Kid's Oneliners

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These are everyday stories from teaching, where kids bring the gift of laughter into our day. I'd love to hear your own stories. Submit to laughter@jiltoa.com.

I was teaching at a small school in 2004 where the previous teacher had left suddenly without notice. As we were setting up for band one morning, I was asking the kids about a boy I'd never seen to see whether he was still involved in the program. One of the students said "He quit. I think he used to play the glockenspaniel."

A friend of mine was working on balance with the percussion section at one of my high schools. It had been a fairly intense session until he said "You've all got to play under the xylophone." One girl looked at the xylophone and said in all seriousness "How are we all going to fit under there?"

A new American boy who played tuba had arrived at school. He'd only ever played a B flat tuba and was struggling with the fingering of the E flat tuba he was issued. I said "You don't have E flats in the USA do you?" He replied "Oh yes we do, we have all the notes."

Just before Anzac Day one of my students claimed that the friend of a friend of her mother's was spending the day baking the world's biggest Anzac biscuit. "It's going to be 35 metres long" she said. I asked "How on earth is she going to cook it?" She replied, "On alfoil."