School Jokes

"How do you spell toad?" one of my first-grade students asked. "We just read a story about a toad," I said, then helped him spell it out: "T-O-A-D." Satisfied, he finished writing the story he'd begun…

A month after Donald MacDonald started at Harvard, his mother called from Scotland. "And how are the American students, Donald?" she asked. "They’re so noisy," he complained. "One neighbor endlessly…

After a day of listening to my eighth graders exchange gossip, I decided to quote Mark Twain to them: "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." After…

During my eighth-grade sex education class, no one could answer the question "What happens to a young woman during puberty?" So I rephrased it: "What happens to young women as they mature?" One student answered:…

Question on second-grade math quiz: "Tony drank 1/6 of a glass of juice. Emily drank 1/4 of a glass of juice. Emily drank more. Explain." My grandson's answer: "She was more thirsty."

At a planning meeting at my college, I congratulated a colleague on producing some superb student-guidance notes explaining how to combat plagiarism. "How long did it take you to write them?" I asked. "Not long,"…

When my summer teaching post in the Czech Republic came to an end, I told my students my next teaching destination would be in Australia, "the land down under." On my final day, they presented me with a card. The carefully…

Found in a heap of recycled files donated to our school was this curiously labeled folder: "Excuses I Have Used."

There was a typo on a test I was taking. Instead of "(D) none of the above," it said "(D) one of the above." So I circled it.

Seen outside a professor's door at Georgetown College: "Psychology 376: Dying, Grieving, and Coping. Take for your major or minor, or as a fun elective."