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Impressed Teachers Admit The Funniest Answers Students Gave That Ended Up Being Right

Impressed Teachers Admit The Funniest Answers Students Gave That Ended Up Being Right

Class participation is 10% of your grade.

Teaching can be exhausting, monotonous, and dry--which is what students think about school anyway, so it's good to know everybody is on a level playing field. But students can really come up with some crazy things out of nowhere--it's what makes our jobs as teachers interesting. So when Reddit user muffinorgy asked:

Teachers of Reddit, what's the funniest answer you've gotten from a student that technically wasn't wrong?

All us teachers got ready for a bumpy ride.

Baby Geniuses

My first grade class was learning the word powerful. Kids came up with examples of powerful things and people, like elephants and superman. Then one boy said, "babies are powerful because they can cry and get whatever they want."

The Second State

"Teacher, I need a pencil."

"Where do the pencils live?" (I have a bucket of sharpened pencils for them to use.)

"Pennsylvania?"

Homonyms!

I'm a teacher in Canada, told the kids to name me 5 US states and their row could go out for recess first.

Boy raises his hand and says "Rattlesnake?"

"What? Hah, oh snakes. No no, STATES. Name 5 states."

Same kid "T-Bone?"

"You're naming steaks? STATES. STAATES."

Resource teacher was in the room and we were crying laughing.

Debate

In 7th grade on a test the question said "Why do some people see some technology as positive, and others see the same technology as a problem?" and a kid simply put, "Because some people are Amish."

A New Look

Phys. Ed teacher here - I always wear shorts teaching. Parent-teacher conferences roll around, grade 1 student comes up to me with her parents - "Mr. Famous1187, I've never seen you wear pants before". I've never responded quicker to a comment before in my life to clear that up.

Profane, But Correct

Teaching English to middle schoolers in Korea, asked: "Ok, what's another way you can express surprise in English?" (after going over expressions like, "No way!", "Are you serious?" "Are you kidding me?")

Kid yells from the very back of the room: "WHAT THE F-CK!?"

Shortcuts

ESL teacher. I had my students do an activity where they had to give directions based off of a map and situations I had chosen. The final question was more complex, and one of my students wrote, "Way too difficult, take a cab."

Existential Syntax

I've taught English in Korea and Japan, and while maybe not that funny one student who wanted to say something like "afterwards" or "in the end" wrote "the after was here". I stopped for a moment and just stared off into space after reading that.

Co-what?

I teach ESL in a university in China. The topic in class was the effect of sleep on study. After introducing the phrase "pulling an all-nighter," I asked the students to give some advice on how they can stay awake in class after the pulled an all nighter.

Student: "Take some cocaine."

Me: gives student an odd look "Excuse me?"

Student: "Yes, you know, like in Coca-Cola, coffee, tea..."

Me: pauses for a moment, now understanding what exactly what he meant, but prompting him "Cocaine?"

Student: realizes what he has done "Oh sh-t, I meant caffeine.

Some Pig

(On a 3rd grade Charlotte's Web quiz): Give 2 pieces of evidence that support this statement: "Charlotte was a good friend to Wilbur""

"She comforted him and she didn't let him become pork."

Too True

In nutrition class at Community College, the teacher asks "what's one of the first things you throw out of the window when you drink alcohol", this kid just mumbles: "standards".

Stacking

The question: A man has to get a fox, a chicken, and a sack of corn across a river. He has a rowboat, and it can only carry him and one other thing. If the fox and the chicken are left together, the fox will eat the chicken. If the chicken and the corn are left together, the chicken will eat the corn. How does the man do it?

Student's answer: "Let the chicken eat the corn, and let the fox eat the chicken. Then bring the fox over."

Listen, Dammit

I've got a story from my fiancee's childhood. They were testing her intelligence or awareness, and showed her an image with a tv in a room. The tv was turned on, showing a cartoon, and had a plant on top of it.

Q: What's on the Television?

A: A plant.

Apparently she just kept insisting in utter frustration until the administrator bothered to look at the image and not the answer sheet.

The Caped Crusader

On a science task, students had to match the predator to the prey. One kid was matching a robin, and instead of matching it to the worm....he scratched it out and wrote Joker.

Neighbor- or Chemical-

I teach forensic science.

We were going to be using iodine to fume fingerprints. Iodine vapor is no joke, so I terrify the students and use only two volunteers with goggles and respirators at the chemical hood. But, we still all go over the MSDS, PPE, and equipment.

I spent maybe five minutes talking about everything and the chemical hood to my class of thirty. Towards the end,

"So. Someone tell me: what is a hood?"

A hand shoots up.

"Yes, [student]."

"It's, like, the place where you grow up."

I facepalm, the class laughs, and I'm unable to pivot his answer in the moment.

Yes, That Is Correct

This is intentional, but I teach a foreign language, and so when I introduce the word for "I don't know" I call on a student who typically gets answers wrong, and ask them to translate the word as if (s)he should know it. When the student inevitability responds, "I don't know" I tell them they're right and the look on their face is always priceless.

Candid(e) Answers

In a class that deals with electricity, I asked the students to name a good conductor.

Leonard Bernstein.

Personal Answers

Not the teacher but witnessed this in class:

Sociology Prof: "Why do you conform?"

Student: "It has always been my goal in life to blend in."

Soc Prof: "No more questions for you."

That's That

I wrote an exam where the question was "Can you name three *models of DNA replication?"

she wrote, "No."

Failed Exams

The student teacher took us into a private room one by one for eye exams. I've never taken an eye exam before and it wasn't really explained to me what was happening. I was just sat down and asked to read the first line of the chart. Then the second. Then the third. By the time it came to the fourth line I was like "It's too small for me to read, one minute please", then I got up, walked over to the board and started reading the letters. Apparently that's not how you do eye exams.

Integrity

I asked 'when is a time you have used integrity?'

He wrote down 'I wash my hands after going to the bathroom, even if no one is in there'.

Exploded Or Bigger?

Not a teacher, but something my brother answered for homework.

My brother was in year 1, and his homework was to draw a balloon "blown up". He drew a picture with lots of squiggly shapes spread out across the paper. He took it as the balloon blown up, like a bomb, so he drew the leftovers of an exploded balloon. His teacher loved it and gave him full marks!

Retorts

Teaching grade 5. Students were fooling around during group work so I said sarcastically, "Do I need to stand here and watch you do your work?" to which the student responded even more sarcastically, "Well you don't have to stand, you can grab the chair and sit."

College Professors Share Their Funniest 'I Don't Know How You Made It Out Of High School' Experiences

Image by Foundry Co from Pixabay

Now that college has become a standard requirement for so many jobs and careers, there is a massive push by high schools to get their graduating students accepted and enrolled at an undergraduate college.

On the whole, that's undoubtedly a great thing. A more educated workforce will be prepared to solve the most complex issues facing human beings in the next several decades.

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college

911 Operators Describe The Most Unnerving Calls They've Ever Received

Image by Gianni Crestani from Pixabay

*The following article contains discussion of suicide/self-harm.

The person on the other end of a 911 call has a truly remarkable job.

For those who don't play that professional role, we hope to never encounter the 911 call interaction. But if we do find ourselves making that call, the moment is an anomaly in our lives.

The chaos, the panic, the racing heart, and the desperation are all emotions we, ideally, don't experience on a regular basis.

But for the operator on the other end, our call is one in a long line of calls they've received all day, and all the workdays before that one.

It's difficult to imagine being embedded in those uniquely urgent, emergency moments all the time.

Some Redditors who are on the other end of that call shared their experiences on the job.

WhimsicalxxButcher asked, "911 dispatchers what has been your most creepy/unnerving call?"

For a few, the most unnerving moments were the calm callers.

There was something just so eerie about how level-headed the faceless human being on the other end could be through such a desperate, tragic moment.

Almost Clinical 

"I had a friend who worked as a 911 dispatcher and he always said the worst call he ever had was a ~20 year old kid who committed suicide by mixing a bunch of chemicals together in his car to produce hydrogen sulfide gas."

"He said that the most unnerving part was hearing him calmly listing off the chemicals, the type of gas produced, and the effects of hydrogen sulfide on the body (namely the almost instant death it causes at high concentrations)."

"He ended the call by providing the address of the parking lot he was in and saying that nobody should approach the vehicle without hazmat equipment."

"Apparently after that there was a whooshing sound as he dumped the last chemical into the mix, and then the line went dead silent aside for a quiet fizzing noise."

"I know that call screwed him up because he almost never talks about stuff that happens to him on the job. He quit a few months later to go into construction management, and frankly I can't blame him."

-- iunoyou

Planned Out 

"A woman called me, saying she was going to kill herself. She was gassing herself. Gave me her name & address then said she was just going to lie down and 'go to sleep.' And stopped responding to me."

"I kept the line open, trying to get her to speak to me, and eventually heard officers forcing their way in to find her body. I guess she just wanted someone to find her body."

-- mozgw4

Before It Set In 

"When I got a call from a 6 year old who got home from school and laid down to take a nap with his dad. His dad never woke up."

"The kid was so calm when calling it broke my heart."

"I ended up leaving dispatch shortly after. I was good at compartmentalizing the job for the year I was doing it, but it would've broken me in the long run."

-- tasha7712

Other 911 operators were unfortunate enough to receive a call from the very last person they wanted to hear from: a loved one.

These dispatchers' unique position gave them the unexpected access to a family member or friend at their most dire moments.

No More of That 

"My family member is a long time first responder, and 'retired' into doing dispatch. He heard the address (someone else was taking the call) and realized it was his daughter's house."

"He rushed over there just in time to see them wheeling her body out. Overdose."

"Five months later, he was called to his ex-wife's place because his grandson (son of the daughter who recently passed) had his door locked, lights on, but wasn't responding to his grandma."

"He broke the door down and found him deceased in bed. Overdose."

"He's very stoic after years of all sorts of traumatic situations but my heart hurts whenever I think of what all of this must have felt like. Like sand through your fingers."

-- bitchyhouseplant

Knowing the Address

"Not me, but my grandma. I was sitting in the dispatch office, (very small one only 2 dispatchers including my grandma) but she put out a dispatch that there was a gun shot from my best friends address."

"My heart sank to my stomach and broke later that day. He committed suicide."

-- OntaiSenpuu

When it Happened 

"My uncle passing away. Worked as a small town dispatcher for a year or so. Had a bunch of messed up stuff happen on shift, but this call came in in the still hours of the night. Small town, so not many calls after midnight."

"I answered and recognized the name and address on caller id. Aunt was in a frenzy so didn't recognize my voice. I remained calm and got ems and fire rolling to them, but by my aunt's own words he was already blue."

"I went thru debriefing and mandated therapy for a couple other things that happened, but never really talked to anyone about this. I just try not to think about it."

"That was the call I figured out I needed to find a different job."

-- dangitjon

Finally, some simply had a front row seat to sudden tragedy.

These operators were flies on the wall when disaster struck. They never asked to witness what they witnessed, but sometimes that came with the territory.

A Holiday Tragedy 

"My mom is a 911 dispatcher. Early on she said one Christmas Eve while working she got a call from an elderly lady who's husband had just collapsed(and died) from a heart attack and in the background Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas music was playing on blast."

"The lady was screaming and crying and begging for her husband to wake up but my mom could hear his gurgling in his last breathes. She doesn't listen to or watch Alvin and the chipmunks since."

-- Blueflowerbluehair

What is it About Christmas?

"Christmas night. 911 call with crying child on the other end. A neighbor had run her car over her mom during a domestic."

"The mom crawled to the porch bleeding and the child saw the car coming back. I had her hide quietly in a closet with the cordless phone."

"The 10 year old child was crying and screamed that she hated Christmas. She was afraid of the police when they got there."

"I kept her on the phone until she felt safe enough to give the phone to an officer. I almost fainted after that call was over. Had nightmares for a while."

-- 2FunBoofer

Close to Home 

"Not a dispatcher but I handle radio communications for the Coast Guard. One night I was on the radio and got a call from an 11 year old kid whose boat had started to sink. He was out with his dad and 6 year old brother."

"They had been hit by another boat and his father got knocked unconscious. I remember the entire conversation up until the radio had gone underwater."

"They ended up finding his dad floating on his back alive but the two boys didn't make it. That one really fu**ed with me because my two littlest brothers were around the same age as the youngest."

-- HIRSH2243

A Horrible Clock 

"Another one that stays with me was the man who called in. It was the anniversary of his adult son having hanged himself. He'd now come home to find his wife had done the same."

"That date is always going to be a black day for him."

-- mozgw4


If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

Again, we hope you never have to use the 911 call in your life. Nobody wants to be involved in a sudden emergency or a tragic incident.

But hopefully, if you do, an operator like one of these thoughtful, sensitive Redditors is on the other end.

emergency

Former 'Gifted' Students Explain Where They Ended Up In Life

Image by Nguyen Dinh Lich from Pixabay

When I was moving on from middle school to high school my parents had me tested for the "gifted" program. By some miracle I passed and was accepted. And then I turned it down. Everyone was irritated. "This will pave the way for any college you want! You'll learn so much!" his path will set you up for life!" Every adult tried valiantly to sell me this merchandise but in my gut I just wasn't buying it. So I "settled" a level below, merely advanced classes. And upon reflection... it was the best choice I ever made.

Redditor u/dauntlessdaisy was wondering how far some in life got by asking... For those of you who were considered "gifted" in school, what are you doing with your life now?
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former gifted students

People Explain Which Things Should Always Be Kept In A Car In Case Of Emergency

Image by Markus Spiske from Pixabay

There's a million things that can happen to you while out on on the road.

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