Teachers have seen and heard just about everything when it comes to kids. Especially if they’re a seasoned teacher like Anna Trupiano.

Mrs. Piano, for short, is a first-grade teacher who educates deaf, blind, and hearing-impaired students together in one classroom. While she is there to teach them all the basics, such as reading, writing, and math, she is also there to help her students learn to navigate the complexities of social interactions.

Though she’s had some interesting “teachable moments” come up at work before, she was recently caught off guard by one of her deaf student’s barrage of questions about farts.

What had happened was one of Anna’s deaf students let a loud one rip right in the middle of class.

Now, most of us are guilty of passing gas in public at some point in our lives. We hope they’re silent and not-so-smelly, but we know it’s always a gamble and that it might involve some measure of embarrassment.

What Mrs. Piano found out that day was that this was one fact of life many of her deaf students never had to face…until now.

The deaf student who passed gas didn’t understand why some of their peers turned to stare.

When the student asked Mrs. Piano why everyone was looking, she had no choice but to tell her student why. This was obviously shocking information, not just for the little tooter, but also for all of her deaf kids.

When the student asked her what she meant, a second and third student started chiming in with their own fart-specific questions.

Before she knew it, the teacher found herself giving her deaf students the low-down on gas-passing.

A second student asked if all farts could be heard and when she said no, a third student asked how to tell an audible fart from a silent one. This is where things got even more hilarious.

How would you describe something like a noisy fart to a deaf kid? Well, the only way to go about it, it seemed, was to make it relatable.

“You know how sometimes you can feel your butt move when you fart? A lot of those they can hear. But if your butt doesn’t move it’s more likely they didn’t hear it,” she signed.

Appalled at the grotesqueness of it all, the student that let one slip demanded Mrs. Piano to make the others stop listening to their farts. Obviously, this wasn’t something she could do and when she explained why, it only brought on more gas-related questions.

After one kid said they would stop farting altogether, the teacher told her that everyone farts because it’s healthy. Rather than ask why it was healthy, the kids zeroed in on something far more interesting.

They couldn’t believe that everyone farts!

After asking if their parents were guilty of tooting from time to time, and then learning that Mrs. Piano herself could let ’em rip, they all seemed to feel much better.

After laughing it up at the idea of big people farting all over the place, they had some more serious questions about the important subject at hand.

After explaining that, though many farts could be heard, none of them can be seen (she didn’t mention lighting them on fire, but we assume that was for safety reasons), the student who started the whole conversation concluded that he simply doesn’t understand farts.

It’s okay little buddy. Neither do we, really.

The entire conversation was a hilarious and fun way to turn the moment from a humiliating one into a teachable one. Though it was funny, Mrs. Piano also points out that it was an important and productive conversation to have with them.

“I know it started with farts, but the real issue is that many of my students aren’t able to learn about these things at home or from their peers because they don’t have the same linguistic access. So many of my students don’t have families who can sign well enough to explain so many things it’s incredibly isolating for these kids,” she said in an interview with GOOD.

After Anna’s post of the conversation went viral, she updated it with an invitation to others to learn sign language.

“Wow!! I cannot believe this post has gotten so much attention, but I guess it turns out farts are pretty universally funny. If you enjoyed it, and don’t know American Sign Language or the Deaf Community this might be a great time to dive in! Check out your local ASL classes, a Deaf event, or even some online resources to start learning the fundamentals. I would love to see a world where my students can learn about anything from anyone they interact with during their day. Whether that means learning about the solar system, the candy options at a store, or even farts it would be so great for them to have that language access anywhere they go. You cannot imagine what an impact it makes, and now is a great time to start learning! Thanks for so much love on this post, I am so incredibly privileged to be a part of these students lives and this is just such a reminder of how lucky I am!“

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Source: Anna Trupiano/Humans of Tumblr