By Andrea Aro
While it is difficult to prevent cheating during examinations, students from Bayawan City, Negros Oriental have found a way to shun the temptation of looking over to a seatmate’s test paper by wearing creative anti-cheating hats.
Grade 10 students from Bayawan, wearing their anti-cheating hats during their exam. (Photo Courtesy of Irwin Borromeo / MANILA BULLETIN)
Irwin Borromeo, a Science teacher from St. Augustine Academy of Bayawan, Inc., Negros Occidental tasked his students to create an anti-cheating hat in exchange for additional points on their exam.
“I just got the idea after seeing several posts of it on Facebook and just thought it would be fun to have my students try it out. These kids are actually really creative and hardworking,” Borromeo said.
“Whoever shows up with the most creative hat will receive a plus 20 mark on their score,” Borromeo said to his students.
Borromeo posted photos of his students wearing their anti-cheating hats during their exam with some of his students exerting much effort to come up with a creative anti-cheating hat.
The student in a Peashooter hat inspired by video game “Plants vs. Zombies” was chosen as the most creative and earned the additional 20 points while the others were given an additional five points.
Borromeo said taking away the temptation to cheat was a way to reinforce good student-teacher relationship with his students.
“I guess what we can best hope for is for the students to really own up their responsibilities as students and as Christians, us being in a Catholic school and all. But even with that said, no school nor teacher and student is perfect, so I guess reinforcing good student-teacher relationships is the most important factor in the classroom,” he said.
“If the students trust their teacher that what he or she is doing is really for their own good, then that is when true learning and respect start to flourish,” Borromeo added.