Teachers Are Sharing The Funniest Student Mistakes They've Ever Witnessed, And I'm Laughing So Hard At These Poor Kids

There’s no way around it: kids are funny. As they grow and learn, they can have hilarious mess-ups. Recently, I decided to ask teachers, "What is the funniest mistake you've ever seen a student make?" As predicted, they made me laugh! So, here are some of the best:

1."A third-grade student of mine wrote, 'Spling stode' in his agenda. I walked by, noticed, and asked him what it said. He said, 'It says 'Spelling — Study.'"

The CW

—sparklyogre504

2."Science teacher here. A couple of years ago, a boy in my ninth-grade science class asked me, 'How long is a meter stick?'"

3."I teach college students. We were discussing the new King back when Queen Elizabeth had recently passed, and my student said, 'I can't believe he's the king now after everything he's done.' Upon further discussion, it turned out my student had mixed up King Charles and Prince Andrew."

Pool / WireImage, Wpa Pool / Getty Images

—kayleighs4e699037f

4."In biology class, one high school girl announced she wanted to be the first person to land on the sun. The teacher said, 'You would burn up before you even got close.' The girl said, 'No, I would just go at night.'"

—Anonymous

5."I got asked where I was during the JFK assassination...I was born in '94. 🤦"

ABC

—Anonymous

6."I teach high school students and one of my students deadset thought that Queen Elizabeth the Second was on the throne directly after Queen Elizabeth the First, like there was no time at all between them. At first, I thought he was joking, but he doubled down and said that Elizabeth I was the mother and Elizabeth II was her daughter."

Gwengoat / Getty Images, Bettmann / Bettmann Archive

—libby77

7."We were reading To Kill a Mockingbird and a student came into class saying the reading last night was really 'phallic.' He meant 'graphic.'"

8.Me: Why is it so dark on the floor of the Amazon rainforest? (Hoping for 'The light can’t get through because of all the leaves, trees, and bushes!') Child: Because there are no street lights."

—lynseyamcewan

9."Music teacher here. We learn about a 'Musician of the Month' every month to teach the kids about various instruments and styles of music. We were learning about Clara Schumann, and I mentioned that she was a pianist."

10."At the top of our exam was a space that said 'name' and, next to it, a space that said 'sign,' meaning: write your name, and sign your paper so we know your signature is you and not another student taking the exam for you (we checked IDs). Two students wrote their name and zodiac sign. We were in college. College."

11."One student wrote that he’d been to the park to 'let off self-esteem!'"

—Anonymous

12."I have college students, but they’re still unintentionally funny. Probably my favorite was an exam question from Abnormal Psych in which a student was trying to remember a treatment for what I had termed 'impotence.'

13."Students aged 6-7 trying to spell 'tights.' We were making grass heads, and the children had to write the instructions."

"We had all sorts! ‘Tie your titties in a knot’. ‘Cut your tits to the right size’. We were supposed to be moderating the writing to grade the pupils but we simply could not stop laughing."

—catieferrarer

14."One time a student who I would consider a high flyer academically had a spelling error in a piece of writing. They spelled 'communities' like 'cummunities.'"

—Anonymous

15."We were studying myths and mythological creatures, and I had my students make a one-pager about a creature and then present it to the class. One of my adorable, sweet, and totally naïve eighth-grade girls started her presentation on the Kraken, and instead of saying 'tentacles,' she said 'testicles.' Repeatedly."

16.“I recently left this feedback on a student writing project in world history class: 'You had a lot of good work in your project, but you need to fix your biography. You are focusing on the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, not Muhammad Ali, the boxer.'"

17."I taught preschool, and one of my students couldn't say 'fish.' My students all had little jobs, and this particular student wanted to feed the class fish, so he wandered over to the counter, happily singing, 'Gonna feed the bitches in the bitch tank!'"

18."High school math teacher here. I would often print different versions of tests and quizzes on different colored paper to hinder cheating, you know, the whole 'eyes on your own paper' thing."

"Sometimes the different versions would just be too much work, so I would use just the one version of the test printed in a variety of colors.

Near the end of the period on one such test day, one of my young scholars says out loud, 'Hey, his test is the same as mine!' And you would know this how?"

—Anonymous

19."I had a student in year 11 (aged 16) who was convinced that I’d made up the idea of moths. She had never heard of them, claimed to never have seen one, and wouldn’t accept my explanation about them or any evidence from the internet. The rest of the class looked at her like she was from Mars."

20."Had a student write, 'The prostate saw this as an ideal city' once in a history project. Protestants. They meant Protestants."

—Anonymous

21.And finally: "A student wrote an essay about To Kill a Mockingbird and mentioned shooting the mad dog…but the sentence they wrote was, 'The town was threatened with rabbis.' Thank you, autocorrect."

If you have any thoughts, I’d love to hear about them down below — especially if you’re a teacher, and you have your own funny story to share. Or, if you prefer, you can share any funny student mess-ups in this anonymous Google form! Who knows — your comment may end up in an upcoming BuzzFeed article.