Teaching is a hard enough job without somebody constantly looking over your shoulder and questioning your every move.

In the following story, you’ll see how one teacher got hilarious revenge on a PhD student who decided that they needed to detail everything the students might ask.

Let’s take a look…

“Include questions from students”

About 20 years ago, I studied to become a physics teacher. As a part of our curriculum, we had a thing called “Didactics Lab.”

It was a lab where they had some basic devices such as electrostatic machines, pneumatic bench, simple toys and tools.

The drill was that one week we’d prepare some experiments and plan a lesson, and the next week actual school children would come, and we would present our experiments to them and teach them physics.

Ah, that’s interesting. I’m sure this required some preparation.

The lab was run by an older professor who was pretty laid back and a young PhD candidate who was doing everything to show us how important she is.

As a part of our preparation week, we had to prepare “lesson plan” in which we would indicate our aims, our methods, and predicted outcome.

This is what teachers do in regular work, and as my mom was a teacher I was familiar with the format.

So I was simply writing everything as required, including a brief description of the lesson like, “teacher presents the experiment and explains the science behind, then answers questions from the students,” etc.

Seems standard enough — there’s only so much you can say in a lesson plan.

The PhD candidate thought this is not enough and demanded that I write [a] much more detailed plan, including the exact questions the student will ask.

I told her it’s impossible, because I can’t predict what questions will be asked.

She told me to extrapolate on the basis of the questions asked by students during previous classes.

So I did.

My next lesson plan looked as follows:

• Teacher switches the electrostatic machine on.
• Girls are screaming.
• Boys are laughing at them.
• One of the boy throws a paper ball at the girls; his pals laugh.
• The girls are outraged and demand for a teacher to do something.
• One of the girls asks, “Do you really want to be a teacher? My mom says their pay is ****.”
• Another boy examines the equipment sitting on the shelf and says, “my neighbour has a basement full of such electric ****. What do you think he might need it all for?”
• The teacher tries to conduct the experiment. He is interrupted by a girl announcing, “My auntie is a physics teacher as well, but she lives in another town!”
• One of the boys asks if he can go to the toilet.

And so on, and so forth.

It was like 10 pages long, instead of usual page or two.

Honestly, that sounds like every classroom I’ve ever been in!

The PhD candidate was outraged and told me those are stupid questions that no student would ever ask, and I should write only the smart questions.

I told her she told me to extrapolate on the basis of previous interactions with the students and the questions and students’ behaviour already happened to me at least once.

Are there consequences for taking this assignment so literally?

She sent me to the laid-back professor, who read my whole plan chuckling all the way and told her that I obviously understand kids already.

So I don’t have to write my lessons plans anymore, apart from one page of brief description of the experiment I planned.

Clearly, this other professor has a trust for his students that the PhD candidate didn’t have.

The PhD candidate was avoiding me for the rest of the class, but I got a good note in the end.

Does Reddit think this behavior was justified? Let’s see what the comments have to say.

A Redditor mentioned the example given had some very misbehaved students.

Another user noted the beauty of this malicious compliance.

A commenter said this reminded him of a personal experience.

And finally, a reader said what we were all thinking: this PhD candidate seems insufferable.

This PhD candidate needs to take a chill pill.

Teachers are there to build their students’ confidence, not micromanage.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.