Humor
The Funny Moments Presented By Students
The times you want to laugh & know you shouldn’t!
Children come out with the funniest things at times, their imagination, cheeky nature & curiosity as well as coupled with bizarre spelling mistakes can often have a teacher in stitches during a long day at work.
Although in these times, a lot of teaching is now through a screen, we are going to reminisce about the times at school when children can have the teachers laughing even though they shouldn’t.
Laughter is a great sign that you are enjoying the moment. In my classes, I often enjoy laughing with my students, yet there were times in the past where I also had to hold my laughter in when the situation warranted a serious reminder of how to behave.
In a school environment there are plenty of times when these young people will make you either burst out laughing or laugh inside while acting serious.
Here’s some examples of those moments:
- A boy notorious for being in trouble several times a day was ironically behaving so well that week, his teacher awarded him ‘Star of the week’. In the celebration assembly, in which the Head teacher was usually very serious, she announced his name. This tiny boy stood up proudly like a lion addressing his kingdom as all watched & applauded. There was an order to this assembly, each row of pupils had a gap behind them where they would quietly walk to get to the front.
But oh no, not this boy! Instead he aggressively pushed the two children’s heads in front of him to the side, used their shoulders to leap through the tiny gap he created and bellowed “About time!”
Many teachers were struggling to hold back their laughter while his teacher addressed his behavior and needless to say, this was the only time he received this award.
- During a presentation, one of my pupils stood up and began reading her speech,
“Hi, my name’s…. I live in the United Kingdom, it’s in Tottenham.”
Whatever would she say next ? The whole of the United States of America would fit into New York? Bear in mind, Tottenham is located in the North of London. This definitely prompted a spontaneous geographical lesson off the timetable.
- “Burger!”- There’s a background to this. A boy in my class used to love burgers and say it at randoms times usually to his friends to make them laugh. In the middle of observing a student teacher’s lesson, she began her introduction,
“ The Ancient Egyptians paid homage to the sun, Ra was a ….” (Out came his favorite word) “Burger!”
- Peer assessment — at a particular school I taught in, we had a system called peer assessment. This involved the pupils adding feedback & their initials. During a marking session after school, my colleague came in and showed me one of her books (see image above). Alas! The EAL (English as an Additional Language) pupil left a very different type of response for their peer but later explained to her that they meant, “descriptive words"…🤔 Imagine Ofsted (The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services) seeing such a thing? They do inspect books!
- Questionable Insults — I remember helping a student in year 9 with mathematics & in came the Head of Maths, a bunch of questions plunged into the atmosphere. The one that stood out was, “Sir, why you wearing such a butters (ugly) tie?” He corrected their grammar and responded,
“You mean, Sir why are you wearing such a butters tie?”
I was glad he had a sense of humor and understood that the slang word was part of their dialect! If you’re going to insult a teacher, you better get your grammar right!
This memory reminded me of the image below that was circulating on social media. The teacher in me had to correct it!
You can take a teacher out of a school, but you can’t take a teacher of them.
- Pupil 1: Hey Abdi", pupil 2 rolls his eyes and with a serious face of disgust and harsh tone replies, “My name’s not Abdi, it’s Abdifitahhhhh!”(For those of you who have seen Disney’s Aladdin, imagine the voice of Jafar). Usually the culture of friends is that most shorten each other names but this boy wasn’t having any of that!
- In a class discussion on which job role the pupils wanted to do when they were adults, the following responses arose; “A YouTuber!” another pupil, “A doctor", then another proudly announced, “A mum at 16.” 🙄 I know being a mum is a job in itself but the ambition to get pregnant by 16 just wasn’t the response I expected from one of the higher ability students in the class!
- A trip can always be full of surprises. One year I took a mixture of year groups to Paris. While leaving the Eiffel Tower the pupils were surrounded by people selling miniature Eiffel key-rings for 2 Euros each. A few of them bought some and others sparked up an interest to buy a whole lot & were telling the sellers off for not lowering their prices. “Deux Euros? Non, non, non! I want, how do you say it miss? Oh yeah, je voudrias trois pour deux Euros!” (Translation: Two Euros? No, no, no! I’d like three for two Euros!”) The sellers gave in. The pupils definitely had good bartering skills!
- I was once working with a class in a Church of England school (ironic for what happened next). The group I was working with were mostly very well behaved & during a drama rehearsal one of the most timid girls I’ve ever met shouted loudly to the teaching assistant, “Miss, have you had sex yet?” I couldn’t believe it, yet wanted to burst out laughing. I was thinking, ‘Girl, can you even spell sex?’ but instead gave her a serious reminder that her question was not only irrelevant to the lesson yet very inappropriate!
- In a Spanish lesson, one of the pupils boasted that their older sibling had taught them some phrases and they could understand a lot of Spanish. So seeing that they wanted to show off their skills, I tested them. “¿Como te llamas (What’s your name?)?” The child proudly replied, “Soy gordo" (I’m fat). He seemed disappointed to hear the native speakers laughing & to find out their sibling had been misleading them to think ‘gordo’ was a cool tag name.
If you’re a teacher, I’d love to hear of your hilarious moments with your pupils/students.
Thanks for reading!
