Teachers deal with a lot. Unruly students, backtalk, and lack of attentiveness are just the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes, even the calmest and sweetest educator reaches their limit and erupts. These stories tell the tales of teachers who couldn’t take it anymore and finally lost it on their students. It just goes to show that teachers have feelings too.
1. Big Boys Don’t Pie
In middle school, there was a fundraising contest, and the winning student got to pie a teacher of their choosing. It seemed fun, but it went terribly wrong. One student, Cory, was a little too excited and slammed that pie into our math teacher's face. He ended up breaking the teacher’s nose. The teacher’s immediate reaction was, "What the [heck] you little…" in front of the entire school.
Flickr, Wet and Messy Photography
2. Who Would Have Figured?
I accidentally knocked a small glass figurine off of my teacher's desk. This teacher was already known for being a bit unstable and harsh. I was terrified, but to my surprise, she just ran out of the classroom. A few seconds later, we heard her release a scream of pure rage. She came back inside composed. I was surprised, to say the least.
3. It Was A Clear Case Of Miscommunication
My dad went to an all-boys school. One of the teachers had a really bad stammer that the boys would make fun of, usually under their breath or out of earshot. The teacher must've been aware of it, but nothing overtly ever happened in class. One day at the start of the term, he was taking attendance and stuttered with each student’s name.
The boys answered respectfully with "Present" until he got to one boy who responded with an even more severe stammer, "P--P--P--Present." The teacher looked up from his list, red in the face, and swooped over to the toe rag that had answered. He boxed him HARD on both ears, and the boy began to cry. Another student yelled, "Sir! He really does have a stammer too"!
The kid was new, and no one had told the teacher that he had a severe stutter as well. The teacher looked absolutely horrified. He apologized to the lad, and after that, he took him under his wing. He was smart, so the teacher called on him in class and patiently waited while he answered. No one ever heard so much as a snicker from anyone about the teacher's stuttering again.
4. Blinded By Science
In junior high school, we had a Vietnam Vet for a science teacher. He was the kind of dude you could sense had his stuff together in times of panic. In the three years we were there, I seldom saw him do more than crack a calm smile. Then, in the ninth grade, this girl named Amy, who would show up late to our first-period class every day and was kind of quiet, didn't show up at all.
For some reason, instead of marking her absent, he called the office and had a very quiet conversation. He looked visibly disturbed and shaken. The next day, the girl showed up to class just a bit late but with a broken nose, a black eye, and her jaw wired shut. I can still remember the look on the teacher’s face when he saw her. It was pure fury. It was as if he was lit on fire inside.
It was even more terrifying when he pulled her into his office. He had a calm conversation with her and sent her to the nurse. He then told the rest of us that nobody was to say anything to her about it as she'd had an accident and was embarrassed. Most people didn't care, but the rumors spread quickly. Things like, "Did you see Amy? Jesus, somebody [beat] the daylights out of her".
Or, "I heard it was because she was sleeping with [the science teacher], and his wife found out", and so on. I happened to be passing the office on my way home that night, and I saw the principal, two officers, the science teacher, and Amy in there with the door shut. She was crying. One of the officers noticed me looking in and pulled the blinds.
School got out around 2:30 PM or so, and I usually hung around with some friends to listen to music or play basketball for 30 minutes before I started walking home. I waited outside the front of the school until almost 4 PM. Finally, a car pulled up, and this dude got out looking extremely angry. He was swearing to himself, and as I was the only one out there, he said, "YOU!? Where's the office"?!
I just pointed, but he didn't make it to the door. The two officers came out quickly, one in front and one behind, and the one who approached the guy started telling him to calm down. This angry dude just lost his marbles. He started screaming, "MY DAUGHTER SHOULD HAVE BEEN HOME AN HOUR AGO, AND I HAD TO LEAVE WORK. I'M GONNA SUE", blah blah blah.
He was just furious. The officers were trying to calm him down. Then out of nowhere, the science teacher came out the side door of the office, his face lit with fury, and he just straight up went full horizontal four feet in the air, and body tackled this guy. He never saw what hit him. In seconds, he was on top of him and was pummeling the guy, closed fists and all. Worse yet, he wasn’t saying anything or making any noise.
He just had deep, rhythmic breathing like you do when weightlifting—short breath in, long breath out, SMACK, SMACK, SMACK. The officers took their time getting him off the guy. One casually handcuffed the guy, the other handcuffed the science teacher who was standing, untouched save for some bloody knuckles, and was just breathing steadily.
His face was red from exertion, his eyes wide in anger and satisfaction. He still hadn’t said a word. The principal then called to me and said, "Come in here. Get inside, or go home. This isn't about you". I decided to walk home. As I was heading up the road, an ambulance—sirens and all—flew past me towards the school. The next day the science teacher wasn't in school, and we had a substitute. Of course, I had told some of my friends what had happened.
By the end of the day, rumors were flying again, and people were telling ME the story, which was completely wrong. The following week, without any explanation at all, the teacher was back. The first thing I noticed was written on the chalkboard, "If you ask, you go to detention". His face made it clear he wasn't to be tested and did not have a sense of humor about it. Nobody saw Amy again after that.
5. He Put His Foot In His Mouth
I had a friend in class who became aggravated at a science teacher and said, "I hope your kid is born with webbed feet". The teacher immediately got in my friend's face and screamed, "Don't ever talk about someone's unborn baby"!!! The teacher then grabbed him by the neck and took him to the principal's office. The next day the teacher apologized to the whole class for the outburst.
6. New Math Made Her Mad
I had a math teacher become red in the face while screaming at me. I wrote "4×4=offroad" on the board before class. She came in and started screaming, "WHO DID THIS"? over and over. I raised my hand, and she started yelling about how it wasn't funny, then told me I wasn't going to pass the class or get anywhere in life. I had an A- in the class.
7. Kofi Time
We had this kid in my class named Kofi, who was also my neighbor and good friend. In class, we sat in the corner by the door with some other people and had a great time. Kofi used to get up and sneak out of class to talk to the teacher next door and goof off. He never got busted, but one day the teacher looked up and said, "Hey, where'd Kofi go"?
We told him, and this girl beside me said, "Hey when he comes back in will you act like you're REALLY mad at him? Like just go berserk". The teacher gave an incredibly devious smile. Four minutes later, Kofi snuck back in. The teacher turned around and asked him where he was and what he was doing.
Kofi replied, “I just...I was talking to Mrs", and the teacher cut him off and went off.
He said, “SO YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST GET UP FROM MY CLASS, AND WALK OUT WHENEVER YOU WANT? DO YOU THINK THIS IS A JOKE?! DO YOU WANT TO GET SUSPENDED? DO YOU WANT TO GO TO THE OFFICE”? Kofi replied, "No, please. I'm so sorry". The exchange went on for another 30 seconds, and every single person in the class was grinning at him and just giggling.
Finally, the teacher stopped, laughed, and patted him on the back. The whole class roared with laughter. We told him what we did, and Kofi, with his big brown eyes, was shaking, and in his deep French accent, he said, "I was wondering why you were all smiling at me! I said to myself, this is no laughing matter"! It was probably the funniest thing I had ever seen.
8. Cheaters Never Win
My high school English teacher found out that during vocabulary tests, students would put the study sheet under their desks on top of their backpacks and cheat. She came in crying, yelling, and slamming books down, saying that cheating was her number one rule breaker, that she couldn't believe we'd do that, and how disappointed in us she was.
She told us all that NONE of what she said should leave that room, so she could do the same to the next class since this was happening in multiple classes. A student excused himself to go to the bathroom, and ten minutes later, our teacher got a call from another teacher inquiring about what had just happened. She blew her gasket and punished the ENTIRE class—cheaters and non-cheaters alike—by making us write a 12-page paper for our final instead of watching a movie and chilling as previously planned.
9. He Added Fuel To The Flame
My junior high science teacher had received a call a week or two prior that her sister had lost her life in a fire after a car accident. So, she left for a week to deal with the tragedy. When she came back, some jerk kid was being a pain in the neck, so she yelled at him a bit more than usual and sent him to the principal's office. As he was packing his things, he said the most horrible thing I've ever heard: "I hope you die in a fire like your sister".
The teacher lost it. She started screaming at him, calling him all sorts of names. She tried to throw a chair at him, but some of the other big kids and I held her back while the kid was standing there laughing. Some of the other kids booted him out and dragged him to the principal's office. After we calmed the teacher down, she ran out of the room bawling, and we never saw her again.
10. Acting Out
When I was in Grade 10, we had this awesome young English teacher who was properly on the level with the kids. I hated English, but he really got us to engage with it. During one lesson, he was reading the book we were studying, hopping and jumping around, acting out the scene, and doing the voices. Two kids were talking while he was doing it, and he lost it.
He started shouting at them about disrespecting him and the other students, how he was trying to do something nice and fun, and all they could do was talk through it. He didn't get physical, but you could probably hear him on the other side of our school. Later that year, he lost his life in a car crash, and everyone in his class had to line up outside the school as the funeral procession went by.
11. Mamma Mia She Went Berserk
I had a music teacher in Grade 6 who everyone disliked. She had a ridiculous penchant for ABBA and was forcing us to play ABBA and ABBA only. After three months of that, we were all going a little stir-crazy, and during one lesson, in particular, she could not pull us back together. Her usual tactic was to point someone out and ask them to play their part solo, so everyone else had to be quiet.
Even though we didn't have respect for her, we respected music and performance nonetheless. That time around, she pulled out the stops and hushed us down before asking the "star" student to perform. The girl straight-up microphone dropped her flute and said, "No". The teacher flipped out beyond control and ended up destroying her electronic keyboard by smashing it with her fists. It was quite a sight to witness.
Flickr, Alliance for Excellent Education
12. Strung Out
When I was in elementary school, the headmaster came in holding a violin. It was school property, and somebody had cracked it to the point where it was unusable. He gave a lengthy speech about respecting other people's property and how they had now ruined it for anyone else who wanted to learn. By the end of his diatribe, he was yelling.
Someone snickered and he just snapped: He responded by smashing the violin down onto the table and into smithereens. A small splinter hit a kid in the eye, who then started crying. The headmaster didn’t care, threw the remains on the ground, and walked out.
13. No Easy Answer
I had a teacher named Mr. Thornsby who had a complete and utter mental breakdown right in front of the whole class. I was about 9 or 10 years old, and he taught us math. For some reason, he asked an open question to the class, and nobody could work out the answer. Mr. Thornsby just could not understand how nobody knew the correct answer.
He started to become frustrated because, in his mind, we must all be idiots and were needlessly making his job hard for him. After asking it in about six different ways, he started to raise his voice and make remarks like, "How can you not understand this?! This is the easiest stuff in the world; I could get a six-year-old to answer correctly"!
He got worse and worse, and the class as a whole started to panic. People started throwing out anything with the hope that, by chance, it was going to be the right answer. "Is it 21? Is it 11"? I remember one guy going, "Is it a digit"? and Mr. Thornsby nearly exploded, "NOOOOOOO YOU ARE UNBELIEVABLE. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THE BLOODY ANSWER? I'LL GO GET SOMEONE FROM YEAR ONE NOW. THAT'S HOW EASY IT IS"!
Sure enough, he went out into the hall and returned with a five or six-year-old named Kieran, who didn't have a clue what was going on. He asked Kieran the question, and he replied with the guess, "Is it 10"? to which Mr. Thornsby said it was and sent Kieran away. He then repeated the question to the class, and one kid very confidently said, "So, is it 10"?
Mr. Thorsby screamed, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO", despite telling Kieran it had been the correct answer. After another two or three minutes, he gave up and said that we were going to stop doing math for the day. Instead, he started to read a fiction book to the class, who, by this stage, was petrified and silent. Then, after about 90 seconds into reading the book, some girl at the back sneezed, and Mr. Thorsby took that as a personal attack.
He raised the book he was reading above his head and threw it to the ground as hard as he could with the comment, "RIGHT! YOU CAN READ YOUR OWN BLOODY BOOKS", and stormed out of the classroom. That was the last I ever saw of Mr. Thornsby, and we had to have a substitute teacher for the last six weeks of the term.
14. Bingo Bust
We had a very nice but old and repetitive teacher who would recount the same stories over and over again. We created a bingo card and distributed it among the class. We had squares for mentions of his deceased wife, cries, talks about being a former mayor, etc. One day, a doofus buddy of mine screamed, "Bingo", and the jig was up.
The teacher was crying and screaming at all of us and had snot mixed in with tears and saliva flying from his mouth. He quit the week after. I think about him sometimes and how we were little jerks to a very nice man.
15. A Sad Turn Of Events
In high school, we were all chatting and fooling around while we waited for the teacher. The teacher finally arrived, and she had this weird thousand-yard stare on her face, which was odd because she was usually very charming and cheerful. She sat at her desk in complete silence for a moment while we continued to fool around.
Suddenly, she said, "Be quiet. Yesterday, I had a miscarriage, and I'm not in the mood to deal with you right now". It felt like an ice bomb fell on the classroom. We sat awkwardly in silence while the teacher spoke to the class in a weird, serious, and monotone voice. After she finished the class, she left without saying goodbye, and we never saw her again.
16. Anger Management
My English teacher got so mad at her class that she threw a decently heavy paperback at one of her students. She missed but was told by the administration that she needed to take anger management classes. Now, whenever she gets angry, she has this seriously creepy smile on her face that screams, "I love you, but I want to absolutely end you".
17. He Hit The Wrong Note
When I was in 5th grade, one of the disorderly kids was being loud, disruptive, and making trouble in general. The music teacher finally flipped his lid, grabbed the kid, and yelled in his face, "Eric, I swear to God, if I was your dad, I would kick your [behind] every day of your life”. The class was completely silent for the rest of the hour.
Surprisingly, not one of us told an adult, and he was never reprimanded for the outburst. The kid was one of those students who hadn't figured out the difference between good attention and bad attention and was generally an annoying jerk to everyone. He didn't say a word in that class for the rest of the year.
18. Her Patience Was Shattered
When I was in junior high school, I was somehow stuck in a science class that was filled with the biggest number of idiots you could ever imagine in a single room. After about a month of the teacher being unable to get a word in edgewise, she finally snapped. She was showing us some tricks with dry ice. She had a small bucket and a hammer and was smashing pieces here and there.
After about 30 minutes of her trying to quiet down the class, she yelled and slammed the hammer on the table. She slammed it so hard that it took out a chunk of the table. These were beefy science tables with a solid inch or two of marble. She broke a piece of the table in the middle, threw the hammer on the ground, ran out the door crying, and quit on the spot. The next day, we walked in, and the table had been replaced. We then had a long-term substitute until they could find a replacement science teacher.
19. “H” Stands For Horrible
I had a teacher named Miss H, who was a terror. She may not have thrown things in a rage or harmed anyone physically, but she was a kettle constantly left on the hob, screeching at anything through the tight lips that were scrunched on her crimson-shaded face. You could hear her from the other end of the school because if she ever entered a room and a child was speaking and not working, she would erupt.
The other teachers would pause and roll their eyes when they heard Miss H roaring before continuing with the class as normal. I largely avoided her wrath—except for that, miserable one day. Once, I needed to go to the bathroom, so I held up my hand and asked, "Miss H, may I please use the lavatory"? She looked up at me and scowled, "No".
I spent an hour in some awful, agonizing place between peeing and crying. Another time, I had been off sick and had just returned to school. I was unable to finish my lunch, and Miss H stopped me before I could leave the lunch hall. She yelled, "WHY IS THERE FOOD LEFT ON YOUR PLATE"? My wide eyes cowered into hers, and I said, "I feel sick, Miss H".
She retorted, "THEN YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TAKEN ALL THAT FOOD. CHILDREN IN AFRICA WOULD LOVE THAT FOOD AND ARE STARVING BECAUSE OF CHILDREN LIKE YOU". I sat at the teacher's table, almost puking everywhere and full of guilt for causing famine across an entire continent. Miss H marched to the end of the room, scoping the place for prey, while a teacher swapped her empty plate with mine and told me I could leave.
20. Dog Day Afternoon
Back in 10th grade, we had an English teacher who had a rather unhealthy obsession with her dog. We'd go to class and hear about "Trapper" at least four times a week. I had her for two classes, so I actually got a double dose. Later that year, we had an assembly of some sort in the gymnasium, and lo and behold, there sat Trapper.
She actually brought the dog—a schnauzer—to school for the assembly. Two of the students decided it would be a brilliant idea to make rubber band slingshots and started firing them at the pooch. Listening to the animal yelp every time it got pelted, I was torn between admiration for their aim and pity for the poor beast.
The teacher was confused for a while regarding what was happening. Then, she saw one of them take aim, and “it” hit the fan. I'm fairly certain everyone in the gymnasium heard her start screaming. They most definitely noticed her face as it turned a shade of red that somehow managed to overpower the multiple layers of make-up she was wearing.
She stormed into the bleachers and quite literally dragged both students out by their ears. The dog was just fine aside from some sore spots, although I can't recall another time that she ever brought it to school with her.
21. Back To Business
Years ago, my religious studies teacher in high school had her dad pass from cancer. As a result, she took a few months off from teaching, during which we had several substitutes. When she came back, during her first lesson, some of the kids in my class were loud and annoying. Classes in my school usually got that way when they had nothing but a barely-trained substitute for so long.
No one was getting ready to start class activities, so after about 10 minutes of loudness and no one paying attention or settling down, she snapped. She started yelling at us about how her dad had passed and how much it had affected her, and how disrespectful we were being. It was honestly the scariest few minutes in all of my high school experience, but I suppose we deserved it. There was absolutely no sound except for her ranting. The noise level hardly rose again for the entirety of the lesson.
22. A Taste Of Their Own Medicine
We had a girl with cerebral palsy in our class who was deaf, nearly blind, mute, and in a wheelchair. She was intellectually sound, just in an unfortunate body, and had a sign language interpreter. One day during an assembly, our teacher caught a pair of older students making fun of her signing. They were twiddling their fingers around and making fun of her cerebral palsy.
So, we were told to go back to the classroom on our own. We thought we were in serious trouble or something since we didn't see anything happen. Then, the teacher came back into the room with the older kids in tow. He stood them at the front of the class and told us what they had been doing. Then, he told us that people who make fun of others like that are doing it because they've never been on the other end of it; they don't know how to empathize.
He told us that was the reason he brought the two of them into the class. He told us we could laugh if we wanted, and many of us did. Once he made them apologize to the girl and they started crying, he led them out of the room. It was justice, along with a harsh reality check mixed with a burn.
Unsplash, National Cancer Institute
23. Shop Talk
In high school, the wood shop teacher saw a senior boy tormenting a freshman girl. She was kind of a plain Jane shy kid, and Mr. Thompson was not having it. He didn't say a word. He just grabbed the kid by the throat, literally pushed him up the wall, and stared at him. The kid’s feet were a foot off the floor. He held him there for about half a minute, then let him drop. None of us could believe what we saw.
Mr. Thompson was a huge man with hands like a lumberjack’s, so this was no problem. Nothing happened to him, but this was at a rural school. The same school had a geometry teacher who would knock stuff into the floor so he could bend down and look up girls’ skirts he always assigned to front seats.
24. A Falling Out
I had a bad case of senioritis which led to the school eventually telling me if I missed any more classes, I wouldn't graduate. So I started going to school regularly, and one day, my shop teacher marked me absent even though I was there. I brought it up in class, with the whole class backing me up, while he tried to say I wasn't there.
He eventually got so mad he stood on a metal ring that was holding the chair's legs together to yell, "The [poo is] flowing so thick, I'll just stand up here", only he was interrupted by the metal ring busting and him taking a fall. The class burst out laughing as he got up, grabbed the chair, and threw it across the entire shop, yelling incoherently at everyone. He left early that day and hated me for the rest of the year.
Flickr, Global Partnership for Education - GPE
25. He Took A Jab At Him
In my junior high, the language arts teacher called one of the students up to the front of the room and stabbed him in the stomach because he was sleeping with the teacher's wife. He was a big sturdy 14-year-old farm boy with a fairly decent beard going on. The kid was hospitalized but lived and wound up at another school. The teacher wound up in a forensic psych unit for a while, then was released and was never heard from again.
26. The Scary Sound Of Silence
In the 8th grade, I had an algebra teacher named Mr. Cogburn. He was tall, had kind of wild frizzy hair, and a smile that made him look like an absolute madman. You knew he was in a good mood if he started the class by slamming the door and yelling. He was not yelling insults, but he was loud and boisterous throughout the entire class.
He would pace the room as he lectured, always carrying a yardstick to hit the chalkboard for emphasis and also students' desks. I saw him break yardsticks multiple times with his exuberance. If you tried to put your head down on your desk to sleep, he'd just hit the bottom of your desk. He would stand on desks and create chants to help us memorize formulas.
I had a different class in the room above his, and we could hear him through the floor when he really got going. He was loud and animated and utterly insane. He was a fantastic teacher, but he only acted like that when he was in a good mood. If you managed to make him angry, he got quiet. Quiet Mr. Cogburn was terrifying.
Every year there was an event at the school called the Math-a-thon that raised money for a local children's hospital. Mr. Cogburn was telling my class about the Math-a-thon and how it would raise money to help children born with congenital defects. One of the other kids in my class, who tried very hard to cultivate a "too cool for school" attitude, waited until the end of Mr. Cogburn's spiel and announced loudly, "I don't know why we're trying to help those [kids]. They should all just be left to die".
Until that point, none of us knew that Mr. Cogburn had had a child born profoundly handicapped due to genetic defects and that the child had passed before he reached the age of ten. I had seen Mr. Cogburn angry before; that day, I saw him furious. I can't remember what he actually said to the kid, but his voice was quiet, even, and deceptively calm.
He loomed over the kid's desk but stood so very still. He just seemed to radiate pure rage in the same way you could feel heat radiate off a hot iron. And, just like a hot iron, every instinct in us told us that this was dangerous. We cowered at our desks and tensed up. Mr. Cogburn's anger was very clearly directed only at the one boy, but it was so intense that there was no way to keep it from affecting everybody else.
After a minute or two, he had the boy get out of his desk, and he took him out of the room. The kid looked like he was expecting the end. Two of the students sitting nearest the kid started crying after they left. A few minutes later, one of the other math teachers came into the room and taught the rest of the lesson for the day. I've seen people scream hate at others and fights erupt over insults, but nothing has ever frightened me the way Mr. Cogburn's quiet, intense rage did that day.
27. Off To The Races
In middle school, we had a pretty crazy teacher. He did a lot of stuff, but the turtle incident was the weirdest one. He was a natural science teacher, and don't ask me why, but one day he had brought with him three remote-controlled race cars and his personal pet turtle. He had built long, complicated tracks for the cars, and the turtle had a short, straight line. We were going to have a turtle race.
No one questioned the turtle race, as it was much more fun than reading a boring textbook and doing assignments after. We all knew this teacher was out of his mind as he previously had told us that he and his brother once found a deceased cat that was roadkill, and they took it home, boiled it, and ate it. Three lucky students were chosen to race the cars, and our teacher laid out a plant mix for the turtle at the end of his line as bait.
The race started, and while the cars were finishing their courses, the turtle couldn't care less about the bait and was wandering in a completely different direction. One of the classmates who had been racing with a car was a really clumsy, destructive dude. He never thought about consequences at all, and he loved to make other people miserable.
When he crossed the finish line, he started to tease our teacher for his turtle, and the teacher got really mad. All the other kids started rooting for our classmate, and I don't know if it was the heat of the moment or if this dude was just a messed up sociopath, but he gained some speed with his race car and smashed it into the turtle from the side.
This was a pretty tiny turtle and a pretty powerful race car, so the turtle didn't make it. Our teacher pulled our classmate out of the room by his neck, and they were both gone for a couple of hours. At the end of the day, he told the rest of us that our teacher had boiled the turtle and made him eat some of it. We all thought it was complete nonsense, as this dude wasn't reliable at all. However, we kind of changed our opinion when the teacher was fired without an explanation about a month later.
28. His Anger Was Lit
We had a world history teacher who was 6’ 3” and mostly slender, except for a gut that he had been working on for the past 30 years. He was a powder keg just waiting for a match. For some weeks, the ignition sources were Ricky and his friend John. Ricky and John’s class clown antics fed off of each other. One would start a horrible joke, and that became the tagline for the rest of the class.
Their "jokes" started off mildly, but their antics went on for a while, each iteration driving the teacher slightly more insane. Then one day, Ricky called out, "Hey, teach". The teacher, inflamed and annoyed, replied, “What”? Ricky said, "Did you know there's an Australian car company called Holden"? The teacher replied, "Yes, I did. Holden is a General Motors subsidiary." He was somewhat smug about it.
Ricky continued his antics, saying, "Wow, teach, you know a lot about Holden ma'dick".The powder keg finally exploded. The teacher jumped to his feet and started yelling like he was about to power up to Super Saiyan. He picked up the nearest textbook and hurled it at Ricky. This caught Ricky by surprise. Being the star baseball player, he never ducked to get out of the way of the text of fury.
The textbook clocked him right across his forehead. Then, John immediately ran to the back of the room, leaving his desk unmanned. The teacher, unfazed by Ricky's injury, stormed over to John’s desk and lifted it over his head, piercing holes into the drop ceiling. Ricky was on the floor, scared like a chihuahua in a thunderstorm.
The teacher yelled again and slammed the desk, legs first, into the adjacent wall puncturing the fake wood interior and cheaply made exterior. The teacher walked back to his desk. John’s desk was stuck, hanging in the wall, Ricky was quivering, and the teacher continued his lesson. The aftermath was uneventful; no one was charged, the holes were repaired, and everything was swept under the rug.
29. In Need Of A Siesta
I had this social studies class in junior high where the teacher had a dry demeanor and talked in a monotone voice. A bunch of the kids always gave him such a hard time, and he would always fall for it and freak out, which was what some of the kids wanted. One time, someone put racy movies on his desk, and another time, they put some fake poop on his chair.
When he would write on the board, a few kids would hide in the attached room when his back was turned, and when he would turn around, he would find half the class had randomly disappeared. He always lost it. Halfway through the year, he took sick leave and never came back. We found out he went on a mental health break to Mexico.
30. Don’t Mess With Mr. D
I had an amazing teacher we called Mr. D. Everyone knew he was a Veteran and was rumored to have seen some stuff while overseas. One day, one of the guys in my class stood up and screamed, "AIR RAID". Mr. D, mid-sentence, dove head first over his desk and cowered behind it. After a few seconds, he slowly stood up with a look of death in his eyes.
He grabbed the kid by the throat with one hand and carried him this way to the hallway. The kid’s feet were completely off the ground. I'm not sure what happened in the hallway, but there was a whole lot of screaming from Mr. D and a lot of whimpering from the kid.
31. Hormonal Hysterics
At the very beginning of my final year of school, we got this teacher who was pregnant. Despite her pregnancy, she was really hot, so the guys loved her; however, the girls hated her. One day, one of the girls forgot her homework, and the teacher became furious. She threw the biggest fit I had ever seen. She yelled her lungs out while crying at the same time and calling the girl more names than I ever thought existed.
The girl decided that she wasn’t going to have any of that garbage, so she had the brilliant idea to talk back. The teacher cried her eyes out, left the room, and took an early maternity leave. The men were sad, the girls rejoiced, and we learned a valuable lesson about hormones.
32. His World Needed Rebuilding
When I was in Grade 4, someone in my class brought in an awesome Lego car they had made the night before. Everyone was really impressed with it, and he was making his way around the class to show everyone. The bell rang, signaling the start of class, and this substitute teacher we had, asked the student to bring the car over to him so he could see it.
The teacher genuinely seemed interested in it, but then, out of nowhere, he threw this Lego car full force into the wall, shattering it. The class went completely silent with shock. The teacher just smiled and said, "Oops. Well, shall we get to our lesson then"? He didn't even look mad. No one knew what to think.
33. He Packed A Punch
My history teacher was a Vietnam Vet and suffered from PTSD. He was also one of the sweetest, easy going, and most understanding teachers I'd ever had. He was very upfront about his PTSD to prevent mishaps in the classroom that might trigger it. During a class about Vietnam, one of the school jocks had loud blasts and what have you on a Walkman.
During a story my teacher had about his time in the Marines, the kid began to play the sounds causing my teacher to dive under his desk and begin screaming orders, much to the jock’s amusement and everyone else's disgust. When the teacher's aide managed to calm the teacher down enough to get him coherent, he marched over to the kid, who began to play the tape.
My teacher just did a straight punch right to his face without warning, breaking his nose. But he wasn't finished. He grabbed the Walkman and destroyed it by slamming it into the floor, then went right back to teaching the class as if nothing had happened. The student tried to get the teacher fired after the incident, but it turns out that triggering a well-loved teacher’s PTSD doesn't get you much sympathy.
34. Nothing But A Drool
We had an English teacher who had narcolepsy. He was an aging fellow with big floppy hair. I was too young to understand what narcolepsy was and never noticed it. But, in hindsight, I realize there were several points where even my inattentive self should have been aware. As you can imagine, this led to us not taking him seriously as an authority figure.
Our class was goofing off in one of his lessons, and he became annoyed. It built up to a point where he singled out one of the kids. He was yelling at him pretty ferociously, and he looked like he was going to end the poor kid when it happened. A sliver of drool began to inch away from the corner of his mouth. I must have been the first to notice it because when I looked around, everyone seemed to be in awe of this man's anger.
The angrier and more animated he got, the further the drool inched toward his chin. As it hit the base of his chin, more people started to notice it, but we were all doing our best to stifle our laughs to avoid his wrath. The most you could hear over his yelling was a couple of sharp exhales of breath, but one of us was about to lose it. I knew he wouldn't be able to contain himself when the inevitable happened, but there was little I could do to stop it.
35. Be Afraid, Be Gerry Afraid
I had a teacher who was one of those guys you couldn’t help but dislike. He was just generally boring and grumpy, going through the routine year after year. Then, there was Gerry, who was a big student for his age, had problems at home, and was a bit of a smart aleck. Things had been escalating slowly between the two over the semester, with Gerry getting a few detentions and minor punishments.
One day Gerry was talking behind the teacher’s back. The teacher turned around and hurled a blackboard eraser at him, which bounced off his head. Gerry picked it up and threw it out the window from the second floor. The teacher became angrier and made Gerry walk down and bring it back. When he returned, the teacher got in his face about being a smart aleck.
After a minute or so, Gerry said something back—wrong move. The teacher clocked him on the nose with his fist, and the kid fell back, nose bleeding. Pandemonium ensued. The teacher came to his senses and took Gerry to first aid for treatment. The next day, the teacher returned and kept teaching, but Gerry was moved to another class.
36. This Teacher Was Way Off Target
There was one crazy teacher who would pick targets and go off on them. She got mad at someone whose anxiety was so bad they couldn't attend school. She said the student was faking it to get out of handing in a draft, even though they had already received an extension, so it was due later for them anyway. The person in question was the nicest girl I had ever seen.
She targeted my sister as well, and at first, I thought my sister was full of beans. Then, I got this woman as a teacher. One time, to check homework, she came to our row to check our work. She started at friend number one, saying, "That handwriting isn't good enough. Do better next time". Then at friend number two, she continued, "That handwriting is disgusting. Do it again at lunch".
I had the worst handwriting of the lot. So, when she got to me, she had a 10-minute rant about how I was a useless waste of space and I "will never be successful in life" and "will never be able to get a job", etc. I held my nerve, stared at her in her eyes during the whole charade, and when she finished, I replied with, "Okay." That went on for the whole year.
37. Pushed To The Limit
In high school, I had an amazing, hilarious teacher named Mr. B. Unfortunately, his class had a group of male students who thought they ran the show. Eventually, Mr. B gave up and turned into a miserable grump. One of the idiots was sitting on top of a desk, tossing things onto Mr. B's desk. Mr. B got up, grabbed the moron by his shoulders, and started shaking him, screaming, "DON'T THROW THINGS AT ME"! On the last push, the student fell off the desk, knocking his head on a nearby TV. Mr. B got suspended for six months.
Freepik, wayhomestudio
38. The Catalyst To Chaos
I had a chemistry teacher in high school who was always a really chill guy. One day, he came in and held up a picture of an ultrasound, and announced that he had a new family member on the way. Most people "oohed" and "awwed", but one kid who was known for being kind of a jerk blurted out, "It looks like an amoeba". The teacher went bananas.
He flipped the kid's table, and all the glass beakers slid off and shattered. The whole room went silent. Then, he sent the kid to the principal's office with the final words, "Don't ever come back to my classroom". The kid was transferred to a different chemistry teacher.
39. This Kid Was Out Of Step
The dance teacher in our school was the quietest, kindest woman you could ever meet. She became pregnant, and everyone at the school was excited for her. She had a late-term miscarriage, and she and her husband were absolutely devastated, but she still came to school to teach. This one student thought it would be hilarious to walk up behind her while she was bending over in dance class and dry hump her.
She turned around, hit him across the face, screamed at him to get out, then broke down crying. It was tough to watch, and that kid became the most hated kid in the entire school. The kid had the audacity to try and get the dance teacher in trouble for "striking him" and got his parents involved with the administration. I had never seen a teacher hit a student like that, and I’ve never been so satisfied that they did.
40. She Would Cook Up A Storm
In high school cooking class, a classmate was mouthy and liked to push the teacher’s buttons. The teacher started calling her a snotty girl and commenting on her bad attitude, etc. Then one day, she called the girl a name and some other things and hit her with a spoon. We couldn't believe it. The girl went to the principal's office to file a complaint. This teacher lost her mind over the dumbest things. She ranted at me for half the class because I called a "pancake turner" a spatula. She would not shut up about how I was stupid for not knowing the difference.
41. Nothing To Report Here
I had a teacher who was strict yet honest and a great teacher nonetheless. For book report presentation day, we were allowed to choose any book we wanted so long as it wasn't one of the ones that were a part of our reading curriculum. This one kid purposely read one of those books anyway and went up to present his report to the class.
The class caught on that he read one of the books that he wasn't supposed to, and we all sat there looking towards the teacher for a reaction. Boy, did we get one. Her voice went deep, and she started calmly ripping into this kid for going against what she instructed the class. The kid tried to argue back and make excuses.
The teacher stood up and raised her voice, her eyes dark. The kid was breathing heavily and, with his face red, was trying his best to argue back. The class just sat shocked in silence as it became an actual screaming match. The teacher was flipping out, and the kid started crying uncontrollably, called her a name, and ran out of the classroom. It was so bad the teacher from next door came in asking if everything was okay.
Freepik, stockking
42. Beggars Can’t Be Choosers
During my last year of high school, we had to read a novel for my Croatian class. The teacher asked random students some questions about the book to check whether they had read it or not. She asked one student a question about the book, and it was pretty clear that he hadn’t read it, although he insisted he had. When the teacher openly accused him of not reading it, he responded with a snarky answer.
The entire class burst out laughing, and things settled down. However, the student picked up his things and walked out of the class, arguing a bit with the teacher while he was leaving. The teacher was furious. She was a bit of a narcissist, always boasting about her being top of her class while attending two colleges simultaneously.
So, she gave us a long speech about child-centeredness in today's educational system and stuff like that. The next day, the student was back in the classroom, sitting there calmly as if nothing had happened. The teacher walked in, noticed him, and, after everyone was seated, asked, “Don't you have something to say"? With a look of complete surprise, the student replied, "What? I have to say something"?
With her rage building up, all our self-centered teacher could come up with was, "I beg your pardon? I beg your pardon? I beg your pardon"? The student sealed his fate when he said, "Beg all you want". The teacher went berserk. She started yelling at him from the top of her lungs, calling him a disrespectful idiot, a shame to the entire class, then stormed out of our classroom, still yelling in the hallways.
43. Nothing To Scream At
My middle school math teacher freaked out on a student in the middle of class over literally nothing. The student was just sitting there, not doing his work, and the teacher walked over to his desk and asked him how many problems he had done, which was none. She flipped out, picked up his paper, shoved it into his face, and started yelling, "You see this paper? What's on it? That's right, NOTHING! That's all you'll ever be! NOTHING"!!! That completely destroyed that kid. He ended up failing 6th grade five times and dropping out.
44. He Struck The Wrong Chord
The head of our music department had anger management issues, and a friend of mine found it fantastic to wind him up. He would ignore his instructions, throw paper airplanes, etc. It usually ended with the teacher shouting and removing him from the class. One day, the teacher must have been having a terrible day. He was playing the keyboard when my friend threw a paper airplane that hit him straight in the face.
He flew into a behemoth rage, picked up the keyboard, and launched it at my friend. This thing flew and missed my friend by a couple of inches, denting the wall behind him. Needless to say, the teacher was fired.
45. Her Anger Became Multiplied
My high school math teacher was incredible. She would stay in her room during lunch hours to help her students in all grades who needed extra math help. She also stayed at the school four hours after school got out each night to grade her students' work, and she would allow any students who wanted extra help to stay with her while she did that.
She also had her own website where she would post notes and tips on how to do well in her classes. She knew everybody by name and always engaged students during lectures, even the quieter kids who fell behind. When we were in Grade 12, she brought in her old university textbooks to give to the students in our class who were going into STEM programs the following year.
Above all, she was a teacher who genuinely cared about her students, and would always talk to you if you needed help with any aspect of life. One day she announced that we had an upcoming calculus test. It was nothing unusual, except, somehow, one of the students in our class managed to find a copy of her test before she gave it to us.
The student photographed it and distributed it to his circle of friends. When test day came, 80% of the class wrote an honest exam while the other guys memorized the test from the images. The teacher found out. The next day, we were in first-period class, as usual, not expecting anything since 80% of us didn't even know about the cheating.
The teacher showed up unexpectedly with the rest of her students who were in her other class. We thought it was weird that she was bringing two classes together in our homeroom. With the class packed, she went to the front with a poker face. The next thing we knew, she started yelling at us about how we had no respect for her considering all the ways in which she busted her rear to get us a quality education.
She said that we were worth less than the dirt on her shoe. She then pulled out our class's calc tests and tossed the whole pile in the recycling bin. She said the whole class had to rewrite the test during lunch and stomped out of the classroom, bringing the rest of the students with her. We shook like chihuahuas since we had never seen that much rage from her before. She later revealed that she knew which students were cheating but had to do what she did to ensure she was not trampled again.
Freepik, stockking
46. With The Strike Of A Pen
In high school, we had this substitute teacher who said from day one, “I’m used to messy students, so there is nothing you can do to get me mad.” Little did he know that we were a rather special group of kids. One day, a friend of mine thought it would be funny to throw pens at the guy. He got mad and threw one back at my friend, so my friend threw it again, and the substitute teacher lost it.
He charged at my 6’3 friend and tried to wrestle him into a computer table while my friend was laughing. I grabbed the teacher and pulled him off my friend. Then, we both ended up getting "thrown out" of the classroom, and the sub came running after us screaming. Another teacher in the hallway saw and heard everything. The teacher was gone the next week.
47. This Guy Spelled Disaster
In middle school, we had a "geography bee", which was like a spelling bee, but with geography. We were in history class, and the teacher had us all stand-up and would go down the line asking questions. Whenever someone got one wrong, they would sit down. It had gotten down to four or five other kids and me. One of the students yelled out a dumb answer when it wasn't her turn. This teacher was an ex-Marine and had some serious anger issues.
He freaked out and started yelling at her. A kid who had sat down giggled to himself. This teacher stopped, looked at him, and that's when chaos broke loose. The teacher told him to stand up and walk to the front of the class. He did. The teacher flipped out and started yelling about how nothing about the situation was funny and began berating the kid with insults.
He eventually pushed him into a corner and continued yelling less than a foot from his face. The kid started crying, and the teacher said, "You crybaby. What are you gonna do, huh? Go cry to your mommy? Do you want your mommy"?! This kid's mom had passed two weeks prior.
These four other kids and I were left next to this poor kid who was sobbing in the corner. The next day, the kid's dad came to the school and chewed this guy out. The teacher was suspended for two weeks.
48. She Did An About Face
In 7th grade, we had the nicest science teacher ever who used to take attendance on a clipboard. One day, a group of kids in the back of the classroom was trying to see if they could make a female classmate faint by obstructing her airway. They were successful. As soon as the female student hit the floor, the teacher turned around from the chalkboard to see what happened, saw her passed out on the floor, and flipped.
The nicest teacher in the world turned into a monster. She threw the chalk, threw the eraser, grabbed her clipboard, and slammed it down on the desk shattering everything. Lab supplies went everywhere. The amount of yelling that happened that day was ridiculous. The female student was unconscious for a few seconds, but the teacher's fury did not stop.
Once the female student regained consciousness, she continued to lay into everyone for the next 45 minutes or so. There was no more teaching done that day in that class. Everyone stayed completely silent and listened. Nothing like that ever happened again in her class.
49. She Had To Sing A Different Tune
In middle school, we had a couple of kids with Down Syndrome in our choir class. My choir teacher, Ms. K, was around 28 years old and had been teaching for over five years. She was always really nice and calm around everyone. She was the kind of teacher everyone always wanted to be around. The only thing that upset her was when students weren't paying attention while singing.
Having two kids with Down Syndrome in the class made Ms. K upset. She felt those two kids shouldn't have been allowed in choir since they had behavioral issues and the special ed teacher didn't sit in during music. Whenever one of those kids acted up, she had to deal with it herself. She made it obvious that she didn't enjoy having them in her class.
One day, we had our regular choir class. One of those students was doing her typical thing, which included not paying attention and basically just shouting the lyrics to the music in a way that made Ms. K angry. Everyone could visibly see that something bad was about to happen. Ms. K stopped the pianist, addressed the girl, and said, "If you're not going to sing the right way, then why are you in my class"?
The room got dead quiet. Ms. K usually stopped the class to address this girl for not paying attention, but this time was different. Ms. K continued, "Part of my job is to make this choir sound good, but I can't do that with these morons always throwing everyone off"! She kept going on saying things about how she was taken as a joke and nobody respected her program.
She got so mad that she sent the girl into the hallway to sit for the rest of the class. The student was crying so loud that the special ed teacher heard and took the student with her to her office. The principal was told and had to have a conversation with Ms. K about being professional around the students.
Flickr, Lower Columbia College (LCC)
50. THAT Teacher
One day, in Grade 4, I was walking down the hallway from the washroom to my class when I heard what could only be described as screeching coming from a different classroom. This classroom belonged to that teacher; the one nobody messes with and nobody questions. They probably had some kind of anger disorder or a fuse so short that a match lit in a stiff breeze would set it off.
I got curious, so I slowed down to listen. A minute after I started doing the rubbernecker amble, an entire desk came hurtling out of the classroom, flew across the hallway, and slammed into a bank of lockers. A chair followed a moment later. It hit the lockers so hard that the corner had a dent the size of my nine-year-old hand. The old screws that held the top to the frame gave out, and the desk's contents spilled across the floor. Pencils, scribblers, and grade-school junk were everywhere.
The sound echoed down the hallway, and heads started poking out of other classrooms. The janitor came out of his supply closet. Nobody understood what had happened, just that there was a stunned student—me—and a pile of stuff that used to be learning tools everywhere. I started to explain when the door to that teacher's classroom blew open again.
A red-faced kid came stumbling out, eyes teary, head down, looking like he'd just witnessed a bloodbath. His eyes were wide and blank, and his mouth kept moving like he was trying to talk, but the air had been sucked out of his lungs. Hot on his heels was that teacher. She reached out, snatched him by his collar, and spun him around right in front of the crowd. She then screamed, "AND DON'T COME BACK TO MY CLASSROOM WITHOUT YOUR HOMEWORK AGAIN"!
Freepik, freepik
Sources:
