Less bragging, more humor!
My D1 was always a pleasant, hardworking kid who never had a problem in school and we are the parents who always default to giving the teacher the benefit of the doubt. I can say with absolute certainty that my D never missed a homework assignment in any class for her entire school career. Not once. So she got her second report card (second, mind you) in sophomore year and had a wretched grade in history. She was very upset, I was very upset because she received a 0 for the project of the marking period. I had seen it, so I knew it was done.
I went and spoke to the teacher who was very young and very sure of herself. She ripped into me about my daughter, her attitude, her work ethic. I told her I would like to meet with her and my D to discuss the project that I knew I had seen. She snapped at me that that was the project of another child who did a great job. We discussed it a little further and, you guessed it. By the second marking period, the teacher didn’t know which brown-haired girl was which and had given several girls grades that had nothing to do with them. It was only funny in that she had been so self-righteous and so nasty and then had to clean up that mess.
At an end-of-the-year conference;
Kindergarten Teacher: We’d like to hold your son back from starting 1st Grade because we feel that he hasn’t mastered a necessary milestone.
Parents: Really? What in particular?
Kindergarten Teacher: Well…he doesn’t know his colors.
Parents: Did you notice he is reading at the at the High School level?
Kindergarten Teacher: Yes, but there are some things we feel are just SO important…
The boy is, of course, red-green colorblind.
When my older daughter was in second grade, I started seeing some fabulism in the corrected papers returned home. She would write stories about how her parents locked her in the attic and wouldn’t let her eat, how we wouldn’t let her play with the girls who lived downstairs, etc. When conference time came, I was a little apprehensive - she had a brand new teacher who I figured was on the verge of reporting us. When we sat down with her, my fears were assauged when she said she admired my daughter’s stories and then finished “and I’ll only believe half of what she says about you if you’ll only believe half of what she tells you about me!”
@Irishmomof2 Teachers don’t usually fare too well in these stories, but that was nice!
My youngest son was a bit of a handful in elementary school. Very smart and equally stubborn! His teachers knew us well, and that we were aware that he wasn’t the easiest child to teach. They knew he wasn’t the easiest child to parent as well, and sometimes spared us the details of his school behavior out of kindness. He changed schools after third grade, and that first conference at the new school was an interesting one. It included his classroom teacher as well as the gifted program teacher. After several minutes of the two of them saying nice things about our son, while intermixing things like, “he sometimes gets this defiant look in his eye” it became clear to us that they wanted to discuss his behavior but were afraid we would be angry to hear that our special snowflake wasn’t perfect. I finally said, “we are well aware that he can be a bit of a handful. He is the same at home. We are working on it. Nothing you tell us is likely to surprise us.” The look of relief on their faces was obvious, and communication was much more straightforward after that!
Son successfully completed elementary school, with the help of those caring and very patient teachers (and a wise principal as well) and has matured into a quite pleasant middle schooler. 
Not my child, but…My D is student teaching 2nd graders. During story time, the main teacher was explaining telephone boxes to children (where would they have ever seen one?) since it was important to story. When she said it was the blue box with phone inside, one of boys sitting next to D whispered “like a Tardis.” D burst out laughing and said “like in Doctor Who.” Little boys so excited that she got it, she made an instant friend. Although they might have to work on walking around playground with arms straight out yelling “exterminate.”
A little off topic, but there are two family stories that still make me chuckle. My dad was the headmaster of the small private school my sisters and I attended. When my youngest sister began kindergarten, she would wait in the library after school until my mom picked her up or until I was finished with my classes and could drive her home. One afternoon she got bored and went to the librarian, saying she needed to see our father in his office immediately. When the librarian asked her why, my five year old sister said, “I’m pregnant and afraid to tell my mother.”
My dad never brought our school issues home with home with him, even after the time I’d been sent to the headmaster’s office for breaking a window with a softball during recess. He always wrote a personal note on every student’s report card, though, and I remember one of my own clearly. It read, “Great job. So proud of your marks. I hear you’re talking out of turn in class. Knock it off. Love, Dad.”
@ irishmom-
"When we sat down with her, my fears were assauged when she said she admired my daughter’s stories and then finished “and I’ll only believe half of what she says about you if you’ll only believe half of what she tells you about me!”
I spewed out coffee laughing about that one! We had a similar thing with my son, his third grade teacher was a British woman, who had that very British sense of macabre humor. We had a parent conference, and she asked “so which one of you cuts off a kids ear for stealing jewelry?” and laughed. She said the class had an assignment, they cut out the figure of a pig, were supposed to color it, and then based on what they did, write a story about it. When my son cut out the pig, he accidentally cut off one of the ears, so he proceeded to write a story about Victor the pig, whose mother cut off his ear because he had stolen some of her jewelry to explain the missing ear and his teacher was delighted. On the other hand, I told that story once to an acquaintance,who was a teacher in a local public school, and she said that was the sign of a child who was disturbed and would need intervention…
Alas, I don’t know if I have too many funny stories from my school days, the schools I went to were never particularly sensitive to the kids who were advanced, and from talking to friends of mine when we had gotten older we all figured that at least some of the teachers delighted in 'putting kids in their place", friend of mine was a math whiz where the teacher put him in the ‘slow’ math group, I was reading at some level way above where I was in age (in 8th grade, I tested out at graduate college level supposedly), yet I always seemed to be in the ‘lesser’ reading groups (I did have some fun, though, I usually read the stupid reading book they had in a couple of days, and then asked to take the tests to prove I had read it, and usually then could read what I wanted to).
Not really a conversation but a teacher once did the sweetest thing for my d. When she was in 4th grade we took her to the statue of liberty where she got a snow globe memento. She brought it in for show and tell in early fall, as it was a prized possession of a great trip with her cousins and us. Another kid knocked it off the desk and broke it. The teacher was so amazed that she just sucked in her breath and said, it’s okay, it was just an accident - even though she knew she was devastated.
The teacher that spring went to NY over spring break to visit her daughter - hopped the ferry over to the statue of liberty to get D a replacement for it.
S1 was a work hard/play hard kid. When he was in high sch. he started working at a grocery store that was open til 11o’clock. S1 never complained. He liked his job. He was often doing homework well after midnight. And we won’t even go into his social life. He was always out doing something.
AP Biology was his first class of the day every day of senior yr. It was a double blocked class. So two and a half hours every morning and class started at 7:15.
AP Bio teacher: S1 is doing very well in my class. He must be a genius (spoken in a very dry tone).
Me: Thank you very much. He enjoys your class.
AP Bio teacher: (dry tone) I’m certain he must be a genius because he sleeps through the first 30-40 minutes of every class and still makes A’s.
@eyemamom- With some of the stories of less than stellar teachers, your story heartened me that there are still decent people out there:)
I don’t have any funny stories of teachers’ interactions with our kids, or even just regular stories of our kids’ brilliance., as you all do. But I do have a story about myself and a teacher.
When our son was in first grade, several classes went to the museum. They needed a lot of parents to chaperone because of the number of kids and how large the museum was. These were first graders - you know, that age when they share waaaayyy too many stories from home.
As the kids were milling about, one of the bright young teachers was checking off who the parents were against her list. She looked over at me and called, “and could I have your name?” I gave her my name and added “I’m [S’s] mom.” In front of all the other parents and teachers she looked up and said “oh, you’re the one who can’t cook!”
I grew up in Oregon and we often visited the coast. After one visit the 1st grade teacher called my parents in to talk about my youngest brother. He had apparently told the class during sharing that his mom’s purse had fallen in whale puke at the ocean. The teacher gave him a hard time but he refused to recant. Hence the meeting. Wherein my dad had to admit he told my brother it was whale puke.
Ha - The “whale puke” term is going to stick with me. That’s a good explanation for the foam that sometimes washes in with a storm.
I have another ‘good teacher’ story. My 3rd kid is a bit of a smart-aleck and doesn’t take anything too seriously. Luckily his 4th/5th grade teacher loves his sense of humor. When my son had only been in this class for about a month, he had a reading assignment to read an article and answer some questions about it. The article was entitled, “Save the Whales”. One of the questions at the end was something like, “after reading the article, come up with an alternate title for it.” I didn’t proofread his hw that week. The teacher says to me, “I haven’t laughed this hard in a while. Did you see what your son wrote on his hw?” So he shows me. My ds had written, “Save the #&$* whales.” (Exactly like that).
At one parent-teacher conference in 5th grade, my son’s teacher told me my son asked, “Why is Mrs. Smith (another 5th grade teacher) so crabby all the time, even when she drives her BMW?”
When one of my brothers was a junior the principal called my mom to school and told her that he was the horniest kid they ever had in the high school.
When DS#2 was in kgn, his teacher said that when writing he was not crossing the midline ( he would switch from left to right hand in the middle of the paper), and when she asked the class to raise the hand they write with, he raised both hands. Well, knowing that this can be a neurological soft sign, I was a little concerned, but suggested we give it a little time (hand preference sometimes isn’t solidified until a little later than his age) and revisit it at the next parent-teacher conference. So at the next conference, I said, “I think he’s established a hand preference”. She said “yes, he’s right-handed”. I said “no, I think he’s left- handed”. She said, “no I think he’s right handed”. So I asked DS which hand he wrote with. He replied “I use this hand (raising right hand) for pencils, and this hand (raising left hand) for crayons.” We had a good laugh. Well, bottom line, as an adult he writes left-handed, and does most everything else right-handed. Had to give away the leftie mitt I bought him for softball when it was clear he threw better with his left hand, and caught with his right.
Another time, when he was in first grads, I went in to be what they called the “secret reader”, coming in as a guest to read a story to the class. I was outside the door when I heard the teacher say “before we have our guest reader, I want you to finish your work and you can ask for help from any of your classmates… except for XXXX (my son), he is off limits”. I worried that he’d done something wrong, so after reading the story asked the teacher if everything was ok. She said “oh yes, but every time I let the kids ask for help from another student, they all go to XXX (my son) for help. I figure he deserved a break. He is off duty!”.
@hayden - I can completely relate to your story and have a similar one. During S’s first grade year, my MIL was diagnosed with dementia. H and his sister were in disagreement as to how to manage her living arrangements and finances so as not to exhaust her funds. This resulted in several heated phone calls between the two of them and then further discussions between H and myself. S and D were 6 and 4 at the time and apparently heard more than we realized. This was driven home when I was telling S’s teacher about our trip to the east coast to see family and S piped up with “Well, we want to see Grandma but not Aunt Kathy 'cause she’s stealing all of Grandma’s money!” cringe Ever after that, we were very careful about what was discussed when the kids were “in range”…