'Had a student write down "hand shoes" instead of "gloves"': 25+ Students whose tests answers made their teachers laugh out loud

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Aug 30, 2023 11:00 AM EDT

Teachers must have to try so hard not to laugh out loud at the answers their students give. According to the teachers on this r/AskReddit post, who have some hilarious stories to share, their student's answers surprise them every day. 

As a teacher in America, you're responsible for guiding students through a full year of reading, discussions, tests, and pop quizzes. Elementary school teachers work with the same kids all day long, while in most middle and high schools, teachers specialize in one subject and see dozens of students each day. Regardless of the type of teaching they're doing, teachers all have to give tests. Finding an educator who gives easy A's is a blessing for students, but these teachers weren't letting kids off the hook so easily! 

Answering a prompt from u/neverlander_15, teachers and students both shared the funniest answers they've seen on tests, quizzes, and homework. I'll never stop thinking about the student who wrote about the famous Mary Shelley book, but referred to it as "Frank Einstein." So close, yet so far! 

Scroll through all these answers to the prompt below. After that, read this story from a diamond specialist who had a customer who insisted her ring had been taken and replaced with a different one. 

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  • 01
    Font - Teachers of reddit, what's the funniest answer you've come across while grading papers?
    via u/neverlander_15
  • 02
    Font - BSackett23. A student wrote an advertisement for the new season of 24 in the top corner of the paper. Strange but it did remind me to watch it.
    via u/BSackett23
  • 03
    Font - [deleted] I had my students in U.S. History create advertisements to convince people to move onto the Great Plains. One student simply drew a donkey and wrote "bring that as here boy!"
    via u/deleted
  • 04
    Font - Mattelaide List 3 different gasses: Air Farts Gravity
    via u/Mattelaide
  • 05
    Font - + [deleted] On a thermodynamics test, the students had to define "adiabatic." One student answered "someone who needs insulin." I think I gave them half credit.
    via u/deleted
  • 06
    Font - the_gabih Just finished marking a set of English and American culture papers. One student wrote theirs on the film 'Bended Like Beckham', while another wrote a very engaging essay about the popular Mary Shelley book 'Frank Einstein'.
    via u/the_gabih
  • 07
    Font - Not a teacher but when I was taking my driver's test, this had been written under a question: Q: "How much is the fine for fleeing an officer?" A: Nothing, if you're fast.
    via r/AskReddit
  • 08
    Font - xLauraDestine I'm still a student but have my internship at an IT school. The first year students had to make a test on the basics of database stuff, and they had to draw a binary search tree and stuff like that, which I had to grade. The teacher was too lazy to type out "draw a binary search tree" every time with the numbers, so that part of the test just said "draw the tree". Every student drew almost correct binary search trees, except for one. He didn't
    via u/xLauraDestine
  • 09
    Font - remember how to draw one, so he just drew a normal tree, with really detailed leaves. For the "balanced tree" he drew the same tree on a seesaw, and according to him the "root of the tree" was the part at the bottom the tree used to get nutrients out of the ground. He didn't pass the test.
    via u/xLauraDestine
  • 10
    Font - Grading finals for an evolutionary bio course, and one of the questions was to discuss or list the development of a baby from fertilization to birth. The students were given 2 or 3 blank pages to go to town on. One student wound up doing a series of diary entries from the zygote's perspective. It was incredibly creative. They received full credit for being totally right. Also another question was to discuss the evolutionary lineage from tree shrew to humans. The student blanked and drew a
    via r/AskReddit
  • 11
    Font - Poptartsaregross Had a student write down handshoes instead of gloves.
    via u/Poptartsaregross
  • 12
    Font - Sean McSeans Not a teacher, but I was once visiting my buddy at college near the end of his semester. He had a physics final to take that morning and I didn't want to sit in his dorm room alone with his roommate cause that would be awkward. So I decided to go with him to take the final. Since there were a couple hundred people there I went unnoticed. Turns
    via u/SeanMcSeans
  • 13
    Font - out my experience in carpentry did not help me with the advanced physics exam so instead I decided to fill it out as best as I could, which came out in the form of a cartoon about Newton and his three laws. Hopefully it at least broke up the monotonous task of grading exams.
    via u/SeanMcSeans
  • 14
    Font - Roy_Inverse When I was teaching English as a second language, I had a class about countable and uncountable nouns, and I had the following dialogue approximately with an Italian student. Me - "Remember you have to think if the noun can be counted (like 1,2,3...) such as 'tree' or if it cannot be counted like that, such as 'air'. What about the word 'fish'?" Her - "Uncountable" Me - No, it is a countable noun. Her (takes both hands to her head like I am crazy) - "Buta you cannot counta all
    via u/Roy_Inverse
  • 15
    Font - its Malarky My nephew's response to the question: "If you could accompany Christopher Columbus on an adventure, where would you go?" His response: "Nowhere. Because he's dead."
    via u/itsMalarky
  • 16
    Font - Artoast Not a teacher but as a secondary school student I completely forgot what metallic bonding was in my chemistry exam (the real one, not the mock). So, in the 10 minutes I had left over at the end, after I'd finished all the other questions, I drew a diagram of an iron atom and a magnesium atom with speech bubbles depicting their conversation. Things like "hi there, how's your day been?" and similarly friendly things.
    via u/Artoast
  • 17
    Font - At the bottom, I wrote a caption saying: As you can see, these metallic atoms are bonding. They will be friends in no time.
    via u/Artoast
  • 18
    Font - Zephandrypus Not a teacher but I saw the question "How do you construct a door?" and for the answer they drew a Minecraft crafting table with 6 blocks of wooden planks in it.
    via u/Zephandrypus
  • 19
    Font - MrTurleWrangler Not a teacher but in a maths mock exam I was given a question where there was a circle and it said to draw a chord on the circle. I had no idea what it was and so I drew out a fretboard and an F barre chord on a guitar. Teacher laughed about it next lesson and gave me the mark since it was drawn right.
    via u/MrTurleWrangler
  • 20
    Font - CantFindMyWallet They had to use vocab words in an original sentence. The word was "usurp," and the sentence "I usurp on my pancakes."
    via u/CantFindMyWallet
  • 21
    Font - T hammer32 In biology freshman year my teacher asked "where does meiosis occur?" My friend raised his hand and blurted out to which "in the c she replied "I can't believe you just said that" and he's like "neither could I..... Principles office?" It all happened so fast that nobody laughed until ten minutes later. Still one of the funniest things I've ever experienced.
    via u/T***hammer32
  • 22
    Font - Thisbestbegood As a teacher, none were very special. Kids wouldn't even put in effort for clever wrong answers, it was usually "IDK" written 7 or 8 times. As a high school student, a friend couldn't remember what the "Franking Privilege" was for a US government quiz, so she drew a hot dog throwing smaller hot dogs and saying "You have been Franked!"
    via u/Thisbestbegood
  • 23
    Gesture - Biobak_ What's the purpose of cow skin? Holding the cow together
    via u/Biobak_
  • 24
    Font - heyjohnnyjohnny While discussing properties of light and more specifically shadows, with my fifth graders, I asked a girl the following question. If your shadow is really long in the morning or the evening, when do you think you would have the least amount of shadow?" Without missing a beat, she replied "at night." She earned an A for the day.
    via u/heyjohnnyjohnny
  • 25
    Font - toferkris I teach guitar and I was going over numbering our fingers with one of my 7 y/o students. He sticks out his middle finger and says "I know what this is, it means you!". Caught me off guard but I couldn't help but laugh a little.
    via u/toferkris
  • 26
    Font - ot Z Lets_Call It Wit This was for one of my IB psychology classes. As I am reading the first two paragraphs, it is clear the student had no idea what they were talking about. None. The research they are using is in no way related to the prompt, no part of the prompt is directly addressed at all, etc.... And then, mid sentence, it switched to "...okay look. I clearly have no idea what I am doing. YOU know I don't. I KNOW that YOU KNOW I don't... so let's just agree that sometimes fate is
    via u/Lets_Call_It_Wit
  • 27
    Font - DefinitelyNotBarack. Not a teacher, but I took an Astronomy class my senior year of high school. During one of the tests we had to make several radio telescopes around the world. There was one in Central America that I couldn't remember the name of, so I ended up writing a paragraph explaining how I couldn't remember the name of the telescope but how it was the setting for the final act in Goldeneye and I went on to talk about how Goldeneye ended with Bond dropping Trevelyan and Trevelyan
    via u/DefinitelyNotBarack
  • 28
    Font - the_vexer In China I had the kids do a test on superlatives. The question was "Who is the cleverest in your class?". One student answered "I is the most cleverest". I explained the meaning of irony to him in the next class.
    via u/the_vexer
  • 29
    Font - Swordsteel D, might be too late here... I used to teach interpersonal communication. For extra credit I would ask students questions about current events. One time I asked to "Explain the current situation in Libya" (back in 2011). One student wrote "The Libya is in the back of the throat. It is what vibrates and makes sounds so people can talk"
    via u/Swordsteel
  • 30
    Font - PromptyPrompt Prompt Student writing a lab report about a density experiment: "Substance A will float in water because it is flamboyant."
    via u/PromptyPromptPrompt
  • 31
    Font - Skankinzombie22 In high school, my brother, was asked this question on a test: Name the three parts of an atom. He responded "Protons, neutrons, and croutons."
    via u/Skankinzombie22
  • 32
    Font - physicist88 I have a couple. When I was a graduate student, I marked homework for a third year electromagnetic theory course. One of the questions asked to show the work done by moving a point charge and you had to show it using three different methods. The textbook also gave the answer for the question, so it was all about showing your work. One of the students drew a picture of Daddy Warbucks' orphanage on fire, with all the smoke from the fire "covering" the work the student would have
    via u/physicist88
  • 33
    Font - When I was in teacher's college on my first practicum, I was teaching grade 11 math. We were doing financial math and the question was set up that "Sally used the following formula to calculate interest. What did Sally do wrong?" The student just wrote: "Ask Sally on a better math day." I actually gave the student 0.5/2, because I just though it was so brutally honest and hilarious. I've also had students do a ton of hilarious drawings on their tests and I can't help but use my red pen to
    via u/physicist88
  • 34
    Font - Mississippimoon Not an answer per se, but the assignment was to write out the Star Spangled Banner. One student began with: "Jose can you see...." To be fair, this was an elementary school in California.
    via u/Mississippimoon
  • 35
    Font - wavinsnail I'm an aide for a fifth grade classroom. Every week the kids have to turn in geography worksheets. One of these asked if Illinois or Oklahoma was warmer and why. One of my brilliant fifth graders put down "Illinois because they have more people so it makes the state warmer".
    via u/wavinsnail

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