I normally walk around the room during an exam with two intentions. First, to make sure the students aren't cheating, and second, to make sure students can ask clarifying questions.
As I went over to address a raised hand, I noticed a student, less than 5 feet away from me, pull something out from under the desk. After addressing the question, I looked again; the student was looking at a cheat-sheet.
After taking the strip of paper, I handed it to my master teacher and explained what I saw. So, we followed the classroom policy of giving the student a "0" on the quiz, and the school policy of calling the parent and informing an administrative counselor.
I was sad for the student, who just sat there for the remainder of the quiz. The 0 would kill the student's 96% in the class, which will almost be impossible to recover from before the end of the quarter. On the other hand, it wasn't an exam, and the student should be able to recover before the end of the semester. Honors and AP students are under a lot of pressure from a variety of sources; sadly, cheating is a much larger problem in higher classes than the mainstream classes.
Hopefully, the student will learn his lesson.
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