What is the Funniest or Most Unusual Experience You’ve Had in Class?

Andrea Fenyves (Mathematics)

Last year, there was a kid who was sleeping every single day, and the classmates were discussing different torture methods to keep him awake, [saying things] like “We should put something on his chair,” or “We should poke him,” because he slept every single day in class. He was also sitting in the very front desk, right in front of my face. But he was actually a very smart kid and a nice boy. We just woke him up with different methods every day.

Manuel Ramirez (French)

A kid was sitting in the back of the room, a freshman, and he had a crush on a senior, so he thought she liked older guys. So, he started drawing chest hair with a ballpoint pen all over his chest, and I said to him, “What are you doing?’” He said, “That girl likes older guys, so I want to show her how manly I am.” The funny part was all the other kids who sat in his group tried to talk him out of this, and I said “This isn’t going to work!” And then, the girl walked in because they were in the same class, and she said, “That was really cute, thanks for trying. Can I take a picture of this? My friends are never going to believe me.”

Eric Ferencz (English)

I don't really have any particular memories in mind, but I can tell you this. I often teach first and second period, and when students come in late, they hand me a little slip of paper indicating their lateness. And it reminds me of a Mitch Hedberg joke: when someone hands you a flyer, it's like they're saying, “Here, you throw this away.” I don't know what to do with these slips.

I already know that the student came in late because they walked into my classroom 15 minutes after the bell rang. As Hedberg said in another joke: “I bought a doughnut, and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut. I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I'll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut. End of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this.”

Vincent Miller (Physical Education)

For my birthday last year, the softball team had gotten me a birthday cake to celebrate. They put the cake down on a chair, and I didn't realize it, and then I sat down on the cake. They sang me Happy Birthday, and I sat down. I was very flustered because I was in the middle of teaching class. I changed my shorts and then we tried to cut around where I had sat in it.

Heather Huhn (English)

I'm from Wisconsin, and sometimes my Wisconsin accent comes out. When I was a student-teacher, we were actually reading this book [The Master and Margarita], and I said the word “supernatural,” but it came out as “supernaahtural,” and then the whole class laughed. The other moment, this year, I said the word “name tag,” but I said “taahg.” I really drew out the 'a' like a true Wisconsinite would, and then the whole class laughed.

Eric Grossman (English)

My class starts with minutes each day. Maybe five or six years ago, in my sophomore class, there was a student whose vision for his relationship with me was based on Epic Rap Battles, so he wanted to throw as much shade at me as possible and hope that I would then diss him back. But that wasn't something that he indicated through set-up, or “here's what I'm thinking of doing for minutes.” He just stood up and started ranting about how terrible I was but in tremendous and lengthy detail. I'm not easily offended, and I knew that he was joking, mostly. He was kind of a silly kid, anyway.

I think the rest of my students were horrified and so deeply shocked and offended that for the rest of the week, every time they saw me, like coming into class, I'd see them in the halls, and they apologized for what he had said. They tried to reassure me that none of it was true. I was like, “no, no, I'm really okay,” but it was too upsetting for them. They'd be like “I'm sorry about what he said. You're not like that.”

I don't even think I dissed him in the moment. I probably said “Thank you for your minutes.” I found ways over the rest of the year. He was disappointed that I didn't get up and start doing my own thing. It wasn't like he was free-styling; it was more like Epic Rap Battles without the rap, or even really the epic.

Marissa Maggio (Biology)

On two different international trips, I've run into my students. I was once in a backpackers’ village in the middle of the jungle in Tulum, Mexico with three other teachers from my school. All of a sudden, we heard, “Ms. Maggio! Mr. Falco! Ms. Bernstein!” We looked up, and it was one of our students who was visiting Mexico on her Girl Scouts trip. The second time it happened, I was walking down the stairs at my hotel in Hong Kong. It was eight o'clock in the morning. I was going to get my laundry from the place across the street. In the lobby was the entire Stuy Robotics Team. I was walking down the stairs, and I heard, “Maggio!” I froze because it was the weirdest experience ever.

Emilio Nieves (English)

Seniors have a tradition of engaging in a sort of conga line down all the floors of the school in June near the end of the last day of classes. It can be a bit rowdy, especially if you are teaching class. I don't mind because the seniors don't mean any harm, and they are simply letting loose four years of pent-up tension. One year, in the mid 2000's, there was a male student who, for some reason, deviated from the conga line and ran into and around my classroom yelling “wooooooo” and banging on a small, hand-held drum. Nothing too strange about that except he was wearing nothing but a speedo.

Irene Mouzakitis (Mathematics)

I had a student in middle school two years ago who had test anxiety. Just before every test she would run to the bathroom and throw up. She would be fine; however, I would fear she might vomit during the test, so I always had a vomit bucket handy under my desk. Five minutes into the eighth grade math state exam, she started feeling sick and tried to hold it; I ran and pulled the bucket, and she vomited in the bucket.

Katherine Fletcher (English)

Two years ago, I had a freshmen class, and this girl decided as a minutes gift that she was going to invite everyone in the class to collect change that they found on the street and keep it in a communal can. We were going to count the money at the end of the semester and figure out what to spend it on. To my surprise, my students took this project really seriously and gathered a lot of change. Kids would come in every day and put it in this can, and at the end of semester, we counted it up and ended up with a fair amount of money, like about $20 or $30 dollars, maybe?

The girl who had initiated the project had decided to use the money on a class pet, and the principal at the time, Ms. Zhang, said that she wouldn't allow us to have any kind of pet that was furry, so, no hamsters, no gerbils. The student decided to purchase a reptile called a Chinese Water dragon, and for reasons I will never understand, I allowed this to happen.

It turned out that Chinese Water dragons have an extremely long life span and grow to be an enormous size. I don't remember the numbers but it's something like “they live for 50 years, and they grow to be like 3 feet long.” Also, the Chinese Water dragon had very specific environmental requirements; its tank had to be kept at a specific humidity level, and it needed to eat a lot of live crickets everyday. It was a really challenging experience, and I ended up giving away the water dragon to an exotic pet store in the Upper West Side. But within the period of 2-3 months, keeping this creature alive was very important to me.”

Josina Dunkel (Social Studies)

When I was student-teaching, here at Stuyvesant, I was teaching a U.S. History class on the second floor, and at the time, we taught U.S. History to seniors. So I was about five years older than the students in the class. And there was a kid in the class who just was not impressed by me, at all. Like, at all. But I finally asked a question that I guess compelled him to participate; he put up his hand, and I was so happy to call on him, and then a mouse ran across the back of the room, and I screamed and jumped up on the desk. So, he continued to not be very impressed by me.

Also during one of my first years teaching here, I was showing some Sumerian art, and a student looked at it and said, “They're all bald. Did the ancient Sumerians have a higher instance of baldness in their society?” and I was like, “Thank you for thinking that I would know the answer to that question. Hair doesn't show up in the archaeological record, but I would imagine that it was probably pretty much the same as it was today, and they probably shaved. You just never know what people are going to ask, so you can't necessarily anticipate.