Students love to get clever, especially when they feel their time at the school they are at is almost coming to a close.
Teachers are supposed to always enforce the rules of the school, but that doesn't mean they don't have a sense of humor, too.
Teachers can appreciate a good prank.
u/MisterF00 asked:
Teachers of Reddit, what was the best prank a student pulled on you that you weren't even mad about?
Here were some of those answers.
Failure
GiphyTwo students stole my stapler and tried to do the jello thing with it (which, I admit, I would have laughed at), but the idiots put the jello in the freezer "so it would set faster." All it did was freeze the water which promptly melted all over my classroom's floor...
I laughed my butt off as they frantically tried to clean it all up and explain.
Clever Boy
A student brought in a huge watermelon, dumped it on my co-worker's desk and said, "They were out of apples."
It was so random, and we all got a big kick out of it.
You gotta work with what you have man. And I mean think about how many doctors that will keep away!
I've Been Prankin' Longer Than You
I wish I had a good story to tell. I prank them way more than they prank me.
My students' version of "pranking me" is to ask me "Hey, do you know the word responsible? Spell it!" and then be very very sad when I spell out "I T"
Child, I wasn't born yesterday.
Andy's Coming
I was teaching a large group of students in Mexico. Someone raised their hand and asked "is it pronounced 'muerense' or 'mueranse' (roughly translated "go die")". I was confused because I didn't understand what it had to do with the subject, so I repeated the question. Everybody, like 80 students, then dropped "dead" on the floor.
I was impressed with the fact they coordinated it, but seeing as they botched their own prank I just rolled my eyes and kept teaching.
The Teacher Done Good Here
A teacher took a cell phone from a student, opened the ceiling tile and tossed the phone so that it was above the neighbouring classroom. Then all day people would call the phone and the teacher next door went insane trying to find where the noise was coming from.
Troll level 10,000
This was the roles reversed. It was this one student's birthday and it was during homeroom. The teacher yelled at him and made him bring his phone over. (The teacher never gets mad so it scared all of us) when the student brought over his phone the teacher told him to open the cabinet next to him and put it in there. When he opened it there were cupcakes and the teacher then told him happy birthday and handed out cupcakes.
Materializing
If it's ok, I was the student at the time but I know I can speak for my teacher as I know him to this day and he remembers it fondly.
If we ever asked our teacher something about the lesson that was incorrect he would respond with "if you believe that then it says gullible on the ceiling." One day he stepped out of class for a minute and a bunch of us taped a piece of paper with "gullible" written on it on the ceiling above his desk. Then we waited....
When the time eventually came he tried so hard to not be amused by it but he laughed about it for a while and left it up there til the end of the school year.
Impeding The School Day
Due to a teacher's health issue and need to take the rest of the year off, I was hired at an odd time of the year, around mid-April. The district had its own phone system, as many of them do, where each classroom has a phone, but most of them can only make internal calls. The first time I went to use the phone in my room, I picked up the receiver...and got nothing. Upon closer inspection, I saw there was no cord connecting the phone to the receiver. It wasn't an emergency, so I just shrugged it off.
During my next break, I went to the main office and said, "Um, this might sound a little weird, but the phone in my room doesn't have a cord." All the secretaries sighed in unison and one told me that a group of kids disconnected nearly every phone in the building by taking the receiver cords as an April Fool's Day prank. They were nice enough not to fully steal the cords, just left the pile somewhere, but someone still had to reconnect all of them, and apparently my classroom was missed. I tried not to show it, but I did laugh a little, because it was one of the more creative pranks I'd heard about.
Making Everyone Suffer
Am the teacher that spear headed the prank, but it is funny so Ill tell it.
There is a cartoon called Brittany Meets Harriet Tubman and the theme song is AWFUL and an EAR WORM. I showed it in my media center in February every year and one teacher had to come in with 2 different 3rd grade classes (I loved her, she was awesome) so she got to hear it twice each year.
Last Christmas I got one of the 2 classes she taught to pull a 'caroling' prank. I learned the theme song on the piano and recorded it and my assistant and I made up red and green 'carol books' with the words to the theme song on it.
I gave the CD with me playing the piano and 'song words books' to the other 3rd grade teacher and we practiced once quietly, the they practiced on their own.
On the last day before the winter break during the parties I had the class line up and a student knocked on the teachers door and asked if they could sing a carol. The teacher said sure and let em in. The boom box had Jingle Bells playing as we entered, then I hit the 'next track' button on the CD player and 'Brittany, Brittany, she wants to know about her history' started and the kids sang their hearts out and the teacher play acted being all upset.
The best part was that the kids DID NOT leak a word about it. I was shocked, I thought they would leak the prank.
It was awesome!
Egged Out
GiphyI had a small group of sophomore boys hide a handful of Easter eggs in my room one year. There was also a school-wide staff Easter egg hunt that the boys knew nothing about, so I expected to find one egg in my room. Then I kept finding them.
The boys asked me if I found them all, and me, being totally clueless and thinking it was still the staff Easter egg hunt, told them that I had and that I was pretty sure the Easter bunny messed up because I was only supposed to have one.
Then they asked, "Are you SURE you found them all?" and I repeated, emphatically, that I had. At that point, the tallest boy reached up and popped off one of the ceiling tiles to reveal a giant golden egg they had hidden earlier. They were all so proud of themselves for stumping me, saying things like, "Dude, she didn't find it!" and high fiving each other. I loved how simple and wholesome the whole thing was.
“'Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience'.” What's your best real life example of this?"
They Literally Won't be "Shut Down"
"When I tell people to just reboot your computer and it will fix all their problems and yet they won't because they said if you wait long enough it will shut down, when in reality it only goes to sleep."
"Then when I tell them they have to completely shut it down they look at me like I'm an idiot and say they did."
"I tell them it seems like it but it only went to sleep."
"They argue back."- niallaa
Some People Just Don't Get It...
"I used to argue a lot with my sister when we were kids."
"She would do this thing where she would say something, and then I would reference back to it literally a minute or two later to prove a point and she would say 'I never said that' or 'that’s not what I said'."
"Absolutely impossible to argue with someone who will just deny having said things that could hurt their argument."
"Also, trying to change the course of an argument if they feel like they are 'losing'."
"A coworker once called me an idiot for doing something 'incorrectly' when I was actually doing it the right way."
"When I politely explained to them that the way they suggested doing the task didn’t actually work, they started asking 'why are you getting so angry?? I was just trying to help' etc."
"So now we’re arguing about whether I’m angry or not instead of the right way to complete the task."- themightypianocat
Facts Are Facts...
"Arguing is pointless if you do not agree on a set of facts."- niallaa
Facts GIF by Judge JerryGiphyYou Can't Have It Both Ways...
"For a short while, I worked as a line cook at a Cracker Barrel, and there was a little saloon style door that led to the staff section (kitchen, bathroom, etc)."
"There was a staff only sign on the door, above the doors, and on the wall behind the doors at eye level."
"Usually if someone from the customer side comes in, they said, 'Coming in' before opening the door, so they didn't hit anyone, but of course customers didn't know that."
"So when this dude opened the door and hit a waitress carrying a ton of drinks, we were reasonably upset with him."
"He said, ;You should really put a sign up'."
"We showed him all the signs, and he goes, 'That seems a bit excessive'."- GreyFoxHound1
So Wrong.
"Had an employee sign an NDA about an upcoming art installation that had investors."
"He told everyone."
"He argued with me the NDA only meant he couldn’t disclose anything with the people in the company."- BosskHogg
He Knew What He Was Talking About
This was best said:
“'Never wrestle with pigs'."
"'You both get dirty and the pig likes it'.― George Bernard Shaw"- Zerowantuthri·
pigs GIFGiphySome Outdated Inventions Are Definitely Not Missed...
"I’m showing my age here but I used to work for an estate agency, and we had sales offices set up at the site of large new housing developments."
"Our primary method of communication was fax."
"One of the sales associates telephoned our office to say that the fax machine had run out of paper."
"No problem, I said, one of the guys is coming your way later for a house tour, I’ll give him a box of paper to give to you."
"We then had an almost 20 minute long argument when they kept insisting 'NO, YOU JUST SEND ME A BLANK FAX BECAUSE I NEED THE PAPER, IT WILL JUST COME OUT OF MY FAX MACHINE'.”
"It was like trying to nail jelly to a tree."
"Difficult, irritating, and it achieved nothing."- BettieKat
Very Few Hills Are Worth Dying On...
"I had a friend in university who was a world-class high school debater."
"Over meals, she liked to pick a ridiculous proposition and then talk circles around people until they had to concede to her point, no matter how absurd."
"When she tried it with me, I just stonewalled her."
"Met every point with a solid 'I don't think that's true'." or 'That doesn't make sense'."
"Eventually she gave up and never tried it with me again."
"It was the only time I've ever used the tactics of the stupid to win an argument."
"But, to be fair, if you're not arguing with me in good faith, I feel no obligation to respond in good faith."- kitskill
IS The Customer Always Right?...
"Working retail."
"Especially when I worked in the tech shop or a computer store."
" Trying to convince someone their $500 laptop is never going to be a gaming system no matter how many of the very few replaceable parts we throw at it can be exhausting."- MOS95B
happy episode 7 GIFGiphyEducation Only Matters If You Learned Something....
"Was arguing with this dude about something math-related."
"He didn’t know how to read a study that involved statistics. claimed he was in multiple AP math classes."
"Tried saying that I 'probably don’t even know basic integration'."
"Gave me a common integration problem."
"He wrote it but forgot the minus sign, making it unsolvable."
"I pointed it out and he edited the comment to make it correct."
"Told him that some people can see when you edit comments."
"He claimed that he just capitalized a letter. on and on and on."- SaturdayNightCity
Good Legal Counsel Might Be Worth The Splurge...
"I asked a representative from the Friend of the Court to explain something she said and she told me that I understood what she was saying."
"I replied that I wouldn't have asked her to explain if I had understood."
"She said if I was going to be difficult, she would hold me in contempt."
"My X chimed in that she didn't quite understand what she had said and was greeted with a smile and an explanation."
"From that point on I always disagreed with the Friend of the Court on EVERYTHING, so that I could be seen by the 'Actual Court' and a Judge."- PURPLEPEE
Season 4 Episode 21 GIF by The SimpsonsGiphySore Winners Are No More Attractive Than Sore Losers...
"Once worked with a guy who, by his own admission, got his rocks off by picking fights."
"He'd start an argument over the smallest thing."
"If you said it was white, he'd say it was black, just to try to start something."
"The one that always stood out for me was the weather app competition."
"One day he asked me what temperature it was, so I read it off my weather app."
"He got all offended, because his weather app said it was a couple degrees warmer."
"So he decides we're going to have a weather app competition."
"He was going to chart what our apps said the temperature was, and at the end of the week, whichever one was closest to that day's high would be the winner."
"And the loser would have to start using the winner's app."
"To which I said, "What is your f*cking problem?'"
"So, yeah."
"For the first few days, he'd make a big performance about marching into my office, recording the temperature off my app, jotting down some notes, and walking off."
"This started on a Monday."
"He gave up after Wednesday."
"Either because I was winning, or he was disappointed because, despite his best efforts, I just did not give a f*ck about weather apps."
"Or maybe the boss told him to stop because I filed a complaint that this was bordering on harassment."- originalchaosinabox
Im Always Right GIF by ZionGiphyIt should perhaps be said calling someone an idiot, or even thinking it, is not a particularly nice thing to do.
Even so, if you're tempted to do so when you're in the presence of a particular individual, probably best not to provoke them.
After all, if you're so determined to "win," does it really make you any better than them?