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Education

Teachers are sharing their students' wildest excuses that actually turned out to be true

Here are 17 of the best responses.

via Pexels

Teachers share the best excuses.

Kindergarten through 12th grade teachers and college professors have heard every excuse in the book. Whether it’s a third grader claiming their “dog ate my homework” or a college freshman claiming their grandmother died to get out of a test, they’ve heard it all a billion times.

A college professor once listed the top 21 excuses he’s heard from his students. Here are the top five:

5. “It’s the last week of the semester.”

4. “It’s St. Patrick’s Day or 4/20”

3. “Our other teacher held us back.”

2. “My timetable showed the class was canceled.”

1. “I’m taking a vacation.”

Yes, some students actually say they didn’t do their work because of a holiday predicated on drinking or getting stoned and others have the audacity to say, “Hey! I needed a vacation.” After spending week after week fielding excuses, there’s a good reason why most educators are skeptical when they hear one from their students.

But every once in a while, an excuse that seems way too improbable to be believed actually is true.

Reddit user u/minecraftplayer48 asked the teachers of Reddit to share the “best excuse for being late that turned out to be true” and the stories were all pretty great. But it wasn’t only teachers who chimed in; a lot of people shared stories from when they were students and had an excuse that was so crazy they didn’t think anyone would believe them.

Here are 17 of the best excuses for being late that were actually true.

1. Revenge of the torque wrench


"My auto teacher let me practice removing and adding the tires on his vehicle. The next morning it was about 20 minutes into first period and no sign of him. He comes running into the classroom out of breath and his hair is all messed up. He points at me and says 'YOU!!!! What is a torque wrench used for???' I respond with "I don't know." He says ' I know you don't know!!!" Turns out one of his tires came off while driving down the highway." — ethnicjello

2. Mom wanted to sleep in


"She had to take her sister to school and drive her mom to rehab. She was always late to class because her mom just wanted to sleep in. Problem was if the mom was late or did not go she would have violated her probation and gone to prison. I never marked her late. If she missed anything important she could come in at lunch or after school to make it up." — RM156

3. "That was you?"


"Student here, I headed into school early to get some studying done in the library before my night class. I was one exit away when I was caught in a 3 car accident. Most of the expressway afterwards was gridlock with only one lane left open. I did eventually make it into my lab class 15 minutes late, with a few scrapes and bruises. My professors reaction was simply 'Oh that was you!''" — AlienCowAbduction

4. "School bus blew up"


"I was one of about 20 kids who were late to school. We showed up at the school office as a group and when questioned why we were late, we said 'The school bus blew up.' They questioned 'So the engine blew up?' The kids 'No, the whole bus, in flames. It blew up.'

"There was much conference between the teachers, all of them thinking we embellished the story. Next thing you know, one of the admin staff has the news website open, very obvious image of an entire bus on fire with a bunch of kids in our school uniform standing in front of it. Our late slip for class read 'School bus blew up.'" — AusPB90

5. B.U.I.


"Told me he got pulled over by the cops for wobbly driving on his bike and they thought he was drunk. Turned out he was just dodging all the slugs on the street." — Fortisvol

6. Chicken of death


"A guy in my college class missed class one day. The next day he came in with his eye covered up and medical paperwork in hand. Apparently he got pecked in the eye by a chicken." — BrrToe

7. Chicken 2: The chickening


"When I was student teaching, I was late because there was bunch chickens in the middle of the road. They wouldn't move at all. This is in the middle of a city of 200,000 people. Freaking chickens.

"I finally get to school and profusely apologize to my mentor teacher and I told her why I was late thinking it sounded ridiculous. She said, 'yeah, those chickens are fucking assholes, they surrounded my car in the McDonalds parking lot last year. Don't worry about it." — Makenshine

8. Cracker Barrel conference


"Taught a group of seniors first period. It was towards the end of the year. I had a class of around 30 and only 5 were there when the bell rang. Halfway through class, the rest of them show up. They went out to Cracker Barrel for breakfast and brought me some back. All was forgiven." — SwansonsLoveChild

9. Beary late


"Bear on the backyard. No access gate. Animal control had to tranq it from the room and drag it through the house. Made the news. Got to retake the test I missed after sending her the news article." — Vladtehwood

10. Present the flat


"We had an exam in my class and the teacher got a message from a student saying that he was going to be late because his car had a flat tire (the student was known to party), the teacher didn't think it could be true, so as a joke the teacher asked him to bring the tire back. He brought the flat tire back in the middle of the exam. Needless to say, the professor didn't expect that." — Sapang

11. Moo


"A kid missed my first-period class one morning but was in school later that day. When I asked him why he hadn't arrived in time for my course, he said his cow was birthing its calf that morning, so he'd picked being in the barn over English. Made sense to me. His essays weren't going to win any ribbons at the county fair, but his calf could." — Bobosbigsister

12. Abduction


"In high school a kid came late to history class. He was a joker so when someone asked him where he had been, he goes 'I was kidnapped.' Everyone laughed, until he goes 'no really.'

"Turns out 2 guys kidnapped him and tossed him into the back of the minivan he was using for his morning paper route. They drove him around while they robbed something. I can’t remember what happens after. I think they just drove the van somewhere and got away." — notinmybackyardcanad

13. Honesty is the best excuse


"Not a teacher, but a kid walked into my class one day and literally just said 'Sorry I'm late, I didn't want to be here.' He wasn't wrong I suppose." — Scally59

14. It actually was the dog


"A little off topic but in 8th grade, a friend of mine turned in their homework late because her dog literally ate her homework. She even brought a note from her parents." — JoeyJoey2004

15. Is this a real excuse? Or is it fantasy?


"'Sorry Bohemian Rhapsody came on just as I parked.' — My art teacher when he was about 5:55 minutes late." — Deeberber

16. "I took a shortcut"


"This happened to me as a pupil; a very quiet, unassuming kid in our class came in to German with about five minutes of the class left. We went to a Catholic school and the teachers were all quite strict and intimidating. Classes were usually silent, especially in junior school. When this boy came into class at the end of the lesson that day, the door flew inwards with such force that the teacher gave an audible gasp.

"It had been raining heavily outside, his hair was plastered to his forehead. His blazer was dripping and sodden. He had mud caked into his trousers up to his knees, and he was breathing heavily. The teacher exclaimed, ‘Brendan! What happened?’ We all stared up at him in shocked silence. This quiet, unassuming little boy let out a big sigh and just said, ‘I took a shortcut.’ And went straight to his seat.

"That line became iconic in our school for years afterward." — lestat85

17. Pug lovers can attest


"Kid was late to school and had to miss a very important football game. The reason? His fat pug fell asleep on his phone. The pug’s fat rolls muffled his alarm." — tip52


This story originally appeared on 02.24.22

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Education

Teacher reminds people how 'brutal' middle school was by sharing things her 8th graders say

“Are you in therapy? You seem like the type."

via Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

A teacher reveals the funny things her students say.

Molly Dugan, 26, a teacher from the Kansas City area, has gone viral on TikTok with a video where she reveals the wilder things her 8th-grade students have said. They range from personal insults to strange observations that you’ll only get from kids stuck in the awkward phase between elementary and high school.

Since being posted on May 16, the video has been viewed over 15 million times.

What’s interesting about the video is that she delivers all of her students’ quotes in a stoic deadpan and they all come from memory. It’s a perfect performance for the teacher’s first-ever TikTok post. “Things that my 8th graders have said to me,” opens the video, looking straight into the camera.

Here are a few of the things her students said:

@miss.dugan1

“8th graders will make fun of you but in an accurate way.” - John Mulaney @John Mulaney official

“Are you in therapy? You seem like the type.”

“You look like my grandpa’s couch.”

“Your pants look like trash bags sewn together. Ha ha. Trash bag pants.”

“I don’t get why you write so much on my rough draft. I’m not reading all that, bruh. For real for real.”

“Fat a** alert.”

"Miss Dugan, the toilet paper in this school sucks. I just got dookie on my hand."

"How does it feel to be the only unmarried teacher in this school?"

“Yuh, I felt that one in my nuggets.”

The teacher captioned the post with a quote from comedian John Mulaney. “8th-graders will make fun of you but in an accurate way,” Mulaney said in his 2015 Netflix special, “The Comeback Kid.” The quote struck a chord with Dugan who teaches 7th and 8th-grade English-language arts and will begin working with high school students next year.

“I never related to something more,” she told The Kansas City Star. “Sometimes they say it and they don’t know that they’re insulting you, but they kinda do. That’s the beauty of middle school, they’re such a blend of elementary and high school. They know they’re saying something mean but they didn’t mean it in a bad way.”

“I fully believe that my students are really great at heart. The purpose was not to roast my students or put them on blast, rather than just to give people a little comedic relief,” she continued.

The video is a funny example of what life is like as a teacher, but it’s also proof that you need tough skin to step into the classroom. "I’m a pretty self-aware person, so some comments roll off my shoulders easily, and I can laugh off," she told Upworthy. "I like to try to show my students that others' comments don’t determine our self-worth or confidence in ourselves. Other days, I have to mentally remind myself that I don’t care about a 13-year-old's opinion of me."

The comments can also be a learning opportunity.

"On the really bad days, or with the most cutting remarks, a conversation is sometimes had about having respect for others. It depends on my relationship with the student and each situation," Dugan told Upworthy. For the teacher, the key is to stay balanced on the emotional middle school rollercoaster.

"Middle school is its own beast because truly, every single day, something is said to me that makes me want to cry and then 2 minutes later, something is said that makes me belly laugh. All. Day. Long," she said.

The video was a big hit on TikTok because it reminded millions of people what life in middle school is really like. "It takes us back to that age and how brutal we were," she told Upworthy. "Middle school was such a universally cruel and awkward experience. It’s like the great unifier of the human experience. I think it’s fun for people to go back and remember their awkward years."

Ultimately, Dugan’s honest rapport with her students is great for everyone involved. "When I'm the first to show my human side, my students start to feel more safe to be themselves, too," Dugan told Newsweek. "My kids might poke fun at me and have some brutal one-liners, but they are all incredible humans whom I am proud to have taught."

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Someone criticized a middle school teacher's behavior. Her comeback was an A+.

When a person commented, "your a teacher act like it," Amy Allen hilariously took the advice to heart.

@_queenoftheclassroom/TikTok

A rude commenter got a lesson from Ms. Allen.




Being a teacher isn't easy. Teaching middle school students is especially not easy. Teaching middle school students who spent several of their formative years going through a global pandemic in the age of smartphones, social media and a youth mental health crisis is downright heroic.

If you haven't spent time in a middle school classroom, you may not fully grasp the intensity of it on every level, from the awkwardness to the body odor to the delightful hilarity that tweens bring to the table. When you connect with your students, it can be incredibly rewarding, and when you don't…well, we all read "Lord of the Flies," right?

Skilled teachers bring out the best in young people, and that can be done in many different ways. For Amy Allen, it's by making her middle school classroom a fun, welcoming place to learn and by bonding with her students.

"I love teaching middle schoolers because they are awkward, and I’m awkward, so we get along," Allen tells Upworthy.

She plays games with students, gets rambunctious with them and creates opportunities for them to expend some of that intense pre-and-early-teen energy in healthy ways. For instance, she shared a video of a game of "grudgeball," an active trivia game that makes reviewing for a quiz or test fun and competitive, and you can see how high-energy her classroom is:

@_queenoftheclassroom

If this looks like fun to you, pick up my grudgeball template (🔗 in bio) #qotc #grudgeball #10outof10recommend @Amy Allen ☀️ @Amy Allen ☀️ @Amy Allen ☀️

"I think for teachers, we always want to create moments for our students that are beyond the standard reading, writing, memorizing, quiz, 'traditional learning,'" Allen says. "Games are a great way to incorporate fun in the classroom."

Allen clearly enjoyed the game as much as her students—"I love the chaos!" she says— and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Fun keeps teachers sane, too. But one person took issue with her classroom behavior and commented, "your a teacher act like it." (Not my typo—that's exactly what the person wrote, only with no period.)

Allen addressed the comment in another video in the most perfect way possible—by acting exactly like a teacher.

Watch:

@_queenoftheclassroom

Replying to @كل الكلبات تريد مني Come see me if you have any further questions. #qotc #iteachmiddleschool #weDEFINITELYdonthavefuninhere @Amy Allen ☀️ @Amy Allen ☀️ @Amy Allen ☀️ #Inverted

There are two solid ways to handle a rude comment without making things worse—you can ignore it or you can craft a response that makes the person look like a fool without being cruel or rude yourself. Allen's grammar lesson response was A+ work, right down to the "Come see me if you have any further questions" caption.

In fact, the person apparently went back and deleted their comment after the comeback video went viral, which makes it all the more hilarious. The video currently has more than 4 million views on TikTok and over 18 million views on YouTube.

"What’s funny is I left my correction on the board accidentally, and the next day, students asked me what that was all about," Allen says. "When I explained it, they thought it was cool because 'why would anyone go after Ms. Allen'? At that point, the video had maybe 10,000 views. I never imagined the video would go viral."

Two days later, as the video was creeping toward a million views, she upped the stakes. "Some of my students are my ultimate hype people, and they were tracking it harder than I was," she says. "I made a 'deal' with my fifth period if it reached 1 million during their class, they could sit wherever they wanted the entire week. During lunch, I checked, and it reached 1 million. So when they came back from recess, I announced it, and it was like I was a rockstar. They screamed and cheered for me. It was an incredible moment for me."

The irony, of course, is that Allen was acting like a teacher in her grudgeball video—an engaged teacher with engaged students who are actively participating in the learning process. Just because it doesn't look like serious study doesn't mean it's not learning, and for some kids, this kind of activity might be far more effective at helping them remember things they've learned (in this case, vocabulary words) than less energetic ways of reviewing.

Allen has her thumb on the pulse of her students and goes out of her way to meet them where they are. Last year, for instance, she created a "mental health day" for her students. "I could tell they were getting burnt out from all the state tests, regular homework, and personal life extracurricular activities that many of my students participate in," she says. "We went to my school library for 'fireside reading,' solved a murder mystery, built blanket forts, watched the World Cup, colored, and completed sudokus. Is it part of the curriculum? No. Is it worth spending one class period doing something mentally rewarding for students? Absolutely."

Teaching middle school requires a lot of different skills, but perhaps the most important one is to connect with students, partly because it's far easier to teach someone actually wants to be in your classroom and partly because effective teaching is about so much more than just academics. A teacher might be the most caring, stable, trustworthy adult in some students' lives. What looks like silly fun and games in a classroom can actually help students feel safe and welcomed and valued, knowing that a teacher cares enough to try to make learning as enjoyable as possible. Plus, shared laughter in a classroom helps build a community of engaged learners, which is exactly what a classroom should be.

Keep up the awesome work, Ms. Allen, both in the classroom and in the comment section.

You can follow Amy Allen on TikTok and YouTube.


This article originally appeared on 4.18.24

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Teacher brilliantly turns getting her period in front of her class into a teaching moment

"That boy who emailed...his parents must be incredible."

Emily Elizabeth|TikTok and Cliff Booth|Canva

Teacher starts period in front of class, turns into a lesson



Teachers are almost always teaching even when it's not in their lesson plan.

Those that were born to be teachers find teachable moments everywhere and one woman found herself in one of those moments. Though this one was likely just a bit more personal than she probably would've liked.

Emily Elizabeth posted a TikTok video about how she found herself in a predicament in front of her classroom full of 10 and 11-year-old kids. The teacher explained that she was noticing a lot of commotion and whispering among the little girls in her class while she was wearing white pants. After reminding the girls to stay on task, the whispering continued, prompting Emily to be more direct.

That's when one of the girls asked to speak with her privately dropping the bomb that no one that gets periods wants to hear in public.

"She goes, 'I'm sorry Ms. Emily, but I just want to let you know that I think you might have got your period,'" the teacher recalls.

But instead of freaking out or being flustered, Emily decided to swallow her embarrassment and use the moment as a teachable experience. She promptly told the concerned girls that it was fine and that she had a change of clothes that she could wear. Just before excusing herself, the boys noticed something was wrong so they curiously asked. Emily informed them that she had gotten her period and while she was annoyed, she was perfectly fine.

One of the boys even sent her an email double checking that she was okay in a less public way. The sweet reaction from her class warmed her heart and the hearts of viewers.

"That boy who emailed...his parents must be incredible," one commenter says.

"You set an excellent example! And to not hide it from the boys who asked because that would have spoken SO LOUDLY to the boys and girls about normalizing periods," another writes.

"The email, you sound like an amazing teacher with an amazing group of kids," someone says.

You can watch Emily tell the entire story below:

@emilyelizabeth.w

Let’s normalise talking about periods for girls AND boys … trying to find the silver lining 😅 #fyp #melbourneteacher #teachersoftiktok #teacherlife

This article originally appeared on 10.2.23

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