Amusing Incidents at School

In second-year French, at Redondo High, a cat sauntered into the room, jumped onto a table at the front of the room, and started preening himself, to our chuckles and giggles. The teacher commented, “C’est un chat classique” (He’s a classic cat"), and finally decided to put him out.

On the day after Election Day in 1966, in government class, first period, one of the other teachers had had all the students’ desks sneaked out of the room, amusing our teacher–a Reagan supporter. The other teacher had also had the word “Brown” (as in Pat Brown, the incumbent, Jerry Brown’s father) taped to the floor, in textbook cover paper. A picture of the scene appears in our 1967 yearbook.

At a baseball game played at Redondo, the home pitcher served a pitch which the visiting batter hit as a foul that went out of the field. It struck the windshield of a parked car, which happened to belong to the pitcher’s girlfriend!
Post something amusing that happened at your school… :smiley:

Way back in the mid-1970s, my algebra teacher used a yardstick for emphasis, and always paced about the front of the room brandishing it. One day in class, a housefly started buzzing around, annoying him. Using the yardstick as a bat, he assumed classic batter’s pose, swung it - and smashed the fly in midair.

No one was more amazed than he was that his aim (and his luck) with the skinny yardstick was that good. He talked about it for years afterward. Probably still does.

Probably urban legend, but the story from my high school was that the police were going to do a demonstration of their drug sniffing dogs. The cop and dog left the room and the teacher hid three bags of pot around the room. The dog and cop came back in, and the dog proceeded to retrieve FOUR bags.

In grade 9 one guy got high at lunch. We were watching a film in automotive shop class when he sprayed puke all over the back of the of the guy sitting in front of him.

Good times.

There was a boy in my school, like many you probably knew, with a quiet unassuming outward appearance. But once you got to know him, he had a wicked, wry sense of humour and a wild, anarchist patter. Everyone liked him, students, teachers, parents all.

High school is when young adults often get their first taste of the demon alcohol. And often with interesting effects, as I’m sure you’re aware. This fellow had a few, with some chums, over lunch and returned with a ‘glow on’, that precipitated a remarkable change in his nature.

First, he got into some wild and unexpected confrontation with a shocked classroom teacher, that escalated spectacularly and at lightening speed. It ended with the principle, vice principle, a couple of teachers and janitors, chasing him around the school grounds, whilst he screamed colourful and creative obscenities at them! (Our high school had a lay out that circled around back on itself, somewhat maze like!) Meantime the office staff was going insane and announcing emergency measures, children were locked down into classrooms!

When they snagged him and dragged him off, he was still putting up a fight like only a teenage boy who will not submit, could! Turns out he’s just one of those human beings who cannot drink because of the change in nature it causes, in him. Alcohol literally brings his demon to life!

He went back to being his quiet demeanored self, as soon as he sobered up, but he was a hero to us all, and we near worshiped him, the rest of the school year.

He is, quite deservedly, a legend there still.

My 6th Grade science teacher, Mr. Murin, was rather like a real live Mr. Kotter. He had an unconventional style in class and held D&D sessions after school but all I can remember now is one bit of creative teaching that we weren’t supposed to tell our parents about. Something having to do with the “shores of Gitchee Gumee”. Mr. Murin had an Atari 2600 at home and would loan out cartridges in exchange for a cartridge loan from someone else.

Mr. Sanders’ mechanical drawing class, freshman year of high school. Mr. Sanders had an assistant that year, a young lady who was either doing an internship or had recently graduated from college. The difference between my height, while seated on one of those tall drafting stools, and hers was just right for my elbow to be brushed by her chest whenever she stopped at my desk. I wonder what her name was and what happened to her.

That class was right after my study hall and I got permission to spend study hall in the drafting room so I was regularly in there twice as long as nearly everybody else. I did my homework in study hall; one day I didn’t have any work so I played a joke on two of my fellow students by switching their keys around. Every student had a little locker in their desks, the key to which was kept in a tray; each class had its own tray.

Freshman English class, taught by a woman whose name I do not recall. I spent the school year expecting for Mom & I to join Dad in the New Orleans area so I refused to do a major assignment. We ended up moving between school years.
:smack:

My sophomore year at high school in Portland, ME:

The previous weekend, some idiot spoiled kid from Falmouth got in a fight with one of my classmates. That Monday, still pissed about it, the kid runs into our school during lunch just so that he could sucker punch my classmate and run away. He succeeded, only to get his ass beat by six of his friends right in the cafeteria.

Both in physics class in high school with Mr. B.:

  1. We had those heavy duty meter sticks and would stick them up in the sliding/rolling window casing to hold the window open. Someone inevitably would get cold and try to close the window which couldn’t. Then they would open the window to take a better start and the meter stick would come crashing down. This happened every day for months and then “people” started putting things on top of the meter stick: other meter sticks, small water balloons, jacks, bouncy balls, culminating in the last day of school and 2000 of those paper tear-drop shaped black powder snaps. The excitement was worth the effort- teachers coming from all over the school to see what the hell was going on. But alas that was some years before the school shootings started and something that would never be attempted any more :frowning:

  2. In an experiment to demonstrate rolling friction versus inertia, etc. we were pushing by hand the Mr. B’s car up and down the parking lot. Someone came up with the great idea of increasing the weight in the car to see how that would affect the experimental results. So “teams” of kids were either pushing, sitting in the car, or sitting ON the car. Now Matt T. was just a bit of a douche and he decides to mess with the “pushers’” data by dragging his feet; however, he slips, falls off the front of the car, scrambles to the side, and only his legs are run over by the wheel. He’s fine but embarassed as can be and Mr. B only felt the bump as he couldn’t see due to a bunch of kids sitting on his hood and doesn’t really know what happened until 5 minutes later when one of the other kids rats out Matt T. right as class ends. Mr. B immediately takes Matt T. to the nurse’s office and then goes to the Principal’s office to report everything and nearly resigned on the spot due to guilt and feeling so bad. Superintendant is called and is en route immediately. Now someone in Mr. B’s physics class has spanish for the next period. The spanish teacher… is Matt T.‘s mom. She is pissed. Walks down to the nurse’s office, grabs Matt’s arm and hauls him to the principal’s office where Matt is forced to apologize via the PA to the entire school for being a "nitwhit and a hindrance to others’ education". The highlight was the chewing out in spanish/english as she hauled his ass across the school.

A friend of mine and I discovered some microscope slide covers in a lab drawer once.
They were thinner than any covers we’d ever seen by far. Maybe 1/2 the thickness of a sheet of paper. This made an individual cover virtually invisible.

We had a math teacher we particularly despised, and set about her psychotic breakdown.

Held gently twixt thumb and forefinger and flicked with another finger, they would sail like little invisible Frisbees to make a slight “tic” upon impact with the blackboard, and a quiet “tinkling” sound as the pieces fell to the metal chalk rail. We would do this as she wrote on the board, and she would stop and ask us if we heard that. Of course, everyone professed ignorance, and we kept it up for months. We also gave some of the covers to kids in her other classes, so she couldn’t narrow the mysterious sounds to our class. We were never caught of course, and she became the teacher who always 'heard things breaking" on her chalkboard.

Good times.

My daughter’s high school has a goat farm about 400 yards down the road. One year as a senior prank, the seniors took 3 goats, spray painted “1”, “2”, and “4” on them and let them loose in the school. Apparently took them days searching for number 3 before they figured it out.

This is awesome! :smiley:

OK this needs an explanation – in a Jewish wedding, it’s customary for the groom to break a glass (as a symbol of remembering Jerusalem, the actual symbolic reason isn’t important here.) Anyway… One day in physics class, the teacher, as was his wont, had a glass of tea on his desk. At one point he made a wrong move and it went crashing to the floor.

Immediate response from the Designated Wiseass of our class… “who’s the poor woman?”

Miss O’Dell’s drama class, ninth grade. Someone came up with the idea that we should all climb out the window (first-floor room) at 0900 on April Fool’s Day. 0900 arrives, and Claudia says, “It’s nine o’clock…” Nothing happens. Claudia repeats her statement, Tom (who sits at the back of the room, by the windows) stands up and opens a window, and we all climb out. Last person out turns around and pulls the window almost shut. We mill about on the front lawn for a few minutes, then open the window again and climb back in. No sign of Miss O’Dell. We close the window, take our seats, and wait. Several minutes pass, with no teacher. It’s almost time for the end-of-period bell to ring, and we’re envisioning Miss O’Dell in the principal’s office throwing a fit, when there’s a tap on the window. We all look, Tom opens the window again, and Miss O’Dell climbs in…

Lute, (with nothing but respect), I have to ask, did you perhaps leave the amusing part out of each of your stories? I’m just not seeing any. Maybe it’s just me.

Where’s the ‘amusing’, in refusing to do an assignment? Or your arm brushing against a sideboob?

I’m sure it’s clear to you, of course. Just wishing it were clearer to us, is all.

I love this. :stuck_out_tongue:

Every year that I was in Jr High, the shop class would disassemble the shop teacher’s Volkswagon and reassemble it on the roof. I’d swear it was just urban legend, except that it definitely was done. And probably with the consent of the shop teacher, or at least without his disapproval, as he never locked his Volkswagon doors. I think it was proof his class learned something. :slight_smile:

Think about it. Imagine Mr. Kotter teaching a science class.

A young female teacher’s aide (intentionally?) brushing against male student not much younger than herself, and that male student spending an extra hour in her class.

That same student playing jokes rather than doing homework which would have kept him out of summer school later. Which, by the way, confused the public schools down in Louisiana, where they’re used to students needing to make up one semester and not an entire year.

Speaking of summer school, I had take another semester the next year for performing poorly in English again. One day, there was a bee loitering under my desk and I had no idea it was there, until it stung me. There was a test that day and the teacher thought I was lying to get out of that but allowed me to see the nurse anyway, who confirmed the bee sting and I was sent home.

You guys couldn’t tell your parents about the Edmond Fitzgerald? Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot Song Lyrics & Annual Events

My story:

Grade 7 and the teacher had left the room for some reason. One kid had a big “Gummy Smurf” and tossed it up in the air…where it stuck to the ceiling. It was an old school so the ceilings were very high. A kid ran out in the hall to distract the teacher from coming back in while the other kids put a chair on top of a desk and reached with a metre stick to pop the Gummy Smurf off the ceiling. As soon as it was off the kid in the hall let the teacher back in the room where we were all sitting angelically at our desks like nothing had happened.

How about a limerick?

There one was a man named Martino,
Whose nose, they said, was supremo.
One night in bed,
He slept on his head,
And his nose held up traffic in Reno.

Credited to a somewhat off-kilter female teacher in a social studies department, regarding a male teacher in the classroom across the hall. I was in his classroom at the time.

I don’t really recall. Maybe he didn’t want them to find out he was teaching history in science class.
:slight_smile:

What are these things? I finished school in 1967 so maybe I’ve missed something…

I was taking a 2nd year university math class. Our Polish professor had been lecturing for 10-15 minutes when a girl poked her head in and looked around. The professor smiled and talked to her cheerfully.

Professor: Why don’t you come in and take a seat?
Girl: Uhhhh…is this Professor Smith’s English class?
Professor: Obviously I can barely speak English. But come in and take a seat anyways!