Wholesome moment teacher discovers why students call her GOAT

A teacher asked Reddit to explain an ongoing joke her students were making, her discovery is so wholesome.

A teacher asked Reddit to explain her student's jokes, and the answers were so wholesome. Picture: iStock / Twitter: Robert Maguire

A teacher on Reddit has been brought to tears after discovering the real reason why her class of students keep calling her The G.O.A.T.

Twitter user Robert Maguire shared an r/NoStupidQuestions Reddit thread he came across in which a maths teacher asked people to explain to her why her students kept calling her the GOAT.

A teacher asked Reddit to explain her students' running joke. Picture: Twitter: Robert Maguire

“I am a math teacher for eighth graders,” the original post went. “Throughout this whole past school years there was this running joke where the students would call me the goat.”

“I realised I have been partaking in a joke I never actually got,” it continued. “Can someone (maybe an eighth grader) explain this joke to me?”

Another Reddit user then explained that the students actually meant she was The GOAT — as in, the greatest of all time, not a four-legged animal.

Another Redditor explained it was a compliment. Picture: Twitter: Robert Maguire

The teacher's response was so wholesome. Picture: Twitter: Robert Maguire

It was a response that the teacher said brought her to tears, and frankly, now so am I.

“OMG I am in TEARS! I can’t believe they were complimenting me this whole time!!”

With all the terrible news in headlines at the moment, this is exactly the type of story I need to hear more of, and I’m not the only one. Maguire captioned his Twitter post with: “Everything’s terrible except for this teacher going on Reddit and learning how much her students love her.”

The explanation brought her to tears. Picture: Twitter: Robert Maguire

“I just cried … actual tears,” responded another Twitter user in the comments.

“I’m a teacher of 17 years, and my students increasingly say things to me that sound potentially offensive but are actually terms of endearment,” explained another. “The wider the gap gets, the more confused I’m becoming! Mostly, they’ll explain it to me (not before laughing at my ignorance though).”

There’s nothing better to me than people embracing their age gap to learn generational language. Like the Gen Z PhD student who taught her Boomer work colleagues how to use modern slang in exchange for them teaching her how to voice her frustrations in a professional way.