Cruel and Unusual

**This story. This story right here. It will be forever implanted into my memory as one of the funniest teacher moments. It, unfortunately, wasn't done by me but by a co-worker. I will say, though, that she is a girl after my own heart. Enjoy.**

My coworker had two precious little middle school boys blowing spit wads onto her whiteboard and every other in between surface during class one day. Gross, team, gross. Not to mention this teacher is a germaphobe. She gave them a stern talking to and instructed them that they were to come after school to clean her room. She called their parents to let them know that the students needed to stay. The parents okayed it and it was done.

Between the time the students were in her class and the end of school she came to tell me about the situation and asked for recommendations..

Coworker: They need to do more than clean up their own spit wads. What should I have them do?
Me: Make them scrape gum off the bottom of the tables. It's gross, they hate it, and it needs to be done.               They don't generally repeat behaviors after doing the "worst job ever" of scraping gum.
Coworker: That's a great idea! (or something to that effect)

During lunchbreak...

Coworker: I looked under the tables and there was only like one piece of gum...so I maybe chewed 3 or 4 pieces myself and stuck them under the table for them to scrape.
Other teachers:.."You really did that?"...Quiet chuckles....Stunned expressions
Me: That's GENIUS!

Really though. The kids never need to know and I bet that it provided a little more satisfaction knowing that they were scraping the gum she chewed.

I feel like this story is funnier in person. Hopefully you laughed. I told my mom and she laughed hard; and then proceeded to tell the Superintendent about it the next day at work (my mom works at the school district office) because she thought it was so funny. For the record, the Superintendent thought it was funny too.

I also feel like I should put in a disclaimer that I (and my coworker) don't dole out punishments simply as a revenge tactic. Really. I promise.