Teacher reveals ingenious way she caught students cheating on their homework and the internet applauds

The homework assigned to students at school can be tricky sometimes. Some attempt these tasks on their own while a few choose to copy from other students' homework, consensually. However, this teamwork can take a sharp turn, if not done correctly. A recent video uploaded on Reddit by a 9th-grade science teacher, who goes by u/Reignofkindo25 on the platform, is a testament to this.  

The user who uploaded the video claims to be an Oklahoma-based educator by the name of Miss Storey, per Newsweek. She shared brief footage of the moment she spotted something unusual about three different students' chemistry homework. She wrote in the caption, "A kid wrote 'Couldn’t have existed' on his chemistry homework. I was worried till I found the telephone game these kids were playing when copying their homework."

The opening frames of the clip showed Storey checking the answers to the question: "What causes the trend in acidic/basic oxides?" In no time, she found something unusual. In her first copy, the response from the student was, "Covalent bonds are acidic." Moving the camera forward, the teacher focused on the assignment by the second student. Here, the answer changed to "Covalent bonds are existed." Hilariously, she moved on to the last copy where the answer completely changed to "Couldn't have existed." 

The responses from the three students left the educator amused. She said, "I was going to see if he was OK the next day at school." However, Miss Storey soon started joining the dots and said, "But then I saw the other papers." She went on to claim that her students cheated on their assignment, "They had all secretly copied each other's work and played the telephone game by accident."

"Telephone is a game where you sit in a circle and whisper a phrase in someone’s ear. Then they whisper it to the person beside them, and so on. The point of the game is to see if everyone can hear it correctly at the end. 99.9% of the time, it’s different than the original phrase," explained a user, u/MelanieWalmartinez, in the comments. So, that explained the errors in the answer sheets of the two students. 

Storey told the outlet that she was not surprised that her students used unfair means to complete the assignment. She said, “They always copy. It was more upsetting in the beginning, as this was my first year teaching. By the time I graded those papers, I expected to see copying." One user asked in the comments that cheating is so prevalent, but how do teachers don't spot it? To this, Storey replied, "It’s so prevalent now that they told us in teacher training this year to allow it during homework."

The comments section of the post is filled with people who either don't know about the telephone game or are questioning why students use it. Some even thanked the teacher for sharing this ingenious piece of knowledge with them.