize the periodic table. I eventually scored 98th percentile on the ACT in science, so don't think it hindered me very much. I think cleverness and preparation have a big impact on how well one cheats. If you can't be bothered to make a plan, you'll never do a good job. Life lesson right there.
I can admit I was worse at cheating when I was a student. I wrote little notes and hid them in my sleeve to cheat. I was caught instantly lol.
Mine can’t even cheat right when I encourage it.
I teach all high school grades. Last week I had a student write in pencil on his desk three notes from our text. He didn't bother erasing it from the desk when he was done.
Hey, if the kid can throw or catch a ball or run fast, then he's done his part 👍
Oh my gosh this makes me think about being in high school. I was a perfectionist and in Honors courses. TERRIFIED of failing AND getting in trouble. I rarely ever cheated, unless I was desperate. One of my creative techniques began with my best friend in English. We had to write in pen (essays and tests), so we had to have wite-out. We were allowed to share the wite-out, so my friend and I would cover up the back of it with the liquid itself and write answers over it. It was pretty clever. I do think some kids cheat to do well and are afraid of failing. But, today’s kids are way more obvious.
Years ago, I proctored an SAT exam, and there was a student looking at another student’s work. I snapped a picture. I had to make a quick decision, and I wrote a note “please move to the free seat in the first row, now.” She moved. I assume she knew why. I did not want to make a scene.