Teacher Jokes

"What is the plural of man, Willie?" asked the teacher of a small pupil.

"Men," answered Willie.

"And the plural of child?"

"Twins," was the unexpected reply.

Teacher: "Hawkins, what is a synonym?"

Hawkins: "Please, sir, it's a word you use in place of another when you cannot spell the other one."

Teacher: "What is an alibi?"

Bright boy: "Being somewhere where you ain't."

"Now, Harold," said the teacher, "if there were eleven sheep in a field and six jumped the fence, how many would there be left?"

"None," replied Harold.

"Why, but there would," said she.

"No, ma'am, there wouldn't," persisted he. "You may know arithmetic, but you don't know sheep."

Teacher: "Now, Willie, where did you get that chewing gum? I want the truth."

Willie: "You don't want the truth, teacher, and I'd rather not tell a lie."

Teacher: "How dare you say I don't want the truth! Tell me at once where you got that chewing gum."

Willie: "Under your desk."

"Pa," inquired a seven-year-old seeker after the truth, "is it true that schoolteachers get paid?"

"Certainly it is," said the father.

"Well, then," said the youth indignantly, "that ain't right. Why should the teachers get paid when us kids do all the work?"

Father (meaningly): "Who is the laziest member of your class, Tommy?"

Tommy: "I don't know, pa."

Father: "I should think you should know. When all the others are industriously studying or writing their lessons, who is it sits idly in his seat and watches the rest, instead of working himself?"

Tommy: "The teacher."

"Johnny," said his teacher, "if coal is selling at $6 a ton and you pay your dealer $24, how many tons will he bring you?"

"A little over three tons, ma'am," said Johnny promptly.

"Why, Johnny, that isn't right," said the teacher.

"No, ma'am, I know it ain't," said Johnny, "but they all do it."

A teacher was instructing a class in English and called on a small boy named Jimmy Brown.

"James," she said, "write on the board, 'Richard can ride the mule if he wants to.'"

"Now," continued the teacher when Jimmy had finished writing, "can you find a better form for that sentence?"

"Yes, ma'am, I think I can," was the prompt answer. "'Richard can ride the mule if the mule wants him to.'"

Teacher: If a man saves $2 a week, how long will it take him to save a thousand?

Boy: He never would, ma'am. After he got $900 he'd buy a car.

By way of enlarging the children's vocabulary, our village schoolteacher is in the habit of giving them a certain word and asking them to form a sentence in which that word occurs. The other day she gave the class the word "notwithstanding." There was a pause, and then a bright-faced youngster held up his hand.

"Well, what is your sentence, Tommy?" asked the teacher.

"Father wore his trousers out, but notwithstanding."

A country school-teacher was cashing her monthly check at the bank. The teller apologized for the filthy condition of the bills, saying, "I hope you're not afraid of microbes."

"Not a bit of it," the schoolma'am replied. "I'm sure no microbe could live on my salary!"

Teacher: "Now, Johnny, suppose I should borrow $100 from your father and should pay him $10 a month for ten months, how much would I then owe him?"

Johnny: "About $3 interest."

The teacher used as an illustration of bad grammar, for correction by the class, the following sentence:

"The horse and cow is in the pasture."

A manly little fellow raised his hand, and at the teacher's nod said:

"Please, sir, ladies should come first."

A teacher asked her class in spelling to state the difference between the words "results" and "consequences."

A bright girl replied, "Results are what you expect, and consequences are what you get."

It had been anything but an easy afternoon for the teacher who took six of her pupils through the Museum of Natural History, but their enthusiastic interest in the stuffed animals and their open-eyed wonder at the prehistoric fossils amply repaid her.

"Well, boys, where have you been all afternoon?" asked the father of two of the party that evening.

The answer came back with joyous promptness: "Oh, pop! Teacher took us to a dead circus."

"What shape, madam, was the pocketbook you lost?"

"Flat. I'm a teacher."

We have just learned of a teacher who started poor twenty years ago and has retired with the comfortable fortune of fifty thousand dollars. This was acquired through industry, economy, conscientious effort, indomitable perseverance, and the death of an uncle who left her an estate valued at $49,999.50.

"Why did you break your engagement with that schoolteacher?"

"If I failed to show up at her house every evening, she expected me to bring a written excuse signed by my mother."

Willie: "Pa!"

Pa: "Yes."

Willie: "Teacher says we're here to help others."

Pa: "Of course we are."

Willie: "Well, what are the others here for?"

"Now, then, Johnny," said his teacher, "if your father gave you seven cents and your mother gave you six and your uncle gave you four more, what would you have?"

Johnny wrinkled up his forehead and went into silence for the space of several minutes.

"Come, come," said the teacher impatiently. "Surely you can solve a simple little problem like that."

"It ain't a simple problem at all," replied the boy. "I can't make up my mind whether I'd have an ice-cream soda or go to the movies."

The teacher asked his pupils to write an essay, telling what they would do if they had five million dollars.

Every pupil except little William Powers began writing immediately. William sat idle, twiddling his fingers and watching the flies on the ceiling.

Teacher collected the papers, and William handed in a blank sheet.

"How is this, William?" asked teacher. "Is this your essay? Every other pupil has written two sheets or more, while you have done nothing!"

"Well," replied William, "that's what I would do if I were a millionaire!"

The teacher explained to her young pupils some facts concerning various organs of the body, including the eye as the organ of sight, the ear as the organ of hearing, and the like. Then she asked the pupils to repeat to her what they had learned. There was a short silence, which was broken by a bright little boy, who spoke as follows:

"I see with my eye organ, I hear with my ear organ, I smell with my nose organ, I eat with my mouth organ, and I feel with my hand organ."

Teacher: "In which of his battles was King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden slain?"

Pupil: "I'm pretty sure it was the last one."

"Well, Mollie, how do you like your new teacher?"

"I half like her, and I half don't like her. But I think I half don't like her most."

"Are all flowers popular?" asked the teacher.

"No, ma'am," replied one of the bright little girls.

"What flowers are not popular?"

"Wallflowers, ma'am."

One day a teacher was having a first-grade class in physiology. She asked them if they knew that there was a burning fire in the body all of the time. One little girl spoke up and said:

"Yes'm; when it is a cold day, I can see the smoke."

Johnny, who had been to the circus, was telling his teacher about the wonderful things he had seen.

"And, teacher," he cried, "they had one big animal they called the hip—hip—"

"Hippopotamus, dear," prompted the teacher.

"I can't just say its name," exclaimed Johnny, "but it looks just like 9,000 pounds of liver."

Teacher: "Now, Tommy, suppose a man gave you $100 to keep for him and then died, what would you do? Would you pray for him?"

Tommy: "No, sir; but I would pray for another like him."

The teacher asked the little girl if she was going to the Maypole dance. "No, I ain't going," was the reply.

The teacher corrected the child:

"You must not say, 'I ain't going,' you must say, 'I am not going.'" And she added to impress the point: "I am not going. He is not going. We are not going. You are not going. They are not going. Now, dear, can you say all that?"

The little girl nodded and smiled brightly.

"Sure!" she replied. "They ain't nobody going."

The faculty were arranging the order of examinations. It was agreed that the harder subjects should be placed first in the list. It was proposed that history should have the final place. The woman teacher of that subject protested:

"But it is certainly one of the easiest subjects," the head of the faculty declared.

The young woman shook her head, and spoke firmly:

"Not the way I teach it. Indeed, according to my method, it is a very difficult study, and most perplexing."

Aspiring vocalist: "Professor, do you think I will ever be able to do anything with my voice?"

Perspiring teacher: "Well, it might come in handy in case of fire or shipwreck."

The teacher of a primary class was trying to show the children the difference between the natural and man-made wonders, and was finding it hard.

"What," she asked, "do you think is the most wonderful thing man ever made?"

A little girl, whose parents were obviously harassed by the question of ways and means, replied as solemnly as the proverbial judge:

"A living for a family."

Teacher: "What does a well-bred child do when a visitor calls to see her mother?"

Child: "Me—I go play in the street."

A teacher was trying to explain the dangers of overwork to one of the smaller pupils.

"Now, Tommy," she pursued, "if your father were busy all day and said he would have to go back to the office at night, what would he be doing?"

"That's what ma wants to know."

A teacher asked her class to write an essay on London. She was surprised to read the following in one attempt:

"The people of London are noted for their stupidity."

The young author was asked how he got that idea.

"Please, miss," was the reply, "it says in the textbooks the population of London is very dense."

"Willie," asked a New York teacher of one of her pupils, "how many make a million?"

"Not many," said Willie with a grin.

The kindergarten teacher recited to her pupils the story of the wolf and the lamb. As she completed it she said:

"Now, children, you see that the lamb would not have been eaten by the wolf if he had been good and sensible."

One little boy raised his hand.

"Well, John," asked the teacher, "what is it?"

"If the lamb had been good and sensible," said the little boy, gravely, "we should have had him to eat, wouldn't we?"

Teacher: "Do you know the population of New York?"

Mamie Backrow: "Not all of them, ma'am, but then, we've only lived here two years."

While the schoolteacher was away at the annual meeting of the state association she sent all of her little pupils a postcard greeting. Little Edgar replied in kind and on his card wrote: "I hope you are enjoying our vacation."

A pretty schoolteacher, noticing one of her little charges idle, said sharply: "John, the devil always finds something for idle hands to do. Come up here and let me give you some work."

A certain high-school professor, who at times is rather blunt in speech, remarked to his class of boys at the beginning of a lesson: "I don't know why it is—every time I get up to speak, some fool talks." Then he wondered why the boys burst out into a roar of laughter.

"There's a young woman who makes little things count."

"How does she do it?"

"Teaches arithmetic in a primary school."

A schoolma'am once caught the janitor in a falsehood and thereupon asked him where he supposed he'd go if he told such stories. The janitor replied that wherever he went he expected he'd be making fires for the schoolteachers.

What is the difference between an engine-driver and a schoolmaster?

One minds the train, the other trains the mind.

"Are any of the colors discernible to the touch?" asked the schoolteacher.

"I have often felt blue," replied the boy at the head of the class.

To observe Washington's birthday, in a fitting manner, a teacher in a Yonkers school told in detail the life of the first President of the United States. She emphasized his honesty, sincerity, bravery and self-reliance. At the close of her discourse, she put this question to the class:

"What high office in a nation could such a wonderful man fill?"

A flaxen-haired boy of ten, sitting in a rear seat, raised his hand and blushingly replied: "He'd make a nice husband."

In the Chicago schools a boy refused to sew, thinking it below the dignity of a man of ten years.

"Why," said the teacher, "George Washington did his own sewing in the wars, and do you think you are better than George Washington?"

"I don't know," replied the boy seriously. "Only time can tell that."

A Barnegat schoolma'am had been telling her pupils something about George Washington, and finally she asked:

"Can anyone now tell me which Washington was—a great general or a great admiral?"

The small son of a fisherman raised his hand, and she signaled him to speak.

"He was a great general," said the boy. "I seen a picture of him crossing the Delaware, and no great admiral would put out from shore standing up in a skiff."

After reading a poem about a little boy who was so happy because there were lovely flowers, beautiful birds, blue sky and running brooks, eight-year-old William remarked:

"Those things would never make me happy, Miss Jones."

"Why, William," replied his teacher, "what would it take to make you happy?"

"Saturdays!" was the prompt reply.

Bessie is a bright one. The other day her teacher set her and her schoolmates to drawing, letting them choose their own subjects. After the teacher had examined what the other children had drawn, she took up Bessie's sheet.

"Why, what's this?" she said. "You haven't drawn anything at all, child."

"Please, teacher, yes, I have," returned Bessie. "It's a war picture—a long line of ammunition wagons at the front. You can't see 'em 'cause they're camouflaged."