Schools are interesting places. Although their intended purpose is to be a place of learning, they are also places where all kinds of other things go on as well. There is perhaps no other environment in which the types of bizarre social interactions that take place in school buildings could ever fly. Don’t believe me? Here are school-based rumors that might jog your memory a bit about what school life is actually like in the time in between the actual classes—and beyond.
1. Suspicious Minds
I’m not a teacher, but when I was in middle school, rumors had somehow started that I was lesbian. One teacher began to treat me differently because of it—she wouldn’t let me sit near other girls, and she’d get mad at me if I hugged a female friend, etc.
2. And the Rest Is History
There was a rumor that the male principal was hooking up with a male history teacher in his office. Both were married to women at the time.
3. She’s Definitely Got a Leg Up On Her Peers
I am a teacher and I can personally confirm the rumor that one of my students is dating our neighborhood’s infamous one-legged drug dealer from across town.
4. Chilled to the Bones
According to a rumor at my school, a sixth grader once cried his eyes out during health class in front of all of his peers—because learning about the skeletal system had apparently freaked him out. The health teacher had started talking about ribs, and he just started panicking and saying that he was too uncomfortable to handle any more of the lesson from that point on.
5. Brother From Another Mother
Back in October, me and a similar-looking teacher kept getting mixed up by our mutual seventh-grade kids. We decided to start a rumor amongst them by intentionally dropping little subtle hints that we were half-brothers. Nothing super obvious, but just enough to get their minds wondering. We’ve been pouring it on a lot more recently, though. Hopefully, we can get a photo together with “our” dad over spring break, just in time for April Fool’s Day!
6. A Master of All Subjects
We had a rumor that the art teacher was sleeping with both the history teacher and the religion teacher. She was married to the chemistry teacher, who she had previously had an affair with while married to the woodwork teacher. I believe that she ended up marrying the religion teacher sometime after I left school.
7. A Man of Principals
My school had a rumor that the principal had made a dirty tape with a student when he was still just a teacher, and had hidden it somewhere on school property. It all came out when the Vice Principal tried to use it as leverage to steal his job. The principal was forced to resign, but the Vice and the rest of the administration were fired for covering it up.
8. A Big Transition
The physics teacher in my school was rumored to be gay. It turned out that she was actually transgender—and she showed up the next fall having undergone a sex change. She was fired two weeks later for arbitrary reasons and blacklisted from all other nearby school districts. She had to move states entirely. I wish her the best wherever she is today.
9. Moment of Truth
There was a widespread rumor at my school that this one kid secretly liked to remove all of his clothing, suspend his legs above his head using his belt, and pleasure himself in the school bathroom. I had assumed it was just a silly rumor, until I accidentally walked in on him doing it one time. It was then that I realized that this school was not paying me enough for the amount of nonsense that I have to put up with all the time. The stories I have…
10. Choose Your Companions Wisely
According to the grapevine at my school, one of my colleagues had secretly married a “much younger woman” who was rumored to also have been one of his students. She was neither. The woman that they had seen him with was actually just his daughter.
11. Discovering the Underworld
We have a rumor that there is an underground bunker from the Cold War era below our school. Not only did it turn out to actually exist, but we discovered that you can even access it from the gym change rooms through a hidden trapdoor.
12. A Fairy Tail Ending
I, as a teacher, once successfully started a rumor that one of my students had been born with a tail, just because he said that I couldn't do it.
13. A Breathtaking Story
I’m not a teacher, but my sister is. At her high school, someone started a rumor about this short girl. The rumor was that she was short because she only had one lung. I find the whole thing just so freaking weird. It’s not even mean or detrimental per se, just so odd. She was actually short because of a spinal issue.
14. Teacher’s Pet
There was a rumor going around at my high school that this senior girl was dating one of the science teachers. She did hang around his office after class a lot, but the rumor was seemingly nothing—just a bunch of kids making up dumb nonsense for whatever reason they do. He was a beloved teacher and she was pretty low key, but a cool girl nonetheless.
I figured that the whole thing was probably just the result of some idiot who had gotten a bad grade in this guy’s class or who had it out for one of them somehow. Either way, nothing ever came of it. Fast forward a few years aaannd...curve ball! All of a sudden, just a few short months after she graduated, it came out that he was divorcing his wife and leaving his family to be with this former student of his.
He even publicly updated his relationship status on Facebook to confirm it for everyone. She was 18 years old, and he was probably in his mid-40s at the time. What in the world?? I did NOT see that one coming!
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15. Sex Ed Gone Wrong
There was a rumor that there was a girl in the boys’ bathroom offering sexual favors for ten dollars. It was true, and she got expelled.
16. Another Side to Him
My mom is a teacher, and I went to high school where she taught. She had a student who I was also friends with, and I ended up hanging out with him again after a few years. Now, there had been a rumor back then that he had begun to appear in dirty movies—and after a few drinks, he told me that it had indeed been true. My mom couldn't believe it when I told her, because he was—and still is—a really polite, quirky, and socially awkward kid. I guess you can never really know…
17. Eye Can’t Believe It!
I’m a former high school band director. We had a color guard girl in our program who COULD NOT CATCH any time that she tossed her flag up in the air. The other kids eventually made up a rumor that she had a glass eye, and that this was the reason why she couldn’t catch anything. Two years later, the girl was about to graduate and came into our office to talk to the staff.
She had never told a soul about this, but she finally decided that she wanted to confide in us. She revealed that her left eye had in fact been glass for years. She had apparently lost it in a car accident just a short time before moving into our district. You could never have been able to tell by just looking at her. So, as it turns out, the made up rumor was 100% spot on.
18. A Steady Diet
There was a rumor that this one extremely strange young lady at our school was the product of an unsavory familial relationship, and that her mom and/or aunt would only let her drink pineapple juice. I think the reality was far more banal. She definitely had some kind of issues, but it was probably your garden variety developmental delay or something like that. Poor girl. She was definitely nice in her own way.
19. Don’t Drink the Yellow Tears
I’m not a teacher, but at my school, a rumor was spread that a fellow student peed through his eyes. It turned out to be false.
20. Baby, You Can Drive My Car
Some students at my high school started a rumor that one of their peers was having a romantic relationship with a Lightning McQueen toy from the movie series Cars. The whole school bought into it and, at award ceremonies, they'd all yell "KACHOW" whenever that individual walked on stage.
21. The Final Countdown
Our school has a rumor that one of the students has secretly made plans to marry the English teacher at the end of the school year. I guess we’ll find out in a few months!
22. A Family Affair
We had a rumor that two teachers who were married to each other were cheating on each other, each with one of their students. The husband was the first to do it, and the wife began doing the same once she found out—you know, as revenge. It all eventually got confirmed when they were fired for it.
23. Like Pulling Teeth
One student's dad was a dentist. He was rumored to have stolen some of his dad's sedatives and sold them to his peers to use recreationally, or something along those lines. I can't verify the truth of the claim, but that student isn't at the school anymore—but this could potentially explain why.
24. You Know What Happens When You Assume
Once, in seventh grade, it was recess time. Everyone had gone out of the class except for one boy and one girl. The latter had been known for staying behind to read books and what not. We came back from recess only to find that the girl wasn't there anymore, while the boy was sitting in the back with a red mark on his face.
A rumor began that the boy had offered her money for sex, and a few people even claimed to have been eyewitnesses to the incident. After a few days of problems with the administration, it turned out that he was actually just giving her money to buy him a certain book, since she was the class rep and was responsible for those kinds of things. And that’s why it’s a good idea to not jump to conclusions!
25. Always Go With Your Gut
My sixth-grade math teacher was super creepy. He would assign seats “randomly,” but always managed to place the girls right at the front of the classroom. He did the whole lingering stare thing, too, and was always trying to get students to “hang out” with him during lunch. I never did, but he was married and had a baby, so no one really suspected him of anything other than being creepy.
That is, until the rumors started that he had been having a relationship with one of his students. Fast forward about seven years. He had indeed been having an ongoing relationship with a girl that had begun inappropriately early. Based on what I could see from the various news articles, I believe it was the girl that the rumors had been about. The police came to arrest him in the middle of his class, cuffed him in front of his students, and then had him walk through the campus in the cuffs to get to their car. I don’t feel bad for him at all, but I can’t imagine how his wife and son must feel.
26. Far Away Places With Strange Sounding Names
A new transfer student at our school once enlisted the help of all of his existing friends to spread the false rumor to all of the teachers that his real name was "Mbaku" and that he was born in "Wakanda, Africa." He even tried speaking in a really shoddy Nigerian accent to make the claim more believable, despite his actually being from the American Northeast.
I was hired halfway through the year and by then, it was just assumed that it was true and no one had ever corrected it. Then one day, he was brought up in a teacher's meeting and I was just like "Wait.... Mbaku? From... from the fictional continent of Wakanda?" And no one says anything. Dead room. I press on, "...Black Panther? The movie? Guys?"
That was when the Social Studies teacher stood up, slammed his fist on the table, pointed at the Vice Principal, and just yelled out "I TOLD YOU SO!! WHY DIDN’T ANYBODY LISTEN TO ME??" Good times, good times.
27. Gender Roles
There was a rumor going around that a female sixth grader in our school was actually a male. It was so widespread that even I was curious about it, too. Then, one day she had to move and announced out loud on her last day, “Just so you know, I’m not a male.” And that put that one to rest.
28. A Different Kind of Graphic Novel
When I was in high school, there was a rumor going around that our French teacher was secretly reading dirty books while in class. I thought that it was just another joke that the students had made up. However, one day in French class, I looked up for maybe a second or two—only to discover that the teacher had accidentally connected his tablet to the projector, and was broadcasting the book he was reading to the entire class.
It was, indeed, quite inappropriate. I quickly put my eyes down to avoid him realizing I had seen it—but it was too late. Judging by the giggles that began to spread across the room, it was clear that I had not been the only one who had looked up at that time.
29. Voicing Some Concerns
I go to many schools, so I have heard several rumors—but this particular one stuck in my mind more than any others. I went to an extremely sketchy school for the first time. Apparently, the substitute they had the week before had left the classroom in tears and was unable to substitute ever again due to emotional issues as a result.
They told me that one of the students had stolen her brand new iPhone, and she had run into the bathroom crying. I asked the student if it was true and he verified that it was. I asked him why he did it. He said it was because he hated her voice.
30. All That and a Bag of Chips
We had a running joke around my school for years. If someone asked "Could you (insert question here)?", most people would reply with "I'll do it for a bag of Doritos!" This had become a school-wide inside joke after a rumor had spread that a girl had been expelled for hooking up with an older student in the school bathroom. Some authority figure had the bright idea of asking the teen why she had agreed to do this, to which she responded: “He offered me a bag of Doritos!” What a legend.
31. Social Issues
At the school I work at, rumors have started that one of the students is my boyfriend. He’s nine years old and I’m his social worker…
32. Leading a Double Life
I taught English at an all girls Catholic school in Central America. I was told by another teacher that one of the seniors was working nights as a dancer and that the nuns who ran the school knew about it but didn’t care because she was supporting two younger siblings.
33. Age Is Just a Number
Two students who happened to have been fraternal twins arrived at our school when they were both 15 years old. One looked older than the other, but that just happens sometimes. Then one day, a rumor started going around that they were not actually twins, but just ordinary sisters. I tell the Behavior Support workers, who look into it. As it turns out, one of the sisters was actually 22 years old. The parents had lied about her age to get her into the school, which they had needed to do in order to be allowed to stay in the country. Whoops!
34. Lunch Is No Break for Some
A younger male teacher was rumored to have been hooking up in his classroom during lunch with an older female teacher, who was married and in her mid-40s. A student caught them and filmed them in the act, pretty much blackmailing them from that point on.
35. Doing His Duty
I had a student who was rumored to have eaten a piece of poop. He was out of school for about a week or two around the time that this rumor was spreading. Sadly, this rumor turned out to be true. When he came back to school, he was charging kids a buck per view to watch the video of the incident on the camcorder he kept in his locker. Amazingly, his girlfriend didn't dump him after this.
36. Shedding Some Light On Things
One student was rumored to have been a Satanist witch who was afraid of the Lord’s holy light. Their evidence for this? That she always wore modest clothing and used an umbrella in full sunlight. The real explanation for these things? She had a skin condition called vitiligo and was undergoing a steroid therapy that made her skin extremely sensitive to sunlight.
37. A Full Time Job
I had a really weird student who was always asking all kinds of odd, personal questions. They had somehow gotten my phone number, and began to text me at odd hours. I never responded. I talked to another teacher who had had the same student previously, and she told me that the student had a really unnatural sleep cycle because, and I quote, the student was an "avid worshipper of Satan."
The student was on standby for spontaneous worship at all hours of the day. The student actually told me about it later on. Nothing threatening, just very matter-of-factly. They confirmed the whole thing and hinted about being part of a large group. They also indicated that there were "many ways" in which one must be ready to serve at any time. I didn't get any clarification about what that meant, so it might have just been to mess with me. Not my worst student, but definitely an odd one.
38. He Loved Me, He Loved Me Not
There was a young girl at my school who once lied on social media about having had an affair with a teacher. She then quickly recanted when it was later revealed that he was gay. First, she explained it away by claiming to have been hacked when the original statement was posted. Then, she claimed that it had never actually happened to her, but rather to another girl who she was protecting.
One full police investigation later, she finally admitted that she had just made the whole thing up because she felt that she needed support from her peers and that this was the easiest way she could get it.
Sources: Reddit,
