Teachers Reveal The Most Clever Ways Of Cheating They've Ever Seen

I was supervising a final chemistry exam along with another coworker. Not 15 minutes in, a hand slams down on a desk and I turn around expecting the worst, only to see my coworker angrily shouting at a pair of really frightened 10th graders whose desk he smashed. Amidst the shouting I caught the words, “Morse code”. The guy proceeded to take them to the office. I called a hallway supervisor to take over and ran after the group.

Apparently, the kids were silently tapping the answers amongst themselves in Morse code. Not even with their fingernails, just their fingertips. I never heard a thing, my coworker happened to catch “B” in Morse code or something. I honestly thought he finally went crazy solely because of his appearance, picture Robin Williams in Jumanji going WHAT YEAR IS IT. I’m 100% sure that if this coworker weren’t in the room, they’d have gotten away with it for sure.

itellteacherstories

I can name the worst, and I’ve definitely shared it before, but it wasn’t my student, it was a friend’s.

She’d downloaded a worksheet for the kids to do while she was in a meeting of some sort. Kids found the worksheet’s answer sheet online and proceeded to copy the answers. Last answer said “student responses will vary.” And that’s what one kid wrote as his answer.

Other times you’ll see one kid misspells something or gets an answer wrong, and everyone who copied from him has the same error.

Jubjub0527

In high school I was in a computer based learning program and our science tests were taken digitally. However, they used a program where once you entered the test your entire screen was locked into the test and the only way to exit it was to click the finish button on the test or turn off your computer which effectively did the same thing.

Another feature of the program was that once you were in the test, anything you had in your clipboard (copied text) was not able to be pasted into the answer sections on the test to prevent the only other way to cheat. However, after creating my own classroom at home , making fake tests and playing with the program to figure out a way to cheat I realized that it would allow you to copy things from inside the test and paste them elsewhere in this test.

The developers of the program also did not take into account the sign in screen where you have to find the test and enter it.

Long story short, I could copy my entire page of notes I had taken on the test material, paste it into the section where I would enter my login information. Then recopy it, enter the test and paste it again in one of the answer sections, using it to answer every question and then deleting it before clicking 'finish'.

owenthevirgin

I was a TA for anatomy and physiology. The professor would ask for me to sit in on finals to prevent cheating.

One kid came in with a vitamin water. No worries. Half way through the test the professor noticed they kept turning the bottle and squinting. This goes on for another twenty minutes.

Professor goes up. Grabs the vitamin water bottle and rips off the label. It had a crib sheet written. On the back. The students had gone to the effort to make a fake vitamin water bottle label and write notes in the back.

The professor was impressed by the creativity and decided to give the student a 0 and not report them to the academic committee.

Macabalony

So, as a teacher the smartest way I "cheat" is by giving the kids a notecard and telling them they can put whatever cheat sheet stuff on there they want. It tricks them into actually studying for their math tests.

Also a pro tip from a math teacher; most students don't know how to study for math and this is why they struggle. Think of studying math like practicing an instrument. You need to "learn a piece" by practicing multiple problems from skill set. If you aren't practicing at least 8 - 18 problems at least every day to two days then you're never going to get past the little mistakes and missteps which have probably plagued you.

Edit: Please stop asking if I'm your old teacher, It's 99.99% likely that I'm not. This is a very common trick that many teachers use and have been using for decades.

Piano_Fingerbanger

So, not a teacher, but I witnessed probably the biggest cheating related scandal in our high school's history.

For context, we had the sweetest old guy as our Chem teacher. He called everyone "Bud" or "Buddy" or "Ma'am", he always helped, he volunteered to teach Driver's Ed after school so kids could learn to drive. He always had a twinkle in his eye because he genuinely showed love and kindness to everyone. A side effect of this was that he was very trusting.

So one day, before finals, he ran to the bathroom during class while everyone was wrapping up their lab reports. While he was gone, someone ran to his desk, found the finals just sitting there, snapped a pic, and then ran back to their desk before he got back.

Somehow, no one tattled. Probably because 90% of our grade level in that class was on board with it.

The pictures got texted around, but a few people were smart enough to Bluetooth in to each other so it couldn't be tracked.

Wellllll after the test, everyone had high scores and apparently someone confessed. This resulted in a huuuuuuuge investigation by the assistant principals, school police officer, and faculty. They traced every text message and busted so many people, all except the ones who transferred via Bluetooth.

They had to re-issue the test. Man that was crazy. I felt so bad for the teacher, he was really sad someone had taken advantage of him and I was too. Such a good dude.

Edit: Oh hot damn, thanks for the Gold!

Edit 2: To clarify, the school didn't 'trace' the messages. They just had 1v1 interviews with the school cop nearby so kids would feel pressured to snitch. Apparently a few cracked under the pressure, but iirc a fair number got away with it.

Edit 3: Also, the cop was our school cop. Real badge, gun, car, he was just there to protect us against school shooters, bombers, he patrolled for loiterers, ran drug searches, ran security for after school events and pep rallies etc. So, no actual police force was present, just this guy.

Avinan

A classmate was printing the answers on his paper in a veeeerry pale grey so that it barely can be seen. Still got caught because the teacher noticed him reading an empty sheet.

Lars_Ebk

I did this once in a college class. Sort of. The class was real analysis and there was one problem that was absolutely going to be #1 on the final exam. It had been #1 for every final exam this professor had ever written (of which he gave us copies to study from), and it was #1 on the study guide for our final. I couldn’t do it. I tried and tried and tried, and studied, and got help, and whatever I did I could not figure out the finer point of this specific type of proof given in this specific context. So I resorted to memorizing the steps and getting it down to a sequence of blanks I could fill in.

Exam day comes. I buy 2 blue books that morning (test booklets with lined paper inside). In one of them I very very faintly write the answer to #1 (complete with space to fill in the aforementioned blanks). On the front I fill in my name- to differentiate it from the other booklet. When the professor tells us to take out our blue books and trade with the person next to us- I trade my blank blue book. I take the one I’m given and slip it into my backpack at the same time I slide out my blue book with my calculator and pencil (so it all looked legit).

I get my test. #1 doesn’t fail, it is exactly as expected. I fill in the blanks and write over my words. I continue on with the exam. And I pass the class.

mathxjunkii

Writing down math formulas and putting them in the instructions insert of the calculator.

More recently, kids will put the answers on their smart watches. It's to the point where I make all students removes their watches and place them on the classroom counter before the test starts.

Teacher

I’ve done the calculator trick all throughout school, I’ll admit to it. Though I had the equations saved in the graphing slots that the calculator provides for actually plotting lines. There was no way to find it unless the professor chose to open up the graphing section and go through my line plots. Never got caught.

You don’t need to memorize these formulas for real life application. You can look them up as needed. The real skill is understanding how to use the formulas to actually get the information you want. I’ve never understood why teachers/professors force students to remember equations in math classes. (In all my psychology courses we don’t have to remember any equations, just have to know how they work and what they’re for)

Conchobhar23

Not the student but the teacher

So, the teacher, let's call him Mr. A, had a reputation for being a phenomenal teacher who had every student engaged/invested in his class, no matter how mundane the subject. Any time he asked a question, every student's hand would shoot in the air with them shouting things like "call on me!" or "I know the answer!"

Simply, Mr. A developed a reputation in the district as one of its best teachers.

Fast forward a couple years and I'm grabbing coffee with Mr. A and I ask him "what's your trick? How did you get every student bought in?"

His response, "well, I told the kids every time we had a visitor in class, I need you all to raise your hand like I was giving away free candy. BUT if you don't know the answer raise your left hand. If you do know it, raise your right hand, so I know who to call on and we all look good. Worked like a charm."

JuiceCastillo

I’m not a teacher but I guess I am semi-creative cheater when it comes to classes I don’t give a shit about. I’m on mobile so sorry for formatting.

I think my best “cheat” was back when I was an undergrad I had to take history with the strictest grading professor I’ve ever had. Our final was an essay where we had to answer “what was the underlying cause of the civil war” (the answer is slavery btw) he gave us the question on the first day of class so I had A LOT of preparation. I spent a month writing the best essay that I could on my computer.

The week before I “dumbed it down” a bit considering the essay was no notes all memory. If I had left it the way it was I’m sure he would have known something was up because this essay was PERFECT. The night before I spent 6 hours imprinting my essay into the blue book. I did this by putting a piece of paper over the blue book page and writing as hard as I could, leaving only the indentation of the words.

If you flipped through the book it looked blank, brand new. But if you looked at it from a certain angle you could read my whole essay word for word Final exam day came and all I had to do was write over the imprinted words. It took up the whole 2 hours we had and I ended up getting a 395/400 on it.

Jayus_YT

Not sure if this would work anymore, but if I had a paper to write on a book I didn't read I would find a well written paper online. Then translate the entire thing from English to German, German to French, French to Spanish, then Spanish back to English.

Pull the original paper and the new one up side by side and clean up the grammar on the new paper and you've got the same concept, but written just different enough to not be plagiarism. Worked like a charm.

Throwmylifeaway000

During a keyboard harmony lab exam (a room with 28 keyboards), one devious student had previously recorded another student's perfect performance of the exam piece on MIDI <in-out-through>.

The cheater played the recorded piece on MIDI, but used all the right hand motions on his keyboard at the back of the room to try to fool me that he was actually playing it in real time.

Unfortunately for him, the student he recorded happened to be my piano student, and I recognized the distinctive playing immediately.

I didn't embarrass him during class by calling him out on it, but dealt with the problem privately - a lesson he told me later that would stay with him for the remainder of his life.

Back2Bach

I remember a story from my O-chem professor. This student all semester who wasn't showing up to class kept getting his score improved significantly after re-grades. They got their tests back, had a day to review them, and were allowed to re-submit for a regrade. They knew he was cheating because of the unlikelihood of the grading mistakes on multiple exams but the TAs who graded it couldn't confidently say it wasn't their handwriting.

Ultimately it was an office worker for the department who figured it out near the end of the semester, his staples were angled different than the exams handed out that were mass stapled. He was recreating the test, printing it, re-answering it, and then grading it in the same pen as the TAs and had done a good job copying the writing style.

11JulioJones11

I’m a high school teacher, but this story is about my own high school math teacher playing us and “cheating.”

It was an honors algebra/geometry class, and it was well known that Mr D re-used the same questions every year, just changed the numbers. He made a big deal about making sure we all gave our exam papers back to him after we had looked at our scores and gone over everything together to prevent cheating for the next year.

Well, of course, some of my classmates got their hands on a complete set of tests from the previous year. Soon, everyone had a set. Before each exam, we would sit together and make sure we knew how to solve every problem on that test so we could do it on the real exam with different numbers.

Years later, when I became a teacher myself, I saw Mr D at a funeral. I confessed to him that this is what we used to do. He smirked and said “Who do you think leaked the test packet to get you to study?” Mr D had figured out that kids won’t study if the teacher suggests it, but if they think they’re getting away with something, they totally will, so he managed to get a test packet out and circulating as contraband. Blew my mind.

sarahsuebob

My high school trig professor administered all tests via programs he wrote for our in-class TI-83 calculators. Basically it was just a simple set of questions and answers that automatically graded you after each question.

I quickly realized I could just close the program and inspect the code using the edit function, extract the answers, and give myself a high B or low A (never 100%, as that is a sure way to get caught).

He soon realized students were doing this and obfuscated his code to make it much harder to find the answers by simple inspection. It took a little more work, but I was still able to find the answers, and he quickly began to suspect again that students were cheating.

Later, he found a way to force the code to self-delete after it was run for the first time. He would start the test for each calculator before passing them out, so if you tried to access the edit, it would be delete itself if you tried to run the program again. I ended up bringing a set of dead batteries of the same brand that he used, accessing the edit, and replacing the batteries with the dead ones and telling him the calculator died halfway through my test.

I think I learned more about software testing than trig that year.

Crackgnome

I taught kindergarten (I teach another grade now), and between 5-6 is a really interesting age. There’s a cognitive development that occurs between 5-7 where children become much more aware of the perspective of others, and therefore learn how to deceive their peers.

I could always tell when a student was a little ahead of the curve when they would cheat during games or activities. I caught one student during a math game deal out all of the low number cards to his peer while he kept all of the high number cards. He kept winning every single round. I walked around the classroom and stopped to watch these two students.

The student who was dealt the low cards had no awareness that he had been dealt a shitty hand and was happily playing while the other student won every round and was cheering.

I had to stop the game to scold the student who was cheating, but in the back of my head I was just impressed that he was smart enough to cheat.

hmboo

So, my dad once helped a friend of his, let call him Sam, cheat during an exam. Now Sam was miserably failing chemistry in his last year but he was lucky. They were doing two different exams back to back the same day and to insure none was sneaking a peak at their neighbours papers they had one row do French and one row to chemistry. If you finished your first exam you went to the teacher handed in your exam and got the other exam.

Now Sam asked the teacher if he could hand out the exams to which the teacher said yes. Now it's important to note that it was june and very hot so the windows were open. So as Sam approached the end of the first row, which had the chemistry exam, he threw an exam out the window onto the street where my helpful dad just happened to wait with Sam's chemistry notes. Dad picks it up and answers all the questions on a blank piece of paper.

Now when Sam was done with his French exam he asked the teacher if he could go take a piss. Seeing as he had handed in his French but hadn't gotten his chemistry exam yet the teacher obliged and let him leave the classroom. Now my dad is waiting at the toilets to just hand him the piece of paper with the answer on and all was good. He just wrote the answers on his "cheat paper" on his actual exam papers and handed it in.

Never got caught, also my dad was kinda the Sam's guardian and it still amazes me that my dad told me this story.

Freaky_spider

I've seen this method used:

You have these little essay books that you get from the school. They have like 8-10 sheets of paper in a little booklet and you have to write your essay in that instead of loose paper.

Then, the professor gives you the prompt ahead of time. This could be as simple as giving you the actual prompt, or they could give you like 3-5 prompts and on the day of the test they tell you which one to write an essay on. The reason they give you the prompt(s) is so you can study properly and look up sources before the test.

The student buys one of the essay books, writes the essay at home, and then acts busy for awhile in the test before turning in their completed essay.

This method can have a few complications. First, professors will occasionally give you several prompts ahead of time and then tell you which one to do on the day of the test. To solve this problem, you need to write all possible prompts ahead of time and then turn in the appropriate book.

An easier problem to deal with is that professors will often go around checking everyone's books before the test starts to ensure they're empty. They also might make students trade their (supposedly empty) books to other students as an extra measure. For either of these, the solution is the same. You bring your pre-written essay(s), as well as a blank book. You take out the empty one at the start so you can show it's empty and can even trade with other people if needed. During the test, you find a time to switch your blank book with the one that has your essay.

DeadFIL

Not a teacher but here are the methods I used back in the day:

I wrote formulas on those pens that had roll out calendars. Almost got caught when I accidentally lost my grip and the calendar rolled back in the pen in such a loud way that my classmates looked at me.

I also wrote formulas on my clothes and body, the hem of my shirt and the part of my legs that gets covered by a sock.

I put a couple of chapters on the notebook app on the old Blackberry. I did this by hand which involved me copying straight from the book to my phone.

Put answers in the song lyrics in my iPod. But I didn't do this frequently, I forgot why, it was either because my school had cracked down on technology (phones, iPods, laptops) or I just had a hard time scrolling with the click wheel.

We'd straight up swap papers. I think I only did it during Trig because during exams we were arranged alphabetically and I was seated next to this dude who was really good at math. I was afraid of doing this but the fact that we were so close to each other made it less scary so I did it.

The only time I got caught was when this new teacher noticed that I kept taking out my handkerchief which had a 1x1 inch piece of paper that had some formulas. In hindsight, if I pulled a bit of sleight of hand I would've never been caught. The funny thing is, the year before, I cheated on a test with two letter sized papers.

426763

Not a teacher, but definitely accused by one of cheating, though I wasn't. I think it's clever, but mods, remove this if necessary.

High school, English class. We were reading four books in this two month period, and then were to have a test on all four. We had finished reading the first three and we're about to start on the last one, when I got sick. Was about about two weeks. Came back just in time for the test.

Multiple choice test, choices a to d. Questions were from each of the books, with each letter answer from one of the four books. It was fairly easy to figure out the answers from the book I hadn't read by eliminating the answers from the books I had.

Was accused of cheating, but the teacher couldn't prove it. We only read the books in class, and I was gone while reading the last book.

She never figured out how I answered the questions correctly about the book I never read.

sephresx