In high school, in a freshman geometry class, we were given a weekend assignment to build a tetrahedral kite. We were instructed to gather our own supplies and we had a day of class time to build the kite itself. The instructions went into some detail about building a kite out of popsicle sticks, glue, and tissue paper.

Having been interested in kites and model building for a while, I promptly decided the instructions were basically useless. Entirely on my own, I came up with a design for the tetrahedral kite in the same dimensions that the instructions called for.

I used cut-to-length fast food drink straws as the structural members, tied into tetrahedrons with fishing line. Each straw had fishing line strung through it, and then fishing line was strung along the straws on the outside instead of inside, and the tension was then set by tying the strings loose but then drawing them to the center with a fishing line knot. It worked marvelously. I then very carefully glued squares of garbage bag to the straws with superglue. I tried plastic glue first, but superglue worked better. I ruined a few tetrahedrons before figuring out how to properly set good tension on the square of garbage bag — by taping the bag to a stick, I could draw it flat and tight on my tetrahedron while the glue set — and then cut with an Exacto knife to trim back once the glue was done.

A final round of stringing together was done with fishing line, and then more fishing line was used to make an anchor for the kite string.

I proudly brought my kite into school on kite flying day. Some students called my kite ugly. We went to fly our kites. The second best kite was owned by one of the girls, and she was flying it about as high as the flagpole. My kite was flying over the roof of the gymnasium. I wanted to see about going higher and or longer, but I ran out of kite string.

I was given a C — 75%. Teacher’s note said, “Did not follow directions.”

(In elementary school, our computer teacher starts off class every year with keyboarding practice. She does this by calling out each letter a couple of times followed by, “space” — for example “A, A, space” — which we then have to repeat as a class as we type it. We’re up to the letter P.)

Teacher: “All right. Everyone always wants to laugh when they hear me say, ‘P, P, space.’ So, if you’re going to laugh, do it now.”

(She actually gave us thirty seconds to laugh and get it out of our system before continuing with the lesson. And you can bet we did.)

(In my sociology class we are talking about social conditioning. My teacher asks for any examples of having been corrected so many times you automatically do or don’t do something. In the class we have [Student] who always has some bizarre story to tell.)

Student: “Ms. [Teacher], I have something. In my Pre-K class, one of the teachers used social conditioning.”

Teacher: “What, [Student #1]?

Student: “She had a blown-up pufferfish hanging from the ceiling. Every time someone would do something wrong, she would yell to them, ‘I’ll stick a pufferfish down your pants!’”

(Silence, then laughter.)

Student: “She would stand under the pufferfish and tap her foot, and we automatically knew to shut up.”

This story is part of our Teacher Appreciation Week roundup!

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(We are in cooking class. We have eaten the main dish we made that day, and one of us is bringing the pie in to the table. I turn my head a little to look at it, and my teacher loses her s***.)

Teacher: “Just like you, always hawking for the first slice. You know what? This time you won’t have any!”

(Usually everybody takes one or three pieces and the rest is given to the teachers, but this time our teacher made the other students eat the entire pie while preventing me from getting any or leaving. This teacher also stopped making us cook any actually good food after our class became 100% girls; all we got was “healthy” BS, like salads and soups, and the emphasis was on how it looked and the decoration. When there were boys in our class, we often made pancakes, pizza, and the like, but the teachers stopped it when the boys got their own class. Just to be clear, in Finland the housekeeping classes are compulsory to everybody.)

(This story takes place in my high school, during history class. We have just finished the topic of World War II and Adolf Hitler. As we all enter class and sit down, our teacher is going around class, asking us one by one, who could be an “icon” of a certain thing or time. He gets to me.)

Teacher: “So, [My Name], who could be an icon?”

Me: “Adolf Hitler is an icon of the Holocaust?”

Teacher: “[My Name], that is completely inappropriate of you to say. I don’t know why you would even bring that up out of nowhere. Go to the office right now.”

Me: “But we literally just studied this—”

Teacher: “I don’t care. OFFICE, NOW!”

(I grab my things and head out of the history room to the office, where I am greeted by our principal.)

Principal: “Oh, [My Name], you’re here? What did you possibly do?”

Me: “[History Teacher] was asking us who an icon of a certain thing could be, and considering we just studied the topic, I said Adolf Hitler could be an icon of the Holocaust, and he sent me down here.”

Principal: “Oh. Um… Well, just stay down here for this period and you can head to your next class.”

(And that’s the story of how I got in-school-suspension for one class period because of our foolish history teacher! Spoiler: he was fired not too long after this.)