Ever wondered what happens when staff and teachers of West Ottawa make the biggest mistakes? From wardrobe mishaps to accidentally using bad words, the staff of WO shares their most humbling failures. These stories remind us that everyone has their off days, and sometimes, those moments turn into the best memories.
Instructor Michelle Stoel – Years ago, I was teaching a grammar class called College English, and I was writing with black marker on the white board. I made a mistake and wiped it away with my hand. Kept teaching and answering questions. I had
an itch under my nose, so I swiped my finger under it. I continued to teach and answer questions. Then a student asked for something (I can’t remember what) that I knew was in Mrs. Cheney’s room, so I walked down to her room and asked if I could borrow whatever it was. She looked at me and said, “Sure,” and handed it to me. I returned to my room and gave *whatever it was* to the student. Then I circulated around the room while the class worked on an assignment. Well, at some point later I caught my reflection in a mirror. Much to my horror, I was sporting a HITLER MUSTACHE. Apparently when I scratched under my nose, I gave myself a black swipe that resulted in his signature toothbrush mustache. And. No. One. Told. Me! Not any of my students (even when I left to walk down the hall!). Not my good friend Mrs. Cheney. No one! I squealed, “You guys! You let me walk around school like this!?” The class said they were embarrassed to tell me. I was like, “You were embarrassed!? Let’s talk about ‘embarrassment‘.” I also got after Mrs. Cheney later. So the moral is: Tell your friends and teachers if something about their appearance would be embarrassing to them. BTW, Mrs. Cheney has been vigilant ever since.
Instructor Kathryn Farney – I went to the New Salem Haunted Corn maze a few years ago, and I thought I would beat the system by going through the corn maze before it became haunted at night. I made a little map and I was so giddy to navigate the haunted version later that night with an advantage. As the hay ride brought us to the corn maze that evening, I was feeling a little cocky. To my surprise, the hay ride took a different turn and brought us to a completely different corn maze. My confidence was shattered because my map was created from a completely different maze. I did not beat the system and my stomach dropped as I realized I would be going into the haunted maze with no advantage. To make it worse, once we started navigating the dark maze, a man with a chainsaw started to chase us. I ran as fast as I could, but then my legs buckled. My legs completely locked up and I fell flat on my face with my feet kicking the ground in front of my head. I fell so hard and everyone around me thought I broke back from my outrageously flexible fall. The chainsaw guy took his mask off and asked if I was ok. He then ran off to chase after some cocky middle schoolers who were pestering him and yelling words they did not know the meanings of. I was ok, but my pride was not. This was when I learned that fear can make you fall and that all of the horror movies I have ever criticized, fell for good reasons. I was humbled that evening.
Instructor Traci Howard – When I was in high school, I was boiling water to make macaroni and cheese at home. I fell asleep while waiting for the water to boil. All the water evaporated out. The saucepan melted to the burner. I am attaching a picture of the pan. My dad made it into a plaque razzing me about it.
Instructor Kayla Ziegler – Two years ago when I was still teaching Spanish, it was a jean Friday and I may have over-committed to wearing jeans that were too worn out then. I dropped a marker from the whiteboard and I bent over and my jeans ripped in my crotch area. It made a big sound so I was afraid someone had heard it but I don’t think anyone heard it. Then I had to waddle around the classroom for the rest of the hour, but the rest of the day.
Instructor Reid Murphy – The greatest failure of my academic life was not paying attention in class. On the very first day of
my organic chemistry course, my professor made an error on the syllabus. She asked us to change the date of our final exam, but in my absentmindedness, I failed to do so. Fast forward to exam day. At exactly 4:30 p.m., I confidently walked into the classroom—only to find it completely empty. Silence. My stomach dropped. Panic. Full-body panic. My mind raced as I realized the unthinkable: I had the wrong date. My hard-earned A, my countless hours of studying—gone. Missing the exam would slash my grade by 20%, a devastating blow. Heart pounding and drenched in a nervous sweat, I sprinted across campus, lungs burning, until I reached my professor’s office. As I stood there, breathless and ghostly pale, she took one look at my panicked expression and—out of sheer pity, I imagine—decided to let me take the exam. Relief flooded over me. By some miracle, my mistake hadn’t cost me everything.
Instructor Kyle Mackenzie – About 3 years ago I was coaching JV baseball. We were practicing something called “pop-up communication”. This is where I hit a fly-ball and players communicate who has the ball, and where the play is going. I accidentally hit a ball straight up. Instead of just letting it drop and hitting another, I got a bright idea. The idea was to run under it and try to hit it as it came down. I had to end up swinging while running. This ended up in both my legs flying out from underneath me, and me falling flat on my back. When I got up the whole team was on the ground crying in laughter. Last year when one of the seniors graduated, they told that story as “their favorite memory of HS baseball.”
Instructor Brian Taylor – During COVID I tried to teach myself Spanish; I ordered vocab notecards by the thousands and verb conjunction workbooks, downloaded Duolingo, etc.. Once in-person teaching resumed, I couldn’t wait to show off my new skills! I asked students to return a large reading packet, so I could re-use them in a subsequent class, and one student wasn’t paying attention, so failed to turn it in. I — very dramatically — went to his desk and shouted “Cabron!” very loudly. A hush came over the class, and the student in question stared at me, and asked where I learned Spanish. I proudly told him that I taught myself. He said I called him a “#%*#@4” — I was dumbfounded; I said, “no, I called you a thief.” He said “thief” was “ladron.” So close, but yet so far… :0
Instructor Christopher Meyer – To start the story, readers need to know that Mrs. Meyer and I sign off most phone calls 
with “I love you, bye!” After a busy Friday, I was on my way out the door and realized that I needed to return a phone call to a colleague at another school. He didn’t answer, so I had to leave a voicemail. It was late and I was in a rush, and I accidentally ended my voicemail with “I love you, bye!” As soon as I hung up, I realized what I had done, and called and left another voicemail saying how much I appreciated him as a colleague, but that I had accidentally declared my love for him. The next day I ran into him and he blew me a kiss and said that he loved me too. It was a running gag with the two of us for a couple of years after, and I am still very careful to only end conversations with Mrs. Meyer with “I love you, bye!”
Instructor/Coach Daniel Blake – When I was coaching the girls track team and was out for a run with some of the athletes. I was talking to one that I was running with, getting to know a little about her and I introduced myself as Coach Blake and asked her what her name was…she said “Anna! I’m in your 3rd hour class!” I was definitely embarrassed and apologized for not recognizing her outside of class.
It’s a bit of a challenge to keep all the names and faces straight outside of the classroom and is becoming more and more difficult the older I get.
Instructor Madeline Biedenbender – I was a freshman in high school and was walking out to the parking lot with my junior brother and his friends because he drove me to school. I was walking down the steps outside, my flip flop buckled under my foot and I fell flat on my face. The topper was that my backpack flipped all the way up over my head as well. 🙂
Assistant Superintendent Todd Tulgestke – It was my first year of teaching, I was on WOBN as a guest/new teacher and we used to do this word of the day where it was a new vocabulary word and the guest would read the word of the day and the def. And I pronounced the word of the day wrong. I was a first year teacher and I didnt know I pronounced it wrong till the head of the English department, who was a veteran, showed up in my room later that afternoon and scolded me for pronouncing the word wrong in front of the whole student body.
Instructor Kyle Plank – I had an epic fail in high school. I played saxophone in high school. We were playing a difficult piece of music for festival, La Fiesta Mexicana. The piece ends with everyone playing a note at the same time, after a beat or rest (no one is playing). It is a loud note. So, everyone needs to be on time and play that note at the same time. I got lost and played that last note when virtually everyone else in the band was silent, and then came in immediately after I had played that note at the wrong time. It was a disaster. As a result, we were rated a 2. It was the first and only 2 that Mr. Gourley received as the band director at my high school. There were other factors that resulted in the 2 rating but I didn’t help.
Instructor Larry Deleon – One time I had my students do an online quiz using Illuminate and I accidentally posted the version that had the answer key attached.
Instructor/Coach Tyler Robinson – During my first year as a teacher, my principal was observing/evaluating me in the classroom. I slipped up on one of my spoken words and mistakenly swore in front of my 9th grade English students and the principal. He and I were able to laugh it off later but not a great first impression! 🙂
Instructor Frank Lerchen – So I was multitasking, filling up standard gatorade coolers for baseball and softball dugouts as 
well as tennis. While I was loading those coolers and all of our medical supplies onto the golf cart for the evening, I stuck the hose that we use in the AT room to fill coolers inside the waterboy (see image below) so it could fill up. It takes several minutes to fill, so we’re killing two birds with one stone at this point…life’s good. The waterboy would eventually go out to the lacrosse field. Needless to say, I got sidetracked doing other duties to prepare for the after school rush and before I knew it, the waterboy was overflowing onto the carpeted area and we had a small duck pond inside the AT room. So much for killing two birds with one stone! I now had a huge mess to clean up on top of everything else.
Instructor/Coach Nicholas Newton – A few years ago in Missouri, I made a poor decision during practice. As a coaching staff, we often held coach vs. player competitions to get practice rolling. In the middle of some lighthearted conversation and joking around—like all coaches do before practice—the head coach asked me which player on the team I thought I could beat in a race.
Being a young coach, no more than three years removed from playing college ball, and foolishly unaware that he actually intended for us to race, I confidently picked one of our senior linebackers. Without hesitation, the head coach rallied the team and squared us off—no warm-up, no prep, just line up and run a 40.
Still letting my pride override my decision-making, I hopped on the line, talking smack to the kid. On the “go,” we took off. It was close for maybe the first 10 yards, but by 25, he was already five yards ahead of me. To make matters worse, just before the finish—pop—there went my hamstring.
I spent the rest of practice limping around, trying to demonstrate offensive line technique on a pulled hammy. I haven’t raced a player since.
Instructor David Drnek – When I began teaching, I wanted to be sure I managed my classroom well and at that time many of my college instructors in my teacher education program believed it was easier to set routines in classrooms and maintain them very consistently early in the school year so the students knew what was expected of them. The idea was to be “tough” for the first Month or two, then lighten up after the rules had been set. “Don’t smile until Thanksgiving” was a saying that teachers would use jokingly. So in my first year teaching, I was going to get things off to a good start by being consistent in applying the rules in my classroom. The school I taught at had a no food in class policy, they frowned upon kids chewing gum and were fine with teachers giving detention for students chewing gum (this was about 30 years ago – I’m old). So I was very strict, as a new teacher hoping to keep my job, I wanted to be sure the administrators were happy, so I was GOING TO ENFORCE the no food in class policy. One day a student grabbed a muffin and some orange juice from their backpack and began opening the muffin and drinking the orange juice. So I kindly asked the student to put it away and reminded her of the rule. She looked at me with a somewhat confused glance and kept opening the muffin, and took a drink of the OJ. I viewed this as a direct defiance of the school rule I was hired to uphold and felt it my duty to fix this issue. So I again told her to put the food away or I would have to assign a detention. She looked at me and began to try to explain, but I was not having it. I WOULD ENFORCE THE RULES. I stopped her from giving me her reasons for breaking the rule as I began to write her up. A few moments later, I looked at her and realized something was not right, she was pale and looked sick. It turned out she had a medical need for calories at that moment due to an issue I had no idea about. She nearly passed out. Her brother was in a class across the hall, so we grabbed him and got her some food and orange juice and helped her get everything taken care of. I felt horrible, still do. I learned a lot through that experience. I ask in an opening “Get to Know You” type assignment every year if students have any medical issues I should know about, that stays private and I explain it is just designed so that issue does not happen again.
