Teacher Spots Telltale Sign Students Are Copying Homework

A video is purporting to show how a 9th grade science teacher was able to catch out a group of students cheating on their homework.

In a clip posted to Reddit under the handle u/Reignofkindo25, a woman claiming to be an Oklahoma-based educator by the name of Miss. Storey, shared footage of the moment she spotted something unusual about three different students’ chemistry homework.

Most young people strive to be honest in their day-to-day life. A 2021 survey of more than 3,000 teens conducted as part of a study published in the journal Advanced Studies in Culture Foundation found 83 percent felt becoming “honest” as someone “who doesn’t lie or cheat” was very important, if not essential.

However, a poll of over 1,000 students conducted by Study.com, laid bare a culture of cheating on school work. Forty-eight percent of students admitted to using A.I. tool ChatGPT to complete homework, with 53 percent using it to write essays.

The kids in Storey’s video were not quite as efficient as that, though.

It all started when Storey was reviewing the answers to one question on a test paper she had assigned, which read simply: “What causes the trend in acidic/basic oxides?”

Storey, who didn’t want to give her full name, told Newsweek she became worried after noticing one of her students had written that they “couldn’t have existed” as their answer. “I was going to see if he was OK the next day at school,” she said. “But then I saw the other papers.”

Reviewing some of the other responses to the question, the educator noticed that one pupil had written “covalent bonds are acidic” as their answer, while a second had put down, more confusingly, “covalent bonds are existed.”

Suddenly, the student’s answer that they “couldn’t have existed” made perfect sense. “They had all secretly copied each other’s work and played the telephone game by accident,” Storey said.

Essentially, the first student had passed their answer onto the second, who misheard it and passed it on to another pupil, where it was distorted even further.

Some were confused how this could have happened. “How the hell did they manage that? Like they must’ve actually been playing the telephone game to copy each others work,” one user wrote.

Another offered a sound explanation, writing: “I’d guess that everyone is copying in secret. So, 3 is copying 2, but 2 doesn’t know 3 is doing it. 2 is copying 1, but 1 doesn’t know 2 is doing it.”

Elsewhere, one Reddit user, who also claimed to be an ex-teacher, said: “When I taught HS English, kids would take out their phones and Google the first question. If they could find the answers, they’d do the work. If not, not.”

Storey was not surprised to discover students copying each other. “They always copy,” she said. “It was more upsetting in the beginning, as this was my first year teaching. By the time I graded those papers, I expect to see copying.”

With ChatGPT now a growing concern, it might not be so easy to catch the cheats in the future.