When I’m in ninth grade, my school is demolishing an old science building and building a better one in its place. Part of the school is blocked off and it’s very loud. It’s annoying but okay most of the time, except in my Japanese class. The classroom is right next to where the construction is taking place and it’s very frustrating during our lessons. The floor is vibrating from whatever they are doing ten metres away. The class is discussing it.

Sensei:
*Sarcastically* “It’s okay, though; the school said they would buy me another whiteboard so that the noise wouldn’t be so bad.”

Us: 
*Confused* “What? How would that help?”

Sensei:
“They said they would get me a new whiteboard for the opposite side of the room so that we could face the other way. Then, the noise wouldn’t be so bad because we would be facing the other way.”

Obviously, we all found this logic hilariously stupid. We decided to try it, facing the other way. Surprise, surprise, we could still hear the sound of construction just as loud when we turned around. I know they had good intentions, but seriously, you would think they would understand how sound works.

(There’s an elderly teacher at my high school who is retiring at the end of the year. From his attitude about the situation, it’s clear that he’s retiring not because he wants to, but rather because the school is pressuring him to. And they have good reason for that. He’s become increasingly forgetful over the years, to the point that he’ll forget where his classroom is and what material he’s supposed to be teaching. He often loses students’ assignments and insists that they never turned them in instead of admitting that he can’t find them. We’ve learned to document everything we turn in for his classes. One day, I’m in his class taking notes when my pen runs out of ink. I turn around to quietly ask the person behind me if I can borrow one.)

Teacher: “[Not My Name], I told you I’d give you a detention if you disrupted class one more time!”

(I look around to see if he’s talking to someone else, since that’s not my name and I’ve never disrupted class before. He does seem to be addressing me, though.)

Me: “But–”

Teacher: “That was your final warning! You’re getting a detention.”

(He goes to his desk to fill out the detention slip. In my school, a teacher giving a detention fills out two slips, one for the student and one for the office. When he hands me the slip, I notice that the wrong name is on it — the same one he called me before. The girl whose name is on the slip is not in this class and looks nothing like me.)

Me: “Um… but I’m not–”

Teacher: “One more word and it’ll be a week of detentions!”

(I stop talking and end up not taking any notes for the rest of class. After class gets out, I go to the office.)

Secretary: “Can I help you?”

Me: “I got this detention slip, but it’s not my name on it. And I’m not really sure what it’s for. All I did was ask to borrow a pen.”

Secretary: “Let me guess: Mr. [Teacher]?”

Me: “Yeah. How did you know?”

Secretary: “We have a special file for his detentions.”

(She holds out her hand for the detention slip and I give it to her. She then puts it directly into the recycling bin.)

Secretary: “Don’t worry about the detention. He never remembers to turn in the office copy anyway.”

(I found out later that the other girl was in that teacher’s class in the previous period and sat in the same seat as me. The teacher never mistook me for her again, but it certainly wasn’t the end of his memory issues.)

I’m taking a musical instrument class in my school during my senior year. It is a pretty laid-back class and we are allowed to play any instrument we provide ourselves, and our teacher just assigns our individual pieces to practice out of whatever sheet music books we bring in ourselves.

Unfortunately, the laid-back nature of the course attracts a lot of problem students who are just looking for an easy class in which to goof off. There is one particular boy who is in the 11th grade but acts much younger and lives for nothing more than to annoy me and a few other people. He does immature things like sitting in our seats when we stand up, pulling chairs out from under us, dumping the spit valve from his trumpet on us or our music books. You get the idea. Our teacher is well aware of his antics and is getting pretty sick of dealing with him.

On this day, a few friends and I snag a private room to practice and chat in peace. We see the annoying kid run up to our door. A boy next to the door and I try to stop it with our feet, but he manages to get it open enough to stick his trumpet bell into the door and blast us with a loud sour note. One of my friends is fairly quiet and gentle but quite large. Apparently, he has finally had more than he can take from this boy. I don’t get a good look at my friend’s face as he hops up and steps to the door, but I can see the look of fear in the annoying kid’s eyes. He turns to flee, but my friend grabs him and pins him to his chest with his arm around the boy’s neck. I can hear the boy gasping for breath.

My friend says, low and seething with rage, “Don’t ever… do that… again.”

My friend shoves him away and closes the door. The annoying kid attempts a show of bravado by banging on the window and yelling angrily before storming off. My friend immediately feels regretful for having let his anger get the best of him, but we reassure him that the kid had it coming. We leave the room to head to our next class and we pass our teacher, an older man who is nearing retirement.

My friend approaches the teacher and says, “I attacked [Annoying Kid].”

“He was harassing us again,” I point out.

But my friend insists, “It doesn’t matter, I hurt him and it was wrong.”

Then, the teacher asks us, “Is he bleeding or unconscious?” We tell him no, and he says, “Then I don’t care!” And with that, he goes into his office and closes the door.

(I’m a student in an all-girls high school. One day, we get a university student who is supposed to teach us chemistry as part of his degree. After his lecture, he realises that most of us don’t understand the concept and tries to explain it better.)

Teacher: “Okay, so, the difference in covalent and dative bonding is basically this. For example, let’s say that you dated a classmate and the two of you went out for dinner. The two of you probably have the same amount of money, so you will split the cost equally. That’s covalent bonding. You get that?”

Class: “Uh-huh.”

(As he speaks, he draws a diagram of two atoms contributing one electron each to a covalent bond. He then draws another diagram where one low-electron atom receives two elections from a high-electron atom to form a dative bond.)

Teacher: “However, you could date a rich sugar daddy, instead, and he’ll pay the full cost of dinner for you. That’s dative bonding. You get that?”

(After we stopped laughing, we got the concept. He got chewed out by our regular chemistry teacher for his “inappropriate analogy,” but he certainly made our day.)

(Our Spanish teacher is usually really nice. This week, we have a quiz, a big project, and a test all in Spanish. On Monday, we have the quiz. On Tuesday, we have time to work on the project. Our teacher is checking to see how much work we have done.)

Teacher: *angrily to the whole class* “I am disappointed in you guys. You are all extremely behind! I know that some of you will leave this to the last minute and I know that a few of your projects will look like Google translate. I’ll be surprised if I’m not sitting in front of the honor board with at least one of you. Because I know that you guys are going to cheat!”

(She continues ranting to us for ten minutes about how she knows we are all going to cheat and get expelled. We are all pretty surprised at this reaction as nobody has even gone as far as passing in a homework assignment late. The next day, we are all nervous about going back to the class. My friend and I both have social anxiety and our nicest teacher unexpectedly screaming at us didn’t help. Nonetheless, we all show up to class on time worried about being yelled at.)

Teacher: *calmly and kindly* “So, a lot of you did pretty badly on the quiz. A lot of you guys failed.” 

(For the whole class, she is really kind again and explains everything we got wrong on the quiz.)

Teacher: *as we are leaving* “I will not postpone the tests! You guys need to start being responsible; I expect better from high-schoolers!”

(Nobody asked her to move the test. She just decided that that was worth yelling about. Oh, did I mention that this is a class of mostly freshmen? And that it’s a new school to a lot of us, as well? We take our tests and get them back after the weekend.)

Teacher: “The class average was 95%! And there were several 100s. Only one of you failed. I am really surprised none of you cheated. I was sure I was going to get someone expelled!”

(I still don’t know why she was so sure that we would cheat, but also, she left some posters on the wall that had a few things that would help out on the test. And I’m pretty sure more than a few of us noticed.)