What is the worst (or best) prank you have ever pulled on a teacher/authority figure?

In My Humble Opinion
21

We actually ** liked ** this teacher. Probability and Stats class in h/s, an elective math class, so a bunch of geeks were we. but cool ones.

Our class was in a “portable” stand alone trailer kind of thing. we had lunch break before class. One day, we simply stayed outside. all of us. another day, we placed a toilet in place of his chair (one of our classmates had access to a construction yard). another day they locked me and a guy in the closet (by pushing desks blocking the door. another time, we brought in a mini wading pool and had one classmate (a diver on the swim team) in his swim suit on the desk saying “watch me!”.

He got back at us, though. we had “citizenship” grades (scale of 1 - 5 where 5 was the worst you could get), he gave us all “9’s”

22

Some friends and I replaced the school’s flag with a Jolly Roger. We cut one end of the rope and tied it in a slipknot around the other chord so once hoisted it couldn’t be easily pulled down. By the end of the day they had called in a cherry picker from the town to cut it free. Got some great pictures that day. Arrrrr!

23

Once we moved everything from the teachers home room to an unused classroom. We put everyting in it’s proper place. Another time we turned everything in the room upside-down, including posters, desks, projector screen, light switches and all the desks, including the teachers. We sat on our overturned desks as if everything was normal.
Keith

24

The best prank I ever heard of was when the guys in mechanics class disassemled a car and put it back together… in the principals office. They did this on a weekend and had some help from the other teachers and staff in getting keys to things.

25

This is one that my friend, Kevin, did when we were younger. Kevin had some problems (kleptomania and a very scary mother…If you have seen Carrie, his mother was just like Carrie’s mother, seriously) but managed to cope with them pretty well. He was kicked out of his house by his crazy mother when he was 5 or 6 years old for stealing a candybar and hitchhiked from San Antonio to Houston (I heard this story from him, his father, and his two brothers so I don’t doubt the veracity). Anyway, while he was there he learned how to pickpockets and generally steal things. The story I am going to relate is just one of many that Kevin managed to pull off but this one managed to be the most entertaining to us.

One day Kevin, Jimmie (my best friend at the time…still is), and I were walking through a mall in San Antonio when a police officer decides to harass us. We generally look like hoodlums since we were (non-violent hoodlums but hoodlums nonetheless) and he starts asking Jimmie and I were unimportant. Anyway, Kevin in the meantime had snuck behind the police and doing something that we couldn’t questions but I don’t remember what they were since they completely see. Jimmie and I were laughing and the officer was perturbed by this. Anyway, he turns around and sees Kevin behind him to which Kevin just looks at him and he asks what he was doing (remember we were laughing). Kevin replied with a shrug. Then the officer says that everything was ok and that we could go. After he was out of earshot we asked Kevin what he was really doing and he showed us a handfull of bullets that came out of the officers belt (he also pointed to the belt which was missing the appropriate number of bullets). We laughed so hard it hurt. He was standing behind the officer and tapping his belt to make the bullets fly out and he was catching them. It was so funny.

HUGs!
Sqrl

26

My senior year, I had 3 friends (Mark, Bruce, and Charles) and we would always have fun in Spanish class. The teacher was really fun and we always had fun with her. 2 of the greatest pranks we ever pulled on her were the following:

Charles brought in a little electronic device encased in a 35mm film canister that emitted a high pitched beep every 3 minutes. Because it was such a high pitch and since it was a very short “Beep”, it was impossible to tell where the beep came from. So we hid it in her class right at the beginning of the hour when students were still coming in and she was out in the hall. Since this was a typical class, it took a few minutes after the bell for everyone to settle down, so she didn’t hear it right away… but once the lesson began, she could hear it loud and clear. We were all rolling on the floor laughing every time it went off. By the end of class, she was a nervous wreck. We did eventually tell her where it was and she did laugh about it afterward.

The other time, we were in Spanish class and our teacher (Mrs. H for this story) explained in Spanish that the class was to only speak in spanish… Absolutely no English! If the anyone were to speak English, that person would get the hall pass. As others spoke English, the hall pass would move to them. Whoever had the hall pass at the end of the hour would get an extra homework assignment. As the hour progressed, people started flubbing up and speaking English. I even spoke english and got the hall pass, but then someone else spoke English and I got to give it to them. With about 10 min left in class, Charles speaks up and says in English, “I have to go to the bathroom”. So he gets the hall pass and leaves the class. He comes back a few minutes later and has a big smirk on his face. Suddenly over the loud speaker we hear the receptionist voice saying, “Mrs. H”, and Mrs. H says, “Yes”, then realizes that she just spoke English. The receptionist responds, “Gotcha!”. We all laughed, and nobody spoke a single word until the bell signaled the end of class.

27

Here are a few off the top of my head:

We got into our Home Economics class (Home Ec? There were no economics taught there, just cookin’ and cleanin’) ahead of the teacher and saw that she intended to show filmstrips that day. Not movies, not VCR tapes, but filmstrips. What could possibly be more boring? This would never do. We decided to hide the filmstrips, but where? “How about the washing machine”, I said. And so it was. When the teacher came in the class was the picture of solidarity. Even the ‘goodie two-shoes’ couldn’t stomach filmstrips. The teacher went into a rage when nobody would fess up and yelled “Fine. We’ll just learn how to do laundry then!”. Oops! She flung open the top of the washer and began throwing in clothes, all the while looking over her shoulder at the class and “instructing” in a fit of rage. Clothes in, detergent in, top down, select correct settings, turn machine on…“What’s that noise?”. The class erupted into laughter while the teacher probably popped a few blood vessels. Thankfully, no one ever told her who did it.

One particular Social Studies teacher was homely, at best. Her head was tiny in proportion to her very cylindrical body and her eyes were small and beady. We called her (behind her back) The Walrus. Within my group of buddies, every assignment which had to be turned in was graced with a caricature of a walrus in the upper right hand corner. We got very good at drawing a walrus. We practiced, you see, so they would all look the same. She did ask on a few occasions what it meant. We just shrugged and told her it was something we did. I don’t think she ever caught on.

We were assigned ‘study hall’ in an active classroom. That is, while the rest of the students were taking a class, one or two may be there for their study hall period. I guess it cut down on personnel by not having a teacher sit with a whole group of sudents quietly studying for other classes. I was, as usual, bored to tears and so began a spitball fight with one of the other students. Just after I launched a beauty, the teacher turned to address his class and saw the trajectory. The conversation went like this:
Teacher: Mr. Jackson, are you shooting spitballs?
Me: No, sir!
Teacher: But I distinctly saw a small object fly across the room. The trajectory would seem to indicate that it came from your vicinity.
Me: It could have been a fly, sir.
Teacher: Mr. Jackson, it was WHITE!
Me: Yes, sir. Albino fly, sir. Very rare. Would you like for me to try and catch it for you?
Teacher: (big sigh) Never mind.

28

As a pupil, I pioneered the ‘gas tap’ swindle. In Chemistry, if you turned on a gas tap, the teacher would spin round at the hiss and catch you. I used to just hiss thru my teeth (that does seem lame now, but it was a big hit at the time!). We once linked hands from the Van der Graaf generator to the doorknob…

Since becoming a teacher (Give me that! What are you chewing?! WILL YOU BE QUIET!), I’ve heard of a couple:

  • last night of term, our school leavers usually get a bit amusing. So one year a sports teacher decides to guard the playing fields all night (from inside his warm car). He falls asleep - they paint the cricket pavilion pink.
    Next year he lies on a groundsheet under the car. He falls asleep - they lift up the car and turn it upside down.

  • we got a trainee teacher, who didn’t have the right stuff. First lesson, his class talk all the time. Second lesson, he says that anyone who talks in class will get into trouble. The class promptly leave by the door. Third lesson, he stands in front of the door. The class leave by the (ground floor) window. There was no fourth lesson…

29

At a community college I attended long ago, unknown hoodlums herded a half-dozen sheep into the plush office of a rather Napoleonic vice-dean, and left the poor little sheepies locked in there over the weekend with a big bucket of water and a bit of hay. The frightened things mashed their “pellets” into the carpet, peed all over the place, and out of nervousness chewed on all the nice oak furniture. Maintenance had to strip the office all the way down to the concrete subfloor.

30

Some of my classmates did this to a rather well-liked history teacher (Mr. Funk, known as “Uncle Funkie”) – only they used a centerfold from the skin mag they found in his desk. Naughty, naughty. Unfortunately he caught on right away; fortunately he laughed right along with us.

31

Biology class, 9th grade.

Teacher was out one day so they sent a substitute for the day. Substitute turned out to be Mrs. Moore, the oldest teacher in the school district and very hard of hearing. Every conversation with her always had you repeating yourself and hollering at her so that she could hear you. For reasons I cannot remember most of the students in my class did not like Mrs. Moore.

When the class found out that she was to be the sub we decided to play a little trick on her. When she came into the classroom and started calling role everyone replied by just moving there mouths but not actually talking. She would repeat herself and look at the class as she did this. So she just saw our mouths moving but no sound coming out. She started screaming at us but still no one would make a sound. It took everything we had not to start laughing and keep the gag running.

She ended up leaving the room and going to the principals office to tell on us. The class decidecd the next day in detention that it was definately worth it.

Another time, same sub, we locked her out of the classroom. She had to go get a custodian to let her in. Again, detention but definately worth it. :smiley:

32

oh Man substitutes were the best!

We had one named Mrs. Broten, pronounced with a long “oh”, but it was spelled the same as Neal Broten, pronounced with an “ah” as in bratwurst, who was on the old Minnesota North Stars hockey team (and I’m obviously from MN, and a hockey fan). Every time she taught a class, someone would ask her if she was Neal Broten’s mom. The whole class would go off “oh man that is so cool she’s Neal Broten’s mom! Are you really his mom? wow that’s awesome!” The thing was she obviously wasn’t the mother of a hockey player, but we asked her every time she taught one of my classes from 7th through 12th grade. For 6 years, every single time. It drove her nuts.

33

I’ve got quite a few. Over a 7 year period I did the following:

  1. Me and a few friends once stole a statue of the School’s patron saint and put a small cuddly toy in it’s place together with a ransom demand.

  2. I once sneaked into the teacher’s staffroom with a load of toothpicks, put one in each of the locks and then broke them all.

  3. In our school library there was an archive of old newspapers one could look through for reference on current events. Me and a friend once bought 20 copies of the Daily Sport and swopped them for the old newspapers (which we hid in a cupboard).

  4. I once took about 30 permanent marker pens from the school’s tech Lab and swopped them for the pens used to write on the Whiteboards (which are NOT permanent marker). The result was that about 8 teachers had to go to the science labs to get enough White Spirit to wash off the product of the subsequent lessons after they realised that they couldn’t rub off the permanent ink.

  5. I poured a special kind of sugar water mix over the saddle of my science teacher’s bike. When left to dry this mixture turns VERY Sticky.

  6. During my penultimate year in college I made a hobby of hacking the school’s computer network. After about a month I had full administrative priviledges. I made myself promise that I wouldn’t abuse these priviledges and I only used them sparingly (giving my friends extra internet credits so they could spend more time online at school, harmless stuff really.) but during the last week I decided to cause a bit of havoc. I brought in a small mpeg of a man jumping over a swimming pool and missing the edge (VERY funny, you just have to see it) and fixed it so that whenever someone tried to use the internet they would get this little movie of a man falling into his own pool.

** but my crowning glory was definately this: **

  1. Once I got hold of the key to the Religious Education storeroom dept. I one of took the candles which were used for masses and took them home with me. Once at home I got a corkscrew and drilled upwards from the bottom of the candle until I could pull the wick out. I then dropped a small banger in the hole I’d drilled so that the fuse poked out where the wick should be. I then replaced the candle the following day. A couple of days later there was a school mass and they used my special candle.
    The noise was deafening and the looks on the teachers faces will stay with my forever more.

BTW: If this sounds utterly irresponsible and dangerous let me assure you that I used the smallest banger I could find and gave it quite a long fuse. Also it was only just about strong enough to blow through the half inch of candle wax which surrounded it. Sure was loud though :wink:

I did plenty more pranks but they were always totally inconsequential and harmless. I usually got caught on those as well but I never got caught for the above pranks (except number 5, that was pretty nasty, then again, so was I ;)).

34

and, unfortunately, this is where we’ve gotten to now. Forgot to mention. My son is now in high school (he’s 16) . He pulled, what he thought of as a prank, on a long term sub (The reg. teacher was going to be out for a month). He took the teacher’s mug and hid it in a friend’s locker.

Because of some other nonsense, his locker was searched, as were several other lockers. He ended up with a 4 day suspension from school, plus they threatened to prosecute him for the felony “larceny from a building” (and yes, that’s a felony here, yes, even if the item wasn’t worth much, yes, he could have been charged as an adult).

35

That was a mean trick pulled on us by the teacher…She had us hold hands in a line across the room. I was in the middle. It was the “dumb” class, and I was a “genius”. Teacher grinned evilly at me and told the person on one end to put his free hand on the 30,000-volt VdG generator, and the person on the other end to grab one of the faucets in the back. I was the only one that knew what was coming…
Me: “Don’t do that, you idiot, you’ll ground u–”
30kv of static electricity: “ZAP!”

It was an electrifying experience.

36

Yeah, it was high school…that poor school…we did SO much shit there! One time…last year actually…some seniors went into a Spanish room (cause it was closest to the exit in case they needed a fast getaway) and crazy-glued all the desks and chairs to the ceiling:)

37

We had a geezer sub who delighted in bringing pointless pictures to class and talking about them all hour instead of teaching. We got her trained to the point of always having new pictures for us. No one really wanted to look at them or hear her talk, but it was better than doing work. Not a prank, really, just a way to pass the time.

Our Spanish teacher decided that we should have a fiesta on Cinco De Mayo, with a real pinata. So we all get blindfolded and take our swings, and this girl Amy goes up. Amy’s a goon. Big and dumb. She takes a swing, misses, steps back, turns sideways, draws the bat back, and whap hits the teacher right in the side of the head with the whiffle bat. Down she goes, for the count. OMG that was so funny. No one stopped to help her because we were all laughing so hard.

This same teacher, in our workbooks, me and a few other guys drew pornographic cartoons out of the small pictures given to demonstrate words. They were vile, they were disgusting, they were absolutely hilarious. They became legendary throughout the school. People would beg us to show them our workbooks. We had about 3 like that. We ended up throwing them away when she tried to collect them at the end of the term. ::sigh::

Thes aren’t really pranks. Just fun HS stuff.

–Tim

38

Hmmmmmmm, I hope it wasn’t a drop ceiling.

39

which had a very unusual set up. There were 2 seperate city high scools: West Bend East And West Bend West. Both seperate schools each with it’s own faculty, principal, sports team, etc… The weird part is that they are right next to each other. the even weirder part was that you could be a student at one school, yet get scheduled for classes in the other! I went to West High, yet routinely had classes at East High. Strange, huh. If you don’t believe me call them up!
Anyway, my senior year I took mostly electives. I ended up in a class at East with a teacher that I never had or heard of before. A real old fart who was a tough grader. Heres how he ran his class: On monday he would have three 8x11 boxes on a table. In one box were worksheet packets, the second box was to hand in worksheet packets, and the 3rd was to pick up graded worksheets from the week before. We had a week to do the worksheets. They were turned in every monday, then we’d pick up that weeks worsheets and get our graded ones. Understand? The neat thing was that when you looked through the box to get your graded sheets you could see what kind of grade everyone else got.
Anyway, I would grab 2 worksheet packets and have a girl I knew who wasn’t in the class fill one out (for different handwriting) and put a phony name on it. The teach went NUCKING FUTS trying to find the ghost student who he didn’t know yet was handing in work! He’s come in screaming somedays…WHO IS MATT NELSON? DO ANY OF YOU KNOW MATT NELSON?! There wasn’t even anyone remotely close to that name in either school! It drove him bonkers! I wonder where he sent Matt Nelsons report card?:stuck_out_tongue:

40

I got my mustache at age 13. By the time I got to be a senior, I looked pretty much like an adult. (I was never carded buying alcohol from age 17 onward. Imagine how popular I was. :)) At any rate, we had fairly frequent substitutes in our Journalism class, as the teacher was kind of a stoner.

After a couple of months, we figured out the teacher was bringing in friends and friends-of-friends as unofficial substitutes, because he didn’t want to bring his frequent absences to the administration’s attention. We determined which ones were actual friends of his, and which were FOAFs, and when we wanted to go home early (it was the last class of the day), I’d come in and tell the sub I was the teacher, I’m there after all, go ahead and take off. I only did it a couple of times, but it never created any problems.

It’s not like we had regular in-class work, anyway, as the point of the class was to produce the school paper, so an occasional early exit was enjoyed by all.

A better prank was pulled by the seniors when I was a junior. The weekend before the last week of school, they took a bag of ready-mix concrete and cemented shut the gates to the parking lots. The sight of the road jammed a half-mile in both directions with cars and buses waiting to get into the lots was totally priceless. We ended up with Monday off while they jackhammered the gates open. Truly, a moment of glory.

Other pranks, not on authority figures but very funny nonetheless:

While on yearbook staff, as copy editor, I made sure the names of several people I disliked were misspelled throughout the book.

Once, during a basketball game, I was sitting up with a couple of pals with a friend who was in the pep band, which occupied the center of the stands. The friend played the xylophone (not strictly accurate; it’s the similar instrument, with each metal note bar on its own little block, but I can’t remember the name). She got occupied in a conversation with a bandmate; while she was turned away, we carefully and quietly took most of the blocks away. She didn’t turn back until it was literally her cue to play in the next piece; she finished her conversation, lifted her rubber hammers to play, turned back, looked down while starting to swing the hammers, and froze in midstroke with a look of absolute confusion on her face, which melted into a perfect “Uh-- oh, goddammit, you guys” expression. Hee hee…