Teachers of Reddit, what amusing family secrets did you accidentally learn from your overly talkative students?
Kudos going out to all the teachers for glossing over the home stuff they learn!
My sister wrote in her daily journal in grade 1 that our parents had a shower together the night before.
Teacher wrote "What a great way to save water!"
My daughter's kindergarten teacher told me about how one child entertained them at Show and Tell with a complete report on the new alarm system in their house including the code and where the keypad was located behind the curtains!
Here’s a cute and lighthearted one—I had a girl stay for some help after school one day.
At the time I was teaching geometry (10th grade) in a mostly Hispanic school.
She told me about growing up in Peru until about the age of 10 or so (I can’t remember the exact age she told me).
She was telling me that she worked with her uncle sometimes on the weekend.
I asked what kind of work—many of our kids worked construction with their families.
“He’s a clown...I’m his DJ.” That really gave me a smile.
An 11th grader was talking about how he moved back with his grandparents when his mom dies.
He mentioned that his mom also attended this school and so did his dad, but he never met him.
He only new his dad's first name.
So he says the name in my "get to know other students first day ice breaker."
A freshman girl asked a few pointed questions, pulls out her phone and calls their dad.
Dad is there within 15 min.
Turns out the dead moms family moved mom out of the city to hide the pregnancy and the dad only knew the child's first name.
Dad spent years trying unsuccessfully to track his kid down.
The dad settled down becomes a emt gets married has 3 daughters, the
oldest daughter was the freshman.
There was a GD family reunion in my ice breaker on the first day of school.
Several years ago, I did a brief stint teaching junior high (I now teach high school).
In that time, I learned a *lot* of information from students that, I am sure, parents would prefer I had not learned.
The one that stands out the most to me was the boy who accidentally let it slip to the entire class that dad has a small penis.
The bell hadn't rung to start class yet, so I was letting the kids (seventh grade) be a little crazy and get some of their pent-up energy out before we began class.
I hear one boy say to another "shut up, you'll always have a tiny dick."
The kid, in a moment of suicide by words, just said "I've seen my dad naked.
He's tiny.
You're probably right."
Thank God the bell rang and I was able to move the kids onto their actual lessons.
4th grade.
A student on Zoom the other day asked why another student had been gone a few weeks, and we all heard his mom in the back yell, "Boy, that is nunna yo damn business!"
before he muted.
I almost burst laughing but I held my composure.
Worked at an afterschool program run by the YMCA.
Once had a 4th grader explain to me in detail how her sister was also her cousin.
edit: they had the same dad and their moms were sisters, so half siblings through dad and 1st cousins through moms.
having a 9 year old run you through that is quite a trip.
Okay, so not a teacher but in grade 9 there was a girl who got completely plastered in the girls bathroom.
And my 14 year old self had one too many slushies at lunch so I ran into her there.
This girl's makeup was a complete mess and since i was at the peak of social anxiety problems I just tried to slip away.
As usual i was too late and this girl clung to my arm and fell apart sobbing to me about how her boyfriend had gotten her mother pregnant.
I ended up missing the rest of the day to sit in the corner of the bathroom with this girl I had never met before in my life, and we never talked again.
But man, I feel bad for that disfunction family
Things have been pretty depressing recently, so here's a funny one!
A kid in one of my classes told me that they learned that Santa isn't real, and in fact, it's actually their parents eating the milk and cookies.
But, as they said, "It's not right they have to make the milk and cookies and eat it.
They cook for me and I eat it.
So I learned how to make cookies and pour milk now!"
So wholesome!
They told me they have a younger sibling, and they're going to keep making milk and cookies for "Santa" until their sibling gets older and they'll teach them how to do it too!
8th grader, excitedly: Mrs. Rosiedokidoki, guess what I found out?
My grandpa was a nazi!
Me: do you know what a nazi is?
8th grader: no!
Me: maybe you should go talk to your mom about that.
She came in the next day and went, “yeah my mom told me I can’t tell people about my grandpa anymore.”
It was my own child actually.
My husband had just quit smoking and my daughter was in kindergarten had proceeded to go and tell everybody that her father had quit doing drugs.
Tobacco=drugs.
I had quite a number of coworkers and parents come asking me if everything was okay at home.
I used to do science programming for kids.
In the middle of a library summer reading program, I picked a little girl, probably about 4-5 years old, to come up and be my volunteer for a magic trick, which then you explained the science of after it was done.
I asked what her name was, she said it into the mic, zero shyness in front of approximately 200 kids and adults.
I asked if she had ever heard of the “trick” we were going to do and she said, “Nope!
My favorite dinosaur is a triceratops!
And I like your shoes!
My dad is back there HI DAD but my mom couldn’t come tonight because she got a shot in her butt and can’t sit on the hard chairs this place has.” Dad (and all the other adults in the
audience) were dying.
One of my students once said "Mummy wants to know if you want to come round for tea because daddy is away at work"
The mother couldn't look at me for weeks on the playground, cause I think she heard her daughter ask me.
I had a Japanese student whose family had formed a music band that practiced in their basement routinely.
Unfortunately I did not get to witness this awesomeness.
I did a placement once and students had to talk about what they would do with a million dollars.
One kid gets up in front of the class and goes "My mum said if she had a million dollars, she would buy lots and lots and lots and lots of weed".
That their mom eats sugar with her nose.
While I taught 4th grade, I had a kid tell me that his dad works on car rims at night.
Another one told my friend, the bilingual teacher, that she came back from visiting family in Mexico over the weekend by going through the river.
Edited to add, another one!
I taught the son of a 2nd grade teacher.
He came in one weekend talking about drinking lots of “kid beer” over the weekend at his dad’s house.
His mom stopped by later and I mentioned the story, she shook her head and said, “It’s apple juice, I keep telling his dad to stop calling it kid beer!”
Thanks for the awards!
These are my very first ones!
I have a kindergartner who’s dad died about a year ago.
She doesn’t quite understand where he went so sometimes when other kids bring up there dads she talks about him.
A couple times she’s said she misses him and says he’s on a trip.
Sometimes she says he’s coming home tomorrow.
I only met her mom once so I don’t know the situation but I don’t blame her for not knowing how to explain death to a 5 year old.
Sorry I know that’s sad, but I work in a low income area.
I have lots of sad stories.
I had a kid bring candy from his “dad doesn’t drink any more meetings.”
Edit: punctuation
I don’t think this is a secret but as I was waiting for the class to start, I sat at the back and this girl turned to me and started telling me about how her mom fell on her ass while she was in the shower and hadn’t showered for days after the injury because she couldn’t do it.
We were talking about calling 911, but what a real emergency is.
This is tricky with 10 year olds because you want to use real emergency examples but not freak them out.
One kid...... "so if your mom gives birth in the kitchen, that's an emergency "
Sure enough mom picks him up with his baby brother who was born last week in their kitchen.
Two girls in middle school were next door neighbors and always marveled about how much they looked alike.
I wasn't a teacher, but I used to have a small farm with the usual farm animals.
I also went to schools and brought along animals and educated the class on animal care, etc.
I always invited elementary school classes to come take a tour of the farm and entertain the children.
Every year the teachers took me up on the offer.
At the time I also had several animals up in the house, including a few squirrel monkeys.
One of them was really old and she had no teeth.
A young boy in the second grade was laughing and playing with
that older monkey while I talked to the class that surrounded the monkey cages.
The old monkey was 'gumming' his finger and he couldn't stop laughing.
Finally the little boy said, "Hey Jacob, come here and let her bite you....it feels just like grandma!"
And while showing them the possum I was bottle feeding back to health, a little boy said he had a bunch of them in his bedroom closet.
not me, but my husband has a student whose mom has a massive crush on him.
She tells him all the time about how her mom primps before they do anything online, so she can lean in and say hi to him.
Here’s a quick one from my wife the grade 3 teacher:
“Daddy had to sleep on the couch last night because mommy found out about his girlfriend.”
If someone in your family is pregnant, and you've told your child, I already know.
I've learned many disturbing.
One amusing one was a boy (I teach prek) said his mom and dad got a new mom so now he has 2 mom's and they all live together.
Umm okayyy
I was walking a new student to IT and they happily shared the story of his fat cousin who is wanted by the sheriff because he's behind in his childsupport.
The fat cousin is fat because he drinks energy drinks and not water and he doesn't pay child support because he doesn't like kids.
Fat cousin also smells a bit like cheese and his feet have long toe nails.
And so on and so forth until we arrived at the IT office.
Used to teach prekindergarten.
I had one kid who would tell me every month when her mom was on her period.
"Mrs. A, my mom is bleeding from her butt again."
😅 at least, I hope that is what was going on or that poor lady had some severe hemorrhoids lmao
I once had a student explain to me that all his neighbors were mad at his dad.
I asked him why, kid goes on to tell me his dad had started a fire for insurance money and lit the whole car port on fire.
Many cars were lit on fire that night.
Kids 🤷🏼‍♀️🤣
Special Education teacher here.
I had a student who was an absolute terror.
He bullied the other students and constantly disrupted lessons.
His mother was just as bad.
She would routinely stop by to "visit" my classroom and would sit there and give me the stank eye.
Then she would go to the principal with made-up stories of my inability to teach and/or my bias against her son.
She would call meetings with district level administrators and rail against me for hours.
One day I was asking my students if they could write down their address for a class project we were doing.
"The Terror" gives me an address that is different from the one we had on record.
In
fact the address was in the next town 15 miles away.
He and his mother had moved 9 months earlier, but had neglected to register in their new school district (as is required).
I notified my principal and the next day "The Terror" is gone.
The icing on the cake was that Terror Mom was sued by our school district for the loss of funds during that 9 month period.
Not a teacher, but the parent.
When my (now teenage) daughter was young, I had a roommate who smoked pot before it was legal here.
One time they left out their bowl and my child saw it, and decided to draw it for art class the next day.
Needless to say, the conversation with the teacher was interesting the next day.
Worked in an inclusive preschool for a bit, and many of our students were nonverbal or limited verbal.
We brought in green limeade with snack one day, and one of little boys, who could barely speak 20 words, shouts "IT'S A MARGARITA!"
at the top of his lungs.
It was the first full sentence he had ever said.
It was amazing, and we laughed so hard and he loved it.
his verbal abilities started rapidly increasing afterwards.
But we all knew what mommy did at home.
If your limited verbal child can name a margarita, that means they're seeing a LOT of margaritas.
I once flew a solar airship at school.
Here’s a picture of one - quicker than explaining.
A year 3 kid (7 years old) said “it looks like a big black dildo”...
A bit different but nonetheless hilarious.
My step brother was in kindergarten & his teacher overheard him say to about 5 other kids, "I've been to hell & back & let me tell you, it's beep scary!"
The teacher had to discipline him but then right after stepped out of the room & proceeded to laugh her ass off
My friend used to teach preschool kids.
One thing that really hit her was when one of the kids asked her: "Can you be my mom instead?"
"Mommy and daddy like to take naps in their rooms in the middle of tv time"
May your day be filled with joy and happiness.
And please remember to like, share, and subscribe for more quality content everyday.