KIDS SAY... Part 5

Specifically stolen from an NSTA List serve for teachers in answer to "What's the funniest thing a student asked or said?"


  1. I was explaining einsteins theory of relativity and how as you increase speed time slows down and a girl said with profound exclamation "is that why when you go fast you get to a place quicker?"

  2. The comment that absolutely floored me and opened my eyes to the issue of misconceptions:  while watching Neil Armstrong take his first steps off the ladder and onto the lunar surface (in Man on the Moon by Walter Cronkite), a student asked me, "What would happen if someone stepped on the earth like that?"  When I replied, completely bewildered, "What do you mean?" and, stomping my feet, "What do you think I am doing?", she said, "No, the planet, earth!"  It took another student to clear things up -- she believed that we live inside the earth and wondered what would happen if someone walked around on its outside!

  3. In response to the biology question "why do you tan?" To look better...

  4. I was teaching the animal kingdom today to 10th grade biology. In response to the question: "What is a characteristic that all members of the animal kingdom share?" I received the following: "They're all alive" "They all have cells"

  5. After already covering Weather and had moved onto Weathering and Erosion I had a student ask me if the snow in the winter (beacuse I was talking about freezing and thawing) was from all the saved up evaporation from during the summer....

  6. (MY personal favorite so far...) Many years ago, I was teaching a 7th grade Life Science class. We were doing some basic genetics and they were doing Punnett squares using the sex chromosomes. At the same time there was a big news story about a woman and her female partner having a baby. One of the students asked if a couple consisting of two women could only have a girl baby since they both had two X chromosomes.

  7. My first year teaching (6 years ago) I made an off-handed comment that 'we all know that water runs downhill' and a student said, "Not always". I stood there trying my best to think about when water would not run downhill, and not being able to come up with anything, I said "Like when?" She then said that the Nile flows uphill and many other students agreed with her! I was shocked and dumbfounded. I got a map and a globe out and pointed out that just because North is up on a map, when you point north, you do not point up to the sky! The Nile, I pointed out, starts in the Ethiopian mountains and ends at sea level in the Mediterranean Sea. I spent many minutes on this subject-and I am not sure I ever convinced her and the others that north is not up-sooooo, some time later I was telling this story to a friend who was also a first year teacher at another school and so she said something about it to her kids. The next time we got together she told me that her kids agreed that the Nile flowed uphill and then they proceeded to inform her that there are two Nile rivers. There is the one that is on the surface and under it, there is another river that flows underground!!! (the upper and lower Nile, of course.!!) OMG! I told my friend that she won!

  8. My 6th grade students constantly misread the word organism as orgasm.  Most of the time, none of the kids even notice...aah, innocence. Oh yes, and testicles for tentacles, too (in their ocean life unit)! 7th graders were so much fun.

  9. I was teaching this year about single celled organisms and I introduced paramecium. One student asks: "Miss, isn't that a type of cheese?" I think she meant parmesean...

     

  10. Teaching about living and non living: "When the egg comes out of the cow, it is no longer living..."

  11. When does New York get the most daylight? (After graphing hours of day vs. month): "Daytime!" I guess my question wasn't clear enough...

  12. Trying to get them to guess "Breathing": "What must you do all the time with your knose so you won't die?" "Clean the booggers out!"

  13. Last year in my Earth Science class I had made the statement that I used to ride a blue mammoth to school back in the ice ages when one of my student asked me, "Oh my God Mister, you had a mammoth?".

  14. Last year (biology) “How do you spell D.N.A.?”  I answered D-N-A  (I had deoxyribose nucleic acid spelled out on the board).

  15. When I started teaching high school one of the first year students noticed the teachers in the hall and asked why we all looked alike (three us out of the 8 were bearded, Caucasian, and had a "full" physique.)  I answered a bit flip- "The science teacher image act of 1980."  -- the next year I over-heard the phantom act cited by one student to another as they passed.

  16. One parent statement: I called home to discuss and get some hints for a student who was not doing well while refusing quiet help with snarling attitude.  While describing the problem I mentioned that there were some incidents of rudeness, and the mother replied "Rude!? ...Bull Sh--"  I still giggle.

  17. Forgive me -- this is a little long, but humor toward the end of the year seems so right!  This story is from the last week of school two years ago...
        Meet "AJ".  He's a delightful seventh grader with severe attention problems, but loves science.  He is constantly moving, never listens, calls out all the time, and tests my patience every single day.  Fortunately, he is fun and sincerely regrets disrupting -- and then does it again five seconds later.  This week I decided to cram in one more lab: a sheep eyeball dissection.  The students had been begging to do it.  Althought it was optional and we were running out of time, I agreed, thinking that it would be a shame not to act on their interests. 
      As with all labs, I passed out the lab sheets the day before, went over safety, and assigned the students to read the materials and answer some questions for homework in preparation for the lab the next day.  When they came in on the lab day, they all dutifully donned their aprons and goggles and cleared off their desks.  I checked the homework and made some brief safety and technique comments.  I showed them an eyeball and quickly stepped them through their assignment (just in case they hadn't read carefully, which they hadn't), including 1) external examination before cutting; 2) cut carefully, away from you and over the dissecting pan, not in the air, taking care not to cut yourself with the scalpel (yes, it is a roomful of 13-year olds wielding scalpels); and 3) when cutting into the eyeball remember that it is like a tough water balloon  and that it just might pop with enough force (here was some interactive Q&A about what they should expect and SHOULD NOT DO).  I demonstrated how to puncture the eyeball so the vitreous humor leaks out onto the towel on the pan, rather than squirting across the table.  I showed them how to use the scissors to cut the rest of the eye.  So far so good.  No one turning green, gagging, screaming...
      OK, when you're ready, you may begin.  They dutifully get on gloves, line up to receive the eyeballs, go back to stations and start the examinations and dissection.  All looks good and I circulate and check to make sure they're on task and being safe.  Suddenly AJ is jumping up and down, making stifled screaming noises at the top of his lungs.  One of his partners is gagging and the other laughing uncontrollably, dropping from his chair onto the floor and clutching his stomach in spasms of laughter.  AJ is hysterical -- leaping around -- covering a good area of the room -- waving his hands and going UHH UHH UHHH!!!!  -- I rush over and try to find out what has happened and he just continues to leap and, eventually, points to his mouth.  As I realize what has happened, so do the other students, and now I have 23 other students screaming AHHHHH and EWWWW and OH NOOO!  at the top of their lungs, too.  The entire room is screaming.  Seems AJ, in his excitement and having completely ignored me as well as his normally calm and controlling lab partners, has grabbed the eyeball and stabbed it directly into the cornea from above, while hovering over it with his mouth open.  Yes, it squirted directly into his mouth.
      It only took a couple of minutes to get him to the water fountain to rinse out his mouth (he wisely had not swallowed), calm him down and settle the rest of the students.  He's fine and has been gaining fame throughout the school and we have a happy ending.
      When the class was over, cleaned up, and the students gone, I walked to my doorway and collapsed against the doorframe, ruminating on what fallout there would be from a student getting eyeball juices in his mouth... and then looked across the hall  to another science room, where other seventh graders were dissecting frogs.  What should I see but a student standing in the hall just outside the room, wearing a frog head on his fingers and making it "talk"...
      Oh yes, I'm ready for vacation.  One week to go.

  18. One time, I was talking about 1.5 volt batteries, DD vs. A or something like this....one student said, "So what you're saying is 'Size doesn't matter?' "

  19. Once I had a kid 1/2 paying attention to me.  I said, "Don't try to cheat off of each other, there are several different versions.  This kid, dumb as rocks, wakes up and tells the class and me ' I'm not a virgin!"
  20. Once I was talking about DNA....I said you match up your T & A's and G's and C's....a few kids laughed at the T & A's....thank goodness most didn't get it.

  21. I was teaching 7th grade basic algebra equations once and this kid distracted me when I said "Move the se(ven)" when I meant to say "x" and it came out "move the sex to the other side...."

  22. Earth science has it's share of words like orgasm/organism --- cleavage, dike, buttes, uranus...the list goes on...by the way, be careful assigning the planet "Venus" as a research project.  Hopefully most of the sites are blocked.

  23. This is just generally funny....once this football jock filled up a rubber glove with water and sat down and placed it like it was a cow udder.  One kid came up, milked it, and popped it all over his pants. It has nothing to do with science, but while meeting with one of my advisees about his report card some 20 years ago , I inquired about his "D" in English. With a completely straight face, he replied: "I don't know...I mean, come on now, it's my native language for Pete's sake." I burst out laughing, and so did he.
      He was a sixth grader. I can still see him today, sitting across from me, delivering that line in the most deadpan manner.

  24. I friend told me this one: She was teaching a fetal pig dissection.  She explained that one cannot determine the gender until it is opened because the penis is still inside the body.  One student wasn't paying attention and announced that he had a female.  My friend repeated the explaination.  The student said, "but this one has breasts."  My friend said "so do you."  The student said "Yeah, but I don't have that many."

     

  25. How about this…….Name the 3 states of matter….California, New York and Texas, the student replied, when I asked what was that he said, the 3 states that matter!

  26. This one happened to me, too. At the end of our week of residential outdoor ed., I asked a student on the bus one thing she learned. She told me that aspen trees are all one big orgasm. :)

  27. A couple of years ago I had a beautiful brunette student who should have been blonde (sorry to insult the smart blondes out there but I can't think of a better way to describe this young lady.) The day before we had finished the properties of ocean water including salinity-why and where it comes from. That day we were reviewing concepts before heading into the next part of oceanography. She raised her hand and totally serious asked "is the ocean salty because of whale sperm?" Luckily the rest of the class took her on and I had time to breath before I answered. I still tell this story when a group of teachers needs to laugh.

  28. When I was teaching a math class (and still in my 20s) one of my 8th graders asked me "Did they have negative and positive numbers when you were in 8th grade?"

    I replied, "Yes, back in the age of dinosaurs we had integers" and there was a significant pause while they all processed whether or not I rode a T Rex to school...

  29. I was discussing with a class of 8th graders what holds us on earth as it spins around in space and one very good student replied the plastic cover that surrounds the earth. She pointed to a celestial globe that I had in the room showing the star field above the earth and said that plastic cover! When I explained that that is not really there she held tightly onto her seat and asked then what keeps us from falling off as we rotate and revolve? I replied, our friend gravity! She relaxed slightly!

  30. Yes, please keep this thread going.  My own story, not about what a student said, but my response to a foolish question. I am known for being both strict and having a dry sense of humor.  In one particularly rough class, I am not sure that I have smiled at all the entire year.  The other day a student asked "What makes you laugh?" in all seriousness right in the middle of a lecture/discussion on the classifcation of organisms.  My response was many things make me laugh. He said that he was serious and really wanted to know.  With out thinking my next response was "your grades".  The whole class got it, laughed a great deal and he just did not get it.  It took 2 students to explain it to him at length. 

  31. I used to demonstrate the separation of liquids by completing an alchohol distillation from wine. To prevent bumping, glass beads were added to the round bottom flask. At the end of the lab a not so observant but perfectly serious student wanted to know if drinking wine made glass beads in your stomach too!

  32. Here is one that happened to me as a new teacher:  I had a student one year give me a unique response.  I said to the class on a Monday,  "I hope you all had a great weekend"  and he raised his hand and then  I said Yes _____?  He said "my weekend was great I had an orgasm".    Of course, he immediately was sent to the office.  So much for the organism/orgasm disconnect.

  33. Okay, so I have to add one that is actually something I was set up to say.  We had talked all year about context clues in our reading and how to figure out the meaning of words that we were unfamiliar with by reading how they were used. Two boys came up to me one day and asked what "moby" meant. I pondered for awhile, asked if they'd looked in "grandpa's dictionary" and then finally asked to see the passage they were reading. Sure enough, they were reading an article that mentioned Moby Dick, so in my enthusiasm I replied  "Ahhhhhh, Moby's the name of the Dick (and then rather rapidly, before even catching a breath) Moby Dick's the name of the whale." The boys, needless to say, gave each other that knowing look, nodded and walked off. At my first break I ran to tell the principal and she nearly fell over in tears laughing.

  34. One of my funniest experiences was when I asked this question on a test: "Why does Earth have so few asteroid impacts compared to the moon"?   The student's answer? "Just lucky, I guess"!

  35. I was teaching a computer programming class years ago, and I asked these high school students to keep a binder with their notes, handouts, printouts, rubrics, and other documents. They could organize it in what was appropriate for them - chronologically, by topic, by type of assignment - but they had to have a table of contents that described their organization. One student brought his notebook to me during the conferences, and it appeared to be a mess - paper stuck in every which way. When I asked how the notebook was organized, he thought for a moment, and said "Would you believe......random access?" We both cracked up, and I could not take points away from one of the best students ever who could also have fun with the course vocabulary.

  36. Since you brought up the teacher side: During lunch the conversation turned to favorite recipes when our “reading” teacher expressed her frustration with a really good broccoli-cheese soup.  It seems the recipe called for a 'can' of wine and she has never fixed the soup because she could never find wine in a can!

  37. This happened to my best teacher friend, in the class next door.  She came blasting through my door between periods, completely flush.  Clearly something was wrong...

      She teaches 7th grade life science, and was talking about joint, tendons, and ligaments.  The discussion turned to repetitive stress injuries.  For her first three classes, she said that you can even get RSI from playing with your Gameboys and Playstations too much.  Fourth period, it came out differently.  She said to the class, "You can even injure yourself if you spend too much time with your Playboy's and Gamestations."  There were a few gasps, and many giggles before she realized what she said. 

  38. In a 7th grade honors science class, we were having a discussion about the side effects of different drugs.  The subject came up of steroids, and one student talked about how a family member needed to take steroids for medical reasons.

      One student, who even though was 12, looked about 7 years old, screamed out "That means his dinky got small!"

  39. Thought of another one that happened this past fall, seventh grade science and I talked about asexual reproduction and a kid mumbled uner his breath something about , "isn't that when you do it by yourself?"

  40. A young, attractive, popular coach at a pretigious Girls' HS was addressing his students as they entered the classroom for their final exam.  He meant to say: "Welcome, keep your feet flat on the floor and spread your desks out" Instead he said: "Welcome, spread your feet and keep flat on the floor"

  41. We were either getting ready for or discussing afterward, a trip to a local dairy farm. You may have seen in on Dirty Jobs - - Fair Oaks :) Any way, I had a student ask me about the cows teats. He asked why don't we just call them "nips?" Well, I guess that IS what they are!

  42. Copra is dried coconut.  In Micronesia, where I was teaching, copra was  a major commodity in the late 1800's.  The history teacher in my cohort asked the students if they new what copra was.  A student raised his hand and said, "Isn't that the black lady on tv?"

  43. I have a similar story.  About 13 years ago I was doing this “Murder Mystery” in my 9th grade Integrated Science class.  At the end of the week, when all the evidence was collected and analyzed, students were discussing who was the most likely suspect.  Of course at the end they ALL wanted me to tell them 'who did it', but I refused to do so.  I explained that even the police don't always know for certain—they can only go with their interpretation of the evidence.  I then said something like “we still don't know who was really Jack the Ripper.”  A student popped up and said, “Isn't that the guy on Three's Company?”

  44. I have one to go along with that though it was not one of my students but a fellow student from college...Those of you from Texas will appreciate this all too true Aggie joke.

    While taking a human sexuality class at Texas A&M University, we were studying for a test and cam upon some notes we had taken on sperm, that said most of it was protein. This girl in our group blurted out "If it is mostly protein, why is it so salty?!?!" I have never seen a group of guys move in for a phone number....

  45. There have been so many! Last year I had a girl who repeatedly brought my class to a halt with her questions or comments. She had better things to do, and probably only caught every third word. The discussion would be going on. She would make a comment, and “a hush fell over the crowd.” Just to give you one, we were talking about how Donald Johanson happened to name the 3.5 million year old hominid  Lucy by that name. As the story goes, he had made this discovery and came back to the camp when “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” by the Beatles was playing on the radio. She raises her had and says in all seriousness, “ Wow is that true? The Beatles were really there 3.5 million years ago?” Needless to say,  “A hush . . .” Then there was uncontrollable laughter followed by her ever present question, “What?” as only she could say it. Clear Skies,

  46. I was teaching an 8th grade science class on the Monday after a severe train crash in Silver Spring MD. I was describing to the students my involvement in a horrendous train wreck in 1984 (6 killed, hundreds injured) when a girl aksed in utter sincerity, "Mr. Youstra, were you killed?". At first the other students were shocked....then came tumultuous laughter.

  47. This might be one under the heading of "Turn your head to the side and say 'I don't get it'"

      A coworker of mine was teaching and algebraic concept of proportions using the Pythagorean theory.  The example was something along the line of telephone poles of various sizes and the difference in length of the guywires. For at least 5 minutes, one of our students kept saying I don't get it, to which my coworker reviewed the theory and how to line things up.    The response was still " I don't understand."  The teacher said, what don't you understand about the theory?  Where did I lose you.    Her response was priceless.... I get the theory but WHERE'S THE GUY?   (Meaning the guy on the wire.)     This is the very reason why we should always stretch our student's vocabulary base.  :)

  48. We were grading research papers on endangered species many years ago. One student's paper was on the  peregrine falcon in addition to information on DDT they threw in that many were killed by barbed feces.   (we decided they meant fences)

  49. Another teacher story: My first year teaching 7th grade science, we were doing the Reboop Babies activity to illustrate genetics.  I explained the activity and answered any questions.  After all questions were answered, I finished by instructions by saying:  "Okay, then, get with your partner and make a baby!"

  50. When I inherited a trig class, there was a huge X through one of the problems...a problem about exponential growth of organisms.  The previous teacher made mistake in reading that problem aloud and vowed never to teach it again.

       

  51. One of my first years teaching physics, we had been discussing friction and how friction could be reducing by waxing surfaces.  One of the students, (my minister's son), raised his hand and asked "Is that why women wax their legs?"  I think of that student every year that I teach physics.

  52. When the first shuttle mission was launched after the Challenger explosion, I thought we should watch it in class.  The launch got delayed, and I told my class (Geometry) that we would go on with a lesson.  Another teacher's son picked up his ruler and put a sign on it that said "Hell no, we won't prove."  After class, I had to walk next door and tell my best friend that I had written up her son....and that I had a hard time keeping from laughing all hour.  This spring, my friend celebrated her 60th birthday...and her son was there.   He told me that the detention I had given him was the only one he ever got...and they still laugh about it too.

  53. And sometimes their attempt at answering questions on your tests just leads you to the greatest multiple choice choices. My all-time favorite was the student who responded to the question “When does Fall begin?” His (or her) answer was “when the first leaf falls off of a tree.” That led me to think of standardizing this answer. On my test each Fall one of my choices to the beginning of Fall is “When the first leaf falls from the official season tree in Washington.” You would be amazed how many select that! Enough, I have lab reports to grade.

  54. While teaching a 3rd grade lesson in the planetarium, I was talking about Earth's rotation and revolution.  I like to ask the students a lot of questions throughout the program even though there's seldom much variation in their answers.  I'd mentioned that Earth takes about 365 1/4 days to travel around the sun, and said, "so, that means that every four years, we end up with an extra day.  We have to do something with that extra day, so we add it on to our calendar making it  . . . what?"  Now, after 4 years of doing this same program, the answer was always a chorus of "Leap Day" or "February 29th."  But this day, one of the students shouts out loudly, "Election Day!" The whole audience broke into a round of laughter, which at least gave me a moment to stifle a laugh myself and respond, "Well, that is a very important day that happens every four years, but I was thinking of something else."

  55. A student answer on a test, "A seduction zone is when one plate gets on top of the other and grinds." 

  56. My question on a test for 8th graders: "What is a scientific law?" The answer: "The thing that scientists have to follow or they get into a lot of trouble" 

  57. And you've gotta love spellcheck. Years ago, one of my 7th graders was evaluating the effect of various chemicals on different types of metals.  She exposed different coins to different types and concentrations of chemicals.  Her conclusion:  The penis will turn different colors when exposed to chemicals… Indeed.

  58. A science teacher came to school one day wearing two different tennis shoes that looked nothing alike, she was mortified; I told her to tell the kids it was a lesson in observation skills……..no one notice it all day!