HEADLINE: NEW TEACHER LEARNS A LESSON (c. 1970)

I was reading an article on student cheating the other day
(yes - some of them do "fudge" when they get a chance), and it reminded me
of an early experience I had as a second-year teacher. It's a bit amusing,
but I thought it might illuminate a possible problem when giving exams and
maybe you could use a good laugh at my expense.

I've always liked giving daily quizzes when my students were
given reading assignments - kept them on their toes, I thought. As I walked
around the room up and down the aisles administering a quiz one day I
thought to myself how cunning I was. These kids knew I was going to test
them daily, so they definitely would do the reading. (How naive was that?)
And from what I had seen so far over the last week my plan was working.

Well, I liked to patrol the class while the kids were working
and this session I was rounding the front of the second row, and I noticed
the girl in the front seat hovering over her test. Boy, I thought to
myself, has this test got her thinking - look at that concentration. Poor
kid must have been burning the midnight oil to make sure she passed this
one.

I settled against my desk watching her, and she must have felt
the vibes traveling through the air because she sheepishly looked up at me,
still hugging the area around her test. The other kids were diligently
working, so I quickly gave her a "hello" wave of my hand.

Must have caught her off guard because she held up her left hand
(the one without the pencil) and with a windshield wiper movement waved back
at me. Suddenly she went pale because she understood that her wave was
showing all of the answers to the quiz -- imprinted on her palm. She
quickly realized her mistake and plopped her hand down on the desk - drawing
the attention of the whole class and Baggetta.

I had already caught her dead to right, but I asked to see her
hand more closely. Reluctantly she showed it to me (this was before
students got all those rights), and I was amazed that she had all of the
correct answers, in the exact order I had them on the test.

When I asked her how she knew what questions I would ask in the
exact order, her reply was that a friend of hers in my previous class gave
them to her, from a list she had made while taking the test. Then they put
their heads together to come up with the correct answers.

My first thoughts were that's nonsense. No student is going to
take the time to write down all the answers to a test, probably fail it in
the process, and then give the answers to her friend so she can get a 100%.
Wrong -- turns out, as the girl innocently explained, that she would return
the favor at another time in a similar fashion.

So, I learned two lessons that morning that I've followed
continually from then on: It's a good idea to give quizzes daily to
consecutive classes, but they will have to be different quizzes for each
class (a lot of work until I invented my literary test generators). Watch
your students very carefully when giving a quiz - not for what they might be
using so much as what they might be taking with them when they leave.

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