From disturbing teacher meltdowns to some of the most deranged students you could ever meet, these classroom horror stories are pure, unfiltered chaos.
1. It's Not "Emotional" Education!
Through MSN messenger, I learned the most terrible news: that my childhood sweetheart had passed. We didn’t go to the same school and I was only thirteen. I was taken out of school for a few days to calm down, and my teachers were all notified.
When I returned, I gave it my all and tried my best to stay focused. All my teachers seemed supportive and understanding, but my PE teacher was the horrid exception.
She took me aside after class, and out of the blue told me to "get a grip and fix the problems of my personal life, because it's affecting my grade".
I looked at her in disbelief, tears started rolling down my chin, and left. She shouted at me to come back and sit down. I walked around aimlessly until my friends found me.
2. Honesty Saves Lives
At the first school that I taught at, I had a girl come up to me one day and say, "Robert has a blade". I pulled Robert into the hallway to talk with him about it. He said that he didn't have a blade, but that he did have a box cutter. I asked him why he had it—and his response made my blood run cold.
He said, "Because I'm tired of Chris". Chris was an annoying suck-up but wasn't really bad or mean to other kids. I asked Robert what he was planning on doing to Chris. He said, "I am going to get him in the bathroom".
I usually took the class to the restroom after lunch but I didn't that day because they were being rowdy in the hallway. I took Robert to the office and after hearing the story, the principal chewed him out. She then called Robert's mom, and she chewed him out on the phone. But here's the kicker.
Robert knew that he was in serious trouble. He knew that what he was planning was wrong. He just didn't care. Not in a false bravado macho-type way. He literally didn't care. I hate to predict a kid's future endeavors, but that kid definitely scares me. By the way, Robert was eight years old at the time.
3. Begging Babies
I taught 3rd graders for a year, so the kids were around nine years old. It was a couple of days before the summer holidays and I asked the kids what they were going to do during summer.
I got to this one girl and asked her what she was going to do and she happily announced she was going to Germany with her sister and parents.
I asked her what she was going to do in Germany, and she said she was going to ask people if they have one euro. I was like, “What?” What she did next made my jaw DROP.
She proceeded to sit down on the floor with a really sad look on her face, stuck her hand out to me, and said: "See like this. Please miss, do you have just one euro, I'm hungry". She didn’t really see anything wrong with this.
I’m pretty sure she didn’t really understand what she was doing. I was quite alarmed by this, so I informed the other school staff. That's when I learned the horrifying truth.
It turned out that even though they weren’t actually poor, her parents were regularly taking their two daughters to Germany over the summer where they would make them beg for money in the streets.
I heard the girl and her sister got pulled out of school shortly after that, but I don’t know what happened after since I don’t work there anymore.
4. Lose-Lose Creep
My high school Spanish teacher would ask me to leave class and speak to him in the hallway because my shirt made him "feel uncomfortable". He thought it was too low and distracting. As my mom would say, I’ve always been blessed, but I would never wear something inappropriate.
I apologized and went back to work. I had a female teacher for my next class. Before class started, I asked her if anything was wrong with my shirt and she said no. As an adult, it’s weird that she didn’t ask me why I was asking.
The next day, I wore a sweatshirt specifically in his class so he wouldn’t say anything. But that wasn't the worst part. He asked me to stay after class. He told me it’s not appropriate to wear a sweatshirt to cover my shirt in his class.
5. The Epitome of Determination
My wife and I taught together in the same high school for a while where we shared several of the same students. We shared one particular student with whom we had entirely different experiences.
In my math class, he didn't mind the subject or me as a teacher. He was relatively calm and polite with me. However, when he went to her English class, he turned into a completely different person.
He hated her class. He hated it so much that he began to try, on several occasions, to get out of it. Here are some of the highlights that took place within about a week before he was eventually removed from school altogether.
First, during passing period on the way to English class, he threw himself down a flight of stairs and swore he was paralyzed and couldn't possibly go to class. The nurse checked him out, and much to his dismay, he was sent back to class anyway.
A few days later, at the start of English class, he attempted to escape again. This time, he soiled his pants in class; no hesitation whatsoever. This attempt was slightly more successful than the last because he was then allowed to go home for the remainder of the day.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, he had to return the following day. His final act came another few days later and finally allowed him to meet his goal. Again, while in English class, this student began to pleasure himself at his desk.
Due to the lewd act, he was removed from class and was shortly removed from the school altogether. He was later enrolled at a juvenile detention center to continue his education.
6. Inspiring a Walkout
I once had a terrible history teacher. He was horrible to everyone and said some extremely questionable things. He never bothered me in particular, a few things here and there but nothing terrible. Well, until my best friend drowned while canoeing with some other students.
A few days later the principal had a moment of silence for him. In response, this teacher said, "kid deserved it". I lost my freaking mind. I started shrieking at him. I was crying, and he was just standing there with this mischievous smirk on his face. My friends pulled me out of the room while he called the principal.
I ended up suspended but there was a student walkout the next day due to my suspension.
7. A Lack Of Social Skills
I worked in a nursery and had a little girl there who I had to do one-on-one work with because of her serious attachment disorder. It wasn't diagnosed at that point yet, but the nursery workers were totally underequipped and underfunded to deal with this poor kid.
Although she was only three years old, she had really underdeveloped speech, didn't know how to cry, and was the most violent child I had ever met. She was incredibly strong due to her history (children who have lived in harmful homes generally have much more strength because they're constantly in the fight or flight reflex, high on adrenaline), and was already removed from the abusive home, living with her alcoholic grandparents.
I saw her swing a metal pole at a kid's head, stomp on children, shout bad words, you name it. But the most disturbing thing of all? Her penchant for biting other children—specifically little babies. On their faces.
Whenever we had outside playtime, we had to have someone right behind her at all times, especially when the babies were out at the same time as us. One moment, she'd be sweetly playing in one corner, and then, the second you looked away—BAM—she'd be on the other end of the playground, viciously lunging for a baby.
She put one of those poor little babies in the hospital before I started there, and there were many other incidences during my time too. The good news is that working with her for just a few months, and really really giving her attention and love and patience paid off. She learned how to cry. She learned how to show love and frustration.
And she stopped biting towards the end. It was really incredibly hard work, and I definitely got too emotionally involved, but it was worth every moment. Broke my heart when I had to leave.
8. Keep It In The Family
My kindergarten teacher was also my Aunt. She used to yell and discipline me for no reason. When my brother started school she gave him the same treatment and we both became terrified of her.
We found out later as adults that she didn’t like our mom and was taking it out on us. I was so young but these memories still haunt me. Another time, I remember she also forbid the class from talking to another girl because she spilled water.
The whole class got upset because the little girl didn’t understand why no one would talk to her. I don’t even know why people like her get into teaching. As I’m typing this I’m shaking with anger at the memory.
9. Exercise Isn’t Always The Answer
I used to teach a PE class to five-year-olds. I had this one kid who used to come with his friend from kindergarten. His friend's mother apologized to me numerous times and said she never would have offered to bring him if she knew what he was like. More than once I had to evacuate the rest of the kids from the gym.
This three-year-old would be running around the gym screaming terrible words at the top of his lungs while trying to punch, kick, or headbutt other kids. You never knew what would set him off.
If you asked him to kick a ball, he was equally likely to kick another student or the ball. One time, he got so aggressive—I couldn't get him away from the other kids. I ended up wrapping him up in the 'firm cuddle technique' which they definitely don't teach teachers about anymore.
I basically dropped him to his knees with me on my knees behind him, arms wrapped around his arms and his chest. The only part he could move was his head and he kept trying to smash the back of his head into my face. But the worst part was the laughter.
He normally had a vague, empty look on his face but when he was trying to hurt someone. He would scream with laughter wearing the biggest and creepiest grin that I have ever seen. I only had him for ten sessions once a week, but oh my goodness, I will never forget that kid.
10. An Argument For Buzz Cuts
I was a preschool teacher at the time. I was doing group time (singing songs, reading a book) and all the kids were sitting on the floor. One left to blow her nose. She came back, walked through the crowd of kids to get back to her spot, grabbed a quiet girl’s hair, and kept walking. My assistant thought it was a mistake, but the girl kept walking.
She even bent at the knees and yanked while the poor long-haired girl screamed. That girl had no remorse and would be so unpredictable. She would look in your eyes, but right through them. It was a stressful year.
11. One Man’s Trash…
I was teaching 7th grade a few years ago. One of my students is a bit...off. Not "off" like "I'm going to harm you," but "off" like "I have an old toy chest full of all of my haircuts and a picture of my mom's pretty friend". I will call this kid Carmine.
One day, Carmine comes to school and you can hear that he's pretty sick, his nose is clogged and that stuff isn't going anywhere. Oceans of molten mucus clogging up his nose. He's snorting every five seconds, blowing his nose, hefty meaty blows of the nose. Filling tissue after tissue.
On this day, in my class, everyone was reading independently. I scanned the room to find Carmine hunched over his book, sideways in his chair, blowing his nose violently into a tissue.
I thought man, poor kid, should probably be home sleeping or something. Then I thought OH GOD WHY as Carmine opened the hefty, soggy tissue, looked suspiciously around the room, and took a big ol' lick of the contents. Then another.
Then I walked up behind him, as calm as I could muster, and said, "Hey, Carmine, throw that away, please". The look in his eyes was not one of disgrace. It was more like the greedy, defensive look I get when I approach my dog as he's gnawing on a bone. The look was 100% NO THIS IS MINE, YOU CAN'T HAVE IT.
I didn’t want it, Carmine, I didn’t want it.
12. Deranged And Quite Strange
There was a deranged kid in middle school who wounded me multiple times in the arms for no reason. I was standing in the chips/snacks line and he just walked up to me, and pierced me in the arm three times, and walked away. I stood there for a couple seconds trying to register what just happened.
I had thought he gave me a numb arm, but then the blood started pouring down into a puddle on the ground. I went to the office and he was called in. The vice-principal walks out of the room for a second and the kid yells at me "You told on me?!" with the devil in his eyes.
I said, “Uh...you did this dude". We both got suspended. I was so angry. I was a straight-A student and small for my age. I still have no idea what the kid’s reasoning was, and why he chose me.
I’m still just completely baffled. I moved away after middle school, but from what I heard from friends who went to high school with him, he started pressing designer pills and would give them out to stupid kids to try out. Hopefully, he's incarcerated now, and I have a strong feeling he is.
13. An Isolated Pain
This teacher introduced me to being self-conscious. I was nine years old and one day she said, "You know something...insert name...you are a real PAIN on Fridays!" It was Friday and it was the afternoon which meant fun and games. At the time of her comment, I was having fun with friends, loudly laughing and joking.
She yelled this to me across the classroom and I was stunned and embarrassed. It came out of nowhere. Everyone went quiet and started looking at me. I went quiet and stayed quiet. I became conscious of myself and any noise I made.
It occasionally crosses my mind and I wonder how my personality would be different without that announcement in my childhood.
14. Advanced Awareness
My twelfth-grade advanced English teacher was terrible. He had this elitist attitude about him and thought he was above everyone, including other teachers. It was painful listening to him every day. Only he knew what the real meaning of books or poems was, and anything that people interpreted was wrong unless it was his interpretation.
He considered himself an adult who had all the answers and would lecture us about life choices, and then call kids out for not living up to his expectations. He was notorious for making people change paper topics or ideas because they didn't interest him regardless of how the student felt about that topic.
He told us that we're "advanced students” and should “figure it out".
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15. The Beat Of The Issue
I developed a drumming nervous habit in fifth grade that two of my teachers didn’t approve of. My teacher in fifth grade would follow me around, outside of the classroom, and correct me for drumming. It gave me terrible anxiety because I didn’t know when she would leave me alone or magically appear.
This constant stress made me transfer out of the school. I thought my next school would be better—I was so wrong.
My math teacher was seriously triggered by my habit as well. One day when I was drumming in class, he lost his cool and threw my pencil into the wall, smashing it. He would constantly email my parents telling them I was lazy and didn’t try to succeed. Eventually, I was transferred to a different classroom.
16. A Cosine To Teach
I had a trigonometry teacher who was a great teacher for students that were already good at math. In our school, trigonometry was mandatory, so it didn’t matter how you had done in math before. I was excited to take the class because one of my math-savvy friends was taking it.
The class was split with students getting straight A’s and those who were barely passing. I immediately start failing this class and he has no idea how to teach me because I'm seriously not meant to be taking this subject. After a certain point, we both gave up on my learning and I started drawing on the back of my tests.
He would pass me based on my art, not my ability to do any of the math that he was supposed to be teaching me.
17. Regret Was Felt That Day
This one is a doozy. We had a brother and sister that were adopted at birth from Russia. These kids were trouble. Needless to say, times were often difficult and one of them seemed to have extremely sociopathic tendencies. For Christmas, they got a camera. Seemed like a fun gift idea and there were really excited about it.
I knew their family didn't have much in the way of income, so a cool gift was really special for them. I was happy they got something they both enjoyed so much. But then they brought the camera in and began showing other children the pictures, which is a pretty big problem. Kids were not allowed to bring in cameras to school or anything.
The cameras were a mistake, and most of all, the pictures were some of the most unfortunate images I've ever seen. They were essentially photographing one another's buttholes as they spread their cheeks apart, among other things. Talking about the photoshoot and how they had to do it when mom and dad weren't watching.
18. A Smelly Secret
The middle school where I used to teach used to be a high school, so there were a lot of disused spaces around the building that the middle school just didn't have a lot of use for other than storage. One of those spaces was the old high school wrestling room. It was essentially used for the storage of some gym equipment and as a hallway.
At some point, people started to notice a bad smell in the room when they went through. They didn't think anything of it at first, but it gradually got worse and worse until they finally went in to investigate...What they found was utterly disgusting. Buried under some other equipment, was a wooden box half full of human excrement.
They just covered everything back up and waited. Eventually, they caught a student who had been sneaking out of the lunchroom and into the wrestling room everyday to do his business in the box. His parents were called, of course. He just thought it would be funny. The best part was that the school sent them home with the box.
19. Heartstrings
One day while I was teaching multi-step equations to seventh graders, a girl asked to speak to me outside. She had these huge brown eyes that were brimming with tears. I walked outside and she just started spilling her guts. She began telling me that her mother wasn't in the country legally. Her older sister’s substance problem was jeopardizing her mother’s security as she was worried about her sister being in trouble, etc.
In addition to all this, her sister would threaten her mom if she didn’t give her money for keeping up her substance use. There was a myriad of family drama she kept running through. After a few minutes, she looked at me and said, “Ms. (my last name), do you want to hear the worst part of it all?” I said that I did. So, she went on.
“I’m still in love with Tristan. And you sat me next to him in our new seating chart and I can’t sit that close to someone I’m in love with when I know he hates me now". Yes, I moved her seat away from Tristan. That was a few years ago and I am still in close contact with her. She and Tristan did fall out of love. They have luckily both been able to find others.
20. He Don’t Got Game
I was near the end of my senior year in college and needed to take an elective to satisfy degree requirements. I took basketball since I love the game. The "professor" was an assistant coach for the school's basketball team, and he didn't care about the class. Our class starts at 8 am in the old basketball gym on campus, and he was the only way that we could get into the gym.
A few times he had a colleague come to open up the gym for us, but at least 7 or 8 times over the semester, he just didn't show up at all so, after 15 minutes, the students just went back to their dorms or apartments. I was a commuter driving 45 minutes each way, so I had to skip work on the days I had class. I was working to pay for school.
Near the end of the semester, someone in class asked him about his attendance then he made an announcement that anyone that doesn't show up for the final exam (basically whoever could make a basket) will fail. On the day of the final exam, he didn't show up. No colleague. Nothing. On that last day, there were 30 students freezing cold sitting outside the gym in December. I ripped him a new one.
21. How Do You Not Notice?
My mother is a middle school teacher so she’s got some stories, but this one is absolutely unnerving. As a class was getting new assigned seats and waiting at the front of the classroom while the teacher reads out names and seats, a girl, who was pretty quiet but not exactly ‘loner’ status, lanced a boy in the back with a pair of scissors completely unprovoked.
She jabbed him deep enough to puncture a lung and somehow, this kid didn’t notice. It wasn’t until 10 to 15 minutes later when he asked to use the restroom and another teacher saw the back of him soaked in blood. After they figured out what happened and who did it, the authorities were called and she was taken to a children’s facility.
My mother stopped in at the end of the day to chat with the principal about the incident and what the principal described was quite disturbing. She apparently sat there the entire time the authorities were talking to her about what she did and why she did it and she had absolutely no remorse. She sat there and nodded. No tears. Gave no reason why she did it.
When she was told she would be going into a children’s facility—nothing...no reaction. She just sat there staring. This wasn’t revenge for something this boy did, they weren’t friends and my mom said he’s the sweetest thing who enjoys his small group of friends and Pokémon. She did this completely randomly.
22. Essay Or Manifesto?
I had a student once write a very terrifying and unsettling personal narrative essay. I forget exactly what the prompt was, but it was about an educational experience. It started off with the student talking about how he had always felt alone and isolated and out of place as a student, and it quickly disintegrated into how he was coveting his pretty female teachers.
He said that he felt overly protective toward them, and that he was jealous when other male students talked to them, eventually revealing that his deepest desire was to cut off his male classmates' faces and wear them as a mask. I had never before felt such a bone-tingling dread before while reading an essay.
I spoke with my dean about this, and we called the counseling and advising department, read sections of the essay to them, and they said they would handle things from there on out. The student was withdrawn from my class, and for the next two class periods, an officer was placed at the door of my classroom in case the student showed up.
Here's the kicker: the next year, one of my students told me that her boyfriend was in my class the previous year and that he really enjoyed my class. I asked who it was, and she revealed that it was the student who wrote that bone-chilling essay. I so desperately wanted to tell her, but privacy laws wouldn’t allow me to.
23. Maybe That’s The Launch Sequence
I was a teacher’s assistant. We had a rocket day where every student made mini rockets to be launched. They were in 5th grade and in the cafeteria and I was walking around to help anyone who needed help. One little girl called me over from my class. I came up and asked, “What’s up?” because everyone was almost done at that point. Her response floored me.
She looked me straight in the eye, and slowly licked the side of the rocket. Like a seductive lick. I had never been more uncomfortable up to that point.
24. He Took Matters Into His Own Hands
In eighth grade, my phone got taken away because my alarm went off during class. The Vice Principal came in and told me I could get my phone back at the end of the day in his office. After school, I went to his office to retrieve my phone. However, he wasn't there. I went to the main office three times to have him called down over the PA system, but he was absolutely nowhere to be found.
My bus arrived, so I walked into his office and grabbed my phone. The next day, I was called down to his office. There, he showed me footage of me going back and forth between the two offices. He then told me I was in trouble for taking back my phone. I wanted to scream. I argued back, asking where he was the previous day when he had said he would be in his office and that the phone was my property to retrieve.
My gosh, to sugarcoat my argument, I even said that I understood why during school the phone was taken away. The Vice Principal wasn't having any of it and told me I was suspended for taking an item from his office. He called my mom and told her none of the details of my suspension, just that I had taken something from his office.
When I got in the car to go home I told my mom exactly what happened, word for word, and she was horribly angry. She stormed into the office and demanded my suspension be lifted. The Vice Principal said there was nothing he could do. A year later, it was discovered he was having an affair with a teacher. Today, there is no doubt in my mind that when I was looking for my vice principal, he was getting steamy with the teacher.
25. Some Teachers Never Learn
My I.T. teacher wanted to inspect my work on the computer and accidentally deleted the file. I was upset and tried to point out she just deleted my work. She started to shout at me, telling me I should have saved frequently. I shouted back telling her that wasn't the issue, she outright deleted the file. It got pretty heated. My parents were called.
We were outright yelling at each other for a good couple of minutes to the point where we were both in tears. I was about 14 at the time. She should have known better. A few years later, my sister had her when she went to that school and that same teacher berated my sister. She would belittle her and call her names in the middle of class.
26. Couldn’t Hold It
My sub urinated in my desk chair. Swear. To. God. He peed in my chair and the students noticed it and mentioned it to him. He ignored them and just sat there anyway with a huge puddle of urine on the floor. The kids called security on him. I came in the next day and sat in the chair.
It was wet and about that time a security guard stuck her head in the door and said "Don't sit there, that guy peed in your chair".
27. Casting Dispersions
When I was in Grade 6, I fractured my left wrist but it was my dominant hand so I had to poorly write with my right hand. The teacher forced me to write with my left while I had a cast. I couldn't even grasp the pencil. I cried a lot. Then a couple of months went by and got my cast off, the sub told me to suck it up and write with my left hours after getting my cast off. I felt like jelly and intense pain.
Also, that sub once asked a deaf kid to take off his hearing aids. The other kids tried to tell her he needed them but to her, they "looked like headphones". The sub cried when confronted by another teacher. The teacher was fired at the end of the year because of "unnecessary complaints".
28. An Alarming Tale
I had a Grade 1 and 2 class last year and one student had diabetes. Let’s call him Adam. Adam had a cell phone that beeps when his blood sugar is too low or too high. It’s connected to the monitor in his arm and hip. The cell phone has no other uses, no apps, no data, and is not connected to the school wifi. The substitute saw his phone on his desk and promptly took it away as per the “no devices” rule.
During gym class, an EA comes in to make sure everything is ok, and Adam is visibly ill. He was pale and sweating. Luckily this EA knows Adam’s medical plan, and instantly asks Adam for the phone and he explains that the substitute took it away in the morning. The EA then loses it on the substitute, demanding the phone.
The substitute calls in the principal to reprimand the EA, but then she got reprimanded herself as obviously she did not read the student’s safety plans. She was asked to leave and the principal taught the class the rest of the day. Adam was fine, drank a couple of juice boxes and had a granola bar. His mom picked him up shortly after.
29. Liar, Liar, Recommendation’s on Fire
There was a compulsive liar of a kid who told me all sorts of doozies for four years. His senior year, he asked me to write a letter of recommendation. I did—because I had an ingenious plan. I included every lie I could remember him telling me as though it was the truth and I was pumping him up. Oh man, it was so good.
He couldn't even show it to his family because I wrote about how he volunteers at homeless shelters every night, raises hundreds of rescue dogs to become service dogs, how he donates blood every week, etc. Any one of the statements was obviously impossible to be true. I hope he didn't try to use it, but I never got a call from anyone to verify my recommendation.
30. First-Grade Justice
Last year, I had a 7-year-old in my class who was just a pain. He would throw things around the classroom, pinch other children, poke them with pencils, and he was rude to everyone but would always blame it on someone else. Talking to his parents wouldn't help because they believed everything their little "angel" said.
One break time, he was harassing another child, and I guess they just had enough. This usually mild-mannered child punched him in the stomach. It was so hard, the horrible child even wet himself. Then, all of the other children who witnessed it completely closed ranks and denied that it ever happened. We couldn't follow it up.
31. We Need to Talk About Kevin
I taught a dissection lab section back in college. I had one kid in a section, Kevin, who never listened to instructions and just dove in with a scalpel, dicing and chopping and generally causing a horrific scene. This led to his first karmic warning when we were dissecting squid. He got squid "juice" on himself, and it smelled awful for the rest of that class. But he didn't learn.
He kept on ignoring instructions and hacking away, so this time karmic justice struck on our very last dissection project: The fetal pig. Kevin really wanted to see the pig's brain. Kevin couldn't get through the skull, though, so he started whacking away at it. I told him to stop, but he had to give it one last, mighty thwack. Crack!
The skull breaks and rubbery piglet brain bits come flying out everywhere, mostly over Kevin. Unfortunately, while he was protesting my clear instructions, Kevin had his mouth open. Thankfully, preserved pig brain, ingested orally, seemed to have a calming, subduing effect on Kevin for the last couple classes.
32. Tap And Trigger
My high school band director easily lost his temper. He once threw the loudspeaker at us during marching band practice and would yell at us after a competition if he didn't think we performed well. I went on to major in music education in college with the hopes of teaching music at a high school level. Every professor I had reminded me of that band director.
I still got my degree but I was worried about becoming one of them and didn’t go into teaching. It doesn’t justify losing your temper on children but from the other side, the frustration of teaching ungrateful hoards of teenagers on top of listening to the same pieces played year after year could make monsters out of anyone.
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33. Strike It From The Record
In my seventh-grade math class, there was a kid who wouldn’t stop talking in class. The teacher had repeatedly asked him to stop. Finally, he was sent to the principal’s office but the kid refused to leave. So the teacher just...snapped. He picked up a thick textbook and threw it at the door. I and the rest of the class saw it almost hit another kid in the head.
That night, my classmates told their parents about what had happened. Our entire lesson the next day was spent telling us he had never picked up a book. He said he had never picked up the book and if he had it hadn’t come close to hitting anyone. He repeated it until we all agreed with him. He was a good teacher and helped me understand math.
34. If You Could See Me Now
When I was in 8th grade, we had a history teacher who lost her left eye at a young age. She was the meanest teacher I ever had, but one day she went too far. We were in class, and I was in the back of the room. She called my name to answer a question and I didn’t know the answer. She calls me to the front of the room, intent on embarrassing me in front of the class.
When I failed to answer the next question she told me to get out of her sight. I promptly stepped to my right a few steps. Her face turned the color of a ripe tomato, and I was suspended from school. Totally worth it.
35. Projecting Hubris
A couple of weeks into my senior year of high school, the president gave a speech about the importance of school or something. I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention. Anyway, all the teachers in my school had to set up their projectors, so we could watch it. However, my math teacher couldn't figure out how to get her projector working.
So, me being the nerdy kid, offered to help. She had a total meltdown. She started screaming about how she wasn't stupid and how I needed to just sit down and shut up. After a few more minutes of her failing to fix it, she pointed at me and ordered me to fix it. I said, "Fix it yourself". Bold move. She told the whole class to go next door to watch the speech in that teacher’s room.
When we got up to leave, she pulled me to the side and told me that when the class got back, I was going to stand up and apologize for being so rude to her. I refused and went to join the rest of the class. She spent the rest of the year making my life miserable. She told me on several occasions that she was going to make sure that I failed her class. Sure enough, I failed her class. It's the only class I ever failed.
36. The New Kid Attempts to Prove Himself
We had a kid in class who would freak out over the smallest things. For example, if you dropped a pen while sitting next to him, he would grab your arm and force you to pick it up. For the most part, he was actually a nice guy to talk to. But one day we got a new student halfway into the year. We could tell he was the typical tormentor type and wanted to act "cool" off the bat.
Nobody really paid him much attention, and we went on with the lessons. Right after class ended, and we were about to head to the cafeteria, the new kid wanted to act tough and thought it would be funny to throw everything off the crazy kid's desk. Big mistake. He started screeching, picked up his whole desk, and threw it at the new kid's head. Both of them started crying afterward.
37. Whistle While You Work
There was a high school English teacher, Ms. Blades, who was ignoring me for a while. It's worth mentioning that she didn't really like me for some reason. I had my hand up because I had to use the bathroom, and she kept pacing about the room, answering other kids' questions but would glance at me and immediately look away.
After about 5 minutes with my hand up and getting ignored (and about to poop my pants), I whistled as loud as I could. Interrupting anyone was completely out of character for me, but my whistle was the equivalent of firing a shot in a closed room. Absolutely deafening. The entire room went completely silent. The teacher then snapped her head around.
As her name might suggest, Ms. Blades was staring daggers into my face. Then one kid goes, "Ooooh, he just called you a dog, ooohhhhhhhhhh," then she gained serious momentum and said, "Oh, I don't think so! You think I'm a dog!? You think I'm a dog!?" I got sent to the principal's office for disrespecting an ignorant teacher. I "used the bathroom" on the way there.
38. Heart Of The Matter
I had a sub who demanded I turn over my heart monitor in front of the class. It was my junior year I was having major heart problems and had to wear a heart monitor 15 hours a day. It had a phone attached that when I had heart murmurs, it would send the data to my doctor. I was wearing it and started having heart issues.
The monitor buzzed and I went to click ‘send’ when the sub demanded I turn over my cell phone. I started to explain why I couldn't, and she snapped at me, so I lifted my shirt to show the wires and sensors strapped to my chest, in front of the class of 50 students. I’ve never seen anyone’s face drop that fast in my life.
39. Jesus Preached Love
I always mention this one because it was literally my first day teaching ever, but a kid in my class carved a girl's name into his leg and bled everywhere. A month later, that same kid somehow managed to take my wallet. Later, he cornered me in the hallway after class and returned it to me. But that's not the most frightening part.
When he gave it back to me, he calmly told me I should be aware of what he could do to me. He let me know that he could do much more since he was able to easily take from me without me noticing. I actually never reported him for that, but soon after, his parents pulled him out of our school because they thought we were too liberal and filling their godly son with bad ideas.
I would argue, however, that we definitely weren’t the problem.
40. Sick To My Stomach
When I was a preschool teacher, we had two students who were aged three; a little girl and a little boy. The little boy was known for being a troublemaker in the class and his parents didn’t care as he was usually only physically violent towards teachers, almost exclusively. But on this day, this little girl had the flu and was being sent home early.
She was sitting beside me crying because she didn’t feel well while we waited on her parents to pick her up. The little boy approached us and asked why she was crying. I said her tummy didn’t feel well and he looked at her for a moment, and then with all of his force just kicked her straight in the gut. She screamed out in pain and started crying even harder.
I, of course, calmed her down while he started to snicker. He had such a smug grin and honestly, I think he was proud of himself for it. In fact, he was going to do it again until another teacher physically restrained him. But that wasn't the end of it. Soon after, he started injuring other students. He was always like this and I really think he’s going to really hurt someone some day.
He completely lacked remorse at such a young age. I’ve never seen that before and it’s terrifying.
41. The Creepiest Smile
I started teaching second grade a few years ago (seven-year-old kids) and one of the students had a very complex personality. He was smaller than the other kids and he showed a lack of empathy. I never saw him have any joy in connecting with other people unless he benefited from it directly, in some way. He was a bit less developed mentally.
I especially remember this one time the class worked with maths individually. The room was completely silent and everyone was focused. I was helping a kid when I suddenly see him standing up and walking over to another kid (who was always nice to everyone), took his ruler, stared at him for a second, and then broke it in half and smiled.
Then he walked back to his own seat while the other kid started crying silently. He sat down and was still smiling. It seems like such a small thing, but I remember this was when I realized how severe his case was and it took me quite a while to stop getting flashbacks of that creepy smile.
42. The Sub That Ruined Christmas
The first year I taught Grade 5, I wanted to do something special for my students before Christmas vacation. I spoke with my team and we came up with the idea to make every student a personalized Christmas ornament. We were going to surprise them by displaying the ornaments on a Christmas tree the day before vacation and they would be able to take them home.
I was gone for a department thing the day before we were going to set up the tree, and one of the least-liked subs was scheduled to teach my class. Since I had stored all the ornaments in my closet, I simply asked the sub that if the students needed any supplies, that she get them herself and not let them see the surprise.
The thing about this sub, and the reason she wasn't liked, was that her first line of defense was that she always threatened to take away something for misbehaving: recess, free time, lunch, (I think you know where I'm going with this). Fast forward to the end of the day, I get back to my classroom in the last 30 minutes of class so I could dismiss them when all of a sudden, I'm met with 25 kids asking about their ornaments!
I tried to play dumb and asked them what they were talking about and of course, they informed me the sub said something. She told the students about the ornaments and said if they misbehaved, she would tell me and I would take away their ornaments. Instantly, I was filled with horror that the surprise was ruined for the entire class (they're kids, they told the whole grade during recess), anger because the sub ruined the surprise, and disappointment because I wanted to see their faces when they walked through the door the next day and saw a special Christmas tree with their personalized ornament.
It’s not the biggest deal or anything, but I was upset that weekend. To this day, when I talk to my old partners, I still refer to her as The Grinch!
43. The Whole Nine Julliard’s
I was teaching music and had a flutist who was fantastic. He practiced for hours every day, but unfortunately, he also had an ego the size of Texas. He told the girl next to him, who also wanted to be a professional flutist, that she was abysmal and should just give up. He refused to audition for our "pitiful" local honor band even though it was part of his grade.
He would also complain about my conducting in class when I didn't pay enough attention to him. Then he refused to show up to a concert because he was embarrassed to be seen performing with his high school band. This was the last straw—and the consequences were devastating. He failed band and I kicked that awful little jerk out.
44. Ran to the Ground
There was a “problem child” in my class who thought it was cool to not listen to teacher advice, shrug off reprimands, and make snarky comments. He was hard to manage, but by no means a bad kid. We have a rule at our school that there's “no running on the deck” outside of our classroom. This rule is often ignored when no teacher is looking.
One day, the entire class and I were standing out on the deck when this particular student was coming back from getting something. He decided to blatantly ignore the “no running on the deck” rule and began to sprint toward the class. Right as I yelled his name, he tripped and went FLYING. It was an epic wipeout.
The fall sent him sprawling across the deck, with the entire class watching. I checked if he was okay, and didn't say anything about it at the time, but I was able to remind him later that we do have rules for a reason.
45. Write Down Your Feelings
I had a teacher in eighth grade who hated me for no apparent reason. I remember the first assignment in class was a journal. I was brand new, starting mid-year, and she just gave me a composition notebook and told me it was due every Friday, and to put it on this shelf as the full instruction. I asked another student, but they left some things out.
I did my best and handed it in, on Friday and the right shelf. The next Monday, I got in trouble for skipping the assignment. She refused to believe that I had handed it in and told me I could buy another notebook if I had lost mine. Things went quickly downhill and she called in my parents to complain about my behavior and poor work results.
Fast forward to the end of the year, and she came up to my desk and dropped a notebook on it—the same one I turned in from that first assignment. She didn’t apologize or anything just dropped it and said, “Here, I found this. I checked the work and added it to the grade book". I opened it and in red pen across the whole freaking page was a D.
46. Think Before You Speak
I was the new kid in my class in third grade. One day soon after I started, the teacher asked us to take out our spelling notebooks. The other kids started doing the assignment in identical little brown notebooks, you know those small packets of lined paper you get for exams sometimes? Obviously supplied by the school.
I asked the teacher if I could have a spelling notebook, as it was the first time this assignment came up since I had started. The teacher sneered at me and said, “You need this, you need that,” in the most mocking voice she could manifest. She got me a notebook but made it seem like it was an obnoxious, selfish thing to ask for.
I know it wasn’t as horrifying as others, but that incident was the beginning of decades of shame and low self-confidence for me. After hearing her say my name, I’ve never liked it much since that day. If anyone is reading this as a teacher, take a second to realize the impact you have on kids, even in small ways. It causes damage.
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47. Why So Serious?
An English teacher I had in high school asked the class to spend half of the class in the library, finding a love poem. I chose Sonnet 130 by Shakespeare. It's not a standard love poem; it says nothing nice about the lady until the very end. She failed me on the project. The very next project was to choose a poem that described our general feelings around that time.
I chose a poem from the existentialists. I don't recall exactly which one, but it was about taking your own life. Again, I failed the project. I'll never forget her response after I read it aloud, "Why would you choose something so awful and sad??" A girl in the class said, "maybe that's how he feels?" She sent me to the principal's office for punishment. I felt like I wasn’t allowed to feel what I felt, and it made me want to rage even more.
48. All Over Some Cheetos
My school took baseball really seriously, and we worked out crazy hard. My metabolism was also through the roof, so I had to always eat some kind of food pre-lunch. I got a bag of Cheetos and brought them into my English class, which was non-honors/AP, so it was a complete blowoff. I was in public school in Texas, so non-honors/AP is mostly kids that just don't care, and the class was super rowdy.
I bumped myself down to this English class to stay eligible for the baseball team because I had completely forgotten to do a paper once, which would've made me ineligible for baseball. I came in, sat down, and started snacking before the class started. My teacher started the class and I stopped eating, but I snuck one at some point.
She caught me and told me to throw them away, but threw a huge fit about it and started yelling at me. I was obviously confused, but threw them away. I questioned her for getting so angry, so she wrote me up. When I saw the slip, I couldn't believe what she'd said. She wrote that I threw the bag at her and yelled back. I ended up with an in school suspension for a week.
The best part was that my stepdad used to teach at my school, so I knew everyone, including the in school suspension teacher who used to come to our Christmas parties. I basically just got a week's vacation.
49. Firm Rage
In my sophomore year of high school, there was a kid in my math class that the teacher didn’t like. One day, the kid was sick and missed a test, so the teacher made it known that he hated the kid. The next day, the kid came in and asked to retake the test, and the teacher said he would email him when he could come in to take it.
Well, he sent the email. Two weeks pass and the kid is like “when can I take that test, Mr. Collins?” and Mr. Collins said, “you never came in to take it so you get a zero. Tough luck". So, the kid stands up and very calmly and firmly states: “You told me you would email me when to come to take it, and you never did. I just lost all respect for you because of that".
Mr. Collins threatened to send him to the principal’s office if he didn’t sit back in his seat, and the kid replied: “I’m going to go ahead and go there so I don’t lose my temper on you. That was really not cool". And he just went to the dean's office. Mr. Collins never let him retake that test.
50. Stop My Heart, and My Brain Will Beat
I once flipped on my German language teacher (I am German). She obviously didn't like me and her marks were incredibly biased. This one time she gave me an F on a poetry interpretation. Interpretation! Although I got an A for grammar. After handing the papers back out to the students, she did some debriefing about the whole thing, comparing what everyone wrote. Her next words left me furious.
She told the whole class how good my thoughts on the poem were and about the passages I wrote. She then wanted me to read my paper out loud. What?! I was raging inside, but collected myself and trembled, "You gave me an F!" Then I stood up, and left.
51. Losing Her Professionalism
One day I did something to upset my awful, seventh-grade English teacher. I am not really sure what it was, but man, she was mad. One day, she walked around handing back an assignment and when she got to me, she just looked at me, gave me an evil smile, and kept walking. Knowing I would get a zero if I didn't hand in the assignment, I raised my hand and said “excuse me, I didn’t get a paper".
She just replied, “don’t talk to me". I told her I needed a paper to do the assignment, but she just responded with the same words. I went off! I told her she was extremely unprofessional and disgraceful, and that I was going to the principal. I walked out and marched right down to the office. That's where I learned that I was far from the first to complain against this teacher. Surprise, surprise, she "resigned" at the end of the year. Good riddance.
52. A Painful Lesson
I vividly remember one incident of having a substitute in Kindergarten. I had an infected cut on my toe and had been prescribed an antibiotic, that morning was the first time I had ever taken penicillin in my life. We were sitting on the floor for roll call and I remember this burning pain in my abdomen, and she told us to get up and go to our desks, I tried to get up only to realise I couldn’t move and just laid back.
This sub was a total cow and I remember she was always really mean. Anyway, she started yelling at me for being attention-seeking and then tried to pull me up. I was in so much pain I started screaming and one of the teachers from the classroom next to ours came in, realized I wasn’t faking it and called an ambulance.
A long story short, I’m allergic to penicillin and my kidneys were failing, I was in the hospital for almost a week before I got discharged. Needless to say that absolute sub was not allowed back at the school, but I will never forget that day.
53. School Drama
Our class had been studying Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, and our teacher had created a very comprehensive exam where we would be asked to compare and contrast characters, situations, and themes of the two. He had spent countless hours ensuring that it was fair and complete. We were going to have the exam the following Monday and he was taking Friday off, so he told us that in addition to the weekend, we should also use Friday's class to prepare for the exam.
His instructions to the substitute were likely something like, "Tell them to prepare for the exam. They already know what to do". So she marched in and shouted, "Prepare for an exam," and proceeded to hand it out. When Monday came, the teacher was devastated. He could not count the scores and he wouldn't even attempt to grade it.
He did not feel right giving the exam now that we had seen it. All the work he put into it and all the insight he suspected he might gain from scoring it was lost. Instead, we spent the day reviewing what we could have, should have, would have answered. As you can tell, I could feel his pain.
54. He’s Seeing Things
After school, while I was coaching a sports team, a student who was trying out for a different team started screaming at the top of their lungs in the gym. We ran in to see what was happening and he was standing with his hands outstretched and his eyes rolled to the back of his head, screaming at the ceiling. The other coaches and I ran over to help.
Once I get to him, I get him to sit down and he's shaking. I put my arm around him and try to get him to snap out of it, the others are calling everyone, especially the nurse. All of a sudden, he stops screaming, his eyes turn normal, and he turns to me, shaking with fear, and says, "I just saw Satan". He then falls back into his fit.
It was the most heart-pumping, adrenaline rush, fear-inducing thing I've ever witnessed. This kid seemed like he was possessed...like in the movies. He eventually goes with an ambulance to the ER. Turns out, his parents changed his meds and did not inform the school he was even on meds. He had a really bad reaction, obviously. Still freaks me out when I think about it.
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55. I Prefer The Lights On
When I was in college, I worked as a Student Nursery Teacher for a few years. Though this event wasn't particularly disturbing, it still gives me chills to think about. I was sitting on the floor, helping some children build a castle out of blocks when one kid gives me a mischievous grin and runs over, climbs up onto the toybox, and flicks off the light to the classroom.
All of the kids around me were silent and terrified, and then one kid pops out of the play teepee beside me, looks me straight in the eyes, and says, in a really deep voice: "It's dark. The lions are coming". The lights came back on and the kid smiled at me and ran off. I was left shaking, I’m still not sure why he said that.
Maybe it was a tactic that their parents had used to keep their kid in bed after dark, or maybe I had just witnessed a demonic possession, but to this day, it still makes me shiver.
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56. Is This A Zoo Or A School?
My mother got back into teaching a while back because one of the schools near our house needed some extra help. Anyways, she taught while I was growing up and she was bored so it was something to do and she enjoyed it. She mainly helped out with the Pre-K/Kindergarten classes. But one day, something so horrible happened—she regretted it with every fiber of her being.
One of the students went into the bathroom and literally took a dump in his hand like a chimpanzee, and then proceeded to smear it all over the walls. They basically had to call in a hazmat team to clean it up. That was her first and last day.
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57. There Has To Be An Easier Way
High school math teacher here. Many years ago I had a very entitled young lady who tried to get out of class every. single. day. Her parents enabled the misbehavior every step of the way. On one occasion, as the students were filing into class, I was helping another student at my desk and this girl asked me (as she had done many times before) if she could go to the nurse.
Without looking up, I told her to take her seat and I would get to her. Once class started (less than five minutes later), I remembered her request and called on her to get a hall pass to go to the nurse. When she looked at me, I was horrified to see her eye extremely red and tearing up. She went on her way and as soon as she was gone, another student approached me.
She said that in the previous class she had witnessed this girl pick up a stray, unbent staple and put it in her eye. The nurse called me to confirm (she was in disbelief) and the girl finally got what she wanted, which was several days out of school.
58. Is This Thing On?
My university lecturer was the most incompetent man I've ever met. He taught information technology, but I still cannot figure out how he got his job. On the first day of classes, he asked us to sign up to Twitter, to share lesson content. He also asked that if we had questions we tweet him or a classmate. We ignored that and used the secure university intranet.
The way he taught classes was through Powerpoint presentations. Each slide had a paragraph of text, which he would read out loud while staring at the screen. After he read it once, he would turn to the class and repeat it, but with less confidence. To top it off, he took four weeks off in our first term and asked the class to help book his tickets.
59. Multiple Choice Purgatory
My worst teacher made their exams multiple choice. On each question, they wrote, “All of these answers are correct, but you must choose the most correct one". It took away from the course content because you were trying to look for loopholes or grammar clues instead of facts. This made me think they didn’t want to see anyone succeed.
Their class had a reputation for being difficult. On top of the multiple-choice style exams, they would automatically fail you for three grammatical or spelling errors in a paper. They would also fail students for missing two classes without valid prior written approval. That wasn’t even the school policy, and they still got away with it.
60. Lost In Hydration
I’ve suffered panic attacks since I was a kid but didn’t know what they were called when I was younger. My worst teacher experience happened in fourth grade. I had thrown up at school and was in a lot of stomach pain. The school nurse and my teacher thought I was faking being ill so they forced me to eat and stay at school.
At home, my mom always told us if we didn’t feel well to drink water, but this is what had led me to be sick at school in the first place. After I tried to drink from my water bottle again, my teacher took it from me and threw it in the trash. She said I was drinking too much and made myself sick earlier. I remember thinking I would have to ask my mom for a new one.
On the last day before winter break, I ate way too much during our Christmas party and started feeling sick with anxiety. I tried to take sips from the water fountain but the same teacher thought I was being dramatic again. She decided to swing me around and all the kids watched it happen. The only way she would stop was when I bit her.
61. Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better
I completed my studies in Asia. And as such there are some pretty big cultural differences. One day in class a lecturer who was known for being a little nuts walked into class in a particularly poor mood. As an example we had a student from China whose English was fairly underdeveloped, and he needed to look at the slideshow on his laptop to follow and take notes in his native language.
He kicked him out of class because he had his laptop out while he was talking and when he tried to explain, the lecturer threatened to leave the class and file a report against us. On this day he got upset with me because I mentioned to a nearby classmate that I needed a pen. He shouted at me, saying “You there! Are you having fun?! Do you think you could teach this class?! Come up here and teach! I dare you!”
Little did he know I am a certified lecturer and have taught TESOL students young and old for three years. So I did. When I was done with his three page slideshow, I went and sat down in my place. He yelled a little more, then left the class.
62. Field Day Fun
In the second grade, there was a girl who got seriously angry because the teacher said she couldn't participate in Field Day. The teacher said that I couldn't either because I didn't put my name on the paper. I wanted to cry. Meanwhile, the other girl went with fury over sadness. It was an incredible sight to behold.
This eight-year-old girl gave the teacher the middle finger, yelled out the F word, and called the teacher a witch. I was shocked because I was only seven. She kept calling the teacher names, and we laughed so hard. The teacher stopped teaching and cried in front of the class. The principal was called, and she got kicked out of school.
Field Day was canceled. The thing was that the teacher would always mess with the girl and the girl had enough.
63. Mr. Rugby
When I was in high school, we had this small, angry teacher that played rugby—or at least tried to—that was always belittling students to feel better about himself. One day we had physical education and our teacher couldn’t come, so the small and always moody teacher that played rugby came to replace her.
The little teacher was trying to show off his rugby skills and made our class play some game where we had to tackle whoever had the ball. We didn’t tackle hard enough so the little guy joined to tackle some students and show off his grandness. He was having fun being unstoppable and yelling at us if that was all we could do. I was quite mad, and I raged full speed at him.
I was a freight train. Choo! Choo! The little teacher got tackled and smashed into the ground so hard. That was something our class laughed about all year.
64. Slaying the Cyclops
When I was a senior in high school, I had an AP English teacher that would grade people "based on how much she liked them". I had long hair and stretched earlobes, and she despised me even though I was an excellent student. She claimed that I didn’t turn in assignments on time to justify my grades, so I spoke with my guidance counsellor, and she investigated for me.
It turns out that she had sorted completed assignments into piles of "good" and "bad" and would arbitrarily grade the papers based on who she felt sucked up to her the most that day. I presented a long, detailed book report on The Odyssey, and she gave me a D. I told her "Screw you, this is the end of your career" and walked out.
She didn't realize that I had sent an identical copy to the guidance counsellor. She presented it to the school board, eventually got her fired, and the best part was she was also a drivers ed instructor and lost her job doing that as well. Apparently, I wasn't the first to speak up about her, but I was the one that put the nail in the coffin. It felt great.
65. Tic-Tac-No
My 8th-grade science teacher was Mrs. B. Early on in the year, Mrs. B had given us a science fair project due in January. We had several class periods over the course of those months to work on it. My project was creating an unbeatable tic-tac-toe program. Because it would take significantly longer to have 20 people (the number of tests we had to do) each play 3 rounds with the program, I asked her if I could do fewer, and she agreed, allowing me to only do 7 people.
A week before the project is due, I make sure to thank her for letting me do fewer because I would never have gotten it done in time otherwise. She turns to me with this confused look and says something to the effect of "I never said that, you have to do 20 trials like everyone else". I became insanely furious; I even got a witness come in as evidence. Both I and my witness ended up in detention. I still occasionally think of it and want to punch a wall.
66. Sometimes, You’ve Just Had Enough
When I was in high school, a girl absolutely lost her mind on my math teacher. Normally, we’d enter class, and he’d have the day’s assignment written on the board. Then he’d spend the first 20 minutes of class teaching new concepts and going over problems, then he’d give us about 30 minutes to work on our assignments, and he’d sit at his desk answering questions. Overall, I really liked this style, but some did not.
This girl did NOT. Toward the end of the year, she completely snapped. The class was no different from any other, he explained the new stuff and did some examples and then said “anyone who needs individual help just line up at my desk and I’ll be happy to help". She lost it. “What do you mean that’s it? I don’t want to wait in line for 20 minutes, help me now! This is total bull! Screw you!” She was growing more and more furious.
To my teacher’s credit, the angrier she got, the calmer and quieter my teacher got. However, the calmer and quieter he became, the more furious she became. The teacher offered to go to the hallway and talk about it. “No, help me with this bull here and now!” She replied. Eventually, she began incoherently screaming, cursing on the top of her lungs, telling everybody and everything off.
This is when the principal walked in and took the girl out of class. The teacher left for a moment to talk to the principal while we could hear this girl screaming all the way to the office. She used every curse in the book, all directed at the teacher. When it was all over, the teacher calmly walked back in, stood at the front, and said: “Well, anyone else has a problem with me, I’m happy to discuss it if we can be civil".
No one said a word. “Ok then. Anyone who needs help come see me". The class went on as normal after that.
67. Tiny Fists of Rage
In the third grade, we were having a math lesson and a para was helping our teacher out. I wasn't great at math and I would ask her for help, but she would ignore me and move on to a different student. I finally got her attention and asked her if she could please help me, and she finally said yes but then moved on to a different student.
I got angry, slammed my fists on the desk, and the whole room went silent. I raged, "I need help on my math can I please have some help!" The teachers were stunned, the kids ceased their giggles. The principal came down and talked to me and asked why I did that because I got reported for being "disruptive".
She was really nice and I never got sent to the principal’s office before and I told her what happened, and she gave an evil glare to the para. Whatever that counts for.
68. There’s No Stopping the Spew
I once had some kind of stomach pain, the worst pain I've felt my whole life, and was in science class. I started groaning in agony in the first row and my bud next to me said I needed to leave and go to the hospital. I wanted to but my teacher ignored me and suddenly tears started streaming down my face.
A minute later I just stood up, walked to the door, and as soon as she tried to talk, I told her to pipe down, middle finger flying in the air as I left. Then I proceeded to throw up in the trash outside, good times. That got her attention.
69. It’s Always The Quiet Ones
Many years ago, when I first moved to my current country of residence, Spain, I was working as an English teacher in a summer camp. These kids were there for the full month of August, and while most of them were perfectly normal kids, there was one who was just on a whole other level. To begin with, he was much shorter than the others who were all the same age.
His clothes were dirty and the only belongings he had were all in a plastic shopping bag. Remember, they were going to be there a month so most of them had pretty decent-sized suitcases. It looked like his parents had just driven up and abandoned him at the gate so we all felt bad for him. Well, the kids were grouped up into classes and we would rotate which groups we were teaching each day and work on improving their English.
This kid, though, just wasn't interested, regardless of who was teaching (most kids had a favorite teacher). He would walk off in the middle of the class (they were often outside under some trees) and start kicking at the ground, and was generally unresponsive. Well, one day, during the lunch break, we heard shouting from outside.
We ran out and this kid had gotten into a verbal fight with pretty much the biggest kid there. The bigger kid was yelling at him, but he was just standing there staring at him the whole time until, without any warning, he grabbed hold of the kid’s finger. Then with zero emotion on his face, he bent it backward.
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70. A Warm Wind Blows
I was substituting for a 5th-grade class, and we were playing a game called "A warm wind blows". Basically, a combination of Simon Says and musical chairs. A student would say "a warm wind blows for anyone who (insert subject, i.e. has a dog, likes to play football)" and then all the students who that pertained to would race to get a seat.
In the last round of the game, I had a student say with a straight face, "A warm wind blows for anyone who has dangerous thoughts". Obviously, the mood was ruined and the other students looked confused and upset. I immediately stopped the game and took him to the counselor. I haven't seen the student in a while, as I was moved to middle school after that. I hope he's okay.
71. Safety First
I was told to take my class of 3rd graders down to art class, where I would sit in the back and do nothing while the art teacher did her thing and then I was to deliver the children back to their regular classroom. We get to the art room and the art teacher tells me she has to run to the bathroom.
She asks that I get all the kids seated and to let them know that she'll be right back to start the lesson. Okay, easy, right? Wrong. We walk in, all the kids start finding their way to their seats, and this one kid, Albert, heads to his seat in the back and suddenly stops. "Look!" he shouts, bending down to pick something up…
It's a pair of safety scissors. My first thought is, "Oh no, scissors! they can't have those!" but then I remember that they're just super blunt and made of flimsy plastic. That's when the nightmare began: Albert proceeds to STAB HIMSELF IN THE NECK WITH THESE SAFETY SCISSORS. His first stab doesn't puncture, so he starts sawing at his neck with the blades, all while screaming exaggeratedly.
Honestly, I was like a deer in headlights, I managed to open the door and see the art teacher returning and I just start shouting gibberish at her and she comes running. She runs in, smacks Albert on the back of the head, rips the scissors from his hand, and says sternly, "We talked about this". He calmed down immediately after and literally none of the other children seemed to think this was a dramatic event at all.
72. A Bad Feeling
This was about five years ago. I was teaching 9th grade English and one of the repeaters was talking out of turn while I was explaining an assignment, so I said something to the effect of, "Student, this is the nth time you've talked out of turn in class today. If you continue to act out, I'll give you a detention". His response was terrifying.
He just looked at me and said, "Miss, you know I could get you, right? I'm not going to tell you what I would do to you, because if I did, I could get in trouble. But you know I could get you, right?" I just shrugged it off and sent him down to the office, but later that day, I told my principal I really needed him moved out of my class.
There was just something that I couldn't explain that really disturbed me about him. That wasn't the first time he said something like that to me and I honestly felt threatened.
73. Sharing Is Not Always Caring
I taught first grade for a year. Had a truly evil little girl in class, we'll call her A. A was friends with a nice girl in class who we'll call C. C was deathly allergic to peanuts and A knew this. She brought a peanut-filled candy bar to class one day and tried to slyly share it with C. I caught her and took the candy away.
I pulled A aside to talk to her. I told her that C was allergic to peanuts and she said she knew that. I then told her that her candy has peanuts in it. She said she knew that also. I explained that C would get very, very sick if she ate the candy. A said she knew that also. I explained that C could die. A responded with "So?"
I didn't know where to go from there so I called the principal in. A was kicked out of school shortly after that.
74. Lack of Honors
There was a clique of “popular” kids who were often jerks and acted out in our school. Our city had a living center for the mentally ill that also had a public swimming pool, so we used it for swimming lessons. Well, one day there's a 14-year-old on the extreme end of the spectrum at the pool who had very limited functioning.
This popular “funny” student decides that it'll be hilarious to sit there and growl at the boy aggressively like a hostile dog. The kid loses it and he freaks right out. His support worker figures out what happened, and the “funny” guy is banned from the center. He also automatically fails not only the module, but the entire gym course. He does not graduate on time.
75. Sub Par
Our regular algebra teacher had a baby and was gone on mat-leave for several months. In her place we got the worst sub ever! She was hyper-focused on three or four of the 28 students in the class and just taught them while completely ignoring the rest of us. She’d pass out a worksheet, then go to her students and never acknowledge us again till she dismissed us.
She never checked homework, never acknowledged us, and if anyone outside of her favourite students raised their hand or spoke up they were ignored. This went about as well as you expected with a bunch of 14 and 15-year-olds. That class was just wild, and it was a mess. I’m surprised we weren’t reported or visited by the teachers on either side of us for how loud we were.
After several months with this lady, the vice principal was walking around randomly checking classrooms and walked into our algebra class. He lost it. He yelled at all of us to sit down and shut up and demanded that the sub leave and he sat with us for the rest of the period. We never saw her again and had maybe six or seven different subs after her.
Two weeks after this our regular teacher came back. When she realized we had learned nothing and learned the extent of how useless this lady had been she started tearing up. I passed the classroom on the way to the bathroom during the next period and saw her sobbing at her desk. A friend of my mom’s worked at the central office where they assigned or organized the substitute teachers, and that lady was permanently taken off the substitute list.
76. Ah, Young Love
I had to step out for a phone call about a student in class, I didn’t want him to hear me talking about him or any other students. This was when I was still working at a middle school. Since then, I've moved on to teach at a high school. I thought it’d be a larger improvement than it was, but thankfully, I haven’t had a situation like the one I had in middle school...not yet, at least.
Anyway, I’m outside of the classroom for a maximum of one minute. They all start talking when I announce I have to leave the room for a moment and pause the lesson. I’m fine with that, but about halfway through my phone conversation all talking stops and it’s perfectly silent. When I return to the class, I'm greeted with the most puzzling scene: A kid is sitting on my desk with a stapler held against his head.
He’s threatening that if his girlfriend (also in the class) doesn’t get back together with him he’ll end it all right there. For some reason, maybe because it was early in the year of 7th grade and they are still young, she completely believes that if he presses that stapler against his head, it’s over. So she starts begging him to put the stapler down and that she’s sorry.
While this was happening, I was basically letting it resolve itself because I didn’t think the kid was really going to do it and the girl was trying to talk him down. Plus, I figured that if I intervened, more people would get more hurt than just a staple to the dome. The situation resolved itself, but I decided to send him to the principal’s office.
It was not something he should be doing. I think the parents should be concerned and I knew it would be hard to focus the class afterward. While I’m walking him to the hallway to explain why I am doing this he screams, “Jennifer, I love you!!” and she starts crying. Hormones make people do some wild stuff.
77. Hidden Doesn’t Mean Invisible
I caught some kid trying to take inappropriate photos of his lady friends in the class. When I noticed him doing something fishy (he was directly aiming the camera to where the female students were sitting), I told him to hand over the phone and he got visibly uncomfortable but complied. I handed it over to his form tutor, who was a lady, and explained the situation.
I figured if there were any photos of female students it wouldn't be okay for me to see it. The first sweep-through of his documents didn't reveal anything, but luckily, I thought of suggesting for her to check the "hidden" category and I'm told everything was in there. School took disciplinary action as a result.
78. She Got What She Asked For
I had a teacher in high school, she was young and starry-eyed. Asking the students to do “outside of the box” essays and such—but some of her prompts were downright disturbing...One of the most memorable ones was: "Your goal is to exterminate an entire population; who are they, what method do you employ and why doesn’t anyone notice?”
It was pretty gruesome; but a great way to actually interest teenagers, unfortunately. Well, one of the students in either my class or another one argued that wards of the state/foster children would be the demographic. They followed through with a well-constructed argument that “people don’t care about them anyway, otherwise they would be adopted”.
He went so far as to detail the method of extermination which I sadly cannot recall. She was genuinely shocked, though I don’t know what else she expected with a prompt like that one. So much so, that she had to call the counselors to have a meeting about it.
79. The First Cut Is The Deepest
One of my four-year-old preschoolers was constantly in trouble. He would single-handedly make the day much harder than it needed to be. One day one of my other students fell on the playground and I cleaned up their knee and gave them a bandage. The "troublemaker" asked for a bandage as well and I explained that we only use bandages on injuries and such.
The boy surprisingly walked away and went to work with another teacher. About five minutes later, I see the teacher bringing him to get a bandage, when I asked what happened she told me she caught him scraping a colored pencil on his arm until he cut himself...Needless to say, we were very concerned about this behavior and reported it.
80. His Name Is Silence
There was a time, not so long ago, that I taught English as a second language. You got a mixed bag of students: the confident, the bookworms, the shy. One class had a peculiar chap called Juan. He was mighty strange alright. He was built like a malnourished werewolf with ginger fuzz. He was late to class once and as he entered and whispered his hello, he floated in silence to his seat like a ghost.
The way he moved was ethereal. Of course, as the teacher, I tried to stop the other students from laughing at his odd behavior. What happened next was not so much disturbing as just plain spooky. One day, I’m writing on the whiteboard. Class listening intently. I turn to write something else. Not five seconds elapse before I turn back around.
This creeper is literally nose to nose with me. I screamed and clutched my heart like a grandma in church and he whisper-asked if he could go to wee. It took me the entire time he was gone to catch my breath.
81. Retribution Education
I had a math class in senior year that was held in a science lab with showers, an eye wash station, etc. It was a class that had kids from grades 10-12 in it. One of the seniors was a big dude on the football team who really enjoyed messing with the smaller kids. He was the worst of what high school sports churn out, you know the type.
He liked to get this one dude riled up every day by pretending to pull the emergency shower every time he walked by. He giggled like a smug doofus every time. One day, I had enough and just went, “Hey, Nelson" while he was under the shower. I waited for him to look me in the eyes, then I pulled it. "THIS is how it works!" Didn't even get in much trouble. Still love that moment.
82. Guess Who’s the New Sheriff in Town?
My high school buddy Steve was a troublemaker. We had a really lax teacher in sophomore English, who was a long-term substitute and not in full control of the class. Meanwhile, we also had a student-teacher named Mrs. Gomez who was good and kind, but obviously didn't have full disciplinary power either in the situation.
This leaves room for people to get rowdy, ESPECIALLY Steve. One day after a particularly loud interlude, Mrs. Gomez gets a belly full and tells Steve to be quiet. Steve looks her in the eye and says, “You're not the teacher. I don't have to do ANYTHING you say". He then goes right back to whatever he was doing. Mrs. Gomez was LIVID.
Her face was bright red and she looked like she wanted to throttle Steve, but he was right and she knew it, so she kept her mouth shut. But she got the best payback. A month later, we walk into class and the old substitute is nowhere to be seen, but there's Mrs. Gomez sitting comfortably at the teacher's desk like she owns it.
The bell rings, and she stands up and says, “Hello, everyone". She then turns and looks directly at Steve, “I'm your new teacher". Steve didn't get away with much in class after that.
83. Like Any Other Coffee Break
When I was in high school, our music teacher was this awesome older dude who was close to retiring. He would openly tell everyone that he was in it for the pension, but was an awesome teacher and could teach any class from music to hospitality to welding to woodshop. One thing he refused to do, though, was putting up with teenager shenanigans.
Luckily he took a liking to me, but he used to do things like throw chalk at kids and other harmless stuff that got the point across. But then there was a rule change, and teachers weren't allowed to lay a hand on any kid in school at any point. I watched kids beat each other, and teachers just having to watch because they’d lose their jobs if they interfered.
One day, this little jerk who was always causing trouble decided that he was going to start a fight in front of the music room. The awesome music teacher comes in, sees this, and tells him to stop a few times. The guy didn't. So he went back into his office, grabbed his large coffee, and dumped it all over the kid.
84. One Plus One Equal Two Tears
When I was in high school, my grandfather passed. I went to a boarding school, so I left campus and went home for a week. I dutifully emailed all my teachers and my Dean that I would be missing my classes. All but one replied with sympathy and a generic, "No problem, you'll get caught up when you get back". I didn’t think much of one missing response.
When I returned to school, everything was fine until my math class, the missing response. When I stayed after class to ask for the homework I missed, my teacher started laying into me about how it was my responsibility to stay on top of things. He said I couldn't just cut class and then expect him to help me out. Since I was 14 and raw from grief, I burst into tears.
I managed to sob out, "I emailed you about my grandfather" but mostly I just sniffled. The teacher at least had the courtesy to look like he felt bad, and said he'd get me the work later. Compared to other people’s experiences it doesn’t sound that bad but he wasn’t great at teaching math and he was the only teacher to ever make me cry.
85. Separated By Clay
My teacher in elementary school had our class make clay animals for our parents at Christmas as an art lesson one day. Well, I happened to be the only child who had divorced parents in the class. She gave a really small amount of clay and specifically said it was for both parents. I asked her what I should do because they don’t live together and can’t share the gift.
I felt self-conscious because everyone else had started their assignment and I was hoping she would just give me extra clay. Instead, she bent down and said, “Well, you’ll just have to pick your favorite parent then". Why would anyone say this to a young child? I don’t remember what I made in art class but I ran home crying after school.
86. The Key of F
Our high school orchestra got a new leader halfway through the school year. She came in strong getting everything to her standards. On her first day, she picked the locks on everyone’s instrument cases and re-arranged everything in there to her liking. Next, she forced everyone to go on a mandatory field trip during our school’s test week.
Scheduling the field trip meant we had to do all our tests over the weekend which made me furious. But she saved the worst for last—specifically the last day of school. We did a concert for the whole school that included the band playing with us. She cut out all the background music for our music, which sounds bad as a jazz unit.
She also decided that chairs were overrated and gave all ours away to the band department even though they had plenty. She directly asked if we could stand and play, but finally decided we should sit down on the ground the entire concert. We were humiliated in front of the whole school. It didn’t even make sense with how to hold our instruments.
87. Riddle Me This
My worst college teacher spent 80% of her time digressing and the remaining 20% talking in riddles. Her course had one of the lowest grade averages but was also considered the easiest by other teachers. They thought because the course was about how to research history so for those that already had a good teacher, it was simple.
Turns out if a teacher tries as hard as humanly possible to make her class hard then it will be! The moment I realized how bad she was was when we actually went to ask older students for advice on how we can succeed and they didn’t have an answer. Even after surviving the class themselves they only had a few words of wisdom.
They told me to "Just roll with it. She has never made sense while teaching and she never will". The fun part is that if I write her name on google she actually appears as a successful person but she either has zero clues on how to teach students or she likes to make their lives difficult. She was the only teacher I ever met with this style.
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88. I Learned A New Word
My ninth-grade math teacher told me my voice was irritating and I didn’t know what that word meant so I just said, “Thank you!” with a smile. She looked at me like I was unhinged and kept teaching. Then my classmate next to me passed me a note saying that what the teacher said was messed up, and they told me the definition.
After reading the note, I began to cry. I felt embarrassed, wondering why she would say that. The teacher asked me why I was crying and thought I was getting bullied. She told the class she would get to the bottom of it and there would be consequences. Then I told her I was crying because of what she said to me, and she apologized.
89. What a Scathead
Park ranger here. We do this “urban education initiative” with inner city kids out to a wetland. There was this one kid, Pablo, who was this third-grade classroom's "funny guy". For example, during a live animal demonstration, he asks about its nipples and then repeats the word nipple louder so everyone could laugh.
While we're walking, we talk about animal poop the whole time and of course, I was professional and answered the questions because I begrudgingly know a lot about scat. Pablo would barge into every learning opportunity for the other kids and take everybody out of the moment. It was actually really awful.
Every time I got the kids excited about nature, he would do some lame peer pressure so the vibe was, “No, nature sucks". I wanted to push him into some briars pretty badly. Well, justice came swiftly when I was explaining poison ivy to half the group. He swaggers over and does some kind of, “These leaves? MINE!” prank.
I wanted to tell him it was poison ivy but instead, I told him to put it down. The other kids were like, “Drop it!” Only the reverse psychology made him caress the leaves even more, so I finally had to tell him what they were before he touched his face. Pablo then cried. His cool guy persona was shattered, and everybody listened to me for the rest of the field trip.
90. Zero Tolerance
It was the very end of the year and I had a student who was failing my class but didn't even bother to try to get help until the last day. Oh, and she failed because she never showed up for class, ever. Like, I didn't recognize her. She came to me and told me, “You're the only class I'm failing and if I don't get a D, I won't graduate".
I went to check the school grade book to see if this was true and I said, “Hmm, according to this, you have a 13% in Math and an incomplete in Chemistry". She denied it vehemently, saying that she'd already talked to those teachers and I was the last holdout. Well, I knew just how to get her. I asked, “Why don't we give your math teacher a call ?”
I dialed the extension for her math teacher. I tell him the story and that I've found her 13% in Math in the gradebook. The teacher's response astonished me. He goes, “Actually, the grade in the book is incorrect. I just discovered the one piece of homework she did turn in was actually a photo copy of another student's work. She now has a zero". She did not graduate.
91. Painfully Enraging
A preschooler used to crawl under the lunch tables and jump off the furniture. One day in the lunch room, he got very angry for some unidentifiable reason. He stood rooted in one spot and screamed that he was NEVER MOVING. During this, he wanted to make a point so he stomped as viciously as he could.
He was wearing really flat-footed sandals on a hard floor, and must have hit the ground with a perfectly level foot. Meaning, it hurt like absolute heck. His face was like a cartoon. His mouth made an immediate upside U and he screamed like that guy on SpongeBob who yells, “My leg!!” It just felt like justice to me.
92. Chihuahua VS. English Mastiff
I teach middle school. We had one eighth grader who was the oldest, meanest kid in class. Put a girl up against the wall with his forearm across her throat so that her feet came off the ground. No other kids even stepped in because they didn't want to get beat on too. He was suspended regularly and didn't seem to care.
Then we got a transfer kid. This huge, and I mean huge, kid transfers in. He's a tough kid, but quiet about it. Doesn't do much academically, but he's super respectful and is just kind of quiet. I've seen a lot of bar fights and this kid carried himself like that dude who knew he could take someone apart but had nothing to prove.
Well, jerk kid walks up to big kid in the hall one day and challenges him to a fight by screaming, "YOU WANNA GO?" up at him with his arms spread wide and his face forward. Big kid quietly says, “Yep,” drops his binder, and then drops jerk kid with the most beautiful jab I've ever seen outside of a boxing match.
Jerk goes down like a ton of bricks and big kid calmly picks up his stuff and heads to the office. Jerk gets expelled, the administration was looking for a reason, and big kid gets a suspension but is suddenly the most loved person in the building. The Vice Principal was actually giggling as he helped jerk kid stagger to the office.
93. When Toys Aren’t for Kids
We were talking about the difference between men and women, men have weiners and women don't, blah blah blah. That one boy goes “My mum has one too,” and we are going “Oh no sweetie she doesn't,” but he insists, and it starts becoming uncomfortable.
After a while he says, “My mum HAS one, only it is not attached to her body, she keeps it in the drawer by the bed". Kid-logic is so precious.
94. Sharing Is Caring a Lot
Our second-grade teacher had everyone in her class say something about their family. One of the little boys described the details of his parents' swinging lifestyle with another family in the town who had a few kids of their own. He was blissfully ignorant of exactly what he was describing.
Apparently out of the 5 kids total between the families (3 / 2 split) no one is really sure who is whose father. So they all are the other family's “half-brothers and sisters". After revealing all of this to the class, his “half-sister” who is in the same class says, "You weren't supposed to tell anyone!"
95. Silly Rabbit, Tricks Are for Kids
I was 15 or 16 and teaching the 2- and 3-year-olds at church. It was Easter, and one little boy comes in crying up a storm. Nothing that my friend and I do can console him. About halfway through he stops and just sniffles. At the end when the parents come and pick them up, he sees his dad and starts crying again, telling his dad that he doesn't want anything to do with him.
His mom comes and gets him, and my friend and I tell her about her son. She was trying SO HARD not to laugh and told us why. The boy’s dad hit a rabbit on the way to church this morning, and the boy started to cry, thinking it was the Easter Bunny.
96. Revealing Too Much
On the day of an economics mid-term, all 300 students had to go to a big lecture hall to take the test. Because it was such a big group, the professor had to use a microphone to give us instructions. So after giving this whole speech about the exam, he bid us all good luck and left the lecture to go do some work in his office next door.
Well, he didn't realize one important thing: He had left his microphone on, so while the entire class was silently writing the exam, we listened to the events that unfolded inside his office. We heard the brief muffled conversation between him and the female TA of our class. Then that conversation stopped. We all realize that they’re being intimate.
The TA’s quieted moans were magnified on the speakers in the lecture hall. The entire class stayed silent. Then, the professor swore loudly and abruptly shut off the microphone. Later, as if nothing had happened, the professor came inside. He was fired a week later.
97. Entitled to Proper Treatment
I had a student who was an entitled little jerk. Like, way more entitled than any of the teens I’ve taught. He thought he could cheat on a test, cuss out a teacher, be cruel to an intellectually disabled student, skip class, throw things at people, etc. Thing is, he could do all this because his mother thought he was perfect and never disciplined him.
She would then immediately try to turn it around on the teachers, saying how they’re always trying to get her child in trouble. Earlier this year, he made an awful remark to a girl classmate who was this nerdy, sweet honors student who would never hurt a fly. But it turns out he messed with the wrong person.
The girl's boyfriend punched the kid right in the face and busted his nose. It was amazing. Even though I obviously had to discipline the boyfriend, I was secretly glad it happened.
98. Who’s Really At Fault Here?
I was once suspended for “refusing to turn my phone off during a class,” and for “having it keep ringing". I took my phone out of my bag during the ensuing argument with the teacher, dismantled it on the desk, took the battery and the sim card out, and then said, "It's not my phone ringing". I then looked down as some phone rang again. I looked over—and couldn't believe where the sound was coming from.
My teacher's bag was flashing and lighting up, so I said, "Mr. Southern, that's your phone ringing". His reply? "I don't have a phone". I replied, "I can see it through the mesh bit of your bag," to which he remarked, "Get out. You're suspended. Go tell the admin office and we'll discuss this next week when you're back". Alright buddy.
99. Llorar a mares
I had a Spanish teacher, and in order to gain other students' sympathy, she would make fun of one of the students for the entire class. Of course, other students would sometimes laugh because the class was super boring so it was like a show. However, I HATED the whole thing. She would pick the students that didn't reply to her provocation, the low-profile type, and she would say "Oh, it's just a joke!"
One day, she chose the guy that never caused trouble for her next victim. She used him as an example to describe a homeless guy in a picture. After 10 (long) minutes, he stands up and leaves the classroom crying. And when she stops him before he leaves, he turns around the drops the mic. He says his dad passed the previous night and pushed her away.
Once the door closed behind him, she paused for a second, pretending to be crying, and mocked him saying, "My dad just passed cry cry, poor baby" Before I realized it, she had my Spanish book flying in her face, and I called her an "ugly witch". Yeah, yeah, my insult level isn't great in Spanish, but it got the job done!
100. Confusing Commands
My middle school was tiny and we would switch teachers for some of our subjects. During history class the teacher had us reading out loud from our textbooks and stopped the class to yell at me. She yelled to "STOP" what I was doing. I was just staring at my book like the rest of the class. She continued to yell at me, and I said I wasn't doing anything.
When she continued to yell at me, I asked "what am I doing?" She said "I don't know! But you need to STOP!" I got detention over recess and lunch where I couldn’t eat or go outside. I had to sit in the hallway and wait as she checked on me every few minutes. At the end of my detention, she said that I was, in fact, not doing anything. I was so furious—but that wasn't the worst part.
She admitted she was taking her anger out on me and needed to make an example out of me. She also felt embarrassed for scolding me over doing nothing. She then made me promise not to tell anyone. I kept my word and this is my first time recounting this story. Even as an adult, I don’t understand that day or her mentality.
101. Playing Possum
I’m a substitute teacher and this just happened today. I was working in a second-grade class and after lunch I had a student try to go to sleep. I told him that he needed to wake up as we had work to do. At first, he refused and I thought that he might not be feeling well. I asked if he needed to see the nurse and he said that he did not.
He then moved to the floor where he proceeded to "fall asleep" for the next hour. After trying everything to get him up, I called the office. A nurse came to look at him and determined it was a behavior issue. The principal came and together they removed the student who went totally limp and they had to carry him out of the class.
I thought that this was the end of the issue, but five minutes later I got called out into the hall. The student was still "sleeping" and the principal had the authorities on the phone. I explained the situation to her and my belief that this was a work avoidance issue. However, the principal had to do her job, which I understood and backed up. I'll never forget what happened next.
Paramedics came and tried to revive this kid. They finally said they needed to give him a shot and draw some blood and what do you know, the second he heard that he was wide awake and crying. I kid you not. This kid played possum for almost two hours and let it go far enough for the principal to call the authorities for help. I just don't know anymore. Where do seven-year-olds even learn this stuff?
102. A Dire Situation
My student—who missed a few days of class and her last exam—comes to me with an important confession: She's homeless. Instantly my heart bleeds for her. I say, "You poor thing! Are you ok? No wonder you've missed class and are having a hard time concentrating. The fact that you're here now is so commendable". She nods and then proceeds to complete what she was saying.
She first says, "Yeah". Then she looks down, clearly distraught, "It has been really hard lately. I can't talk to my friends or family. It has been hard concentrating in class". She says she just wanted me to understand what she's been going through. I ask her where she sleeps at night? Is there a place that she can go while she's getting back on her feet? That's when she gives me a bewildered look.
Apparently, I got it all wrong because she replies, "I'm not homeless. I'm phoneless".
