Departments: In the Light Lane
Presidential Perception

Teaching a class of eighth graders about the Constitution and the qualifications for the Presidency, I happened to mention that no person can be elected to the highest office in the land who is not a natural born citizen.

One young lady raised her hand immediately and inquired if someone delivered by Caesarian section could be elected.

Jeff Pearlman
Revere, Massachusetts

This is my first year teaching second grade after decades in the upper grades. Second-graders' lack of vocabulary, I've found, is made up in imagination.

One day, doing phonics, the double "e" came up. I used the word "cheese." I asked what types of cheese students knew about, and I got the usual answers--pizza cheese, cheddar, Swiss, American.

Then one child said, "Line cheese." I had never heard of this cheese and said so. Then another student piped up: "Oh, he means string cheese, Ms. Lucas."

Diane Lucas
Cathedral City, California

During a vocabulary test one of my 10th graders quickly finished his test and turned his in first. I started to grade his test while the other students completed their quizzes. I was pleased to see that he had matched all of the words with the correct definitions.

The students were then supposed to pick five of the words and use them in a sentence. I burst out laughing when I read his sentence for one of the words he picked.

"Amazement," he had written. "In the bottom of my house is an amazement."

Karey Howell
Lakewood, Washington

I was teaching my second graders about digraphs: ch, sh, th, wh. The students were eagerly giving examples of words that had these digraphs in them.

The "wh" took them a while, so I started their thinking with words like "whale," "what," until a boy raised his hand and proudly stated, "Whassup!!!"

Kimberly Zeller
Manitowoc, Wisconsin

My fourth grade students keep a binder for notes that are related to their independent reading. The cover sheet lists "title of book," "genre," and "date completed."

One of my students is an avid reader, but he often seems foggy on details and instructions given out in class. I was looking through his binder and noticed that there was a column on his first page, after the book titles, that read "male" and "female."

Perplexed, I asked, "Ian, what is this?"

"Well," he responded, "you know, if it's a boy or a girl."

When I regained my composure I asked, "So how did you determine the gender of your books?"

"I used the authors' names, " he replied promptly, "but sometimes it was hard to tell."

Julie Drew
Evanston, Illinois

I was chatting with my high school English class just before the period ended. I was wearing my college letterman's jacket, which was embroidered with the school name and the year I graduated (80).

A student in the front row asked, "What's the '80' for?"

I puffed out my chest and said with feigned arrogance, "Well, you see, when you're in college they embroider the number of girlfriends you had on your jacket."

A voice piped up from the back of the room, "So, what's the eight for?"

Frank Kovac
South Lake Tahoe, California

In my U.S. history class, I asked one girl if she remembered one of the nicknames the colonists gave to the British soldiers. She piped up and blurted, "Red lobster!"

I smiled and said, "I'm sorry; that's the name of a restaurant." We all enjoyed a good laugh. The answer I was looking for was either "redcoats" or "lobster backs."

Gerald Lunderville
Long Beach, California

My eighth grade English students were taking their weekly vocabulary quiz.

One of the extra credit questions on the quiz was, "What is the noun form of the word romantic?" (The answer is "romance.") One student gave it a shot and answered "Romeo and Juliet!"

Lynne Dennis
Ellington, Connecticut

For "Back to School Night," my students wrote letters to their parents.

Students wrote about classes, fellow students, and teachers.

I had to laugh when I read one student's letter.

"My social studies teacher is cool, he's really young," he had written. "Now, for English. My English teacher is a regular teacher and you know how they can sometimes be!"

Linda Brach
Doylestown, Pennsylvania

When I asked one of my students why he had completed his homework with a blue crayon instead of a pencil, his response was "My pencil was in the computer room and I'm not allowed in there when my dad is on the Internet".

Hmmmm...

Cindy Winans
Erie, Pennsylvania

During our "Discovery Time" one afternoon, I was monitoring my first grade students and overheard a conversation about ancestry. One little girl told the others in her group that she was part Hawaiian. Another girl said that she was half German. Finally, one boy shared his family history with the group. "I'm very lucky," he said. "I'm a quarter leprechaun! My family's from Ireland!"

Christina Andersen
first grade teacher
Towers Elementary School
Torrance, CA

My special education class had spent weeks trying to learn the alphabet. We had done various activities, one, of course, was to sing "The Alphabet Song."

One day I asked my students to try and write the entire alphabet on their own. "If you get stuck", I said, "just sing the alphabet song in your head."

After working furiously and erasing a hole in his paper, one of my first grade boys raised his hand in frustration. "Mrs. Honeycutt", he wailed, "how do you make an elemeno (LMNO)?" I couldn't help but laugh. After that, we made up our own alphabet song.

Michelle Honeycutt
Dryden, Virginia

Our Ancestors
During our "Discovery Time" one afternoon, I was monitoring my first grade students and overheard a conversation about ancestry.

One little girl told the others in her group that she was part Hawaiian.

Another girl said that she was half German. Finally, one boy shared his family history with the group. "I'm very lucky," he said. "I'm a quarter leprechaun! My family's from Ireland!"

Christina Andersen
Torrance, California

While teaching about the United States government, we had spent extensive time and energy drawing trees as graphic organizers.

The students named the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government, and explored the role of each branch.

To review the previous day's lesson, I asked my fifth graders who could name the three branches of the government.

One of my students eagerly answered, "The three branches are the legislative, the executable, and the jewishable."

Angel Gasior
Baltimore, Maryland

Our textbook described "conscience" as "the inner voice of reason telling you what is right and wrong."

When the test question asked, "What is the inner voice of reason telling you what is right and wrong?," one student promptly wrote, "My mother."

Mary Ann McGinley
Wilmette, Illinois

Got Laughs?

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