I don’t know about your experiences in giving a quiz, but I tell you, I’ve seen all sorts of cheating going on over the years. I am known for my weekly Thursday vocabulary quizzes, and every year, a handful of students feel the need to cheat. Why, I do not know. The quizzes are 20 points, and are not worth the effort if you did not study for one week since there will be another one the following week.

This year’s cheating winner was in the form of a freshman girl who felt writing the terms and definitions on her hand would help her succeed. See, I am a detailed person; one who notices e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.  On that particular Thursday, as I was greeting students as they entered my classroom, some suspicious behavior was occurring involving an open notebook, to the list of terms to be assessed, a pen and an open palm. This student, like the others, try to be sneaky, but they are not Gollum. So upon asking students to clear their desks, and set-up their paper as they need it to take the quiz, I requested the student to wash her hand. Fortunately, she complied with my request and left to do so, and then she resumed to take the quiz and earned an honest 18 out of 20. I wrote on her quiz: “So why did you write the answers on your hand?”

This is one the usual simple ways of cheating; the written hand, the slip of paper under the quiz or in a lap, but there have been worse ones, with students who wanted a knock-down-drag-out-fight. And for what? I’m still the teacher. The zero goes in the gradebook with a comment of “student caught cheating” regardless of his or her excuse. It’s not worth the effort to argue with a kid.