School Jokes

Q: How did the two dead brothers do in school? A: They were dead even.

Q: What vegetables do librarians like? A: Quiet peas.

When I was teaching kindergarten and had a cold, I would often get laryngitis with it. One day a student asked me, “Do you have a frog in your nose?”

If you’re a fan of lousy literature, you’re in luck: Here are two intentionally bad first lines of nonexistent novels. As he caressed her hair, cheek, forehead, chin, collarbone, shoulder, upper arm, and stomach, she knew that her decision to take Octoman as a lover was the correct one.    L. C. If Vicky Walters had known that ordering an extra shot of espresso in her grande non-fat sugar free one pump raspberry syrup two pumps vanilla syrup soy latte that Wednesday would lead to her death and subsequent rebirth as a vampire, she probably would have at least gotten whipped cream.    M. C. From the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

My sister-in-law was teaching Sunday school class. The topic for the day: Easter Sunday and the 
resurrection of Christ. “What did Jesus do on this day?” she asked. There was no response, 
so she gave her students a hint: 
“It starts with the letter R.” One boy blurted, “Recycle!” Mari-Lynn Finley, Los Angeles, California

Just before the final exam in 
my college finance class, a less-than-stellar student approached me. “Can you tell me what grade 
I would need to get on the exam 
to pass the course?” he asked. I gave him the bad news. “The exam is worth 100 points. You would need 113 points to earn a D.” “OK,” he said. “And how many points would I need to get a C?” Aimee Prawitz, Sycamore, Illinois

In college, my freshman-year roommate was in ROTC and came from a long line of military men. Trask (his last name) used that 
heritage to lord it over me. But I had the last laugh. One night, he returned to the dorm in his perfectly pressed 
uniform, his newly acquired name tag in his hand. Reluctantly, he showed it to me. In large gold letters was printed: TRASH. Gary Severson, Nooksack, Washington

A first-grade teacher can’t 
believe her student isn’t hepped up about the Super Bowl. “It’s a huge event. Why aren’t you excited?” “Because I’m not a football fan. My parents love basketball, so I do too,” says the student. “Well, that’s a lousy reason,” says the teacher. “What if your parents were morons? What would you be then?” “Then I’d be a football fan.”

For Martin Luther King Day, 
I asked my fifth graders how they’d make the world a better place. One said, “I’d make potato skins a main dish rather than an appetizer.” Jessica Castronovo, 
Manalapan, New Jersey

Try as she might, our granddaughter couldn’t grasp the concept of potty training. Then one day … Success! Jumping up and down, 
she threw her arms in the air 
and yelled in excitement, “I went potty all by myself, and now I can 
go to Harvard!” Jan and Jack McCloskey, 
San Francisco, California

Gauging from these exam 
excerpts, my college dance students had better stick with pliés. “The costumes were vindictive 
of the style of dance.” “I commend Bill T. Jones for 
his acts of true kindness and 
selfishness.” “Dancers must have long limps.” “At first, I had a hard time 
understanding and interrupting 
his movement.” “Savion Glover’s purpose is to cross all racial and ethical barriers with his dance.” Kathy Dubois, Onalaska, Wisconsin

• Q: 
What’s the name of a 
six-sided polygon? A: Sixagon. • Q: 
What part of the body is 
affected by glandular fever? A: The glandular. • Q: 
In The Tempest, why does 
Ariel sing in Gonzalo’s ear? A: 
She’s a mermaid and wants to be human. • Q: 
In comparison with large 
hydrocarbons, how would you describe small hydrocarbons? A: They’re smaller. • Q: 
Who were the Bolsheviks? A: A Russian ballet company. From F in Exams: Pop Quiz, 
by Richard Benson (Chronicle Books)

Student: I don’t understand why my grade was so low. How did 
I do on my research paper? Teacher: Actually, you didn’t turn in a research paper. You turned in a random assemblage of sentences. In fact, the 
sentences you apparently 
kidnapped in the dead of night 
and forced into this violent and arbitrary plan of yours clearly seemed to be placed on the pages against their will. Reading your paper was like watching unfamiliar, uncomfortable people interacting at a cocktail party that no one wanted to attend in the first place. You didn’t submit a research paper. You submitted a hostage situation.

I’m now in high school, so when I ran into my third-grade teacher, I doubted she would remember me. “Hi, Miss Butcher,” I said. “Hi, Eddie,” she replied. “So you do remember me?” I asked. “Sure. You don’t always leave a good impression, but it is a lasting one.” Edward McMurray, Wayne, Michigan

I don’t want to brag or make anybody jealous or anything, but 
I can still fit into the earrings I wore in high school. From humorlabs.com

One hard thing to explain to teens is how legitimately exciting it used to be when someone would wheel in an overhead projector. @juliussharpe

A mother complained to my wife, 
a schoolteacher, that other students were stealing her daughter’s pencils. “It’s not the money—it’s the 
principle,” she insisted. “My husband took those pencils from work.” Roger Prengel, Lacey, Washington

“Give me a sentence about a public servant,” the teacher instructed her second-grade student. “The fireman came down the ladder pregnant,” he answered. “Umm … Do you know what pregnant means?” “Yes,” said the boy. “It means 
carrying a child.” Earl B. Child, Roy, Utah

I recently ran into an old student of mine, who said, "I always liked you. You never had favorites. You were mean to everyone." Lois Henry, Farmington, Maine

“Hurry up or we'll be late!” shouts a teacher to her kindergarten class. “What's the rush?” a tot asks coolly. “If we're late, we'll miss your next class!” the teacher reminds him. The kid shrugs. “If you're in such a hurry, go on without us.” —Source: Funny in Thailand Survey

Why was the math book sad? Because it had so many problems.

"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, then read it aloud: "I toad my mama I wanted a dog for my birthday."

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 bangs his head against the wall, while another screams all night."

"How do you put up with it?"

"I just ignore them and play my bagpipes."

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 considering my words, one of my students asked, "What does it mean to remove all doubt?"

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: "They start to carry a purse."

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," he said. "I copied them from another university's website."

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 worded note read "Good luck, and happy journey to the underworld."

During a lecture on the influence of media on teens, a typo in the PowerPoint presentation revealed the professor's true opinion. The title read "Three Reasons Teens Are Vulnerable Toads."

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."

Our school had just installed a new air-conditioning system, and a representative from the company wanted to make sure it was running smoothly. Poking his head into an empty classroom, he asked the teacher, "Any little problems here?"

"No," she said, smiling. "All our little problems have gone home."

Discovered: why our nation's education system is in trouble. When a friend delivered 20 new math books to a teacher's classroom, the teacher exclaimed, "Oh, shoot! I was hoping it was something I could use."

My son, a high school senior, went to take a national literacy test recently. A sign on the classroom door read "Literacy Testing in Progress: Do Not Distrub!"

Teacher: What is an evangelist?

Student: Someone who plays the evangelo.

Teacher: Why can't freshwater fish live in salt water?

Student: The salt would give them high blood pressure.

Teacher: Mira went to the library at 5:15 and left at 6:45. How long was Mira at the library?

Student: Not long.

For 98 percent of the students at the school where my wife teaches, English is a second language. But that didn't stop them from giving her Christmas cards. Still, their enthusiasm for the occasion sometimes exceeded their grasp of English. Among the many cards that flooded her desk were: "Happy Birthday, Grandma," "Get Well Soon," and "Congratulations on Passing Your Driving Test!"

Our local newspaper lists recipients of school awards. Beneath one photo, the caption read "This year's Perfect Attendance Awards go to Ann Stein and Bradley Jenkins. Not present for photo: Bradley Jenkins."

When our students began raising donations for Child Abuse Prevention Week, the school administration did its part by setting up a collection box outside the principal's office and displaying a banner by the front door of the lobby. It read "Please give $1 to help stop child abuse in the front office."

An amateur pilot wannabe, I knew I'd finally made progress with my flight training the day my instructor turned to me and said, "You know, you're not as much fun since you stopped screaming."

English is tough to learn, as these attempts from classes in English as a second language prove:

"Do you like this food? I made it from scratching."

"I never liked mushrooms, but now they are beginning to grow in me."

"Do you like your coffee cremated?"

"I usually worm up my food before I eat it."

In lectures on human genetics, I explained to my college students that males determine the sex of the offspring by contributing either an X or a Y chromosome. So at the end of the year, I put it on the final exam: "How is the sex of the child determined?"

One student wrote, "By examining it at birth."

A middle school in New Ipswich, New Hampshire, encourages freethinking. A sign outside the school reads, "You are unique—just like everyone else."

During my first meeting with my physically challenged students, I assured them that most people are handicapped in some way.

"Look at me," I said. "My eyes are so bad, I need to wear glasses. Because I can barely hear, I need a hearing aid. And look at my ears—they're much bigger than they should be."

From the back, a boy added, "And your nose too."

Teacher: George Washington not only chopped down his father's cherry tree but also admitted it. Now, Joey, do you know why his father didn't punish him?

Joey: Because George still had the ax in his hand?

When our school librarian announced she was changing schools, my fellow teacher asked a student, "Why do you think Ms. Richardson is leaving?"

The third grader opined, "Because she's read all our books?"

One of our projects at military leadership school called for us to speak in front of the class on a topic picked by our instructor. A classmate gave an impassioned speech on the benefits of drinking liquor. Alcohol, he insisted, warded off colds, kept you alert, and even made you steadier on your feet.

"Good job," said our instructor when he finished. "Only one thing: Your topic was the benefits of drinking liquids, not liquor."

I'd contacted a butcher to get sheep brains for a lecture in my neuroanatomy class and said I'd be by to pick them up. But when I arrived at his shop, it was closed. Taped to the door was this note: "Teacher, your brains are next door at the barbershop."

"Guess what?" yelled my high schooler as he burst through the door. "I got a 100 on the Spanish quiz that I didn't even know we were having."

"That's great!" I said. "But why didn't you know about the quiz?"

"Because our teacher told us about it in Spanish."

Interviewing a college applicant, the dean of admissions asks, "If you could have a conversation with someone, living or dead, who would it be?"

The student thinks it over, then answers, "The living one."

Teacher: Millie, give me a sentence starting with i.

Millie: I is …

Teacher: No, Millie. Always say, "I am."

Millie: Okay, I am the ninth letter of the alphabet.

An e-mail from our school principal: "The Miss BHS Beauty Pageant has been moved to Friday night instead of Saturday because of the contestants involved in the hog show."

When a nosy fourth-grade student wanted the scoop on what another teacher and I were discussing in private, I decided it was time for an impromptu lesson in manners.

"Do you know what ‘minding your own business' means?" I asked pointedly.

He didn't, but a student clear across the room shouted, "I do!"

Flummoxed by his true-false final exam, a student decides to toss a coin up in the air. Heads means true; tails, false. Thirty minutes later, he's done, well before the rest of the class. But then the student starts flipping the coin again. And soon he's swearing and sweating over each question.

"What's wrong?" asks the concerned teacher.

"I'm rechecking my answers," says says the student.

Early one morning, a mother went in to wake up her son. "Wake up, son. It's time to go to school!"
"But why, Mom? I don't want to go."
"Give me two reasons why you don't want to go."
"Well, the kids hate me for one, and the teachers hate me, too!"
"Oh, that's no reason not to go to school. Come on now and get ready."
"Give me two reasons why I should go to school."
"Well, for one, you're 52 years old. And for another, you're the Principal!"

I was a percussion major when I was in college, and during a rehearsal of the student orchestra, my section kept making mistakes.

"When you're too dumb to play anything," the professor conducting us sneered, "they give you a couple of sticks, put you in the back and call you a percussionist."

A friend next to me whispered, "And if you're too dumb to hang on to both sticks, they put you in the front and call you a conductor."

 

After his first day back at school in the fall, I asked my son if the high-school students were wearing anything new. "Well," he replied, "a lot of the fellows are showing up in see-through mustaches."

The college football player knew his way around the locker room better than he did the library. So when my husband's co-worker saw the gridiron star roaming the stacks looking confused, she asked how she could help. "I have to read a play by Shakespeare," he said.

"Which one?" she asked.

He scanned the shelves and answered, "William."

We live less than a quarter-mile from the high school, but my son proudly drove there in a car he bought with his own money. A typical first car, it had lots of little problems and was sometimes slow to start.

One morning I was surprised to see it still in front of the house, so after school I asked him about it. "I had to get to school early," he said, "so I just ran."

During our computer class, the teacher chastised one boy for talking to the girl sitting next to him.

"I was just asking her a question," the boy said.

"If you have a question, ask me," the teacher tersely replied.

"Okay," he answered. "Do you want to go out with me Friday night?"

Four students walked in halfway through the American history test my father was giving at the local community college. "Sorry," they said, "we had a flat tire."

An understanding man, Dad said that if they could all answer just one question correctly, he would give them each an "A" for the exam. The students agreed. So my father handed each one a piece of paper, placed them in four separate corners and said, "Write down which tire was flat."

At the beginning of my junior year at Russellville High School in Arkansas, our homeroom teacher had us fill out a form stating our future goals. Out of curiosity, I leaned over to see what my friend put down for her aspirations.

Where it read "Vocational Plans," she had written, "Florida."

One afternoon while I was visiting my library, I noticed a group of preschoolers gathered for story time. The book they were reading was "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." After the librarian finished the first page, she asked the children, "Do you think she'll die?"

"Nope," a little girl in the back said. "I saw this last night on 'Fear Factor.' "

While reviewing math symbols with my second-grade pupils, I drew a greater-than (>) and a less-than (<) sign on the chalkboard and asked, "Does anyone remember what these mean?" A few moments passed, and then a boy confidently raised his hand. "One means fast-forward," he exclaimed, "and the other means rewind!"

I was teaching a life-skills class to my high school students one day, and we were discussing the various terms one might encounter in a restaurant. I asked, "What does the phrase 'à la carte' mean?" "It means," a student said, "you're in the wrong restaurant."

Parents are justifiably upset when their children don't get into the college of their choice. As an admissions counselor for a state university, I took a call from an irate mother demanding to know why her daughter had been turned down. Avoiding any mention of the transcript full of D's, I explained that her daughter just wasn't as "competitive" as the admitted class. "Why doesn't she try another school for a year and then transfer?" I suggested. 

"Another school!" exclaimed Mom. "Have you seen her grades?"

 

 

Did you hear about the college professor who was involved in a terrible car wreck? He was grading papers on a curve.

As a fund-raiser, the chemistry club designed and sold T-shirts. Written across the front were our top "Stupid Chemistry Sayings":

• Have yourself a Merry Little Bismuth

• What do you do with dead people? Barium

• You stupid boron!

• We hope your year is very phosphorous.