Katy teachers share hilarious moments from the classroom.
KATY MAGAZINE | October 2017
Shetye Cypher
Harvey Humor Our counselors are visiting lunch to talk with kids and make sure they are OK and let them talk. Counselor is sitting at a table of girls. Another girl comes and sits beside her so she thinks she is there to talk.
Counselor: "Honey, did you have water in your house?" (Meaning floods)
Girl: "Yes I did."
Counselor: "Oh my goodness, I am so sorry! How much water did you have?"
Girl: "Two 24 packs!" - CD
Pants Optional
"I only wore skirts my first year of teaching, but I finally found a pair of slacks I liked and wore them near the end of the year. When I got out of my car at school, a student saw my new pants and shouted, across a parking lot full of parents and students, ‘Miss! You never wear bottoms when you teach!’” - S.T.
Tardy Teacher
“During my first year of teaching, I worked at a school that swept the halls for kids who were tardy and took them to ‘tardy tank.’ A really old teacher took me to tardy tank three times. She didn't believe that I was a teacher and wrote me up twice claiming that I stole a teacher's ID badge and keys. She never recognized me. I stopped walking down her hallway.” - K.L.
Classroom Karaoke
"We were studying Langston Hughes' poem titled ‘Dream Deferred’ and I asked my students if they knew what the word 'defer' meant. A girl in the back shouted out, ‘Yeah, it's from that one song! You know, 'Apple-bottom jeans, boots with defer!’” – S.T.
Party Tricks
“We were coming back from a game and it was pretty late. I was driving the bus and saw a bunch of flashes (from cameras) and the girls start getting louder. I asked what was going on and they erupted in laughter. One of the girls had gotten an olive stuck up her nose and they were all taking pictures of it. They eventually got it out, but for the life of me I’m still not sure how the olive got there in the first place.” - J.S.
Table Dancing
“My first year of teaching, I was trying to get the attention of my very rowdy class. They were chatting, talking, just not paying attention to my 22-year-old, new teacher self. I was standing on a table, yelling for my class to be quiet and listen to me...right when my principal walked into my classroom.” - S.L.
Vocabulary Charades
“My students asked me, ‘What does ‘abear’ mean?’ Referring to the Spanish verb, haber. “Abear?” I repeated. My student held up his hands mimicking a scary bear, ‘No, not a bear...aber’ I finally understood, ‘Oh! Haber, that means to have.” - A.Y.
Creative Commentary
“As a rookie teacher, I taught seventh-grade Texas history. As I was enthusiastically explaining the siege of the Alamo, I told the class the Alamo had the largest cannons west of the Mississippi. However, because of the distance, the Mexican army brought much smaller cannons. I went on to say, ‘The Mexican cannons were not as effective because the Texans had much larger balls.’ In my excitement I forgot to say cannon balls. The entire class erupted into hysterical laughter. Word spread quickly and by the end of the day I was being quizzed by the administrators, staff, and students about my unique ‘commentary’ of the Alamo.” - D.G.
Snake Crossing
“One morning I came in and saw something on the carpet in my classroom. I went over and saw it was a snake. It looked like it was dead, so I asked one of my students to get a custodian and we both turned away. All of a sudden the snake started moving and tried to hide in the computer cords. A student from FFA came and picked up the snake then took him outside. From then on, there has been a Snake Xing sign in my room.” - S.C.
Giggle Box
“While speaking at an awards night in front of about 600 parents, students, and teachers, I got a case of the giggles. I mispronounced the name of a colleague and couldn’t keep it together. This lasted about a minute before I was able to slink off stage (still laughing).” - J.M.
Ice Cream Overload
“During my second [coaching] season, on the way back from a wrestling tournament, I decided to stop at Buc-ee's and allow the kids to get something to eat. My 220-pound wrestler thought it would be a great idea to buy a half gallon of Blue Bell homemade vanilla ice cream. During the bus ride back he ate the entire thing! Needless to say, by the time we got back to school he was in such tremendous gastro-intestinal distress he had to be helped off the bus by his teammates.” - D.A.
Not a Fan
“In 2010 as the drama of the collapsed mine in Chile was unfolding, I announced that they were expecting to pull up the Chilean miners soon. One student responded, ‘Well, I really don’t follow sports.’” - S.H.
SHETYE CYPHER is a contributing writer for Katy Magazine.
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