Going over homework assignment in beginning DC Circuits class, teacher demanded (rightly so) totally complete answers: 1.45 AMPS, 6.5 VOLTS, etc…
Teacher: Question #3, blah, blah, blah, the answer is?
Student: 2.6.
T: 2.6 what?
S: 2.6, SIR!
A vine I saw awhile back mad eme happy. The student, a large African-American high-school boy, recounted an incident in class:
Student: [raises hand] Ms. Johnson, may I go to the restroom?
Ms. Johnson: Why?
Student: So I can fight the dragon and win the fair maiden’s heart. WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Around Mother’s Day last year, I asked my third graders to write poems for their moms. “Don’t just say You’r Nice, Mom!” I exhorted. “Be specific! Think of the specific things your mom does for you that are kind, or loving, or generous!”
Excerpt from my favorite poem:
As for me, apparently the funniest thing I’ve ever said in the classroom was on the day I was explaining how to pluralize words ending in a consonant followed by a “y”, and I used the word of the day that the rat bastards who make our phonics program provided. Every time I said “duties,” my students fell apart.
Going back through the archives, last year I had a student raise his hand desperately in the middle of a read-aloud. “Mr. Dorkness! Mr. Dorkness!” he shouted. “I think I popped my left buttcheek out of place!”
Okay, one more:
My students begin recess every day with a “lap for health,” and then high-five me before going to play. Today one sweet little girl high-fived me and chirped, “I could bite your thumb off as easily as biting through a carrot!”
A boy asked his dad why the lake’s water was vibrating. (That is, why there were ripples on the lake’s surface.) He said, “Because of all the animals in the water moving around!”
My son looked at me and said, “It’s windy.”
(Okay, not technically in a classroom, but I liked it.)
Another classic, right up there with the salty semen line. Even Star Trek did a variation on this one. I think it was in the TOS episode where everyone (but Kirk) got inebriated by eupohria-inducing spores.
Ah, here it is: “This Side of Paradise”.
Kirk: “We’re evacuating all colonists to Star Base 27.”
Spock: “Oh I don’t think so.”
Kirk: “You don’t think WHAT?”
Spock: “I don’t think so, SIR!”
During anatomy class in high school, we were discussing reproduction and how women could measure their temperature to help them determine where they were in their cycle. Our teacher said for the best accuracy, the temperature should be taken “right when your head hits the pillow” – i.e., right at bedtime.
One of my classmates raised his hand and asked, “Wouldn’t that ruin the moment?”
Our teacher had to go out in the hall and laughed for about ten minutes.
UL or not, that teacher is completely wrong. Receptors for specific tastes are not concentrated on any particular part of your tongue. The tongue map myth arose due to a mistranslation of a paper in German. But it just. Won’t. Die.
Teacher: “What happened to your glasses?”
Me: “Got into a fight.”
Teacher: “Is that blood on your trousers?”
Me: “Mine.”
The rest of the students in the classroom found that a lot funnier than I did. (In retrospect, I can appreciate the humor of it.)
High school English Class. We were studying Greek literature. One day, the subject was Sappho. The teacher had to be very careful, trying to explain what the poem was about, but without saying anything that might endanger her job, if a straitlaced parent should hear of it. It took a lot of circumlocutions and euphemisms, but we finally managed it.
She breathed a sigh of relief, turned the page, and said, “Now that we’re over that hump, let’s go on to—” and she stopped and blushed, while the entire class laughed for about five minutes.
During high school world history class, we had a guest speaker visit who had spent years in India. At the end of her talk, she asked if anyone had any questions. The girl who sat in front of me asked “I used to know someone who was from India, they had a dot on their forehead. Is that why they stink?”
The staggering ignorance of the statement had my friend and I laughing to the point of tears for several minutes. We ended up getting undeserved detention because the teacher believed that somebody had to put the girl up to asking a question that stupid.
A teacher warned a student to stop slouching in his seat or he would someday be hunched over like a comma. So I had to go and say, “well its better than a semi-colon.” It got a good laugh.
Our HS Physics teacher was young and cool.
My session included the class clown.
We are seated in rows, maybe behind lab tables. We have real, individual chairs.
Clown is chatting with person behind him, turning his chair a bit.
Teacher: Just turn your chair around.
CC: All the way around?
Teacher: Yes. All the way.
CC proceeds to turn his chair through 360 degrees.
Teacher laughs, concedes the point.
Physics teacher was ‘Adviser’ to the ‘Science Club’. There were some neat toys in the back room - Van De Graff, old neon sign transformers - 15K volts! We used it to burn our initials in the wooden table top.
I only remember 2 teachers from then - 50 years later.
This is my sister’s story, from 40 years ago: In a college English class, discussing the assigned book, the instructor asked the students what the character’s motivation was. Several students offered their ideas. A guy some rows behind my sister was getting frustrated, and finally blurted out his suggestion. Evidently he had never heard the word said aloud, had only seen it in print: “But what about the libbidy-doo?!” [attempting to pronounce “libido” but rhyming it with Dippity-Do, a popular hair gel at the time]. After a couple seconds’ pause processing what he’d said, the class and instructor burst into laughter, to his baffled mortification.
??
From Mad’s “Zappers That History Forgot”:
Lord Nelson: We sail into battle! Remember! England expects every man to do his duty!
Young ensign: I think I just did mine–in my pants!
I was in a college class that covered electrical engineering topics for engineers in other fields. The professor had assigned a particularly nasty homework problem that he thought was super easy, but everyone else in the class found to be utterly confusing. He devoted almost an entire class period to explaining the solution to the problem. At the end of the explanation, he asked the class, “Is that clear now?”
From the back of the room, one voice responded, “Not at all!”
I had a high school classmate whose surname was Schittekatte. It was Belgian in origin, I believe. Yes, it was a pretty strange name, but we were all used to it, having heard it for years.
One year we had a student teacher from the university across the road from our school. Male. On his first day with our class, he read the role, asking each of us to stand up when he called our names. When he got to young master Schittekatte, he started to laugh. He said “Your name is shy cat? Is this a joke? You’ve got to be shing me, right?” Realizing the pun he’d just made, he fell out completely, laughing until he was crying. All the while the poor kid is standing there in the middle of the class, completely embarassed.
We got through the rest of the class with our student teacher, but he never came back to our school again after that day. I think word may have spread. lol