TEACHERS may claim to be responsible adults but just like other professions they are busy farting, falling over, exposing their underwear or making double entendres.
The difference is they do all this in front of pupils, parents and even school inspectors.
Tales of the unexpected and humiliating are revealed by contributors to The TES online staffroom.
One wrote: “Went to the toilet and in my hurry didn’t close the cubicle door. Suddenly the main toilet door opposite the cubicle was opened by the headteacher showing an Ofsted inspector around.”
Even after school, teachers can never quite escape the job. “I was having a rather good time on stage in a local nightspot, when I noticed a crowd of women paying a good deal of interest,” wrote one former teacher. “I decided to play up to the crowd with an inflatable saxophone and feather boa. It was only half-way through ‘YMCA’ I realised that it was a group of parents, including a governor. And it was a Wednesday night.”
The game-for-a-laugh group though never told the head and the teacher’s secret life remained safe. Until now.
Other teachers had problems with words. “When none of my Year 3 class was able to answer my question, why did the Hodgeheg keep getting his words mixed up,” writes one contributor. “I thought I would stay true to the spirit of mixed-up Spoonerisms.
“I concluded in a loud and exasperated voice: ‘because he’s had a hump on the bed!’ ” Another contributor offered: “Well-remembered from my own school days was a class of 17-year-old boys making a lot of noise at the start of a physics practical. The teacher yelled out: ‘Come on now, we don’t want a mass debate’.”
Oh dear.
