Teachers are on the frontlines of education, shaping young people’s minds and helping them become good human beings. The problem is that sometimes, things slip through the cracks, and kids might act in a way that a teacher never could have imagined. They can only stand by and watch the mess unfold.
These horrified teachers are finally opening up about some of the most shocking things their students have ever done. Some of these stories are so troubling that you should probably mentally prepare before reading them.
More info: Reddit
#1
My favorite teacher in high school was a very kind a lenient man. do your work, be respectful, and follow the major school rules and you and him would be cool. the one thing that would seem minor, but that he was very strict about was taking any medication in any way shape or form in his classroom. one day, i needed to take some advil for cramps and asked to take it. he said i needed to go to the nurse for permission. i ended up asking him why he’s so strict on it. it turns out, he had a student pass out in class one day at his former school. he tried to wake her up and called the nurse, but she wouldn’t wake up. they called 911 and by the time they got there, she had [passed away] of an OD’d on [substances] she’s took in the bathroom that she had hidden in a tylenol bottle. i don’t know how he went back to teaching after that.
Image source: musical-nerd24601, Max Fischer
#2
A different type of bad than most of these.
I was a teacher at a poor inner city school.
I had a lot of wonderful students but some difficult ones. One was the worst — clearly bright but was always sleeping through class and acting up and never doing homework.
I lived about 30 mins away. One night, I stopped by the local Wawa after a night out with friends. Was at least 11:30pm and I was already dreading the early morning drive to school. And who should be checking me out but my own “problem” student.
He was working late to make money for his family and then getting home at 1:00 am or later before heading into school on 4-5 hours of sleep.
He was a smart kid. Really smart. I hope things worked out for him but I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if he’d been allowed to have a childhood and focus on his education.
Image source: Low_Cartographer2944, Oktay Köseoğlu
#3
I was teaching for three months in a terrible inner city school in London (UK). Terrible, because the school’s management was super ridiculous and refused protecting or standing up for their teachers. I quit after three months, at the end of the first term – the school begged me to stay and promised me a pay increase. Here are some highlights: 1. A female 15 years old student pulled out a used tampon from her v****a during class, and chucked it on my colleague’s (female) face, telling her to “f*****g shut up” 2. A 16 years old female student spat on my face while calling me “a f*****g poof”. The school’s head teacher put her on detention for an hour as punishment while the student was laughing at me saying “you see? All I got is a free lesson now f**k off”. The school refused to suspend her and let me know that if I call the police to charge her with assault they will support the student and refuse to acknowledge the attack (“to protect the school’s reputation”) 3. A male student smeared his feces on a huge wall in the boys’ toilet, writing “s**t” with it 4. A group of 6-7 students 16-17 years old surrounded a male colleague, pushing him from one to another, took his glasses (very high prescription, rendering him practically blind), breaking them, then beating him and kicking him. The school refused to investigate as he couldn’t identify any of the students (he couldn’t see the faces without his glasses). He quit the school the same day. This place was a nightmare!
Image source: thecontainertokyo, Karolina Kaboompics
#4
Saw a very sweet 16-year-old girl I taught for 5 years being strangled by her boyfriend in the hallway at school.
I was FUMING and he got very aggressive with me yelling in my face that it was “just a joke” and I should “chill”. As a woman, I also felt really intimidated by this teenage boy.
I passed it on to the safeguarding team and I’m not sure how they dealt with it, but I know the girl defended him. He got expelled for something else a few weeks later and she told me that they broke up when he was gone, but I still worry about what kinds of relationships she’s going to have in the future if she thought his behaviour was acceptable. She deserves sooo much better.
Image source: androidfifteen, RDNE Stock project
#5
It’s a three-way tie for me.
Student 1: Steal my class pet, a fish that I really loved. Claim to flush it down the toilet. Another student said they gave it away to a kid on the street in a water bottle.
Student 2: Raise their hand in a fist like they were going to hit me when I was visibly pregnant to see me flinch. They repeated this gesture three times. I wasn’t their teacher. I just asked them to stop banging on random doors and go to class.
Student 3: Put his finger in his throat and forced himself to throw up on my floor. I asked him why he just did that. He said to go to the nurse. Why didn’t he just ask though? Why start with forcing yourself to puke on my classroom carpet?
I quit teaching; the kids and their parents and the admin are raising a generation that isn’t going to understand consequences. We are creating sociopaths. I also grew tired of parents screaming at me for the dumbest reasons (I didn’t allow phones out in my classes; another wanted me to pay for her internet at home). And finally— I was not paid enough yet I was expected to subsidize the education system.
Image source: melodyknows, Engin Akyurt
#6
Stab another student in the back of the head with a pencil.
Went in right at the base of the skull. Luckily it didn’t hit anything important and just needed three stitches. But it was deep enough that it stayed in before the doctors took it out.
Image source: Linusthewise, Edz Norton
#7
Saw a boy stab a girl in the eye with a pencil.
Luckily for her the pencil was blunt and he missed her eyeball and got the bridge of her nose instead.
The boy bullied other boys and girls..as long as they were smaller than him.
I called the principal, the little girl still had the pencil mark on her nose. Boy was taken out of the class…but sadly there were no long term consequences. I think he just got talking to from the principal.
The girl was more surprised than hurt, she did not even cry. But i was horrified.
On another note…I remember Billy. Billy was a good kid, doing well in school. Then his parents decided to make him a “boarder” at the school. Billy’s parents lived so close you could see his house from the school…but he was no longer allowed to go there. He lived in the school now, like the other boarders. But he could still see the home he was no longer allowed to go to…
His behaviour went from good to bad. He stopped doing any work and misbehaved all the time.
I was a teacher but I also lived at the school…(a private school). One day I walked past Billy, who was sitting on a stair and crying while looking at a picture he held in his hands….of his mum and dad.
After a few years he was allowed to be a day boy instead of a boarder, his mum and dad let him go home again. But Billy’s personality had changed…possibly permanently. This was about 15 years ago…
I hope you’re ok now, Billy.
Image source: TheDevilsAdvokaat, Amanda Dalbjörn
#8
My wife is a elementary teacher and has a kid this year that likes to slip under their desk and lick toes (we live in a warm state) and they all think he will grow up to be a creeper.
Image source: CherryManhattan, Khairul Onggon
#9
Sadly, eating out of a bin because they were so hungry. I worked in a very deprived area and this has always stuck with me as one of the worst things I’ve witnessed at school.
Image source: 10642alh, Jas Min
#10
I was talking to a kid about Pokémon one day during their lunch time. I’m the band director and a lot of band kids come to the band room for lunch. We were having a good time. He’s a great tuba player and I tell him I can’t wait to see him tomorrow. He took a rope and hung himself in the last period of the day by kicking a desk out from under him. Luckily the teacher he was with was able to somehow get to him, but I ran down in time hearing the screaming and was in time to see him hanging there as others tried to support him enough to keep him from [passing away]. Kid was gotten down, but that was awful. It’s so hard to tell sometimes even when you’re right there with them right before they try it.
Image source: anon, David McEachan
#11
The was a loud pop and a flash in the back corner of the classroom. I asked the student sitting there what happened. She said it was firecrackers. I sent her to the office. While she was still in the office, I realized the electrical outlets in the room didn’t work. At that point, another student fessed up that the student sent to the office had put a pair of scissors in the outlet. I’m not sure why that student thought it was better to lie and claim she was doing fireworks inside the school?
Image source: mynamelessname, Vanessa Loring
#12
It gets very hot here in the warmer months and so the school put out those big containers for water for everyone. Well one student was caught peeing into a bag and dumping it into the containers.
Adding: student was 11 or 12.
Image source: huzzahserrah, Kha Ruxury
#13
Once caught a child looking up furry [adult film] on a class ipad. That was something.
Image source: SpiderMonkeyfromMars, Julia M Cameron
#14
When I was teaching preschool, I had a little girl, between 3-4, walk up to another girl who was sitting on the rug reading a book, grab her by the hair and slam her head into the wall. They hadn’t been interacting in any way prior. When I asked her why she did it, she said she “wanted her to know it hurts.”.
Image source: No-Doubt-8748, cottonbro studio
#15
About 8 years ago a Student was spraying deodorant in class, teacher asked the student to stop as that she and other students might be asthmatic and to go outside instead, the student paused for a moment then sprayed it directly in her face, teacher had an asthma attack and was taken to hospital, student was given a stern talking to but otherwise had no consequence.
Image source: SerennoTheSith, cottonbro studio
#16
I taught a student who was born addicted to various [substances] and at the age of 17 still had no coping mechanisms, so when he was stressed out he would lean over and fart in your face. The day he graduated I cried buckets.
Image source: growsonwalls, Mikhail Nilov
#17
I taught college English literature and composition for twenty-five years until I retired a few years ago.
I’ve caught students cheating on exams and plagiarizing quite a few times–at least a couple per semester.
During every exam, I had students turn off their phones and place them on their desks face up. I always went around and checked their phones.
During one exam, I had a student say she didn’t have a phone. She was a single mum who had recently immigrated to the country, so it seemed reasonable that she couldn’t afford a phone and it didn’t occur to me that she was lying. She asked to go to the bathroom during the exam and I let her go.
While she was gone, her name popped up on the course site and I could see every resource she looked at while she was out of the classroom for about five minutes.
I let her finish the exam, but wrote to her immediately after and included the record of everything she’d viewed during the exam from her phone (that she apparently didn’t have).
She claimed that she forgot she had her phone (and when she remembered she did have it, she was embarrassed to admit it), that it was in the pocket of her jeans, that she must’ve hit the course site when she was pulling down/pulling up her pants because it was the last thing she’d looked at online.
I said I’m sorry, but I’d have to forward the evidence to the dean. She said she was going to appeal it. I replied that that was fine–it was her right to appeal.
Meanwhile, the dean’s office contacted me to say that this was her third offence.
Because it was her third offence, she automatically failed the course. It was sad because she had high enough grades to pass the course before the exam, so even if she’d failed the exam, she would’ve passed the course.
I think about her often because I admired her so much for restarting her life with a small child in a new country. She would sometimes bring her young son to class if she couldn’t get a babysitter and she was very attentive to him and he was very well behaved and never disrupted the class.
Image source: kindcrow, Andrea Piacquadio
#18
This was the worst thing I know of that happened at my high school.
Someone brought a blasting cap to school (OK, that’s a bit dumb), and flushed it down the toilet (that’s REALLY dumb). Then told a teacher about it, because maybe it wasn’t such a good idea (their best idea that day, really).
Wound up with that restroom being taken out of service while the fire department x-rayed the plumbing to find and remove the (admittedly tiny) explosive. Took several weeks before it was back in service.
Image source: gogstars, dirtyboxface
#19
Early years educator specialising in children with S.E.N. (special educational needs). Eating faeces. No competition. Seeing a child chewing their own s**t is something that stays with you. Having to try and hook it all out of their mouth with your finger whilst they bite you is something you forcibly forget.
Children with complex sensory issues, particularly those with hyposensitivity to smell and taste will often seek out particularly strong smells and tastes and things that we find disgusting are not to them and instead are stimulating. Combined with the delays to their development which means they are still likely to be at the stage of exploration where everything is tested in the mouth this can obviously lead to situations that are very unpleasant to us.
Edited to add clarity and further explanation.
Image source: just_some_a***hole, sklei
#20
Kid threatened to [assault] a teacher.
Image source: shoelesshistorian, Arthur Krijgsman
#21
This morning one of my kiddos used the urinal as a drinking fountain :-).
Image source: BeneficialFig_, Markus Spiske
#22
I remember there being a fight at my high school where one girl rubbed the other girl’s face into the concrete. She had braces and they tore up her mouth. Saw her a few days later with two black eyes and scabs around her lips.
Image source: mom-whitebread, SHVETS production
#23
Saw a 4 year old purposely push a piece of furniture over onto another 4 year old at preschool. It actually really hurt the other kid, and her parents took the school to court.
Image source: MPD1987, RDNE Stock project
#24
Didn’t see them do it, but it was such a catastrophe that I heard about it for weeks.
The countryside Japanese junior high school I used to work at had one really rough year. When the 3rd years were 1st and 2nd, they were angels. As 3rd years, they were absolute demons.
Four male students in particular were stereotypical delinquents. They often just walked out of class and wandered the school, smoked out behind the building, and stole/broke a lot of things. It was so bad they had to schedule staff who weren’t in class to walk the halls to catch them before they did anything.
Well, while the 2nd years were out in the gymnasium for PE, one of the 3rd year delinquents escaped and went up to their classroom which had all their uniforms and gear laid out on their desks. He pulled the pin on the room’s fire extinguisher and sprayed the /entire/ classroom down in pink foam. Everything was ruined.
Image source: junjun_pon, West Midlands Fire Service
#25
My wife has a few this is only one “during class one girl was sitting with her hands in her lap shaped like a bowl, upon further inspection I noticed she was collecting her spit in her hands …said her name, made eye contact, she drinks it and wipes her hands on her shirt. She didn’t make a move to ask to wash hands so I sent her to.”.
Image source: Condition_Boy, Pixabay
#26
Two boys pushed a girl down a flight of stairs.
Image source: meekonesfade, Pixabay
#27
Bring an air rifle to school in his backpack and get arrested outside my door.
Image source: Galena411, Scott Webb
#28
Not the worst, but one I’m comfortable sharing. A student picked their nose and wiped their boogers on another teachers back.
Image source: Zumidude, Daniel Kondrashin
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