School is an unpredictable place. Teachers, even if they think they’ve seen it all, still get caught off guard. From exploding pens to twerking turkeys, lesson plans can definitely go awry. These chaotic classroom stories are guaranteed to make you smile.
The Jean Smock
We’ve all been lost in thought and made mistakes. But absent-minded mishaps can result in embarrassment far worse than the echoing bang of a Hydro Flask crashing to the floor. This particular slip-up proved to be disastrous, and it most definitely wrecked one boy’s ego.
DeLancy Hutchinson’s fifth grade art class was starting a new project involving paint, so to protect from the inevitable mess, they were instructed to wear smocks. Hutchinson supervised the room while her students dutifully followed the directions. As she gazed around the room, she spotted one boy interpreting her instructions slightly differently from the rest of his classmates.
“What are you doing?” she asked, aghast. He gave her a bewildered look, unaware that he had mistakenly donned Hutchinson’s jean jacket, which had been hanging off of a chair, instead of one of the denim smocks. “He seriously didn’t realize that,” says Hutchinson. The class, including Hutchinson, erupted into laughter as the boy sheepishly removed Hutchinson’s jacket in exchange for a smock.
Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me
Grade chair Patrick Egan was completely fooled, two days in a row, by his Connecticut high school class in the 2000s. At the time, phone policies were still developing to catch up with the rise of cellphones. Educators were grappling with a new, pressing problem: students were focusing their attention on their phones, not their teachers.
Egan’s class included many perpetrators of the unwritten rule against cellphones. One day, Egan spotted a frequent offender watching something under her desk. Her reputation led him to believe that she was texting as usual. But when he strode over to the girl’s desk to confiscate her phone, he was given an offended look as she explained that she had been innocently examining her nails.
The very next class, a boy decided to prank Egan by bringing a fake phone, made by drawing numbers on a piece of cardboard, into class. “It looked like he was texting, and he was sitting there, and you could see him in the back of the room, just kind of smiling and chuckling,” said Egan. Convinced that he had finally caught a student in the act, Egan power-walked over to the boy and got tricked for a second time. Embarrassing. . . .
Classroom Crisis
Math teacher Sarah Kossis almost had a heart attack while teaching Algebra at a different school. The class was peacefully reviewing their homework with Kossis’ trademark red pen, which, as any student of hers would know, is required for checking assignments. One boy was chewing on his pen in concentration when he raised his hand with a question. As soon as opened his mouth, Kossis’ eyes widened in shock. She stood, stunned like a deer in headlights, in front of the entire class. “I stood there for like 10 seconds and the kids were like, what is wrong with her?” Kossis recalled. Her class gave her a bemused look before turning around to find that the red pen had exploded in his mouth, staining his teeth with startlingly vibrant blood-colored ink.
Turkey that Cooked
Have you ever seen a turkey twerk? Well, the classes of ‘28, ‘29, and ‘30 sure have. During a Thanksgiving service two years ago, a fall-themed timer for a fun activity got spicy. The dancing turkey countdown had somehow slipped through the screening process and twerked its way into the 2023 Middle School Thanksgiving ceremony.
The whole fiasco began with a busy, strained Reverend Tina McCormick scrambling to put together the assembly. Rev had reviewed the first couple minutes of the video before having to assist with other aspects of the assembly, so she passed it on to a colleague for further evaluation. The second inspection only went until just before the three minute mark. Unfortunately for McCormick, mere seconds after the point where the examination had stopped, the roast turkey began shaking its butt in front of a chapel-ful of middle schoolers.
Needless to say, uncontrollable laughter soon spread like wildfire through the pews of students as their grandparents stared, stunned but possibly amused, at the screen. “I was solving another problem on stage when . . . all of a sudden I just heard this eruption and I just, like, looked up at the screen . . .” McCormick says. Immediately, she went to shut the computer, but the crowd of grandparents and middle schoolers could never unsee that turkey.
The Shoe Mix-up
We’ve all worn our shirts inside out to school, but Spanish teacher Leonor Taylor can attest that fashion mishaps can be much, much worse.
With a baby at home, Taylor was understandably exhausted. Her daily routine consisted of tending to a wailing, demanding newborn before heading to school to take care of even more kids. Her mornings were bleary-eyed attempts to get to school on time, with Taylor frequently getting ready in the dark as she struggled to wake up.
One morning, the combined effect of her fatigue and the dim lighting kept her from catching the slight difference between the two shoes she put on. Taylor spent half the day oblivious of her mistake before finally noticing. “Then I saw, and they were like pink, but they were two shades of pink,” Taylor says. “But then I was like, oh, my God, because I was still getting to know the kids, so I didn’t want them to make fun of me.” To avoid embarrassment, Taylor taught class from behind the podium for the remainder of the day. Not once did she leave her classroom, not even for lunch. Only when completely necessary, she would wait until the students were occupied with something else to quickly run back and forth between her desk and the podium to grab her phone.
Chorus Chaos
15 years ago, Adam Fry and Susan McMillan taught a Boys’ Chorus Class of extremely talented sixth and seventh graders. “It was one of my all-time favorite classes,” says McMillian. They were, however, still immature pre-adolescent boys, with “the energy of 22 caffeinated puppies.”
The class was scheduled to sing in the Lessons and Carols Christmas Service, which was far more formal than its current version. They behaved like angels during the performance, and sang like them, too. Their composure couldn’t last forever, though.
After they had finished, they filed off the stage into a room full of swivel chairs. Over 20 middle school boys in a room with 15 rolling chairs is absolutely a recipe for disaster. While the eighth graders were singing a peaceful lullaby less than 30 feet away, boys were spinning on chairs, pushing each other around the room, and having the time of their lives. Some had even begun throwing the chairs, with boys sitting in them, across the room. McMillan, who came by to check on them, was greeted by crooked ties, untucked shirts, and general mayhem. As she remembers, “My boys’ chorus was staging their own version of Gladiator—with office furniture.” McMillian fixed the boys with a stern look as she recovered lost ties and reunited shoes with their owners before leading the group back to their pews. However, throughout the entire assembly, McMillian couldn’t stop herself from chuckling.
Target Practice
7th grade art teacher Cybil Sather had a grudge against three specific students. Or at least her paint did. One of Sather’s paint dispensers was slightly clogged, so when she started pumping the paint for the students waiting in line with their palettes, it sprayed everywhere, hitting three students in its path. The next day, it happened again and ended up on one of the very same students. “And so it was like I was potentially targeting one particular person that always got paint on them…” says Sather. Coincidence? Probably not.