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“Marking Those Papers Broke Me”: 40 Times Students Stunned Their Teachers With Their Stupidity
Interview
Patience is a virtue! Especially if you have a job in education. That’s not just a broad generalization, though: if you do work as a teacher, your patience will get tested. Probably more often than you’d like.
User u/12345burrito asked the teachers of Reddit to be honest about the moments that seriously made them question their students’ intelligence. Scroll down for some candid stories about the strangest things that kids have said or written in the classroom.
Bored Panda got in touch with the author of the viral discussion, u/12345burrito, and they were kind enough to share their thoughts about what teachers should be like and how students can catch up if they've fallen behind. You'll find our full interview with them as you read on.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Handed out an exam...in University. 6 hands that went up instantly...I pointed to one of them and said "yes". She asked "What does Surname mean?"...I paused, and answered it calmly..."it's your last name". The other 5 hands went down. I thought to myself....f**k we've lowered the bar.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 7 months ago
Same way we get Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain. Surname = Sir Name.
According to Indeed, the average teacher working in the United States makes $20.12 per hour or around $32,074 per year. Forbes reports that the average annual salary in the US is $59,428 per year or around $28.34 per hour. With this in mind, it’s clear that the average American teacher is grossly underpaid.
Although money isn’t everything (a sense of purpose and career growth are also vital), you want your educators to feel stable about putting food on the table. If you want your educators to be patient, empathetic, and go the extra mile, you can’t have them worried about cash.
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#2
I mentioned bringing my lunch to work and a kid put up his hand to ask where I worked.
Right after lunch. In class. Where I teach him.
#3
I teach swimming lessons and lifeguarding courses. During one, I was trying to teach them cpr and instead of showing them first, I told them to show me what they already knew about it.
I then proceeded to observe 15 16-20 year olds do the weirdest s**t to those poor training dolls. My favorite though was the kid who did a two foot jump onto the chest of the dummy. The dummy slid out from under his feet like a cartoon banana and he landed on his rear end on the pool deck. Good times.
If your teachers are underpaid, burned out, and overwhelmed, they might not have the time, energy, or willpower to give struggling students the attention that they need to improve.
However, let’s not forget that a teacher’s salary can vary a huge amount depending on where they’re based and what school they get a position in. How much experience you have is also going to affect your starting salary.
For example, some of the highest-paying cities in the US include New York City (an average of $68,364 per year), Los Angeles ($66,820), and Chicago ($56,164).
Though, that might be a mixed blessing. Sure, you may be earning more. But your cost of living is likely much higher in these cities, too. How much you end up saving will vary depending on your lifestyle, rent, etc. Eductors need a support system in place that goes beyond finances.
#4
I teach Intro. Geology. I gave a lab quiz on the Density and Buoyancy lab we had done the week before. One of the questions asked how are we able to build ships out of steel, considering that we measured steel to be more dense than water the week before.
Almost the entire class gave variants of "The ocean is so big compared to a boat, that all the water is able to keep the boat afloat . . ." as an answer. I get some version of this answer every semester, but it really struck me because so many of them put it. (And they weren't just copying each other.)
This school happens to be right next to a bay. So I took a large, uninteresting rock from the prep room and marched the students outside to the bay. I said "This rock is about 8 kilos and has a density of about 2.4 g/cc. But, according to your last test responses, the bay is so big that it should float . . ." I threw the rock into the bay and we all patiently waited for it to bob back up to the surface.
#5
I have a poster on my wall that says something about not believing everything you read on the internet, and it attributes the quote to Abraham Lincoln. Student said, “Wait, did they have internet back then?”.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 7 months ago
"Students, tomorrow's lesson will be about sarcasm and irony. Your homework is to go home tonight and look up those words and then try to explain what they mean tomorrow."
#6
College instructor, you would be shocked. Just last year: multiple students can't save word docs as pdfs, students take smartphone pictures of every single slide while I lecture even though I upload them to our LMS. Personal favorite: when asked to insert a picture into a word document, one student prints the word doc, prints the picture, puts the picture on the word doc, takes a smartphone picture and uploads the file.
Miss my millennial students.
We were interested in getting the OP's personal perspective on what a truly good educator is like. "A great teacher for me is one who is patient and will always try their hardest to ensure that all students are gaining the knowledge. They are open to all questions and viewpoints, listen to each one, and respect them," redditor u/12345burrito told Bored Panda.
"They are patient, kind, and understanding of all students. Bonus points if they are easily reliable (via email or phone) and have a perfect balance between discipline while still maintaining leniency."
According to the author of the thread, students who feel like they've fallen behind their classmates in their studies shouldn't be afraid of reaching out for help. It's one of the best things they can do to get back ahead. Being proactive is a massive plus here.
#7
One of my 16 year old students asked, while starting a multiple choice test, if it mattered what letter he chose. I just stared at him. Sometimes there are no words.
#8
My class had a math test over polygons. So I was grading their tests and one of the throw away multiple choice answers was fiveagon. I laughed out loud, so my class naturally asked me what was so funny. I told them that no one could be that silly as to pick fiveagon as an answer. I immediately saw one kid slouch really low in his seat and about three papers latter I realized why. He had answered fiveagon for pentagon. I felt like the worst teacher in the world. After class, I went up to him and apologized. He said not to worry but I could tell it made him feel bad. I never forgave myself for that one. I now grade papers after school.
#9
In the intro of a paper, a kid (8th grade, teenager) wrote “In this SA, I’m going to explain...” and throughout the paper he wrote “SA” several more times.
He meant essay. S-A. This kid’s first language is English. I had literally no words.
"Email the professor, visit their office hours, maybe stay a few minutes after class to help go over things. I know a lot of students feel afraid to, but once they get into the habit of it, doing so will feel like a normal thing for them. I myself would feel afraid at times to reach out to the professor, but honestly, at the end of the day, being brave and taking that step is the best thing you can do,” they told Bored Panda.
Meanwhile, we were curious about what had inspired u/12345burrito to start the online discussion in the first place. According to them, it was partly influenced by their personal experience as a student struggling with their classes and feeling like their professors were "secretly annoyed" with them.
#10
One of my sixth graders had a brain fart moment. Couldn’t remember the word for ‘suspenders’. Called them farmer straps (complete with hooking his thumbs through his imaginary suspenders and moving his hands up and down, like an old guy wearing suspenders might do), and I laughed so hard I cried and almost fell outta my damn chair.
#11
Not my story, but my Brothers. I still chuckle about it
He taught at a trade school, and he’s a super nice, patient guy. One of his students calls in him in a panic that she can’t get to school bc of a flat tire, she’a frantic and has no one else to call for help - np, this will be a good teaching moment,
So he drives out to help her, and as he’s examining the tire, explains to her that the she’s got a nail right in the top, and is going to show her how to change it
She scoffs at him, rolls her eyes, and proceeds to tell him that that’s absolutely impossible bc the tire is flat on the BOTTOM, not the top where the nail is....
Needless to say, my brother didn’t even bother explaining to her how to change the tire...
#12
I teach on the college level and students try to convince me dumb stuff is true a lot. At least once a semester a student will try to fight with me saying Africa is a country.
Petunia Petal 7 months ago
The confidence level for that is astounding. Slightly worrying though that they won't listen to a teacher.
"When daydreaming, I always spend a lot of time thinking of random hypothetical questions or scenarios in my head a lot. It’s the reason why r/AskReddit and r/NoStupidQuestions are always some of my favorite places to browse on to see what kind of random content they have but also to post questions myself when bored," they opened up.
“Something worth noting, though, is the fact that I posted that question when I was still going to a community college nearby. I will admit there were a few classes I had to take that were pretty difficult for me -- math of any kind being the main culprit. I am sure there were times when I just couldn’t get an answer right no matter what, and the professors were probably thinking, ‘How is it this difficult for him to answer?’” u/12345burrito shared with us.
#13
Watching a video about dinosaurs. A 13 yo asks 'how did they get video of real dinosaurs if they are all dead?' Same girl also wanted to know how Mayans communicated with each other if they had no cell phones or 'wall phones' as she called them. Yeah. And my evaluation and raises depend on these kids.
Indosidius 7 months ago
Does she know of CGI? If not, explain it to her. And her not knowing how Mayans communicated shows a lack of knowledge, with a thirst to learn.
#14
"Are mermaids real?" followed shortly by "I don't believe in dinosaurs."
She was 16.
#15
When teaching a health class to sixth grade girls and having to stop and explain that babies don’t actually grow in a stomach and they have 3 exits in their nether regions.
They literally had no clue about their own anatomy.
Parents, please talk to your children about this stuff. Get them a book. Something. They need to know this stuff.
#16
My dad is a history teacher and he had a student tell him the statue of liberty was in pearl harbor.
#17
I asked my class of 5th graders what city they live in, and the first response was “Texas”.
#18
Student 1: yeah, my aunt had cancer, and my mom, and my grandma.
Student 2: wow, that's awful, do you think you'll get it as a result? Is it hereditary?
Student 1: nah, it's not hereditary, its genetic.
Freshman in College.
#19
I teach science. Sometimes I teach remedial science so I have to hype up my lessons. When students start showing an interest in things I get super excited and help support their interests as best I can. A girl came to my desk wearing a cute white marshmallow jacket with a NASA symbol on the back. I said "oh, super cool of you to be repping NASA!" Her response "Thanks, it's a cool new brand everyone is wearing." I asked a few more questions and turns out, she seriously didn't know what NASA was! She was 18 years old.
Another story - two kids just talking to each other working on laptops. Silence for a few minutes, typing etc. Then randomly, one boy says, "if mandarin is a fruit, how do people speak it?" He was 16, and dead serious.
#20
During a unit on Vietnam I was discussing the number of bombs dropped by the US and a student asked me if all those bombs are what killed the dinosaurs.
Had another student ask if Pearl Harbor was still alive after doing a mini-lesson on it last December. She thought it was a woman’s name.
I have a lot more but those are my two most recent, egregiously dumb ones.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 7 months ago
How old are these kids? They sound like 3rd graders but you don't teach things like Pearl Harbor and the Vietnam War to kids that young.
#21
University course - paper on Witches - spelt Which throughout the whole paper. Favorite sentence - Whiches and broomsticks. footnoted a phone number as a source!
Marking those papers broke me.
#22
Me: Name one of the states of matter.
Student: Massachusetts.
#23
How can I type lowercase 'a'? All I have in my keyboard are capital letters.
#24
Not a teacher, but this is from when I saw a Teacher's face which clearly showed it.
Blonde Girl [Literally the stereotypical bimbo; bottom in all ability sets and dumb as a brick; but Geography wasn't in ability classes] in my Year 9 [13~14 y/o] Geography Class:
"How are we in Europe? I thought we were in America."
We're in the UK
The Geography teacher had a look of pure horror and despair. Bonus points since we were his first class at that school.
Javelina Poppers 7 months ago (edited)
My friends daughter attends a small college 120 miles due north from her family home. When talking with her mother, she asked what time it was at home, mom replied it was 8 o'clock same as where she was. She replied, "Ok, I was wondering because it takes me 2 hours to drive up here".
#25
My students tried turning in plagiarized papers. Unfortunately they're so dumb that they neither bothered changing the file name or paraphrasing the content. I think almost 50% of the kids in class sent me the same paper over and over again. Spelling mistakes and all.
#26
Kids at lab tables.
Suddenly, there is a bright blue flash and a loud pop.
I turn and look directly at a kid, still holding a pair of scissors and a now severed laptop cord, his eyes wide.
"I didn't realize it would do that.".
cerinamroth 7 months ago
Well, now you know. Science is all about trying things out and observing the results!
#27
Don't know if this counts, but I was a TA for a semester in grad school (never again). One student submitted this paper I will never forget. Basically, the author was wrong because the student found the argument "boring." In explaining the author's argument, he got most points wrong and then proceeded to say he had a better argument. His argument WAS the author's argument.
OneHappyPuppy 7 months ago
Oh my, here's my sister's story. She was present when her tutor (or whatever you call the head teacher for your class in highschool) was grading some essays and asked her for an honest opinion if she'd fail a student for entering a completely off-the- topic essay of another classmate (who's dad was VERY generous with school donations, important). The essay was for a literature piece, and this dude I guess didn't even read the book but instead wrote an entire essay on the time he went with his pals to a football match
#28
I asked my students to write a sentence and give an example.
One of the students (age 12/13) asked "what's an example?"
Actually really hard to explain.
#29
“When did the world change from black and white to color?” They honestly believed that from like 1970 (when color photography became prominent in publications) to THE BEGINNING OF TIME, humans lived in a totally black and white world.
#30
One of my third graders pointed at the moon in the sky and asked, "Is that the Phillipines?".
#31
A classmate of mine in elementary school had this exchange with our teacher:
"What's the answer to this [multiple choice question with 3 choices]?"
"A?"
"no"
"C?"
"no"
"I don't know.".
#32
Me: I’m thinking of a fruit that is yellow and very sour!
Student: Chickenpox!
Petunia Petal 7 months ago (edited)
As an adult, I once said "E for idiot"! We all have brain farts 😂
#33
For women’s history month, I had my students give presentations on famous women in history. One student got up and, dead serious, gave a presentation on “Anne Franklin” and said that “the holocaust was a guy called Hitler.” She had researched all of this. I still don’t understand.
#34
An old friend of mine used to be a tutor. She had her math notes out. She used to use "#" instead of writing "number".
One of the kids saw and they all kept asking she put hashtags everywhere. Even whem she explained it, they kept saying "no, idiot. Its a hashtag."
Gotta love middle schoolers.
#35
Four students in the same class had copied work from each other for an assignment on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. I don't know why they thought I wouldn't recognize four of the exact same paper, but the cherry on top was the fact that each paper made several references to the "Ideas of March". I'm not sure which was worse: plagiarizing an idiot or not even being able to see the difference between "Ides" and "Ideas". It was a reading comprehension class, by the way.
#36
Spent 15 minutes with my 9th graders going over MLA headings in great detail. Even gave them a reference sheet to keep at home. Later received at least 3 essays from students named Your Name. Truly sad times.
Corvus 7 months ago (edited)
Oooh yes, this has happened at the university where I work as well. I made some example forms to show newly accepted students how to fill them in, and, of course, some folks copied the info from the examples instead of filling in their own data. So what I did was remove specific examples, and instead give super-detailed explanations what has to be filled into each space (as if explaining to a 3-year-old). This significantly reduced the number of incorrectly filled-in forms... though exceptions still occur. These are 19-year-olds. It's not like they are dumb or anything, they just seem to lack common sense... or, perhaps, basic life skills.
#37
Not a teacher, but a witness to the face mine made which was definitely, 'how are my students this dumb?' It was 7th grade Lit and we were reading through The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. We had discussions throughout and the teacher would have us write a summary of what we had just read before class ended. When we were done with the book she did a slide show of pictures showing the attic they were in and the secret entrance. About halfway through these pictures we hear a boy in the back go, 'wait a minute. WHOA! This really happened?' She stared at him for a very long time.
#38
Not a teacher, but a friend of mine once said that Internet is a liquid. Not the dumbest thing she said, but the only one I can remember.
#39
I was talking about CFL lightbulbs and the fact that they contain mercury. One high school freshman raised his hand and asked if they had to go to Mercury to get it.
#40
Teaching Assistant (of French) here. Once I have asked my students to choose a word and then to describe/define it to the class so that someone could guess the word (it helps to remember and learn their vocabulary). They all thought they were supposed to describe the word "word" and then they didn't understand who could win the game as they all knew the word they had to guess....
What do you think ?
Penguin Panda Pop 7 months ago
Dear teachers: if most of the class have the wrong answer, then could it possibly be that you didn't teach it clearly? Evidence suggests you didn't. How about you try again? Signed, a fellow teacher.
Ms.GB 7 months ago (edited)
I agree with you but also whatever happened to having a child repeat the grade or special education if they need a slower learning environment. There were a few kids in my hs that Def shouldn't have been in the grade level they were at. If you failed a class they sent you to summer school which was a joke, anyone could pass those classes. Some teachers are having a hard time because other teachers are letting them pass when they aren't ready. Then you've got high school teachers having to teach things those kids should've learned in grade school plus their own curriculum. I'm not a teacher or anything but even when I was in school it was disappointingly easy to graduate.
Load More Replies...
Rose the Cook 7 months ago
First time teaching high school in China. Practicing TOEFL essays, "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?" I explain they are asking for an opinion. The whole class, " Teacher you haven't told us our opinion yet." Used to western students I didn't realise Chinese teachers would usually give them the official party opinion on the issue.
Jesha 7 months ago
A good number of these seem to be showing that adults failed these children - and don't forget how many of these are children you're calling dumb - instead of something inherent to the child themselves.
Marie Dahme 7 months ago
Not always. If it's generational.....maybe parents were high school drop outs and have very poor skills themselves, what can they teach to their own kids ? Over the last 30 years the Department of Education has been underfunded and teachers are overwhelmed playing catch up with course material that should've been learned the previous year...and the year before that. It's cyclical. We have an overinflated industrial military budget yet educational funding is abysmal. Look up YouTube videos of grown adults in their 30s who can't answer basic questions. Google stupid Americans. It's so unfortunate.
Load More Replies... Penguin Panda Pop 7 months ago
Dear teachers: if most of the class have the wrong answer, then could it possibly be that you didn't teach it clearly? Evidence suggests you didn't. How about you try again? Signed, a fellow teacher.
Ms.GB 7 months ago (edited)
I agree with you but also whatever happened to having a child repeat the grade or special education if they need a slower learning environment. There were a few kids in my hs that Def shouldn't have been in the grade level they were at. If you failed a class they sent you to summer school which was a joke, anyone could pass those classes. Some teachers are having a hard time because other teachers are letting them pass when they aren't ready. Then you've got high school teachers having to teach things those kids should've learned in grade school plus their own curriculum. I'm not a teacher or anything but even when I was in school it was disappointingly easy to graduate.
Load More Replies... Rose the Cook 7 months ago
First time teaching high school in China. Practicing TOEFL essays, "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?" I explain they are asking for an opinion. The whole class, " Teacher you haven't told us our opinion yet." Used to western students I didn't realise Chinese teachers would usually give them the official party opinion on the issue.
Jesha 7 months ago
A good number of these seem to be showing that adults failed these children - and don't forget how many of these are children you're calling dumb - instead of something inherent to the child themselves.
Marie Dahme 7 months ago
Not always. If it's generational.....maybe parents were high school drop outs and have very poor skills themselves, what can they teach to their own kids ? Over the last 30 years the Department of Education has been underfunded and teachers are overwhelmed playing catch up with course material that should've been learned the previous year...and the year before that. It's cyclical. We have an overinflated industrial military budget yet educational funding is abysmal. Look up YouTube videos of grown adults in their 30s who can't answer basic questions. Google stupid Americans. It's so unfortunate.
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