It was April Fool’s Day, and everyone knew what that meant. It meant that someone was about to be pranked, and everyone but the person being pranked would find it incredibly funny. Needless to say, this was a perfect opportunity to stir up some commotion in the school, and so I took it upon myself to think up an interesting prank.

Last year, my fifth grade teachers pulled a prank on us by telling us that our state-mandated tests had been somehow lost and that there was no way to get them back other than to retake them. Everyone hated the test, so when the teacher called out people’s names, some began even crying.

Some people thought that this was incredibly funny, but the people who had gotten pranked had hated it, especially when they opened the “letters” from the state department of education and found the words “APRIL FOOLS” typed over and over again, each with a trailing smiley face.

Although it was quite hard to think of a good prank that wouldn’t get me expelled from the school, I still really wanted to play a prank on someone. So I decided that that person would be my English teacher, for the simple reason that she loathed tests, considering them blatant wastes of time.

After a few calls to my friend’s house to learn if the class as a whole was playing a trick, I discovered that everyone was planning on ignoring the teacher when she asked if anyone had done our homework. Since I myself had not been informed of this, I figured that probably the other half of the class would raise their hand, destroying the prank.

So it all came down to this: I had to come up with a good trick, it was going to involve my English teacher, a test, and other theatrical items. Although this sounded incredibly interesting, it turned out that it took a while before I was able to conceit a good plan to fool the teacher.

Playing on her annoyance of tests, I wrote a fake letter from the Texas Education Agency, the state’s department of education, and included the logo, the name in bold letters, and even their address and phone number. While they were completely real, calling them would probably receive confused staff, as the rest of the letter was to be fake.

The letter was completely written after twenty minutes of work, but just to make sure that I wouldn’t get expelled for forgery and intent to deceive, I made the letter written by a certain Dr. April Fools, Ph.D. Now everyone would understand when they reached the end of the letter.

I planned on sealing it into an envelope and sending it to the school via postal mail, but then realized it was already 9:00 PM the night before the big day, so I decided that perhaps I would ask another teacher to leer the letter into her mailbox and have her read it that way.

The next morning, however, the teacher I talked to, when asked whether she could smuggle the letter into my English teacher’s box, immediately told me that pranking wasn’t nice and to leave the pranking where it belonged: in my head. The teacher I had asked obviously had no sense of fun, so I grumbled away and then sought another form of smuggling.

I was wary of asking other teachers, and I reconsidered whether I should pull through with the prank itself. My English teacher, I decided, was a complete maniac over dictatorship of the classroom, but still had a decent sense of humor, and wouldn’t take my letter seriously. Especially if I put it in her classroom box, where she told us to place completed worksheets and et cetera. And if she did get mad, well, maybe it was time to change my sense of humor.

Before the bell rang and first period began, I went to her classroom, leered around, looking for opportunities. Unfortunately, her laser eyes followed me around the room, and she demanded to know why I was there in five seconds or be kicked out. I walked away, disappointed.

So the last opportunity for my prank was to be during the actual class itself. I hurried from the class before as fast as I could, trying to get there first so I could place the letter in her box in between perhaps a worksheet or two. When I got there, I noticed two things.

One was that there were much too few students in the classroom, and the teacher kept looking at me. The second thing was that there was nothing in the box itself, so a letter would be extremely apparent. I decided, even with these excruciating circumstances, to execute the plan, and while she checked there wasn’t a hole in her favorite pillow, I stuck the letter into the box.

About three and a half seconds later, I realized that some of the words bleeded through the paper, so I grabbed it back out. She saw this, and asked me what I was doing. I responded, heart thumping, that I had turned in the wrong homework. She replied that there had been no homework that was on paper and had to be turned in, then eyed me suspiciously.

I grabbed two pieces of notebook paper from my binder, feeling heat on my back from her glare, stuffed the paper in between the two sheets, then quickly stuck that into her mailbox, while another student distracted her with questions on grammar. I thank this unnamed student, for although she wasn’t in cahoots with me, helped me execute my malicious plan.

I eyed my English teacher and her inbox for around five minutes, waiting for the time when she would finally sit down and go through her box. Instead, she paced around the room, talked about her dinner last night, asked us whether we had done our homework (six people said yes, much to the annoyance of the rest of the class), and then talked about a grammar test.

It wasn’t until ten minutes later that she finally sat down peacefully, passed out the paper to the grammar test on pronouns and antecedents that she finally sat down. She looked at her planner, she flipped through notes, she took attendance, but the box remained there.

The box now contained my letter between two pieces of paper, a book someone had checked out from her little library and had now turned back in to her, and that was it. Soon the box would be filled with the tests coming in, and the box would be buried. She would take everything in it home and sit down to grade it maybe the next day. Oh no!

Thankfully, she had realized this. Perhaps it was my continuous begging. Perhaps it was the random muttering beneath my breath. But either way, she picked up everything in the basket, shelved the book, then saw my letter. She sat down and began to read.

To the above mentioned educator or teacher:

This is a notice from the Texas Education Agency regarding new testing practices for the 2010-2011 year. You have received this notice because you were recognized as a Texas English Language Arts teacher and teach one or more classes in the GT program. Due to mandated legislature and modified laws and regulations, the school system or your school district has proposed, and accepted after intense debate, the new testing regulations for TAKS testing, as well as new tests to assess your pupils or students.

We will not be modifying the TAKS testing that is scheduled in the spring of each school year, but we will be adding new test functions to the entire system. Beginning in the 2010-2011 year, we will be taking additional testing every month and at the beginning of any new curriculum. The new tests are called ACTTPBSP, or the Assessment of Curriculum Taught by Teaching Personnel for the Benefit of Students and Pupils, or a shortened version: ACTT. New ACTT tests have funding from increased tax from homeowners beginning in 2009-2010.

Please inform your students of the necessary changes. Beginning next year, tests will be taken before, after, and once between the teaching of curriculum. During each test, the school will need to enter lockdown mode for the safe testing and for the securing of vital testing apparatus.

Please converse with colleagues and other teaching professionals to find the optimal time to begin and end each curriculum, as they must be synchronized to keep down the number of times the school must enter lockdown.

Thank you for your continued support in Texas education legislature.

Dr. April Fools, Ph.D.

My teacher was a woman who believed in orderly behavior and probably ate with twenty forks, each with a millimeter in size difference, actually snorted. It was a small indistinct sound from her throat, and I wasn’t sure I had heard quite correctly, but then she broke into laughter. Everyone stared at her, she muttered sorry, and then her eyes locked with mine. They were twinkling.

Later, during the break between the two periods that I had English in, she asked me how I had made the letter. I had even included a fake barcode with the district on it, and she asked me how I had done it. Three seconds later, she added to the question by asking me whether any of the stuff I had done was even legal.

I replied that yes it was legal, no it wasn’t real, yes it was the real logo, no that’s not a real barcode, no you can’t scan it in a grocery store, and yes I did make this. When she was done firing questions at me, she just looked at me with a certain look of strangeness. And it was just at that moment when another teacher walked in.

It was also an English teacher that taught “GT” students, and seeing as this was one of the criteria for my so-called “ACTT” test, my teacher snatched up the chance, brought the letter to her, and let her read it. She put on her reading glasses, turned around to face the door, and then began to read.

As she read, her shoulders started heaving with anger, her hands clenched the paper even more tightly, and after an indeterminable amount of time, she suddenly spun around, and said with outrage, “Th-they can’t just do this. They can’t.”

She paused for a moment, then said to my English teacher a second later, “Forward this to our principal,” she said. “Tell her that this so-called Dr. Ap–”

Her eyes caught the name, and suddenly she bowed over with laughter. “Oh my gosh!” she said, giggling like a maniac. This was probably one of the rare chances we got to see her laugh, so I eyed it deeply, trying to save it to my memory. Certainly just the sight of her had made my hard work worthwhile.

“Oh my gosh!” she repeated. “I just… I just can’t believe that I fell for that. Oh, my, gosh.” She leaned over, laughing again, before grabbing a desk, stabilizing herself from the heaving attacks sudden laughter gives people, and then shook her head.

“Who orchestrated this?” she asked, and my English teacher pointed to me. The other teacher smirked finally some more, and then walked away. We all broke into laughter.

My English teacher told me that part of what made it even more realistic was that there had been a team meeting and they had explained that new testing procedures were underway but had only given part of it before the time ran out. The part that they did give away was extremely annoying to teachers, and seeing the letter had probably confirmed the worst.

A day later, my English teacher had shown the letter to over six teachers. They’d all been completely tricked. She’d even shown the principal, who started trembling and repeating, “They don’t have the authorization to do that. They don’t.”

What makes this specific April Fool’s prank so interesting is that so many variables can be formed together perfectly, and the coincidence of luck made this one just so funny.

I can’t wait for next year.