If there is one thing that we know about teachers, it’s the fact that they are going to be surprised on occasion by their students. Those surprises can be good or bad, depending upon the direction that they are coming from. Often, a teacher may get frustrated over the way that their students act and perhaps the fact that they don’t learn everything that is taught to them. Perhaps that came through in the most hilarious way when teachers turned in these 15 questions that received the most ridiculous answers from students.
1. “Is Alaska a real state, or are you just messing with me?”
2. In class we were discussing the hole in the ozone layer. Some girl blurts out “Oh! That is the hole that the space shuttle flies through, right?”
3. We had a big presentation near the end of my 4th year of high school. It as one of those, Things to know before you graduate type things. One of the topics was choosing your area of study for college/university.
One kid said, I’m not a liberal, and my dad is pretty conservative. Am I still allowed go to school for liberal arts?
4. Our 9th grade English teacher was collecting food and stuff to send to Japan after the tsunami, namely rice.
A girl raised her hand and asked if it was to soak up all the water.
The teacher’s look of disappointment could be felt down to her soul.
5. “Wait, volcanoes are real? I thought they were made up.”
This was a high school freshman…
6. In my World History class a student was put on the spot and mumbled out the following question, “wait, did food exist back then?”
My teacher simply said, Nope. The ancient Greeks used photosynthesis.
I think he probably meant to ask, did they prepare food back then. But still, I’ve never seen a guy blush so hard.
7. We were discussing forest fires that were going on somewhere in the midwest at the time, and a girl asked, “How can the fires keep burning for more than one day? Do they start back up again every morning?”
She literally thought that fires only burn in the daytime. This was in a college class.
8. “Hey teacher, how many seconds are in a meter?”
9. I had to explain to basically 75% of a science class in high school that ants were animals, they didn’t believe me so I had them go to the teacher, they were shocked: “bugs are animals”.
10. On the first day of class I was doing my standard introductions and I told my class that I was from Portland, Oregon.
In response to this, a girl in her mid-twenties asked me: “So do you speak Portuguese then?”
Sometimes it’s hard not to laugh at my student’s questions.
11. High school chemistry class, we were working on a lab where we had to make little squares on a piece of plastic to perform tests in, and the squares had to have 2 cm long sides.
This kid at my lab table, who had already proven to be not so bright in class many times beforehand, got our teacher’s attention, then asked what a centimeter was.
After the teacher thoroughly explained what a centimeter is, and where exactly to find them on the ruler in front of him, the student turned to us and said:
“I’m still not understanding this centimeter thing.”
12. The following exchange took place in my grade 11 history class. We were discussing Egypt, and one girl actually said,
“Egypt really exists? I thought it was just someplace from Jimmy Neutron.”
Somebody else in the class also spoke up, saying, “What do you mean place, I thought Egypt was a religion.”
13. Our class was discussing American history and the topic of the Vietnam war came up. One student mentioned that he is actually from Vietnam, and that he had family members who had gone through the war.
A teenage girl raised her hand and said, completely seriously, How can you be from Vietnam? Vietnam is a war, not a place.
14. I’ll never forget this moment. Now given this was in the eighth grade, but still a girl asked me how to spell “GPS”.
Yes, English is her first language and yes, she still takes crap for it 5 years later.
15. Girl in my high school earth science class felt compelled to ask this one:”Where does the sun go at night?”