Humor can be a powerful tool in the classroom. For example, Randy Garner, Ph.D., a psychologist at Sam Houston State University, found that students were more likely to recall a statistics lecture when it was interjected with jokes about relevant topics.
And sometimes, it can make the teacher's day too. Reddit user u/KDwiththeFXD recently shared a heartwarming and funny anecdote on r/Teachers, proving just how unpredictable kids can be.
It all began when u/KDwiththeFXD was subbing in a lower-achieving high school. A student, who happened to have developmental issues, became the target of a bully's remarks. The teacher was about to intervene and defend the student, but they quickly snapped back themselves, saying, "I am in here for a reason, and I have an excuse. You're here and failing because you're just dumb."
Unable to maintain a serious demeanor, u/KDwiththeFXD burst into laughter, leaving the bully feeling embarrassed and rendering them speechless for the remainder of the class. As the comments on the post poured in, many fellow educators shared their own hilarious encounters. Continue scrolling to check them out.
This post may include affiliate links.
I have a very quiet super studious girl in my rowdiest class full of athletes. She keeps to herself, gets her work done and is generally my favorite kid ever. One day, the athletes were exceptionally horrible and I happened to walk by her as she muttered to herself "God your moms should have all swallowed"
I snorted coffee out of my nose. No one else heard. She was mortified that I heard her.
My class is prepping for a play, and one student was super pumped to do the sound design. He came up to me with his chromebook and airpods and said, "Here, listen to this sound effect, I think it would be perfect," so I put in the airpod and heard......
Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."
The kid Rick-Rolled me.
Two kids with the same first name in one class. One was chronically absent. I’d call his name and the other one would say “maybe he died.” This went on for a few weeks. One day, chronically absent kid shows up and other kid says, just audibly enough for me to hear, “I murdered the wrong one.”
I was ROLLING and no one else in the room new why.
I’m a 7th grade SS teacher, one class I had to explain what a swine herder was. A student in the back called out “Does that mean a person with chickens is a… chicken tender?”
All the time.
The other day I (a clumsy person) knocked my water bottle over and spilled it all behind my desk. Immediately I just start going “everything’s fine! Everything’s fine!”
A 2nd grade boy somberly said “Everything was not fine.”
I was once teaching a lesson about horseshoe crabs (environmental ed) and mentioned they lay 100,000 eggs a season. And a boy in the back goes “dayummm that’s a lot of child support.”
I couldn’t help it. Had to laugh.
7th grader: but he's the one who started it.
Me: well it takes two to tango.
7th grader: but it only takes one to break dance
Student then begins break dancing.
Yesterday at the bake sale fundraiser my friend picked out an ugly looking cupcake and says "she's not the prettiest girl at the dance but she'll do".
The most innocent student in the world replies "as long as she tastes good". The kid had no idea what she had said. Closest I've ever come to legitimately choking on food in my life.
One of my students who REALLY needs his ADHD medication wasn't getting it for a couple of weeks, and he was having a hell of a time coping. He walking past me, and I heard him whispering to himself, "Holy spirit, activate!" When I'm having a bad moment nowadays, I can be heard whispering the same thing. It still gives me a giggle.
I got so owned by my 4yr old pre k student..
Child-what’s your name
Me-Miss Stephanie
Child- what’s this (pointing at nose)
Me-nose
Child- (holding up hands) what am I holding
Me- nothing
Child- ha ha Miss Stephanie knows nothing.
I look at the other teacher and she’s busted out laughing. I stood there in shock because he flawlessly executed the joke.
Aww this reminded me of a boy at my old school who said the exact same thing to everyone he walked up to (when we were elementary school age). It was kind of his thing. I miss the kids from my old school.
After telling a student he needed to sit down and do his work, he replied “it’s hard to work with all these children around.”
I have two:
1. An 8th grader asked me if a skank was the female version of a skunk
2. Two boys were arguing and one told the other that he looked like a gummy bear. After getting them to knock it off I realized that he does, in fact, look like a gummy bear
When someone makes a valid point but you can't express it out loud.
“Do I look handsome today? I’m wearing my dinosaur underwear!”
I had an ELL class reading a simplified version of Romeo and Juliet, and I was reading the stage directions.
I read the direction, “They kiss. They kiss again.”
A 15 year old girl yells, “WHAT THE HELL KIND OF BOOK IS THIS?!?!”
I died.
My fourth grader comes up and says he needs to tell me something, but wants to do it quietly, looking all serious. He comes to whisper in my ear, and simply says, "No one out pizzas the hut."
I play bass and teach general music. Since I’m teaching my third graders the instrument families right now, I figured I would show them a video of me playing bass. So it was a duet with my Asian male friend, and myself, a Caucasian female wearing a dress in the video. Conversation goes like this:
“OMG! Is that you?”
“Yes, it is!”
“Which one?!”
I should also note I’m seven months pregnant, so the idea that I look like an Asian man just killed me and I couldn’t stop laughing
Small class (4) the other 22 went on a field trip for the advanced kids. Well, wasn’t teaching new content with the large majority of students not there……
The handful of kids wanted to play history hangman…..so, with the students guessing letters and missing over and over and over, one of the girls quickly said, “This is why we ain’t on the field trip!”
I laughed out loud. Told her thank you for making me smile, that was the best joke I heard all year. Gave her candy. Top 5 moment of this year.
During a 7th grade math test. Everyone is quiet and one girl starts sneezing. These sneezes are very loud room shakers that scare everyone. She stops for a minute then starts up a few again. In between a few of them I hear her friend next to her whisper "Stop doing that or you're gonna s**t yourself"
I don't know how I kept it together...
It’s my user name story! I created an account just to tell this story.
Little pre-K boy was arguing with an assistant teacher (who shouldn’t have been a teacher for many reasons, one being she was okay arguing with a 4yo). She told the kid something like, “you smell like doo doo.” He responded with, “well you smell like dried lipstick.” And he had just the smuggest look on his face and I died laughing. He won the argument in my book.
But also any adult who argues with a 4yo has already lost because you’re arguing with a 4yo.
But what color of dried lipstick did she smell like? (Also, what kind of "assistant teacher" thinks it's ok to tell a 4 year old they smell like doo doo?!)
While subbing 8th grade one kid loudly said to another "Shut up! That's why my dad don't touch your mom no more"
A third grader called me a big glob of goo, and then said I was fired and was calling the police. Actually, he screamed all of this at me at the top of his lungs. I still laugh about the glob of goo comment.
Also a kid told me I was “like a rock in his shoe” to mean I was annoying him. I use that one in my own repertoire of insults now
"Like a rock in my shoe," the latest (and best) variation of "thorn in my side." I need to find someone annoying to use that on
I have a lot but heres a good one
We were talking about favorite foods one day and this one 9th grader said he loved pickles.
So the other kids in the class started asking him if he liked things like pickled beets, pickled onions, etc...he said yes to every single pickled thing they asked him.
I asked if he'd ever tried pickled cucumbers and he said he didn't know they made those...lost my composure and had to be helped back to my feet after that one
So far my favorite is when, early in the semester, I told students that we would be learning Latin dances (spanish teacher.) turns out a student misheard me, so after a month or so of classes while we have down time this one girl just blurts out “ so when are you going to teach us how to lap dance?”
“Sometimes I fart when I run and it helps me go faster!”
convo with a kinder student:
student: you smell like my grandma
me: oh...that's nice
student: she died
first, i just about died trying not to laugh, then i started wondering if i should be worried.
I’m a band director, and I was explaining to my beginner brass class the need to support their sound. I told them to think of squeezing their stomachs and I had a student say, “I have IBS so is it safe for me to do this?”
"Chicken wings are a side dish."
Entirely innocuous, but the whole class dropped what they were doing when they heard it, and we proceeded to debate for, legit, 45 minutes.
IMO..... Chicken wings can serve as an appetizer..... But can also be the main course.......I need to look into making dessert wings.
“Please look around the ground for crayons that ran away from your desk and disappeared.” - me
“Dang, just like my dad!”
Teaching 8th grade - I had two really heavy-set boys in this class. They were told to give a presentation on their dream jobs.
The heaviest of the two went first and said verbatim “My dream is to be a famous chef, it is a dream I have with such a fiery passion. Just like Steven’s dream is to swim in a swimming pool…filled with fried chicken.”
I lost it.
Student, to me: Miss, do you have a boyfriend?
Me: no I don’t
Student: soooo, does that mean you’re single and ready to Pringle?!
Just a mingle single who's ready to Pringle ;)
“Okay kids, fold your paper hotdog style”
“Your mom likes it hotdog style”
That’s a top 10 for me.
3rd grader was running from point a to point b. The way third graders just can’t stop doing. “Friends please slow down, it’s muddy out here today…” as if on cue, the friend with the big body he has yet to grow into falls literally over himself. Body out, mud all over his pants. Not hurt. Just a hot mess. “Friend, are you alright”. Kids looks up. Dead pan. “I hate my life..”. I still laugh (like I did under my mask then ) thinking about it to this day.
These 2 boys were beefing over early morning basketball and one tells me "Apparently I broke his vertebrae, insulted his personal image, and airballed every shot! This is why you don't drink during pregnancy!" Another time 8th grade girls were talking astrology and one boy just shouts "STOP SPEAKING IN MOON RUNES"
Recently I was discussing something with my high school seniors and someone used the word "tragedies." Without skipping a beat, the quiet kid next to him whispers "trage-deez-nuts" during one of those inexplicably silent moments that sometimes happen in a crowded room. I laughed my a*s off and everybody then had permission to crack up.
We were discussing Darwin's Theory of Evolution. I mentioned how most offspring never survive long enough to reproduce.
One of my students raises his hand and says "you mean they all die as virgins?".
Pre-K'er asked me how old I was. I told her. She said, "Oh my god! That makes me want to die!"
That convo will randomly pop in my head and still makes me laugh out loud!
I worked with a student who had Prader-Willi Syndrome (and the resulting behaviors). He peed on the floor, looked at us and said " TADAAAAAA". I had to walk away to laugh.
Apparently it is a genetic disorder that, among other things, causes constant hunger that often results in childhood obesity and diabetes and some intellectual impairment and behavioral problems.
First grade:
Ms. Puzzled_loquat, I just come to school for the change of scenery.
I teach 7th grade and they are still learning new vocab words and such. One boy told me he ‘had to go to the bathroom very tediuously’
My phone went off and played the digital freak out sound and one of my kids goes “I think that was Mr.‘s real voice” and so now he will walk by me and go “beep boop” and I just crack up.
First grader, dead serious eating string cheese: “Excuse me. This cheese tastes like watermelon.”
“You so f****n annoying, that’s why your grandma stole from dollar general”
Like what, how does that even make sense. I still laughed
Well you're so damn exasperating that your great aunt purloined from family dollar!
I had a Taco Bell cup from a rare opportunity to leave campus for lunch. A kid said, “Oh, you gonna get GASSY.”
A kid told me once that he didn’t want to get cancer because he didn’t want to run across Canada like Terry Fox did.
This week a 4th grader said to a classmate, "bro, look at you. You're sweating. That's proof you're doing too much."
A 5th grader: "Home Depot, we have the meats."
And a 3rd grader, explaining why they don't like kiwi: "it has hair... Like a woman."
I think the home depot one is a reference (or perhaps an accidental mix-up) of the Arby's (fast food chain) slogan "Arby's, we have the meats"
Note: this post originally had 47 images. It’s been shortened to the top 45 images based on user votes.
In a college history class, my professor, who had notoriously bad handwriting, wrote some important point on the dry erase board. It was pretty illegible. A student in back of the lecture hall yelled out "Are you SURE you're left- handed?" We all died laughing and then the teacher hurled the marker at him. It was hilarious.
One time in 8th grade history, my teacher asked "what are people from Oregon called?" B3xause my classmate was being an idiot, and I legit raised my hand and said "oreganos" with a the most straight face possible and my entire class f*****g lost it.
In a college history class, my professor, who had notoriously bad handwriting, wrote some important point on the dry erase board. It was pretty illegible. A student in back of the lecture hall yelled out "Are you SURE you're left- handed?" We all died laughing and then the teacher hurled the marker at him. It was hilarious.
One time in 8th grade history, my teacher asked "what are people from Oregon called?" B3xause my classmate was being an idiot, and I legit raised my hand and said "oreganos" with a the most straight face possible and my entire class f*****g lost it.
