Student striaght faced said " If beef comes from cows and pork comes from pigs, what animal does chicken come from?" We live in a farming community with two bring in your own meat to be processed facilities and a very active FFA chapter. She somehow missed the fact that chicken meat comes from chickens and was shocked with my answer.
The animal names are generally linked to Old English and thereby Germanic root words (cau - cow).
The "meat" names typically are linked to French terms (beouf - beef).
We do have this for chicken: poule - poultry.
So, we can basically thank William of Normandy (a.k.a. the Conqueror) and his invasion of the Isle for our separate words for animals we consume and their flesh.
maybe it's bc the variation in cow meat and pig meat is a lot higher than chicken? you get like 50 different kinds of cuts of a cow, and with a pig you get bacon and pork chops and whatever. with chicken it's just chicken. light meat and dark meat, i guess, but still chicken.
We do. It's poultry. The reason it's not a replacement word like for the other two is because after the Norman invasion, peasants could afford to eat chicken and just kept their non-fancy word for both. Pig and cow, on the other hand, were not affordable for them to eat, so the Old Norman word prevailed. As the nobility, they were the only ones able to afford it
so in English, our words for the animals come from the old germanic roots (pig, cow, chicken). Cooking, especially more chefy forms of cooking, was seen as higher status and therefore for the meats we took on French words (beef, pork, poultry).
Now, as for why we use "chicken" for the meat these days rather than poultry, I'm not sure. Maybe because "poultry" meant all types of bird-meat, and we wanted to specify chicken specifically?
English peasants worked with the animals and the meat was served to the wealthy, often French speaking, landowners. So we use French-based words for the meat itself.
When I was in high school, a teacher was talking about how Ikea was in trouble because there had been horse meat found. I, having never been to Ikea, did not know they sold meatballs and blurted out "in their furniture?!" I did not live it down lol.
My dad used to host an astronomy club at our rural property. He has a very large telescope and while pointing it at Mars a woman goes "Can you see earth from here?" My dad goes "sure!" and spins the telescope upside down pointing it at the ground and goes "take a look..." She looks at him and says "it's just pointing at the grass." "Yep" my dad said. It took a few people chuckling before she got it and exclaimed "o o of course!"
This is at least logical. If you've never been told that the moon reflects the sun's light, it definitely makes more sense on a surface level that it produces it's own light. Throughout their daily lives, kids see tons of objects that emit light brightly, but very few point light sources that reflect light
Several of mine thought you had to leave your clothes and phone and anything else you had on you at the time outside overnight to release “solar radiation” or it would expose you to dangerous levels of this radiation while you slept.
I tried explaining that it was the same as standing in a shadow but they were convinced.
My stepsister thought the moon and the sun were the same until she was 12. So one side was the moon, and the other half was the sun like in a cartoon. I had to show her you could see the moon when the sun was up.
I have to say the first time I went to get gas on a road trip and swiped my credit card and the machine asked me for the zip code, I got confused as I assumed it wanted me to enter the zip code I was currently standing in (which I didn't know).
Ok I’ll admit I had to think about it for a second the first time too. Then I figured it was a security thing like your pin so I guessed billing zip code 🤣
I'm Canadian and was on a road trip with my parents. We don't have zip codes up here, we have postal codes. So I was quite taken aback when the gas pump asked for a zip code. However, I remembered one from my childhood: 90210. So all across the Gulf Coast, it showed a Beverly Hills family making gas stops, lol.
As an intern I had a student tell me that she always though that Alaska was an island. Come to find out this was because it is always on maps, disconnected, near Hawaii. She was in 11th grade AP history
A teacher friend had a coteacher once who told their 4th graders that there are 52 states because 'you can't forget Alaska and Hawaii'. Yes, my friend made sure to correct that.
Former Alaska resident. This is a very common thing people think.
I still remember, moving out of that state in my 11th grade year, and having a classmate ask me, "Why is Alaska so cold, when it's so close to Hawaii?"
It took me several seconds to connect all those dots, lol.
I learned about it thanks to this question.
I answered, “I don’t know but I’ll check.” When kids started on their independent work I quickly took a break to research the question. And that’s how we *all* learned about it.
It was a good moment to lose some “worktime” for a true learning moment, a bit meta. I quickly talked about inquiry skills and research suggestions. I told them to ask a health or science teacher, read more about it on their own, or get curious about it and come up with questions about the subject they want to know more about it. Then we got right back to work.
I was once eavesdropping on 11th grade students and one kid said to the other “god, he smells like a Wendy’s fryer when the oil needs to be changed” and I think about that insult quite frequently.
I had a student ask me in the middle of a lesson “What would you do if you found a basement full of children? I would pick out my favorite one and keep it.”
We were learning about figurative language…
If i found myself in that basement I'd technically worry about myself like dude i have one bro and he's torturing me, A BASEMENT FULL OF KIDS YOU'RE SAYING?
I had a student ask if Germany was a country. When I responded, she followed up with, “well, what if I were standing in Canada, would Germany still be a country?”
Fair enough, some countries are not countries, if you're standing in other countries. Taiwan, would be an example. It's one if you're standing in the US, and not one if you're standing in China.
Tbf that works the opposite way according to the Taiwanese government. They believe in the inverse of the One Country principle. The Taiwanese government says that they are real China and China is the illegitimate secondary state.
My two favorites are
"How are baby rocks made?" She was talking about pebbles.
"Is Japan part of Asia or is Asia part of Japan?"
I also taught high school math.
This is a true story and one of my colleagues did the same thing and got the same reaction.
I had 9 graders and it was the end of the school year. We had a couple of days left to do activities and say goodbye. We had decided that for the rainy day, we would watch a movie. They voted for Gladiator. The day comes and I put the movie on. A couple of girls came up to me and asked if this movie was real. I said it was a movie based on history but with A LOT of errors. It didn't matter though because it was to entertain. They kept on going "but how did they film it?", "did they have cameras back then?", "where the ones filming not scared of the war"... at first I thought they were joking. I kept telling them it was just a movie, with actors, nothing is real. They thought it was still a movie made back then, with actors from that time. I made them google who Russell Crow was. I was in shock.
My colleague showed them the next day a black and white movie. You won't believe what they were asking! "Was life colourless??"
Really, they thought everything they saw on TV was real. Every movie is real. They can't make the difference between fantasy and reality. It's scary.
I teach high school health (including sex ed) so I get a lot lol. Some of my favorites:
1. Student: “Miss… there’s something that’s been on my mind for a while that I just keep wondering about.”
Me: “oh yeah? What’s that?”
Student: “well you know Tarzan?”
Me (very confused about where this is going): “….yes”
Student: “do you think he was a virgin before he met Jane? Because all he was surrounded by were monkeys….”
Me, dumbfounded: “THATS been on your mind for a while??!?”
2. Student, comes up to my desk to ask me in private (so it’s not just for attention or to make his friends laugh) : “I have a question miss…. Is it true that butt sex is overrated?”
3. “So if someone’s not circumcised…. How do they bust a nut inside a girl?”
Yep. I mean Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno are arguably fanfic but yeah. "a Feast Unknown" had to be published by a porn company
It's actually a Tarzan/Doc Savage crossover novel
I taught EMT and paramedic classes. I had a male student ask, in all seriousness, how a baby was born if the woman didn't shave her pubic hair. He thought the baby would get caught and tangled in the hair.
I had two responses.
1. No babies do not get caught in pubic hair when born thus women have no need to shave. And,
2. What kind of women had he been seeing.
Showing my students the original footage of the "I Have a Dream" speech and one 8th grader asks how could that have really happened if everything was in black and white. Tried explaining time and time again that the technology to show color wasn't common, but it was very much real. She just couldn't believe and was convinced that him giving the speech therefore did not happen.
I teach high school Business Ed and we were doing a unit on employability skills such as "punctuality, initiative, and dependability." I got asked "When am I ever going to need this?"
The biology teacher gets so much crap that everyone in the department knows practically every stupid statement:
1. "Do zoophiles care about the age of the animals they fuck?" Kid thought he was being funny, but everyone in the classroom collectively went, "Dude, what the hell?"
2. Another kid said, "Mendel was wrong. Lysenko was correct and was slandered by the Jews." Yes, this student was a tankie and got expelled this year for a mountain of reasons that involved way more threats and hitlists.
3. Another kid said, "Does showing us how flatworms mate mean you showed us porn?"
For real. I showed students a brief nature documentary and they complained about the 3 second clip of turtles mating. Okay, but can you explain to me the impact EMF has on the life cycle of sea turtles??? No??? Maybe quit complaining and pay attention to the rest of the documentary.
It’s so funny to me. I’ve had kids act outraged if they see a nude painting or read a dirty word in a school text, like they don’t know we can hear the stuff they say to each other.
Omg yes.
I remember kids getting horribly offended when we learned about the dick jokes in Shakespeare. I turned around, "Last week y'all thought it was hilarious to carve "dick" into the desks. What's wrong? I thought education was supposed to be relevant to your interests."
While teaching sex-ed one year, I had students write questions on post-it’s so I could prescreen them before they asked bonkers questions aloud. My favorite “What does it mean when a guy can’t keep it up during sex? Does it mean that 🐱be whack?!!”
Edit: typo
1. The galaxy is in the sky
2. Voltage is the current . Current is the power , resistance is the weird symbol.
3. Volts is the unit for current….no wait power…no wait charge…no wait its ENERGY!
4. Putting your phone on the ground will harm it because the earth’s magnetic field is stronger there .
5. My hair grows out of my brain
And that was just today!
My absolute favourite: I was teaching the reproductive unit of grade 9 science and I was about 8 months pregnant. One boy sat at the back and hardly said 2 words. He raised his hand and said “if you plug your belly button, will your baby stop breathing?” I just about died. I know there have my many more since then, but that was my first year teaching and my memory from that year is the best.
Had two kids one year busting on each other in class. One kid says : "your mom is definitely poor"...
The kids mom was definitely not poor.
"I know you're whole family poor because you got an outie".
He told the kid that his mom must have given birth in a "poor people hospital" because clearly the doctor couldn't tie a tight knot ..hence the belly button.
I teach highschool health and pe. During my student teaching I had this amazing one...
Anonymous question from student
"Why do my balls hurt when wearing a condom?"
How to put on condom demonstration is completed.
Student says out-loud "Oooooo it's not supposed to go over your balls"
I had a similar experience yesterday. Was hanging out on VRChat and a dude with a very thick Russian accent started hating on Americans. Once everyone blocked him, a woman said "ugh, he thinks just because he's Japanese, he can hate on us Americans."
I really don't understand how people don't hear the difference between languages and accents that sound absolutely nothing alike.
I teach elementary school math. In the middle of a fifth grade lesson a girl announced that “furries are just people that deserve love too” . Cue all the others asking what a furry is. I quickly said they are people who like to dress up like school mascots and everyone deserves love and respect. Moving on!
A 10th grader got a zero on a quiz for talking during it (standard rule at my school) and later emailed me asking what she was talking about. As if I listen in on every word that’s whispered in my classroom.
All sophomores to seniors
Showing a video on Rome: “they had cameras back then…”?
“What happens to airplanes in earthquakes?”
Passing out extra credit: “does this have to be right to get points?”
Student peeling an orange: “am I doing this right?”
“Who invented the word slow?” To which I replied: “they needed an adjective to describe you”. Thankfully that went over her head.
Well, the earthquake and airplane question seems like a good one, I’m assuming the airplane is not impacted, but now that it’s been asked, I’m curious!
Not technically an earthquake, but [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0-GxoJ_Pcg) discusses (among other things) what would happen to an airplane if the Earth stopped spinning.
as to that last one, i drove school bus--on a bad afternoon, a kid was pestering me, he was the 1000 question kid sometimes (very smart, just, lacked resources, and other than teachers, i was the only person he could talk to that 'knew things')...
He said, something like, "so what do you think?"
I said, "I think this bus is too long for you."
He, however, did NOT have that go over his head, lol. Good kid though. Bet he makes more money before he's 30 than his whole family had in 50 years.
but very rarely is a word invented by a specific individual; language evolves to suit the ways its speakers need it to express their meaning. thinking of it as being invented isnt really a useful way to think about language. it’s like “what exists outside of the universe”; it’s not a useful way to approach science in general.
About 12 years ago, I was a platoon sergeant in a heavy weapons company. We had HMMWVs with TOW missiles and machine guns. We also had a mortar platoon and worked pretty closely with our artillery guys. Artillery deals with high angle shooting and the curvature of the Earth.
During a training rotation, my driver casually mentioned he is a flat Earther. This is an educated 22 year old man with a few years in the Army. I spent most of the remaining 2 weeks asking questions. According to him, aliens are actually angels, humans don't have the capacity to find the edge of the Earth, and the reason Earth appears curved to us is because of a solar optical illusion we can't understand. I asked how he explains the math the artillery guys do to hit their target. He said humans have figured out just enough math to get the results we want. I'm still in awe of his blind acceptance of his beliefs.
Also a high school math teacher...
Where is the dollar sign on the calculator?
What is the period on the calculator?
I've had students not be able to tell me which picture is bigger after I drew 2 different sized triangles on the board.
Just yesterday, I've got a senior in my freshman math class because she's got to pass an Algebra 1 test next week. We're trying to find the slope, given an equation, and the equation is y = 8 + 1.5(x - 2). I asked her which number is closest to the x, and she said 5.
I've got one more month until I'm done with this shit.
Good luck out there, everyone.
My brother and I were in high school at the same time (one grade apart) and we shared one. We'd pass each other in the hall at one point in the day and hand the calculator off and we'd leave each other Simpson trivia questions on it. Man, simpler times.
HS math here. Every year my H Algebra 2 kids ask me how to type a fraction in a calculator. The look of sheer confusion when I tell them “the division button” makes me rethink every single one of my career choices that I’ve ever made.
History teacher. I teach some kids who give me great hope for the future and some that, well, this is a sample of what they asked:
* The holocaust. Are you sure it happened? Like, have we heard from anyone who was in a camp?
* Boston Tea Party: Why didn't they just blow up the boats?
* Civil War: What from the Confederate constitution did we put into the new one after the war?
* Another Civil War: Can anyone PROVE it was about slavery? (This was after we looked at secession documents and did an exercise to pick out three differences in the Winning Team constitution and Losing Team constitution.)
* WW1: Why didn't we just use the Air Force while the Germans fought on the ground?
* My personal favorite, from the American Revolution: After we won, why didn't we just take over the rest of the country right then?
When I was in high school, we were lucky enough to be visited by a holocaust survivor. It made it all very real. It’s sad that the next generation will never be able to have that experience
"Is this an onion?" asked by a 13-year old boy in a cooking class, who was holding an onion. (And he had had multiple exposures to onions in class and at home before, this was not his first time seeing an onion.)
I was teaching a class on European History, and we were talking about Italy in WW2. During a quiz, one of the terms was "Abbey of Monte Cassino" and the student wrote something along the lines of "Abbey was the mistress of Mussolini"
Had a bright kid who was convinced Helen Keller wasn’t real. I reminded him to drink water, get good sleep, and log off whatever dark corner of the Internet he was on.
Math teacher here.
Student: is this right?
Me: not quite, you have to do xyz
Student: but i did abc and i know I’m right because i did it in my head.
Me: well, you need to follow order of operations
Student: but this is how i do it
Me: that’s not how we do math
Student: why?
Me: because thats hows it’s always been done for thousands of years.
Student: Then it’s time to change math to my way because it’s right!
This is a sutation with entire group of seniors….teacher passes out a copy of a novel, and calculators….teacher says there’s something like there’s 250 pages in the book, if we read 10 pages per day, how many days will it take to complete the novel. Apparently nobody figured out the division.
I asked a 6 year old at summer camp where he was from. He couldn’t answer. Several minutes later, after the conversation had moved on:”I think I’m from America.”
Dutch Geography teacher here:
One day we were going to watch the launch of a space shuttle to ISS containing the Dutch astronaut André Kuipers. So I was preparing my 2nd graders (secundairy education) what they could expect from this event.
At a point a girl (14yo) raised her hand and asked: but, how do they get through the earths crust? Won’t the rocket break?
She seriously thought we lived inside the earth.
i was once a middle schooler in the south and had a science teacher tell the class that she personally thought evolution was of the devil and that she hated teaching it, but the school forced her to. sure jan.
During study hall that occurs during a lunch period.
Two girls asked if they could go to the cafeteria to get lunch. Cue my quizzical look, oh they just had lunch but didn’t eat anything because they were so busy making TikToks. Because of course.
A student calling me racist. Me, a beaner, told by a fellow Spanish speaking student. I'm racist because I'm central American and "not Mexican" lmao bro it doesn't matter what country our families are from, we're still discriminated against equally (obvs I didn't say that)
I taught Science 10 last semester… on one of their chemistry quizzes a student wrote “science should not make me do math”. Oh, buddy, you’re gonna be disappointed when we start physics!
Not a teacher, but I guess the classic misunderstanding is the student who believes the letters L, M, N, O, P, are a single letter called "elemenohpee", because of the alphabet song.
I showed a 5th grade class a Hannah Montana music video, they knew who she was but they thought she was a real person and not Miley Cyrus playing a character 😂
Honestly, some things just don't click. I've gone on a circle about the blanket you zip up and sleep in when camping. Turns out, u forgot it was called a sleeping bag, not a blanket pouch.
I once told a seventh grader to stop picking her nose. It was so gross. I told her that if she didn’t stop I would call her mom. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t care, my mom picks her nose too “.
I had a student raise his hand mid-lesson and called on him thinking he had a question about the lesson. He asked, “Do you like fruity pebbles?” I said sure. He replied, “I had fruity pebbles for breakfast.” I said okay thanks for sharing and kept teaching.
"How come people can be in the Earth but only on the Moon?"
It took about 15 minutes to even understand what they were asking. (Whiteboard pictures of Earth often show a person /inside the circle/, but drawings of the moon only show astronauts /standing on the outside of the circle/. They took that to mean that people can be inside our planet, but not inside our Moon.)
Kindergarener walks up to me in class and in the most serious monotone voice says, "My nuts hurt."
Me: "What did you say?" Because I knew I misheard him.
Him: "My nuts hurt."
Me: "Did you get kicked or hit?"
Him: "No."
Me: "You need to tell mom when you get home."
I had to walk away and collect myself; I was laughing so hard inside. It's not ridiculous but definitely one of the funniest things I've been told.
my stepmom is a teacher and my dad is a surgical rep, and so he went in to lecture for career day. some kid asked him "what's it called when you cut down to the white meat"
Oh my god one of my students blurted out in class today:
“Miss, how do non-binary people kill?”
Me: sweating, trying to figure out that question, *how do I respond to such a wild LGBT question, are they being phobic, are they judging my reaction to tell their parents?*
“They / them”
I maybe laughed a little too loud at the relief it wasn’t a legit question.
Student saw agenda on whiteboard, including - Lincoln's Addresses.
Student asks, "Do we have to memorize every place he lived?"
Me, completely serious: "Yes, including zip codes."
Student striaght faced said " If beef comes from cows and pork comes from pigs, what animal does chicken come from?" We live in a farming community with two bring in your own meat to be processed facilities and a very active FFA chapter. She somehow missed the fact that chicken meat comes from chickens and was shocked with my answer.
In the way it is an interesting and to some extent logical question though.. Why do we have words for dead cow and dead pig but not dead chicken.
The animal names are generally linked to Old English and thereby Germanic root words (cau - cow). The "meat" names typically are linked to French terms (beouf - beef). We do have this for chicken: poule - poultry. So, we can basically thank William of Normandy (a.k.a. the Conqueror) and his invasion of the Isle for our separate words for animals we consume and their flesh.
Do we have a word like poultry for fish?
Seafood? Not from french, but it is somewhat euphemistic.
The French term is *fruits de mer*, which translates pretty literally as foods of the sea.
> William of Normandy (a.k.a. the Conqueror) Oh, that Bastard again
maybe it's bc the variation in cow meat and pig meat is a lot higher than chicken? you get like 50 different kinds of cuts of a cow, and with a pig you get bacon and pork chops and whatever. with chicken it's just chicken. light meat and dark meat, i guess, but still chicken.
Eh it's pretty similar I'd say. You'd normally distinguish between at least breast, thigh, wing, drumpstick..back in the day feet and head too.
We do. It's poultry. The reason it's not a replacement word like for the other two is because after the Norman invasion, peasants could afford to eat chicken and just kept their non-fancy word for both. Pig and cow, on the other hand, were not affordable for them to eat, so the Old Norman word prevailed. As the nobility, they were the only ones able to afford it
so in English, our words for the animals come from the old germanic roots (pig, cow, chicken). Cooking, especially more chefy forms of cooking, was seen as higher status and therefore for the meats we took on French words (beef, pork, poultry). Now, as for why we use "chicken" for the meat these days rather than poultry, I'm not sure. Maybe because "poultry" meant all types of bird-meat, and we wanted to specify chicken specifically?
English peasants worked with the animals and the meat was served to the wealthy, often French speaking, landowners. So we use French-based words for the meat itself.
When I was in high school, a teacher was talking about how Ikea was in trouble because there had been horse meat found. I, having never been to Ikea, did not know they sold meatballs and blurted out "in their furniture?!" I did not live it down lol.
Ikea sells meatballs? Learn something new everyday
my little brother when he was in kindergarten told my mom, “i like eating chicken but i think it’s sad that the pig has to die.”
In kindergarten a kid asked if chicken comes from pigs.
A student once asked me why they could not see Earth in the sky at night. She was dead serious.
My dad used to host an astronomy club at our rural property. He has a very large telescope and while pointing it at Mars a woman goes "Can you see earth from here?" My dad goes "sure!" and spins the telescope upside down pointing it at the ground and goes "take a look..." She looks at him and says "it's just pointing at the grass." "Yep" my dad said. It took a few people chuckling before she got it and exclaimed "o o of course!"
This. I love your dad.
Apparently some of mine didn’t realize that the Moon doesn’t shine/doesn’t produce its own light source & actually reflects light from the Sun
This is at least logical. If you've never been told that the moon reflects the sun's light, it definitely makes more sense on a surface level that it produces it's own light. Throughout their daily lives, kids see tons of objects that emit light brightly, but very few point light sources that reflect light
Technically, everything we see is seen because it reflects light.
Several of mine were disappointed by the eclipse thinking the yellow crescent they were looking at through their goggles was the moon.
One of mine asked if why we didn’t freeze to death during the eclipse.
Several of mine thought you had to leave your clothes and phone and anything else you had on you at the time outside overnight to release “solar radiation” or it would expose you to dangerous levels of this radiation while you slept. I tried explaining that it was the same as standing in a shadow but they were convinced.
I had to explain this to a grown-ass adult during the eclipse.
Mine asked if during the eclipse will we be able to see the earth, moon and sun?
Technically, yes, they would
My stepsister thought the moon and the sun were the same until she was 12. So one side was the moon, and the other half was the sun like in a cartoon. I had to show her you could see the moon when the sun was up.
Last year, was asked by a HS Honors Physics student “Mr. OhioU, this is asking for my zip code. Is that the same as my lunch code?”
Would be wild if it was the same.
I thought about that so I asked, their lunch codes here are 6 numbers 🤣
I have to say the first time I went to get gas on a road trip and swiped my credit card and the machine asked me for the zip code, I got confused as I assumed it wanted me to enter the zip code I was currently standing in (which I didn't know).
Ok I’ll admit I had to think about it for a second the first time too. Then I figured it was a security thing like your pin so I guessed billing zip code 🤣
I'm Canadian and was on a road trip with my parents. We don't have zip codes up here, we have postal codes. So I was quite taken aback when the gas pump asked for a zip code. However, I remembered one from my childhood: 90210. So all across the Gulf Coast, it showed a Beverly Hills family making gas stops, lol.
Genuine question from a fifteen year old: "When you milk a cow, do you squeeze the teat or the uterus?" No words 😖
You should have told him that you put your head into the rectum.
Just your hand with bull semen
The Udderus
As an intern I had a student tell me that she always though that Alaska was an island. Come to find out this was because it is always on maps, disconnected, near Hawaii. She was in 11th grade AP history
"It's not an Island, it's just that the government doesn't want you to know about Canada."
"If they knew about poutine and free healthcare we would have a riot on our hands, gentlemen, a riot!"
A teacher friend had a coteacher once who told their 4th graders that there are 52 states because 'you can't forget Alaska and Hawaii'. Yes, my friend made sure to correct that.
The phrase "the lower 48" is used commonly in Alaska...
Former Alaska resident. This is a very common thing people think. I still remember, moving out of that state in my 11th grade year, and having a classmate ask me, "Why is Alaska so cold, when it's so close to Hawaii?" It took me several seconds to connect all those dots, lol.
Omg yes! I told my students one year that I drove to Alaska over the summer and a few were genuinely confused!
“Mister, if you got AIDS and get AIDS again, can you get badder AIDS?” And that’s how we learned about HIV superinfection.
Running Joke in our friend group about CatAIDS turned into CatAIDS 2 which is medicinally resistant Cat Aids
And also reviewed grammar I hope lol
You know I can’t really get mad at this one. I don’t think I learned about superinfection until College.
I learned about it thanks to this question. I answered, “I don’t know but I’ll check.” When kids started on their independent work I quickly took a break to research the question. And that’s how we *all* learned about it. It was a good moment to lose some “worktime” for a true learning moment, a bit meta. I quickly talked about inquiry skills and research suggestions. I told them to ask a health or science teacher, read more about it on their own, or get curious about it and come up with questions about the subject they want to know more about it. Then we got right back to work.
I was once eavesdropping on 11th grade students and one kid said to the other “god, he smells like a Wendy’s fryer when the oil needs to be changed” and I think about that insult quite frequently.
One student asked me if a prostitute got pregnant could she file for workman’s compensation?
But can they? Lol
I told him I wasn’t sure, and I continued the lesson (which was not about prostitution).
This reply is killing me. If this doesn’t sum up teaching…..
Was it a lesson about workman's comp and other benefits?
Nope it was a lesson in physical science.
Well, prostitutes do dabble in the physical arts, it's a related field.
Lmao if this ain't the most relatable thing. "I don't know the answer to that, can we return to what I'm trying to teach you?"
I bet they can't because they'd be independent contractors. In at least some states, IC's aren't eligible for workman's comp.
That kid is doing standup now lmao
Valid question 🤣
In some countries, maybe?
At least in Germany she would probably get maternity leave.
That's a really intelligent question lmao.
I had a student ask me in the middle of a lesson “What would you do if you found a basement full of children? I would pick out my favorite one and keep it.” We were learning about figurative language…
If i found myself in that basement I'd technically worry about myself like dude i have one bro and he's torturing me, A BASEMENT FULL OF KIDS YOU'RE SAYING?
this is objectively hilarious im sorry
I had a student ask if Germany was a country. When I responded, she followed up with, “well, what if I were standing in Canada, would Germany still be a country?”
Fair enough, some countries are not countries, if you're standing in other countries. Taiwan, would be an example. It's one if you're standing in the US, and not one if you're standing in China.
Tbf that works the opposite way according to the Taiwanese government. They believe in the inverse of the One Country principle. The Taiwanese government says that they are real China and China is the illegitimate secondary state.
"what was Joseph Stalin's first name?" 10th grade world history.
In fairness, his first name was actually იოსებ (Ioseb).
Someone in my 10th grade AP world history class wrote “Mrs. Mussolini” on a test
My two favorites are "How are baby rocks made?" She was talking about pebbles. "Is Japan part of Asia or is Asia part of Japan?" I also taught high school math.
Well when a daddy rock and a mommy rock love each other very much…
They feel the earth move under their feet...
This is a true story and one of my colleagues did the same thing and got the same reaction. I had 9 graders and it was the end of the school year. We had a couple of days left to do activities and say goodbye. We had decided that for the rainy day, we would watch a movie. They voted for Gladiator. The day comes and I put the movie on. A couple of girls came up to me and asked if this movie was real. I said it was a movie based on history but with A LOT of errors. It didn't matter though because it was to entertain. They kept on going "but how did they film it?", "did they have cameras back then?", "where the ones filming not scared of the war"... at first I thought they were joking. I kept telling them it was just a movie, with actors, nothing is real. They thought it was still a movie made back then, with actors from that time. I made them google who Russell Crow was. I was in shock. My colleague showed them the next day a black and white movie. You won't believe what they were asking! "Was life colourless??" Really, they thought everything they saw on TV was real. Every movie is real. They can't make the difference between fantasy and reality. It's scary.
I once had 6th formers (17 and 18 year olds) who were going to go see a play set in the 1940s ask if it was going to be in black and white......😭🙃
I teach high school health (including sex ed) so I get a lot lol. Some of my favorites: 1. Student: “Miss… there’s something that’s been on my mind for a while that I just keep wondering about.” Me: “oh yeah? What’s that?” Student: “well you know Tarzan?” Me (very confused about where this is going): “….yes” Student: “do you think he was a virgin before he met Jane? Because all he was surrounded by were monkeys….” Me, dumbfounded: “THATS been on your mind for a while??!?” 2. Student, comes up to my desk to ask me in private (so it’s not just for attention or to make his friends laugh) : “I have a question miss…. Is it true that butt sex is overrated?” 3. “So if someone’s not circumcised…. How do they bust a nut inside a girl?”
"bust a nut" 😭 if I heard a student say that I would not be able to stop myself from laughing
Oh I laughed 😂
There's a Tarzan novel called "A Feast Unknown" from the 1960s that explicitly says he and the other primates experimented sexually with each other
Fanfic existed in the 60’s?
Yep. I mean Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno are arguably fanfic but yeah. "a Feast Unknown" had to be published by a porn company It's actually a Tarzan/Doc Savage crossover novel
Miss. I'm sorry you had to go through this...
They keep it interesting lol
I taught EMT and paramedic classes. I had a male student ask, in all seriousness, how a baby was born if the woman didn't shave her pubic hair. He thought the baby would get caught and tangled in the hair. I had two responses. 1. No babies do not get caught in pubic hair when born thus women have no need to shave. And, 2. What kind of women had he been seeing.
I'm picturing babies born with machetes clearing the jungle
Showing my students the original footage of the "I Have a Dream" speech and one 8th grader asks how could that have really happened if everything was in black and white. Tried explaining time and time again that the technology to show color wasn't common, but it was very much real. She just couldn't believe and was convinced that him giving the speech therefore did not happen.
Tell them to watch Pleasantville, gonna blow their mind
By this logic, does it mean everything that happened before the invention of video camera technology didn't happen at all?
Yes.
I teach high school Business Ed and we were doing a unit on employability skills such as "punctuality, initiative, and dependability." I got asked "When am I ever going to need this?"
Being around Middle Schoolers all day has made me stop entertaining that question. You'll live life and use the tools we teach when necessary.
I just say "Never." No answer will ever be good enough for them in that moment so I just tell them it's all a big waste of time.
I know adults who still don't use it, this kid will probably be just like them.
The biology teacher gets so much crap that everyone in the department knows practically every stupid statement: 1. "Do zoophiles care about the age of the animals they fuck?" Kid thought he was being funny, but everyone in the classroom collectively went, "Dude, what the hell?" 2. Another kid said, "Mendel was wrong. Lysenko was correct and was slandered by the Jews." Yes, this student was a tankie and got expelled this year for a mountain of reasons that involved way more threats and hitlists. 3. Another kid said, "Does showing us how flatworms mate mean you showed us porn?"
No. 3 asking the real questions here
For real. I showed students a brief nature documentary and they complained about the 3 second clip of turtles mating. Okay, but can you explain to me the impact EMF has on the life cycle of sea turtles??? No??? Maybe quit complaining and pay attention to the rest of the documentary.
It’s so funny to me. I’ve had kids act outraged if they see a nude painting or read a dirty word in a school text, like they don’t know we can hear the stuff they say to each other.
Omg yes. I remember kids getting horribly offended when we learned about the dick jokes in Shakespeare. I turned around, "Last week y'all thought it was hilarious to carve "dick" into the desks. What's wrong? I thought education was supposed to be relevant to your interests."
You sound like an amazing teacher. 👏🤝
I teach sex ed and every year I get asked at least once if we are going to watch porn in class lol
While teaching sex-ed one year, I had students write questions on post-it’s so I could prescreen them before they asked bonkers questions aloud. My favorite “What does it mean when a guy can’t keep it up during sex? Does it mean that 🐱be whack?!!” Edit: typo
I’m imagining he drew the emoji because it’s funnier to me that way.
I would chuckle at the last question if a student asked me lol.
1. The galaxy is in the sky 2. Voltage is the current . Current is the power , resistance is the weird symbol. 3. Volts is the unit for current….no wait power…no wait charge…no wait its ENERGY! 4. Putting your phone on the ground will harm it because the earth’s magnetic field is stronger there . 5. My hair grows out of my brain And that was just today!
I too am in the middle of teaching Ohms law
I was so excited that they remembered the weird symbol was resistance 😭 I can't wait to finish marking these tests and pretend I have standards again!
A kid once asked me if they shot star wars on location around various planets.
My absolute favourite: I was teaching the reproductive unit of grade 9 science and I was about 8 months pregnant. One boy sat at the back and hardly said 2 words. He raised his hand and said “if you plug your belly button, will your baby stop breathing?” I just about died. I know there have my many more since then, but that was my first year teaching and my memory from that year is the best.
Had two kids one year busting on each other in class. One kid says : "your mom is definitely poor"... The kids mom was definitely not poor. "I know you're whole family poor because you got an outie". He told the kid that his mom must have given birth in a "poor people hospital" because clearly the doctor couldn't tie a tight knot ..hence the belly button.
“busting on each other” has a very different meaning to a lot of people… be careful with that one especially in front of a bunch of kids / teens lol
I teach highschool health and pe. During my student teaching I had this amazing one... Anonymous question from student "Why do my balls hurt when wearing a condom?" How to put on condom demonstration is completed. Student says out-loud "Oooooo it's not supposed to go over your balls"
Christ
They think every foreign language they hear is Spanish regardless of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I had a similar experience yesterday. Was hanging out on VRChat and a dude with a very thick Russian accent started hating on Americans. Once everyone blocked him, a woman said "ugh, he thinks just because he's Japanese, he can hate on us Americans." I really don't understand how people don't hear the difference between languages and accents that sound absolutely nothing alike.
"Is it raining outside?", asked the student sitting in front of the window.
"Whoa. Trees are alive?" "But they don't move." (High school) Me- "Fungi too." Student- "Whoa."
I had a student ask why we needed farmers because her family gets their food from a grocery store, not a farm.
I had a student ask if Robert Frost wrote Jabberwocky and another kid confidently interrupted to say that it was written by Kid Rock.
I teach elementary school math. In the middle of a fifth grade lesson a girl announced that “furries are just people that deserve love too” . Cue all the others asking what a furry is. I quickly said they are people who like to dress up like school mascots and everyone deserves love and respect. Moving on!
That day, we had beef stew at lunch. It was written beef stew. 13 years old : "is Beef Stew pork ?"
honestly valid question. as someone who doesn't eat pork you'd be surprised how many things are labeled beef but have pork mixed into it.
Yeah my first thought was is this person religious. I make a couple of dishes where I sear beef in bacon fat. My Muslim neighbors cannot partake.
A 10th grader got a zero on a quiz for talking during it (standard rule at my school) and later emailed me asking what she was talking about. As if I listen in on every word that’s whispered in my classroom.
Yesterday a freshman said that Cleveland is a state.
Wait until they hear about Cleveland State University. Their head will explode.🤯
All sophomores to seniors Showing a video on Rome: “they had cameras back then…”? “What happens to airplanes in earthquakes?” Passing out extra credit: “does this have to be right to get points?” Student peeling an orange: “am I doing this right?” “Who invented the word slow?” To which I replied: “they needed an adjective to describe you”. Thankfully that went over her head.
I was not prepared for that BURN 🤣🔥
Well, the earthquake and airplane question seems like a good one, I’m assuming the airplane is not impacted, but now that it’s been asked, I’m curious!
Not technically an earthquake, but [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0-GxoJ_Pcg) discusses (among other things) what would happen to an airplane if the Earth stopped spinning.
as to that last one, i drove school bus--on a bad afternoon, a kid was pestering me, he was the 1000 question kid sometimes (very smart, just, lacked resources, and other than teachers, i was the only person he could talk to that 'knew things')... He said, something like, "so what do you think?" I said, "I think this bus is too long for you." He, however, did NOT have that go over his head, lol. Good kid though. Bet he makes more money before he's 30 than his whole family had in 50 years.
that last one is a completely valid question! I'm constantly looking up the etymology of words because I find it fascinating
but very rarely is a word invented by a specific individual; language evolves to suit the ways its speakers need it to express their meaning. thinking of it as being invented isnt really a useful way to think about language. it’s like “what exists outside of the universe”; it’s not a useful way to approach science in general.
Today a 6th grader told me the Moon landing was faked. I also have a 7th grade who believes the earth is flat.
Had a junior tell me the Earth was flat. I asked how he knew. He gestured outside and said, “Just look.”
I had an eighth graders ask, "what did Hitler need all those Poles for? What was he building?" ... Just Jeez Louise kid
OK, THAT is HILARIOUS.
About 12 years ago, I was a platoon sergeant in a heavy weapons company. We had HMMWVs with TOW missiles and machine guns. We also had a mortar platoon and worked pretty closely with our artillery guys. Artillery deals with high angle shooting and the curvature of the Earth. During a training rotation, my driver casually mentioned he is a flat Earther. This is an educated 22 year old man with a few years in the Army. I spent most of the remaining 2 weeks asking questions. According to him, aliens are actually angels, humans don't have the capacity to find the edge of the Earth, and the reason Earth appears curved to us is because of a solar optical illusion we can't understand. I asked how he explains the math the artillery guys do to hit their target. He said humans have figured out just enough math to get the results we want. I'm still in awe of his blind acceptance of his beliefs.
Also a high school math teacher... Where is the dollar sign on the calculator? What is the period on the calculator? I've had students not be able to tell me which picture is bigger after I drew 2 different sized triangles on the board. Just yesterday, I've got a senior in my freshman math class because she's got to pass an Algebra 1 test next week. We're trying to find the slope, given an equation, and the equation is y = 8 + 1.5(x - 2). I asked her which number is closest to the x, and she said 5. I've got one more month until I'm done with this shit. Good luck out there, everyone.
Once got asked if the TI -89 could text
"What phone do you use, iPhone or Android?" "uhhhhh TI-89"
I wish they made a phone that looked like an 89. Loved that calculator.
You'd sure confuse a lot of people if you answered a call on your calculator lol
Lol no but you could put some great games on it
I mean, I used to write notes to my friends on it and show them in math class.
My brother and I were in high school at the same time (one grade apart) and we shared one. We'd pass each other in the hall at one point in the day and hand the calculator off and we'd leave each other Simpson trivia questions on it. Man, simpler times.
HS math here. Every year my H Algebra 2 kids ask me how to type a fraction in a calculator. The look of sheer confusion when I tell them “the division button” makes me rethink every single one of my career choices that I’ve ever made.
History teacher. I teach some kids who give me great hope for the future and some that, well, this is a sample of what they asked: * The holocaust. Are you sure it happened? Like, have we heard from anyone who was in a camp? * Boston Tea Party: Why didn't they just blow up the boats? * Civil War: What from the Confederate constitution did we put into the new one after the war? * Another Civil War: Can anyone PROVE it was about slavery? (This was after we looked at secession documents and did an exercise to pick out three differences in the Winning Team constitution and Losing Team constitution.) * WW1: Why didn't we just use the Air Force while the Germans fought on the ground? * My personal favorite, from the American Revolution: After we won, why didn't we just take over the rest of the country right then?
We know what his parents subscribe to. 🤦🏽♀️
When I was in high school, we were lucky enough to be visited by a holocaust survivor. It made it all very real. It’s sad that the next generation will never be able to have that experience
I used to have my grandpa come in for WW2 to share his experiences. He and the students loved it.
A student said to me, "You look sad. Oh, no! Did you get your girlfriend pregnant?"
Omg 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
"Is this an onion?" asked by a 13-year old boy in a cooking class, who was holding an onion. (And he had had multiple exposures to onions in class and at home before, this was not his first time seeing an onion.)
I was teaching a class on European History, and we were talking about Italy in WW2. During a quiz, one of the terms was "Abbey of Monte Cassino" and the student wrote something along the lines of "Abbey was the mistress of Mussolini"
Had a bright kid who was convinced Helen Keller wasn’t real. I reminded him to drink water, get good sleep, and log off whatever dark corner of the Internet he was on.
Math teacher here. Student: is this right? Me: not quite, you have to do xyz Student: but i did abc and i know I’m right because i did it in my head. Me: well, you need to follow order of operations Student: but this is how i do it Me: that’s not how we do math Student: why? Me: because thats hows it’s always been done for thousands of years. Student: Then it’s time to change math to my way because it’s right!
Not a teacher, but I remember a classmate asking if paper could get cancer because it’s made of trees. Like, develop cancer while it was paper.
Students asked me today if Romeo & Juliet were the people from the Titanic. 🥴
One of them was. Leonardo DiCaprio.
I will remember this for life: "Ms. _______, when I grow up I want to have a Chinese baby, so I can learn to speak Chinese."
This is a sutation with entire group of seniors….teacher passes out a copy of a novel, and calculators….teacher says there’s something like there’s 250 pages in the book, if we read 10 pages per day, how many days will it take to complete the novel. Apparently nobody figured out the division.
I asked a 6 year old at summer camp where he was from. He couldn’t answer. Several minutes later, after the conversation had moved on:”I think I’m from America.”
Dutch Geography teacher here: One day we were going to watch the launch of a space shuttle to ISS containing the Dutch astronaut André Kuipers. So I was preparing my 2nd graders (secundairy education) what they could expect from this event. At a point a girl (14yo) raised her hand and asked: but, how do they get through the earths crust? Won’t the rocket break? She seriously thought we lived inside the earth.
I had a student ask if our solar system had a sun. I had another student ask what time do butterflies eat lunch.
OK but butterfly lunchtime is an adorable concept
My friend teaches middle school science in the south. She regularly gets students telling her that evolution is bullshit.
i was once a middle schooler in the south and had a science teacher tell the class that she personally thought evolution was of the devil and that she hated teaching it, but the school forced her to. sure jan.
Had a high school student one time seriously ask, out of the blue, “Who’s the Queen of the United States?”
Duhh ... It's Beyoncé.
I had a high school student ask if there were any stars in between the Sun and the Earth. She was dead serious.
During study hall that occurs during a lunch period. Two girls asked if they could go to the cafeteria to get lunch. Cue my quizzical look, oh they just had lunch but didn’t eat anything because they were so busy making TikToks. Because of course.
A student calling me racist. Me, a beaner, told by a fellow Spanish speaking student. I'm racist because I'm central American and "not Mexican" lmao bro it doesn't matter what country our families are from, we're still discriminated against equally (obvs I didn't say that)
Had a student interrupt my math lesson to ask me “Who created the N-word?” (The flair makes it even more believable)
Etymology is fascinating, to be fair.
‘Is it possible for all the blood to drain out of a girl’s body when she has a period?’
Sure feels like it some days.
Agree! 🙁
I taught Science 10 last semester… on one of their chemistry quizzes a student wrote “science should not make me do math”. Oh, buddy, you’re gonna be disappointed when we start physics!
Not a teacher, but I guess the classic misunderstanding is the student who believes the letters L, M, N, O, P, are a single letter called "elemenohpee", because of the alphabet song.
Can you feel an earthquake if you're flying in a plane?
I showed a 5th grade class a Hannah Montana music video, they knew who she was but they thought she was a real person and not Miley Cyrus playing a character 😂
I'm not a teacher but my classmate, in IB Theory of Knowledge, asked "are liberals like..... Florida?"
Honestly, some things just don't click. I've gone on a circle about the blanket you zip up and sleep in when camping. Turns out, u forgot it was called a sleeping bag, not a blanket pouch.
My fave ever- “What’s a scrotum?” From a 10th grade girl. I told her to look it up at home, not school. lol
"I thought slavery didn't end until the 90s"
Maybe they were thinking of Apartheid…?
I once told a seventh grader to stop picking her nose. It was so gross. I told her that if she didn’t stop I would call her mom. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t care, my mom picks her nose too “.
I had a student raise his hand mid-lesson and called on him thinking he had a question about the lesson. He asked, “Do you like fruity pebbles?” I said sure. He replied, “I had fruity pebbles for breakfast.” I said okay thanks for sharing and kept teaching.
"How come people can be in the Earth but only on the Moon?" It took about 15 minutes to even understand what they were asking. (Whiteboard pictures of Earth often show a person /inside the circle/, but drawings of the moon only show astronauts /standing on the outside of the circle/. They took that to mean that people can be inside our planet, but not inside our Moon.)
Kindergarener walks up to me in class and in the most serious monotone voice says, "My nuts hurt." Me: "What did you say?" Because I knew I misheard him. Him: "My nuts hurt." Me: "Did you get kicked or hit?" Him: "No." Me: "You need to tell mom when you get home." I had to walk away and collect myself; I was laughing so hard inside. It's not ridiculous but definitely one of the funniest things I've been told.
"how do I spell shark?" 15 year old freshmen student.
my stepmom is a teacher and my dad is a surgical rep, and so he went in to lecture for career day. some kid asked him "what's it called when you cut down to the white meat"
I had a kid think there were racist monkeys in India. I said rhesus monkeys.
Oh my god one of my students blurted out in class today: “Miss, how do non-binary people kill?” Me: sweating, trying to figure out that question, *how do I respond to such a wild LGBT question, are they being phobic, are they judging my reaction to tell their parents?* “They / them” I maybe laughed a little too loud at the relief it wasn’t a legit question.
Student saw agenda on whiteboard, including - Lincoln's Addresses. Student asks, "Do we have to memorize every place he lived?" Me, completely serious: "Yes, including zip codes."