(Our science teacher uses unorthodox means to ingrain lessons into our heads, such as sliding a student across a slick surface on a chair to demonstrate a type of friction. This time he is tossing around a tennis ball.)

Teacher: “Okay, and Newton’s Second Law— Oh, c**p!”

(Without meaning to, he accidentally grazes my shoulder with the tennis ball. I flinch.)

Teacher: “I’m sorry! Are you okay?!”

Me: “Yeah. I’m fine. It mostly got my hair.”

(The next day the lesson continues and he still has the tennis ball. He’s walking around the classroom and moves behind me. Almost at once I feel the ball bounce off the back of my head.)

Teacher: “Ha ha! That time it was on purpose.”

(In my history class we are copying notes on ancient Greece. We are chatting about how far we are in the notes currently. One bullet point on the ancient Olympics just says ‘completely naked’ referring to that they competed naked.)

Student #1: “Yeah. So, I’m at the part at pottery.”

Student #2: “Really? I just got to Plato’s ‘The Republic.'”

Me: “You guys are so far ahead. I just got ‘completely naked.'”

(There’s a moment where we all process what I just said.)

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(I teach 8th grade English at a public school, so students often ask me the meanings of words they hear. )

Male Student: “So what does, um … ’emasculate’ mean?”

Me: “Uh, well, it means… kind of … to insult a guy by calling him girly things. Who said that word to you?”

Male Student: “Oh, no one. I overheard my mom say it to my dad.”

(In our class, we pick a station and are partnered with two or three other people. We have a computer-generated lesson plan based on which station we’ve picked. I’ve ended up partnered with a student I had a fight with a year or two prior, after he had attacked my friend.)

Me: “Why the h*** did you come to this station?”

Student: “Shut up, I just wanna do this one.”

Me: “Whatever.”

Student: “Fine, so you pick where we start.” *turns to a friend* “Man, this’ll be the easiest unit. She always manages to get a good grade somehow.”

(He then proceeds to spend the rest of the day doing zero work, letting me carry him. I decide that I could survive flunking one unit. At the end of the day, we get our grades back…)

Student: “What the h***?! How did I get an F?!”

Me: “Oh, gee, that’s really too bad. I guess I just wasn’t able to do so well all by myself.”

(The teacher actually apologized for letting him pair up with me when I explained our history, and actually forbade the guy from working not just with me, but in any unit taking place at a station next to me for the rest of the semester!)

(I’m in World History class. The teacher finishes talking about the Catholic church in the middle ages and how central the church was to the whole community.)

Student: “Man, people are so gullible. I should start my own church.”

Teacher: “Starting a church isn’t as easy as you might think. You’d have to work hard to bring people into your church, something to entice them, like Spiritual Enlightenment or eternal life in heaven.”

Student: “What about strippers and cake?”