Outside of parents, teachers are supposed to be the adults in kids' lives they can look up to and confide in. Teachers are supposed to be role models for the future generations. That's why it's so heartbreaking when some teachers don't actually live up to those expectations and are actually horrible people instead. These students reveal how their teachers made them cry. Content has been edited for clarity.
She Was Punished For Someone Else’s Misbehavior
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“In 3rd grade, I got blamed for talking in line when it was the two kids in front and behind me. We all had to write a letter home to our parents (kinda overblown) and I just cried, partially because I didn’t know what to say. I remember thinking this was an obvious mix-up, especially since I never so much as got called out by an adult for misbehaving, but I just collapsed underneath the towering figures that reprimanded me and couldn’t vocalize my defense.
I did write a letter, trying my best to explain this to my parents, but the teacher grabbed it, read it aloud (ostensibly under her breath but loud enough for the entire class to hear) and said, ‘NO! Try again.’ So, like a torture victim, I didn’t protest. I just sobbed and wrote a false confession about how I was misbehaving and goofing off. Surprisingly, my parents believed me when I broke down again at home, which I guess made it better.
I’m nearly thirty and still sometimes think about my hot, teary, embarrassed face seated on the carpet as the teacher loudly mumbled my original letter to my parents in front of a class when I try to fall asleep…life’s first injustice stings.”
He Called Her A Liar To Her Face
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“In 9th grade, I had this World History teacher, Mr. Wyatt, who had a big issue with spiral bound paper. All I had was spiral bound paper, my parents didn’t have money for loose-leaf paper because we were dirt poor. He made this huge deal about ‘everyone has a DOLLAR for paper’ in front of my class and pretty much called me a liar and I cried. He actually sent me to the in-house detention because I was ‘lying’ and not following his rule about the stupid paper. He did this every day for about a week. A nice office lady asked why I kept going to the office because I seemed like a ‘nice girl,’ so I told her and they gave me a stack of paper, a 3-ring binder and some pencils.”
She Got A Little Dirty During Lunch Time, So The Teacher Assaulted Her
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“My 5th grade PE teacher had a rule that we could not play tag during lunch time because she did not like disheveled-looking prepubescent girls. Being the annoying kids that we were, we completely ignored the rule and played until the bell rang. When she called us to line up, she exploded. She shouted at us to tuck our shirts and wipe our faces. So, I did. She then threw an armchair at me, screaming, ‘Who the heck told you to move!?’ The metal part of the armchair hit my legs and I wailed.
I didn’t want to tell my mom because I was afraid she’d blame it on me, but I could hardly walk because my left leg was swollen. My mom angrily talked to school administration the next day. The teacher got fired but I don’t think my parents pressed charges.”
That Day He Went Too Far
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“I generally showed respect to my teachers because I was stuck in a classroom full of super idiotic kids. I understand the job’s rough, but this teacher was so awful. I made it known I hated him from day one. I called him on bull constantly. I also wasn’t afraid of suspensions or school calling my mom, so he didn’t bother me personally all too much. I was also in his wife’s class, who was a super chill lady. Great teacher.
There was one girl that was his biggest target. It was just her that he would hammer into. Like, he’d pick on all of us, but she was the biggest target. I think her usual silence was a challenge and he wanted to break her.
One day, he went overboard and she started crying.
I excused myself to the bathroom and found his wife and told her we had an emergency in our class. I figured the easiest way to get him to stop, since it’d been going on so long, was to let her see it. She followed me and when we walked in, he was berating this girl.
She looked him dead in the eyes and told him to get his butt to the principal’s office as she’s going down as a witness for his behavior. She called in another teacher to take over. He was moved to another district. His wife was so mad and embarrassed. She even made him write an apology note that she delivered to the girl.
Mad props to his wife for not being biased.”
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
“In the height of the Survivor craze, my grade six teacher decided it’d be fun if students could vote each other out of certain class activities.
She couldn’t grasp why having 12-year-olds scheming together to decide who didn’t get to participate in class activities was a horrible idea.
I was an overweight, high functioning autistic kid with no friends and dealt with so much bullying on a daily basis that I’d attempted suicide once already. Age 12.
I pleaded with her not to go through with it, but she’d already made up her mind. Sure enough, by a near unanimous decision, I was the first kid voted out. Each time she read my name out, the class laughed louder and louder. All I could do was hide my face and sob. To this day, if I hear strangers laughing, I assume it’s at me.
You might think maybe she had some big noble lesson planned, but no. She was just a middle-aged housewife who was addicted to TV and wanted to bring some drama to her useless life.”
She Not Only Bullied Her, She Encouraged Other To Do It, Too
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“My fourth-grade teacher drove me to the edge of suicide.
I still, to this day, don’t understand why she hated me so. I had the best grades in her class and was always the ‘good girl.’ She’d single me out for bullying, and told the other kids it was okay to bully me as well. I got screamed at on a daily basis for being weak. She loved to humiliate me when I did made any mistake on my work or tell me I wouldn’t get anywhere, or that I expected to have things ‘just done’ for me.
This is the same teacher I saw twice slap other students in the face.
The pinnacle came one day when I finally begged her for help in ending the constant harassment and bullying from the other students. She stood me up in front of the class and told me I was worthless, would never amount to anything, and how dare I ask her for help?
She pretty much said the same thing to my parents when they complained. I wasn’t worth anything, so why should she bother?
This was the same short, squat little witch with scoliosis who often broke down in class and cried over her ‘hard childhood.’ She often went off on ‘poor me’ benders.
Fifth grade started in much the same manner. Any hopes I had in making friends were quickly dashed. I couldn’t feel any emotions anymore, and a couple of months into the year, we moved to Idaho from Utah, where I’d lived for a little over a year by that point. If it wasn’t for Mrs. Furniss, and her sharp eyesight (as well as a very caring heart), I probably wouldn’t be here.
I only know it now after looking back, but she went out of her way to make me feel special. All her students loved her, and, as I now know, she had one of those people come in who deal with emotionally troubled students. I didn’t understand why, back then, I had this person come to see me a couple of times a week to spend time with me, talk, and do fun things on the playground and such.
We moved again just before the school year was over, and Mrs. Furniss actually cried and gave me a folder full of stuff to do on the way across the country, and let me pick out a book to read on the trip as well. It’s a book I still have, and the one that introduced me to Laura Ingalls Wilder.
I credit this woman for saving my life. Sadly, when I did manage to locate her again, it was from her obituary as she died in 2014. I really wish I could have reconnected with her.
As for my fourth-grade teacher in Utah…I hope she’s rotting in the devil’s outhouse.”
He Singled Her Out Right Away
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“It was the second semester of first-year law school in my Constitutional Law class. He was a crusty old professor who, at one time, had been the dean of the school. He was creeping up on retirement and taught almost exclusively in the Socratic method.
We picked our seats on the first day of class and sat there for the remainder of the semester. On that fateful first day, he asked a female classmate a question she couldn’t possibly have answered correctly. If you’ve been to law school, you know the type of question. She fumbled for an answer. He asked another question. She fumbled for an answer. He asked another question. She fumbled for an answer. And so on and so on.
Finally, in her frustration, she started crying. He looked at her and asked, ‘What are you, some kind of crackpot?’ which made her cry harder. He moved on to another student and we all thought it was over.
It was not.
Every class after that first one, when he finished grilling a student, he’d turn to her and ask, ‘So whaddya think, crackpot?’ It was a long semester for that poor girl.”
One Missing Text Book Sent Him On A 40 Minute Bike Ride
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“I was sent home to retrieve my textbook even though I lived 40 minutes away by bike. Nevermind that I did my homework, had everything else with me and I could have shared my friend’s textbook. By the time I would be back, the class would already be over. I cried the entire bike ride home because the teacher was so angry at me and I had never caused any trouble before. I cried even harder when my friends told me other people also didn’t bring their textbook but didn’t have to go home to get it. I’m still upset about it, ten years later.”
Halfway Through The Year, Mrs. R Underwent A Change
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“In 1st Grade, I had a teacher, we’ll call her Mrs. R, that became a royal witch halfway through the year. I can remember one time she refused to let me go use the restroom. I obeyed, like a good boy, and waited until I couldn’t handle it anymore. I asked once more and she refused, resulting in me peeing myself in front of the whole class. When she found out what happened, she yelled at me, called me a baby and sent me to the principle. My parents became suspicious and complained to the school board (they had friends on the board). Turns out, Mrs. R was going through a nasty divorce at the time and was taking her anger out on us. I was moved to a different class shortly after and never saw her again.”
He Reflected The Violence She Saw At Home
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“My papers in my binders got disorganized, so I was trying to organize them again. He got mad, picked up my binder, and threw it across the classroom. I was 7. My dad was violent with me too, sometimes, so my male teacher doing this to me at school overwhelmed me.”
She Thought She Was Following Directions Perfectly
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“I was in my 6th-grade math class and the teacher had it out for me for whatever reason.
I was a really good kid. I was quiet and pretty good at math, but I didn’t like it. I did, however, love to draw.
So one day, my math teacher finished the lesson and told us all to work on homework. For context, in my language arts class, we had been given an assignment to illustrate a chapter of the book we were reading.
I was sitting quietly and working on my drawing for my other class, and the teacher came up behind me and asked me why I wasn’t working on homework. I told her about the assignment from my other class, and she started yelling at me in front of my whole class that she meant MATH HOMEWORK and how could a DRAWING POSSIBLY be HOMEWORK ANYWAYS?
Then she tore my drawing in half and I cried.
I went to the bathroom to continue crying. For context, I didn’t have a ton of friends in the 6th grade but all the other kids thought that what the teacher did was so horrible that the other girls followed me into the bathroom to comfort me, which was really nice.
Then my dad went to a parent/teacher conference with her and told her that every kid has ‘that teacher’ and that she would forever be mine. And whaddya know, he was right.”
He Got Time Out For THAT?!
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“I was in first grade. My PE coach really did not like me. She was always putting me in time out for breaking the rules, rules I didn’t even know were rules, like sliding or swinging on your belly or picking up rocks off of the playground.
One day we were playing a game of Telephone in the cafeteria on a rainy day. The girl who whispered in my ear, well…I couldn’t understand her. It just sounded like wet spitting in my ear. I asked her to repeat herself and she did. Wet spitting. At that point, I was scrambling to make something up to pass along, and the coach was loudly pressing me to hurry up and think of something. I guess I thought about it too long, because she snapped at me that I’d ruined the game, and then she put my nose in the corner for the rest of PE time while everyone else played. I just sat there quietly crying, and I wasn’t even allowed to look out the window at the rain because she’d tell me to turn my head back to the wall.”
Not Only Was He In Physical Pain, But He Was Totally Humiliated To Add Insult To Injury
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“In 8th grade, I hurt my neck in gym. Long story short, one of my teammates in soccer decided the back of my head was a better impact point for a soccer ball than the goal I was facing. Thanks, random teammate. Anyways, I had math later that week and we got new seating assignments. Why? Well, mostly because a few troublemakers were seated next to each other originally. Now, this wouldn’t usually be an issue, but the new seat I got put in basically faced straight away from the blackboard (seats were now in clusters of four), so I had to turn all the way around to learn anything. This, of course, was murder on my recently injured neck. Being the nerd I was, I soon approached the teacher, asking if he could swap my seat.
That’s when things went downhill. He asked me why and I told him that it was killing my neck, which I had hurt in gym. For some reason, this set my teacher off. He proceeded to mock me in front of the entire class for a good five minutes, laughing about how ‘poor little baby thinks he deserves a better seat because he was dumb enough to hurt himself in gym!’ Now, I was also a psychologically challenged middle schooler and dealing with extreme social anxiety, so that was a double whammy. Within 45 seconds, I was sobbing at being mocked by a teacher in front of the entire class.
I was in the advanced math class, so there was no other teacher to swap to. The teacher didn’t get fired, or even, as far as I can tell, disciplined. On the bright side, my classmates realized how much of an imbecile the teacher was after that and they made an honest effort to console me, a level of empathy rarely seen in middle school.
The rest of the year was uneventful, aside from me being afraid to ask the teacher for help with anything. Ended up with my lowest grade in a math class until college.”
She Always Thought They Had A Special Connection
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“In freshman year of high school, I had a math teacher who was really great. I struggled with math and she would let me sit in her class during my free periods to study, gave me additional tutoring, and was always so nice to me. She was really young and her classes were pretty rowdy because she didn’t have the courage to dole out punishments, but I was super shy and didn’t contribute to that vibe very much, if at all.
During parent-teacher conferences, she completely FLIPPED on me and told my mother that I was the worst student with an awful attitude and was ruining her classes with my disruptions, etc. etc. My mother believed this at first and ripped into me upon exiting the classroom, and I burst into tears in front of everyone and their parents. My mom started to calm down when she saw how genuinely horrified and hysterical I was, and considering that I’d never been seen to do anything like that before. I ended up calling classmates over who were also very confused and vouched for me, too.
The next day, my mother had an unpleasant meeting with the principal and the teacher and transferred me out of her class. I saw her later that day walking back to her classroom in tears and she never spoke to me again. I think she moved to a different school the next year.
I still have no idea what triggered her complete personality change. It was so bizarre.”
He Had To Use “Her” Technique
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“8th-grade art class. I will never forget the humiliation of this day.
I was in art, doing art stuff, something with charcoal. I think it was a perspective house that I was doing. Anyways, I had my own technique that I liked to do. I didn’t like doing the art teacher’s way, because I didn’t want my hands to get completely covered in charcoal. I knew it was inevitable, but the way I did it helped. My grandma, who is an artist, taught it to me when I was a kid.
The teacher was walking by and saw that I had a tissue under my hand as I was shading, and she took it out from under me. Just took it, didn’t say anything. So I grabbed another tissue, sat back down, and went back to work. The teacher then proceeded to yell at me that I wasn’t doing it ‘the right way.’ I told her that my grandma taught it to me and that she is an artist and that I liked it better this way. She didn’t like that. She proceeded to scream at me in front of the entire class. I started to bawl, I was terrified! I ran out of class and into the bathroom and sat in there for the rest of art and half of my biology class.
She later went to the high school while I was there and was involved in the Drama department, which I did as well. I stayed far away from her and did everything in my power to not speak to her.”
He’d Had A Rough Year, But This Made A Difference
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“It happened to me in my senior year of high school during English.
I’ve struggled with depression for a better part of my life, and my senior year it got extremely bad. I skipped school at least once a week, usually more. My grades all went to crap, despite me always being relatively well off academically. I was going through a lot of different things but didn’t really feel like I was ‘worthy’ of help. My English teacher that year was also my English teacher my sophomore year, so we were already on good terms. He noticed my poor attendance, bad grades, I’m sure the lack of effort in my appearance as well. Some days when I missed school, he’d call me and ask where I was. He left a few voicemails, he was clearly disappointed in me and worried.
The day he made me cry was actually senior skip day. I wasn’t having an awful day so I actually went to school. It was going to be an easy day so I might as well not have the absence on my record. When I got to English, I was the only student there, absolutely none of my classmates showed up. At first, my English teacher started laughing, understandably. Class started and I was studying for our final exam coming up since I would fail the class if I didn’t do well, and it was an AP course.
He came up to me and started talking to me. He said he noticed I haven’t been myself lately and was concerned, and he knew I was a better student than that. We kept talking, about my depression, a recent split from a three-year relationship, my home life, my struggle with substance abuse. He told me I was worth something, that he believed in me. At one point he said he wishes he could’ve adopted me and done more to help. I couldn’t stop crying, I was so overwhelmed. Nobody had ever said things like this to me before, I’d never heard anyone tell me they were proud of me. When I went to walk across the stage at graduation, he was in the front row. He looked at me and gave me a thumbs up, and said something to the effect of, ‘You got this, I’m proud of you.’ I think about that every day. He had more faith in me than anyone ever has and it’s something I’ll never forget.”