Many years ago, my oldest child was in junior high. He took a computer class his first year in junior high. His teacher was interesting. On Parent-Teacher Night, she announced to all the students and parents that if a child in her class could hack the school’s Internet filters, they would get an automatic A for the entire year in the class. She even had this printed up on handouts she gave us parents.

My oldest child can be a challenge. I never wanted to be one of his schoolteachers. He just thinks of the most random things to do and then does them without thinking of consequences. (Thankfully, he has mostly grown out of this!) I could tell that my son was going to take her up on this “offer”/challenge. He was good enough with computers that I was pretty sure he could do it.

I warned the teacher that the school district did NOT want students hacking the Internet filters, especially not my son. Who knows what he would find that I didn’t want to know about?

Less than two weeks later, I was called up to the school on very little notice. My son was going to be expelled. That was all the info I had before I got to the school. I had a feeling it was about the computer class, so I brought in the handout the teacher gave out on Parent-Teacher Night.

I was right. He had hacked the Internet filters successfully, and because of this, the school was going to expel him. Permanently.

I had quite the chat with the principal. He was completely shocked that the teacher had challenged the students this way but claimed it didn’t matter because the school had rules that my son should have known. He was flabbergasted when I called the Superintendent of Schools for our city. He was more shocked when I chatted with him on a first-name basis. It might have been an entitled thing to do but messing with my kids brings out my inner Mama Bear.

My son did not get expelled; he didn’t get punished in any way, mostly because the teacher was an absolute idiot. I later learned that this was not the first time she had issued this challenge, nor the first time a student was able to do it. She had been warned not to do it again, ever, and she had ignored that.

They had a new teacher in under a week, because you are just not smart enough to teach school if you openly challenge kids to hack the school’s filters.

We are attempting to help my English teacher set up and troubleshoot a video call for a number of classmates who can’t attend class in person.

Online Student: “You’re very blurry.”

Teacher: “That’s just my personality.”

I am eight years old. Our music teacher seems like a nice woman until, in one class, she tells us we are to memorise the lyrics for six songs by next week, word for word. As we’re eight, our class is afraid to protest. During the week, we are all terrified, and my parents agree that the teacher is requiring too much. However, it being a different time and place, merely a few years after my country has become independent from the Soviet Union, people simply are not used to challenging authority.

The dreaded day comes. The teacher hands out empty papers and assigns us to write the exact lyrics to one of the songs. We are all quietly panicking, but we start writing down the lyrics as well as we can. She tells us to hand the papers over and that she’ll return them after lunch. It is a long and scary lunch break, but finally, it ends. She enters the classroom with our tests.

During that horrible week, no one has paid attention to the date. The first of April. She has not corrected or graded anything, only written, “April Fools!” on every test.

Painfully, I see later that I actually managed to write down the exact lyrics, word for word. The fact that she did not even bother to give us all As for effort really bothers me.

My mom and I are big fans of a classic rock musician who’s known for giving very long concerts. He’s American and rarely comes to our country, so we naturally jump at the chance to go to one of his concerts in 2016, despite the concert taking place on a weekday. The concert is amazing, but it doesn’t end until almost two o’clock in the morning. I am fifteen years old and have school at eight o’clock the following morning.

As we shuffle out of the venue, I spot a familiar face near me. It’s my history teacher, whose class I have first thing tomorrow morning!

Teacher: “Nice concert, huh, [My name]?”

Me: “Yeah, it was great. See you in a couple of hours!”

We then went our separate ways home. He brought me a cup of coffee the next morning.

I’m in an English Studies class and the teacher is known for his jokes and sarcasm. We’ve just done a creative writing task based on an image prompt, and we’re discussing one of the stories.

Teacher: “Have you ever broken a bone?”

Student: “Yeah. My leg, playing football.”

Teacher: *To me* “Have you ever broken a bone?”

Me: “I do parkour, so… many.”

Teacher: “I’ve only ever broken one.” *Absolutely serious* “It wasn’t mine.”