48 Times Teachers Realized Their Student Might Not Go Far In Life

This happened to me just yesterday....

My hair is usually strawberry blonde in the summer, but I dye it a darker red in the fall. When my kindergarten students came to class yesterday, they were all a bit unsure of the new color. Here's a real conversation (the broken English is because they're Korean children).....

Kid - Teacher, head is why red?

Me - Why is my hair red? I'm like a tree. I change colors in the fall.

Kid - So...... winter and no hair?

I about passed out laughing! That's some logic for you!

In my first grade class I asked my students what they wanted to be when they grow up one boy put his hand up and said "a cat burglar, because I'm good at climbing things and I like cats.".

“Woah Miss I just realised that the numbers after 10 are just made up of the numbers between 1-9.”

Somehow he’s one of my best maths students.

A university freshmen turned in a paper on the Treaty of Versailles that conformed to no known formatting system I had ever seen, there didn't even seem to be paragraphs.

Assuming that his computer had jumbled it up somehow when he turned it in, I went to give it back to him in class one day so he could fix it.

He informed me it was intentional, the format meant the paper was to be read as a rap. Which he proceeded to do for me in the few minutes before class started, It was incredible. D+.

When I was in high school a girl (who wasn't exactly known for academic excellence) in my world history class gave a presentation on concentration camps. It was going pretty smoothly until she was showing pictures of the crematioria and said "and this is where the prisoners made their bread for the day." It was so stunningly awkward that my teacher had to make her stay after class for what I'm sure was the most painful conversation of his career. I still think about that a lot.

Not a teacher, but in one of my health ed classes, a girl in my class said she wasn't afraid of getting AIDS, because if she got it she'd just give it to someone else... and therefore not have it....

Yeah that was an interesting day once we realized she was serious...

Not me but a fellow student in college.

Sit down for out statistics final exam.. multiple choice answers but you’re doomed if you don’t know the formulas.


Guy one row over and two seats down sits.. pulls out a single six sided dice and rolls it for every question.

The guy passed the exam. I did too.. but wow that guy was brave (not to mention lucky).
Guess if you figure you’re gonna fail might as well try something new right?

Okay...so I had a student in middle school that couldn't read. That wasn't a huge deal. Kid had issues. Once he got angry at me and told me he was going to "rip off my buttons". It may have been literal or figurative. Didn't matter. Remember, issues. It was my job to teach him to read. He should have already been in high school. He was 14 and in middle school. I worked individually with this kid. Everyday. Finally I just asked him what he was going to do for a living if he couldn't read and wouldn't try. He gave me a pretty standard answer. "I'll play basketball". I should mention he was barely over five foot tall. I worried about him. He was my student for two years. Eventually he moved on and I switched to high school. So twenty years later I get curious. I remember most of my students and this kid had a name that stood out a bit. I Google his name hoping he won't be in prison. A lot of my former students are. I find him right away. He's a professional basketball player. For Ukraine. Retired now but still...So good for him. Made himself proud.

Quick edit: He turned 15 in middle school. He did learn how to read. He graduated and went to college. Apparently he struggled for awhile, but he's human. His history was not ideal. I'm concerned about naming him because of his privacy. He played from 2006-2010...

I work with three year olds.

One was crying and pointing at another kid so I asked what happened. She mostly speaks Spanish, but understands English so I started asking her, "Are you hurt?" Yes "Did she hit you?" Yes "Did she kick you?" Yes

Then the other child chimes in, "NUH UH!! I didn't kick her! I just punched her in the face!".

Teaching at a university you might be surprised how many students get pissy over basic math. Freshman use to shock me with comments like "I didn't sign up for a math course", "I don't think I signed up for calculus", and "I am just going to drop." Now it is almost common place. A couple each semester in 100 level courses.

I am talking basic math; addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. It is pathetic and most students that make comments like that do terrible in class. It may be really harsh to say but if you think basic math is something to cause you to drop a class... You should not be taking university classes.

I'm late to the thread, but I have a winner. The class was an applied math course for high schoolers, and we held a paper airplane design contest. The rule was that you could use anything on the table to make your airplane, and that the person who threw theirs the farthest down the hallway would win. The table had all manner of things on it, printer paper, construction paper, tape, rulers, compasses, toothpicks, duct tape, paper clips, masking tape, a stapler, and even elmer's glue. Well, the class went to work and for an hour designed some very interesting airplanes. Except for Tim. Tim sat quietly and chatted with his friends until about thirty seconds were left to build. Then he went up to the table, grabbed a few things, and sat back down to wait. When it came time to throw, it turned out that his "airplane" was a piece of paper wrapped around the stapler. While the lighter (and more complex) planes drifted to the side and landed early or hit the hallway walls, Tim's "plane" slammed straight into the door on the other end of the hall, with a satisfying clunk. Tim's ridiculous creation beat everyone else out and won the contest easily, while technically obeying the rules of the competition. I hope that guy ends up working for NASA.


Edit:

My other favorite student was a kid who ate a glue stick for five dollars. He figured it was edible because it said "non-toxic". Technically correct, but so, so, wrong. He had to go home, due to the uncontrollable vomiting. I'm not sure if he was ever paid the five dollars.

My third favorite was a middle-schooler whose mom was dissed by another student in class. His reaction, not having any decent weapons on him, was to rip out the three-ring part of a three-ring binder and use the prongs to attack the other student's forearm. Unfortunately, that kid isn't going anywhere but juvie unless he can get help with his anger issues. Too bad, because it was an ingenious improvised weapon, and he could probably use that creativity some other way.

I teach freshman-in-college-level writing. Every semester I have one (so far, always male) student like this:

He tells me that he's excellent at writing, and that this class is pretty much a formality for him. He tells me not to worry, he'll do me a favor and play nice in the class unless "it gets ridiculous" because he likes me as a teacher. He tells me about the book he's writing, and he tells me that he'll "let me" edit it for him when he gets finished. The other students hate him because he's always one-upping them in discussion.

The papers he turns in never follow instructions, and, on top of that, they're barely comprehensible. He's among the weakest writers in the class. His formatting is bizarre. He's then offended by any and all feedback. When I try to offer help, he assures me that it's actually a mistake that he's even taking my class, and that he was "supposed" to test out of it. He gets the grades he deserves and moves down the line to the next teacher.

TL;DR: The Dunning-Kruger effect is real.

Not a teacher but a fellow classmate. The least intelligent member of my geography class stole my homework assignment from my bag and tried to hand it in as his own. I told the teacher after class and she looked through the pile and said don't worry. He didn't even attempt to remove my name from the paper. He basically just handed my homework in for me.

Hell class. It was the ultimate test for if I really wanted to be a teacher or not, in my final year of teacher's college.

Second grade. There were the usual few trouble-makers, some suck-ups, some sad stories, but mostly just average kids. Except THOSE TWO. THOSE TWO made it hell class.

Both boys. Boy 1 was hyperactive, stubborn as hell, violent to both students and teachers (once punched my mentor teacher in the face while I was there, breaking her glasses), and just generally a handful. Both boys were given special schedules which meant they were on the iPads most of the day. If you told Boy 1 it was time to do work instead of playing on the iPad, he lost it. Every Time. Every single time. This happened about 5-10 times a day, depending on how much we wanted to fight him.

Boy 2 was almost worse. No emotion. No impulse control. Nothing. Just a blank slate of anger and venom. He screamed, he destroyed school property, he forced the whole class to evacuate on two occasions. He was no longer allowed on field trips because he would run away, forcing the teacher to chase him (he thought it was funny). He did a lot of things he thought was funny - hint: it never was. I thank God he was never physically violent because he was such a huge kid that he would have seriously hurt someone.

It's not that these kids were going nowhere. They were going to jail. Probably sooner rather than later.

My 8'th grade physical science lab partner took the top off one of those oil burners, poured the oil all over our desk and then lit it on fire. Like on purpose. Did you think it would be less flammable because it's on the table now?

Hilariously, even though I was the one who put the fire out and had nothing to do with lighting it, I still got suspended too. I guess the lesson I was supposed to learn was never help put out a fire.

I had my students write “two truths and a lie” so the class could get to know one another better. One student writes: “I had four concussions” “I play hockey” “I have gold”. He said that the lie is that he has gold....I told our phys ed teacher about it at lunch and she says “what does he mean he has gold” I said, “well, that was the lie” “well then he lied twice, because he’s had seven concussions” no wonder he’s so slow....

On the first day, after going over the syllabus, I had a little "intro to college" talk I would give first semester students. I know how boring a syllabus is, so I would touch some of the most important aspects of it, like attendance and late work, in a less formal discussion to help grab the students attention.

Part of this was something along the lines of, "You are now in college and you are an adult. I don't know your parents phone number and I will not call them if you miss a day, or don't turn in your work. You are now responsible for your own future."

Right when I said that, a few students would get up and leave, never to be seen again.

"How many legs does a chicken have?"
"Three, no, wait, chicken the bird or chicken you eat?" She was a high school junior.
.
"On the map, find the border between Georgia and South Carolina."
"I don't know where that's at."
"Okay, find Georgia."
(embarassed)"I don't know where that's at." He was a high school senior...IN GEORGIA!

Used to teach English in Japan.

Had a 12 year-old kid who would take off his socks and chew on his toenails in the middle of my lessons.

Had a 4 year-old kid who would run at top speed toward the wall, throw himself into it, stumble around going "ouch!" for a few seconds, then do it all again, for an hour straight if we would let him.

Had a seven year-old who stripped off down to his underpants, then skipped around the room singing the Pokemon theme song for the whole class. Finally got him dressed again just as the lesson ended. He looked up at me, and said in complete seriousness, "Sensei, I did a good job!"

Kids, man. They're weird.

Had an older college student (28 or so years old) turn in 4 papers in a row that were directly copy/pasted from well-known academic articles.

First one, he said he uploaded the wrong paper. Gave him 24 hours to turn in the "right" one. No new paper was submitted.

Second one, he thinks he's cracked the code - this time he only turned in a hard copy and "forgot" to upload the assignment so it didn't go through the plagiarism scanner. I told him he could go ahead and submit it now, no problem!

Third one, he copy/pasted yet another article, format and all, and only replaced the author's name. During the plagiarism hearing, he tripled down and claimed he was the actual author of the paper but had just changed his last name - he pointed to the fact that he and the author had the same first names as evidence of his authorship.

The fourth one I saved as a memento since he'd just been removed from the program.