Teachers recall their craziest classroom stories

by Hailey Guit and Kayla Nalepa

With over 1,500 students and over 100 staff members, something unusual happens here pretty much every day. We asked teachers and administrators about the strangest things they remember happening in the classrooms and halls of our school.

A teacher got upset because a student came in late to their cooking class. That day in the class they were making fried chicken, and the teacher took the student’s chicken and ate it in front of the class.

–Vice Principal Trey Sirman

My whole ceiling collapsed. It was the dead of winter and freezing cold in the room. The class was watching a movie when I heard a sound like a fire hose, which was a pipe bursting in the ceiling. The water made the ceiling tiles heavy and they all just started falling in the middle of class, and water was everywhere. We thought the world was ending. About three years later it happened again!

–Mr. John Rossi

A student was using inappropriate language in class and I told him to eat some soap and clean his mouth. As a joke I gave him some soap on a paper towel and he actually tried to eat it!

–Ms. Krystal Butler

When the pipes burst upstairs last year, Mr. Gibbons looked like he way swimming in all the water. It was like the beginning of Patriot Falls.

–Principal Kevin Howard

I once had students mistake salt for sugar and put a cup of salt in a batch of cookies.

–Dr. Pamelia Moore

I had a student from South Africa, and when he came into the class I would always sing the opening song from the Lion King. One day I snuck up behind him in class and started to sing the song really loudly, and I scared him and he hit me and gave me a bloody nose by accident.

–Mr. Kevin Richter

We had a lab that every class was doing one day where they had to pour a sulfur solution down the drain. The drains overflowed and the floor was covered in a giant puddle of stinky smelling solution.

–Mrs. Robin Clites

We were testing a new design for a rocket launch tube, but it misfired and made the rocket pop off like a corkscrew.

–Mr. Henry Faxon

We had a mechanical mouse and Mrs. Dowling was coming through with a cart. I hit the remote for the mouse and she freaked out.

–Mr. Mickey Norfolk

I was going over the rules for an eleventh grade research paper and this one girl kept saying “too much, too much” because she thought it was so hard. Then she slid under her chair and laid in the fetal position on the floor and sucked her thumb, so I just let her be in her happy place for the rest of the class.

–Mr. Sandy Walker

One time, I came into class and one of my students was asleep, and I thought she was a backpack. Also, during lunch I had this big bag of trail mix, and I left and came back to a scavenger hunt to try to find it.

–Mr. Max Donohue

One of my students was very concerned about his grade, and he came out (to the gym) in a t-shirt and boxer shorts because he didn’t have his uniform.

–Ms. Linda Curry

I came into class one day and all of my posters were upside down. Last year, my students would take them and put them in the hallway.

–Mrs. Kristen Lowder

We were on our way to a competition and one student had built a plane for it. As we were leaving the Mary Harrison, this guy wasn’t paying attention and the door crushed the plane.

–Mrs. Theresa Jackson

Over 20 years ago, I had a student who was constantly in trouble for getting out of class and wandering the halls. The principal ordered me to never let him out of class for any reason. One day in class, he told me he was sick and asked to go to the office. I told him I wasn’t allowed to. Shortly thereafter, he turned blue, passed out and fell on the floor. We called for an ambulance, but before it came, he stopped breathing and had no pulse. When the EMT’s arrived, they used a defibrillator to bring him back to life. I still run into him every year or two and he always asks me, “Hey, Mr. Clites, you remember that time you killed me?”

–Mr. Gary Clites