The Life of a Teacher

More student stories...

1. For my unit on mysteries, the students are writing their own mystery stories. I told them that the story has to be two typed pages long. One student came up to me and said, "But I can't write that much!!" I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Yes you can. I have faith in you." He turned and sulked away, whining to his friend "I HATE when they have faith in us!!"

2. A student asked me to marry him. I said no, that I am already married. He asked if I would just marry him as a joke, and I told him that I only marry people for real.

3. We had a tornado warning, and my students had to go in the hall and sit facing the walls. Lots of them were panicking. One girl stopped me as I was walking by and said, "Mrs. Webb, are we going to die??" I said, "No, Sara. Do you know how many tornado warnings I have been in? A LOT. And I have never died. Not even once." Her eyes turned hopeful, and she said, "Really?!" "Yes. Really. Not even one time." She was comforted after that, which was a little bit weird but I am glad that it worked.

4. During that same tornado warning, I was making my rounds walking up and down the halls to make sure the students stayed in their safe positions. I heard one student whisper to another, "How come we all sit here but the teachers are walking around?" The student next to her whispered seriously, "It is because they really care about students. They are going to die first in order to keep us safe."

5. One student decided to be snarky during the tornado warning, and he quizzed one of my fellow interns, "What if there is a fire in the building so we have to go outside, but there is a tornado coming so we have to stay inside, and then we try to go outside and find cover but there is a fire there too so we can't?" She seemed kind of flustered and didn't really know what to say, so I cut in with, "Then you die. It's game over, Josh. So you'd better hope that doesn't happen."

Students are so funny. That was the best tornado warning I have ever had in my life.