Deadwood Gone

In college, I had a professor who had a reputation for being an oddball if not a downright lunatic. The first day of class, there were approximately 35 students in attendance. Dr. Saddmann (not his real name) outlined what we would cover in this six-week summer course. There would be six books, he said, with an essay assigned for each one, and a test on each book. Class discussion would also be a major part of the grade.

As the class convened the second day, I noticed that I seemed to have only about a dozen classmates. Discouraged by the huge assignment load, about two-thirds of the kids had dropped the class. Just as I had expected, Dr. Saddmann came into class looking quite satisfied. He grinned as he looked around the depleted classroom and said, "Now that we've gotten rid of the deadwood, we can get down to business. We will read two books, write one paper, and have an open-book final in this class."

A Teacher by Any Other Name

Thanks to Mr. Blake:

A girl in middle school asked me if she could leave for an early dismissal, but when she tried to get my attention she accidentally called me "Master Blake".

First, it was funny because she called me "master", but then it got even "funnier" when the other students realized what it sounded like when said quickly.

Oops! I had to nip that in the bud rather fast.

Lost in Translation

As I was teaching a kindergarten art class, I was helping the students finish a drawing of things that they like.

A boy would ask me how to draw a football. I would demonstrate how to on the board. A little girl would ask me how to draw a bike. It would be drawn on the board. Before I knew it, the board was covered with small drawings used as examples for the students.

As I walked through the class, a boy from India raised his hand and waited patiently for me to get to him.

When I got to him, he said with a strong Indian accent, “I cannot write this dinosaur.”

He was still new to the English language. I tried to understand what he was trying to say.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“I cannot write this dinosaur,” he said again, waiting on me to help him with his request.

“One more time,” I still had not caught what he said.

Again, “I cannot write this dinosaur,” he said looking up at me.

“You cannot write it?” I really wanted to help him, but I didn't understand.

“Yes. I cannot write it,” he said again matter-of-factly.

I looked around at the other students for help as to what he was saying. The other students were busy finishing their drawings. Finally, I remembered that I had drawn a triceratops on the board for another student earlier in the class period.

“Oh. This?” I ask moving to the board and pointing to the dinosaur.

“Yes. I cannot write it,” he said happy that I finally understood.

“I gotcha. You cannot draw this dinosaur. Is that what you mean?” I ask him. “You cannot draw it?”

“Yes. I cannot write it.”

We’ll work on that.

Not Recommended

A female teacher of 31 years shared this excellent one:

While still in college for education, she had a professor who told the class a cure-all for misbehavior in schools. On the first day, you find the worst student that there is. The student who can’t stop talking, who can’t stay in his seat, and who is the most disrespectful. Then you take him out into the schoolyard where all of the other students can see and shoot him. After that, you won’t have anymore discipline problems.

Virgin Joke Maker

My students are witty and clever.

I teach high school art. During the painting unit, the students are to get a grasp on color theory and color mixing. Because the school is too gigantic (35 students per class), we can only afford to use tempera paint which is probably the worst paint that there is.

And since the students are so uneducated when it comes to anything, we have to start with the very basics. What is color? What are primary colors? What two colors do you get when you mix yellow and red? How did you make it to high school?

One student, while mixing a red-purple, thought he’d try his hand at being funny.

Failing miserably, he caught my attention and said, “Mr. ********, check it out. I just mixed Virgin Red,” naming this new color that he’d invented something to try to make me laugh or get a rise out of me. Some other students at the table laugh at this new fun name due to underdeveloped senses of humor.

Luckily, I realized that he was not funny, and said back to him as seriously as possible, “You’re right, Kevin. You did make a dark red,” as though I did not even hear his stupid attempt at a joke. “Good job.”

“No, no. Mr. ********, Virgin Red.” He tried again, smiling.

“Yeah. I heard you. Dark Red,” I nodded smiling innocently. “Nice work.”

“No.” He’s beginning to get frustrated. “Mr. ********. VIRGIN Red.” And it was still not funny.

Angrily and quickly through my teeth, I reply, “Yes, Kevin. That’s what I said. DARK Red. I heard you the first time.”

The look of confusion on his face said it all. I had confused the crap out of him, and made the other students laugh, not with him, but at him without him even realizing.

Beating a Student to the Punch

A friend of mine was substituting in an inner city middle school where fights among students were commonplace each day.

One day, a fight broke out in her classroom between two boys. After attempting to break it up without success, she went next door to get the assistance of a male teacher. As he learned about the fight, an insane look came across his face, and he headed for her room.

Once inside, the male teacher yelled, “Fight me!” And he put his hands up in the air to taunt them.

He pushed one of the boys to the ground, while the other one, so frightened by a teacher acting this way, took off running down the hall.

The male teacher climbed onto a chair, and began shouting to the rest of the students, “Clap for me! Clap for me!”

They did. On the chair, the male teacher began slapping his elbow in preparation to do a wrestling move to the boy on the ground, who by that time was laughing pretty hard. The teacher jumped off the chair, landing on the student, not harming him, but finishing the move.

Then he turned his attention toward the other boy who had disappeared down the hall. The male teacher ran down the hall in the direction the boy had gone and eventually found him hiding under the principal’s desk.

Fight thwarted.

Fatal if Swallowed

I once had a kindergartner who loved to eat anything and everything. Wally was his name. Whatever it was that was put in front of him, it was guaranteed to end up in his stomach. For this reason, Wally had an aide with him during the school day.

The first time I learned of Wally's habits was when I set a container of crayons down on each table. Some crayons were old and some were new. Without any warning, Wally picked up a crayon without a wrapper on it and popped it into his mouth. The aide immediately reached her hand in and fished the slime-covered crayon out.

Another time, we were using white craft glue for an assignment. After carefully applying glue to the backs of papers, Wally would also have small amounts of glue on his fingers. He would very delicately lick each finger that got glue on it as if he were eating a sweet treat like icing or melted chocolate. No reason to be concerned, however because the glue was non-toxic.

One time I got too close. While helping Wally with his project, I felt a tug at my ID tag which hung around my neck. Wally had found my ID tag and was smelling it, then preparing to take a bite of it. I snapped it away just in time.

Finally, while using clay, Wally decided he'd have a little taste of the exciting new pliable material. At first, I was concerned, but his aide informed me that he eats any number of things that are potentially harmful or dangerous in any given day, so the nurse administers a shot that negates any side affects from these harmful ingestions.

And I thought my lunch was bad.

Laughter is the Best Something Something

While student teaching, I had a second grade boy who gave me the most hilarious answer I have yet to hear. I was standing at the board, and I had asked someone in the class to tell me what we had done in the previous class. Several students put their hands in the air hoping to answer the question.

“Yes, Curtis,” I said to a boy in the back of the room.

Before I knew what hit me, I heard in a high pitched voice, “Witha withay thuh wee thay uh though weeth ow ith thee oh with thee oh they uh though witha woothee thow uh tho….”

It went on like that for over a minute. I tried my hardest to understand what he was saying, to get anything intelligible. There was nothing. Not one word.

I had forgotten when I picked him that he had a lisp. A horrible one. After about eight seconds of the speech, I just about laughed in his face. I almost excused myself, but instead put my hand over my mouth as he continued to cover my smile. At one point I thought it was a joke. Then I remembered that second graders aren’t clever enough for this kind of trick, and none of the other students were laughing. Perhaps they understood him.

I caught my cooperating teacher’s eye during this onslaught of words, and she immediately looked away because she too was about to lose it. If our eyes were to have locked for longer than that, we both would have been done.

After his speech, I swallowed the laughter and said to him, “Not exactly” because I had no clue what he had said. That was rough.

Blend Together

As a first grade class was walking into my art room, I realized I had not cleaned the tables from the previous class. (The last class had been using chalk pastels. They’re dusty.) The students found their seats, and one little girl, who was white, sat at the same table with a little girl who was black. The white girl began swirling her hands in a circular motion on the tabletop.

After a minute or so, the white girl looked at the pastel-covered palms of her hands and exclaimed, “My hands are all black!”

The black girl looked at the backs of her hands and with great delight said, “Mine too!”

Let Me Just Do the Project for You

While I was student teaching in a small district in Pennsylvania, I had the great fortune of playing an unparalleled practical joke on a high school student.

I was in my fifth week of teaching in a drawing and painting class. The students were working on an assignment which was to select a word (any word), reproduce the word on drawing paper using a particular font and then to illustrate the word in some way using colored pencils. Not too difficult. Scratch that. Not at all difficult. Not even a little bit.

The students had two weeks to complete the assignment. One boy, we’ll call him Mark, decided that he did not want to work on this assignment. He sat at his desk for these two weeks with a blank piece of paper in front of him “brainstorming” as he put it. Daily encouragement could not prompt him to work.

Finally, the due date for the project rolled around. Now, it’s important that you know that after each project, I had the students fill out an evaluation sheet where questions would be answered concerning their work. Question seven on the sheet read, “What word did you select to illustrate and why?” Two minutes before the end of the class on the project’s due date, Mark placed his completed evaluation sheet on my desk.

“Mark, I have your evaluation sheet, but I didn’t see your project,” I informed him.

“I put it on your desk,” he responded confidently.

“Alright. I’ll look again,” I said as the bell rang, and he left the class.

I returned to my desk, double-checked and searched the floor. His project was not there. I checked the storage shelf where the students kept their assignments and found that Mark had not completed the assignment. In fact, his paper was still on the shelf, not even started with his name written on the back.

I checked the evaluation sheet that he had turned in. It was completed as though he had done the project including an answer to question seven which asked what word he had selected and why. According to this evaluation sheet Mark had chosen “Friend” as his word to illustrate.

Suddenly, I was struck like a bolt of lightning to the brain with an idea so brilliant that few could match it. I would do the assignment for him. Not only would I do the assignment for him, but I would do the WORST JOB on it imaginable.

So I did. The word itself was done terribly, no straight lines, crooked letters and set on an angle. The color scheme was disgusting, Purples, oranges, browns, grays, and blues. One letter was in spots another outlined in black. The illustrations were so ugly, all done drawn with my left hand worse than a preschooler. I did the worst job on it that I could. I was striving for crap. Then I hung it on display in the hall with the others.

The following day, once I started the students on their next assignment, I called Mark out into the hall. I showed him the project.

“Mark, are you sure you want to hand this in for a grade? Because I know you can do a better job than this.” I pointed to the work hanging in the hall.

Confusion covered his face.

“I mean, I saw what you did on your last assignment,” I continued “and you did a decent job. I know you can do better than this.”

He fumbled for words. “This isn’t my assignment.”

“What do you mean?” I asked perplexed.

“That’s my word, but this isn’t my project,” he said.

“But this is the one that was on my desk. Isn’t this the word you selected? Didn’t you illustrate ‘Friend’?” I asked him.

“Yes, I picked ‘Friend’, but…”

“Yeah, cause it has your name on the back in your handwriting,” I said to him showing him his name on the back in his own writing. He could not understand. “So you’re telling me that this isn’t your project, but it has your name on it?” I ask.

“Yeah. I don’t get it,” he said.

“Weird.” I say shaking my head feigning confusion myself. “Why don’t you go ask one of your friends if they did this project as a joke and then put it on my desk with your name on it. Because I don’t know where your actual project could be,” I say.

“Well, I can do another one,” he says as confused as ever.

“Well, if you already did it once, you don’t have to do it again. I don’t want you to have to do the entire thing over again. That wouldn’t make sense. Since you already worked so hard on it.” I think I made my point.

He went back into the classroom and redid the project for partial credit.

Cleaning the Students Out of the Desks

It was a typical Friday afternoon, and I realized that the children's desks were in dire need of a good cleaning. I told the children I would give them fifteen minutes to get their desks in order before they could leave. I circulated around the room, as the children tossed out old papers, organized books, placed supplies back into pouches, and so forth.

Then, from behind, I hear a student yell, "Mrs. ******* help".

Wesley, our class clown that year, decided it would be funny to fit himself into his desk, backside first. Our desks are the style that have a big open compartment on the bottom for books. Wesley, one of my smallest students ever, was completely in the desk with just his little hands and feet sticking out.

"Wesley," I scolded, as I swiftly glided across the room to assist him.

As I approach him, I hear one child say, "He's stuck, Mrs. G., he's really stuck".

Yea, yea, I thought to myself. We'll get him out. Well, I tried and tried to retrieve him from the desk, but was not successful. I commanded another student to recruit the help of a fellow teacher, Mr. W., who came from across the room.

"What's up Wesley?", he asked, seeing the situation. Finally, we decided to try to lift the desk and dump him out. Mr. W. laughed, "What goes in, must come out"

I was not amused, and by this time, Wesley had begun to cry. He'd realized he was in trouble. We recruited yet another teacher, and still could not find a way to release this child from the desk. Finally, we called 911, and his parent. They had to actually disassemble the desk to get the child out. It was 5:00 before Wesley got to go home that night, and I do believe that was the last time he tried to inhabit a desk.

There are no Hugs!

One thing about elementary school students that is endearing, or at least should be I guess, is that they are very touchy feely. They will rest their heads on your shoulder when you are sitting at a desk doing a demonstration; they will tap you if they need to get your attention to tell you something; and worst of all, they will try to hug you.

Once when my first year of teaching was rolling along and the students became more comfortable with me, a strange habit would form among certain classes. As the students were coming into my room, before they would take their seats many of them decided that it was appropriate to give me a quick hug. Many teachers would think this practice was fine. It was not.

In this day and age, it’s not a good idea for teachers and students to touch no matter what the circumstance, especially male teachers. This was the least of my worries as I was being hugged before each class.

My biggest worry came with winter. With winter comes cold season, and with that comes snot. Runny noses. Disease. During this time I quickly realized that I could no longer tolerate the hugs.

Because I did not want to be rude to the six-year-old’s face by saying, “I don’t want your gross hugs. Please don’t touch me,” I had to quickly devise a plan for the hug emergency to stop. There was the option of standing at my desk as the students entered and found their seats. This was not effective as I often had confidential information passed to me from another teacher or a parent at the start of the class. I could have the students take their seats as quickly as I could like some kind of contest. This game would get old quickly, so I had to devise a different plan.

Finally, I had the brilliant idea to just hold something in my hand. A sharpened pencil. That way if the students were to try to hug me, they would impale themselves. I would hold it down low to the ground close to where the hugs would be coming at me. This plan only worked for a number of days before students would not see the sharpened pencil in my hand, and I would have to quickly remove it at the last second.

So that plan didn’t work, but I was onto something with the holding something idea. On the chalk tray in my room was a dowel rod that was about three feet long that I would sometimes use as a pointer. There was my answer. I would hold the dowel rod out in front of me using both hands so that physically the students could not reach me to hug me. Victory! The plan worked perfectly. The students would enter my class, see that a hug was not possible for that day and then take their seats. Occasionally, a student would wait for a few moments seeing if there were some way to get around the obstacle, and I would have to abruptly say, “NO! No hugs today. You have to find your seat.” They would, and the crisis of snot touching my clothing was averted.

Bypassing the Throat

Blood, vomit, snot, saliva, pee, poo it’s all disgusting. I nearly gag every time I brush my own teeth. I have a weak stomach.

So when I found out that I would be meeting with a class of sixteen special ed students, I was more than concerned. Would I have to see drool? Would there be smells of human feces? Would the students try to touch me? If I throw up on them do I get fired?

So mentally, I prepared myself for these things. The runny noses would be wiped by the aids. The smells could be masked. Diapers would be worn. Kitchen towels could be wrapped around necks to catch drool. It would not be too bad, I told myself. And it wasn’t bad when the class finally showed up the first day. The class was even border line fun to teach. I even got used to the constant audible teeth grinding.

But nothing could prepare me for what would come next.

Toward the end of the fifth meeting with the class, a student who was pushed around in a wheel chair, we’ll call him Miguel, began making extra unusual moans. The aids, who were busy doing his project for him, begin reaching into a backpack that was attached to the back of Miguel’s chair.

“Awe, Miguel’s hungry,” one of the aids exclaimed.

She reached into the bag and pulled out a can of Pediasure.

“Oh that’s cool,” I thought to myself. “He drinks Pediasure. That way he’ll get all of the required nutrients.”

She shook the can and opened it. Next, she pulled out a really long straw for him to drink with and put one end into the opened can. The other end disappeared into the backpack. She reached far into the bag and found another straw. She lifted up Miguel’s shirt and inserted this second straw directly into his stomach. She flipped a switch and the liquid began moving from the can into him, completely bypassing the mouth and esophagus. Miguel’s eyes rolled back into his head and a satisfied look came across his face.

At this point, my knees gave out from under me, and I nearly fainted. Quickly, I retreated to my desk to force myself to breath. Questions were posed to me by students and other aids, but I was too focused on not passing out to answer.

I was given no warning what so ever. The food just quickly went from the can directly into his stomach by way of the port at the surface of his skin. Disgusting. Nothing can prepare you for this. I hate my job.

Please Text During Class

Four score and seven years ago schools were invented in one room school houses. Then no child left behind came along and tried its hardest to ruin education. A year or so later I worked in an elementary school and finally in a high school. On Thursday a student showed me his phone during first period. On his phone was a text message from his guidance counselor stating, “Michael, please see me. And turn off your phone.”

“May I go see my counselor?” asked the student holding his phone up for me to see.

I was stunned. “No. Absolutely not. I’m sorry. That’s not a pass.”

“But she needs to talk to me, probably about this class,” he said.

“Still no. If a counselor needs to see you, they will send for you,” I said. Then I reminded him that his phone should be off and that it should be put away. Our school has a no cell phone policy ever.

He pleaded for me to let him see his counselor. Finally, I emailed the counselor asking if she was in fact the sender of the text. She was. She was caught. The guidance counselor of a high school in a supposedly “good” county was sending a text message to a student during instructional time.

“Yes, the text was from me, but I will be out of the building until one. He should see me after one. And tell him to turn his phone off, like I did in the text.”

That was the day I quit my job. Not really, but I felt like it. The guidance counselors don’t know the battle that we as teachers go through daily with the cell phones. The students feel the need to text under the desks a various points throughout the class time. Forty five minutes can’t pass without the students having to know what’s happening with their friends in the other part of the building.

I’d love let the students know, “We see you texting. Every single time. We just choose to not stop you each and every time because it would take away from the learning of the rest of the students. I promise you can survive without your phone for forty five consecutive minutes, you little idiot.” I would love to break their phone right in front of their face and then sarcastically and as offensively as possible say, “Oops!”

So when a guidance counselor condones this kind of activity by texting a student during my class, I get ticked with a side of violence.

Is That Barf on Your Shoe?

Every teacher has a throw up story. Mine took place on the first day of school in a kindergarten class. The students were working at their tables individually. And I was walking through the classroom answering questions.

When I arrived to one little girl’s desk, I noticed that there was barf on her paper, on her arm, on the desk, on her shirt, on her shoe, on the chair, and on the floor. She didn’t seem to mind; however, because she continued to work on her assignment. I looked at the other students at her desk. They too seemed to be oblivious to the vomit that was covering this little girl and most of her belongings. They were all still diligently working as though it were perfectly normal to be covered in puke.

When asked if she threw up, she politely nodded and waited for further instruction. She went to the health room to be cleaned up and taken home, and the principal came from next door to clean the mess.

Dare Me to Pierce My Ear?

While student teaching, I was working with a crafts class, meaning that all projects in the class were three dimensional. The assignment in progress was to take a bunch of old garbage and a hot glue gun and start gluing until a “found object” sculpture was completed. Among the stuff available for the students to use was a small box that contained some old jewelry.

One tenth grade boy, while gluing his “stuff” together found a gold earring with the back still on it.

“Mr. *******? Dare me to pierce my ear?” he asks me.

I’m sure I had a disgusted look on my face just thinking about the diseases he would contract and the infection that would be inevitable. Obviously, he’s kidding, I tell myself. Of course a student isn’t stupid enough to pierce their ear during class with a dirty earring that was found in a pile of refuse.

“No, I definitely don’t. These are for the project,” I say. I continue making my rounds answering questions the students may have and giving suggestions for their projects.

Eventually, I return to the desk where the boy with the earring was. I am horrified and partially sickened to discover that he has in fact pierced his ear with the disgusting discarded earring. He had apparently pushed it through skin and cartilage then cleaned up any blood and put the back onto it. His ear had turned a bright pink.

I didn’t remain at the school long enough to see what kind of disease he’d gotten from doing this, but I made my cooperating teacher aware of the situation. She told me to ignore him and pretend I didn’t notice the earring in his ear. Done and done.

Please contribute a story.

If you have an excellent story from school, whether you are a teacher, administrator, or staff member, please contribute. This is your chance to tell your story.

Please label as humorous, asinine, ironic, or other.

No names please.

I will review each story, and do small amounts of editing for clarification, cohesion, and continuity before posting to the site.

These stories will be published. Please do not submit any stories that will compromise your position as an educator.

Submit more than one if you have them.

Please email to misteracademia@gmail.com

Thank you.

An A is Worth Two Beers and a White Russian

Today, a guidance counselor offered to buy me a drink at happy hour if I would allow a girl to pass my art class, a requirement at our school, so she would graduate Friday. Well, that's not too big of a deal. Or is it??? Well, she missed 43 days of my class out of 90 – not quite half. She earned a C the first quarter and then an E (the equivalent of an F – F’s hurt kids' feelings) the second. Oh, absolutely, I'll let her pass. And while I'm at it, why don't I change both of her grades to A’s and then buy you a drink? Then I'll go to her house and clean her toilet with my bare hands and sell my car to pay for the family's meals for the next 10 years. I'll take out a high-interest loan to buy them a house, and work nights to help pay for it. I don't need clothes, so I can give those to them also. Then I'll tell the rest of the students that academic regime means nothing, school policy is for suckers, and they can get away with whatever they want from now on. There's no need to go to art class; you'll pass anyway.

Or else… or else I'll implement the school-wide policy of not passing a student who fails a class, hold the student to high standards, and treat this child as an equal to all of the other students who skipped school and as a result aren't passing my class. I’m sorry; I’ll not contribute to the baby-fication of society. I will not coddle students, telling them it’s okay to do nothing, then pass them through the class; that teaches them nothing about the reality that awaits them shortly after graduation. If we are supposed to be high school teachers, why don’t the staff members act like we’re in a high school? How can we be expected to enforce policy if others in the building are not willing to do the same? A house divided cannot stand.

Now I can't decide. Which option is more appealing?

"Do you want to be known as a stickler, or do you want to get the student out of the building?" – a direct quote from the guidance counselor. "This reputation will follow you." – an easy nudge in the "right" direction. "I’d hate to be the one to tell a student she’s not graduating because of an art credit," he says. Really? I would LOVE to tell someone that because they weren’t responsible enough to come to one single class, they can’t walk across the stage. “… because of an art credit.” You're right; art class isn't important. Tell the administration that it should be an elective and not a mandatory class. Then the dross can be removed from the class, and some real art can take place with a select few students who actually want to be there, who want to learn and who want to progress as artists. But if it’s going to be instated as a requirement, MAKE IT ONE!! Stop letting kids slide! That tells them that governing policy is just for show, and it can be easily beaten. And it tells me that my class and career choice are not important. The second I stop taking my class seriously, the students, staff and administration will follow.

This story has a happy ending, because, as the guidance counselor stated about himself, "I'm an idiot. I called you down here for no reason. She already had an art credit from her freshman year. I'm sorry." Idiot – you said it; I didn't. But I agree.

Why this blog?

What teacher doesn’t have a million different stories from their days at school? Stories that they repeatedly say they must write down. What educator doesn’t have an absurd tale that they tell over and over again to family and friends? What instructor cannot say that they did not have a unique experience in the classroom that others should hear concerning interactions with students, parents, and staff? This blog is their outlet.