Students Share The Most Damaging Thing A Teacher Ever Told A Kid

Some teachers don't always think before they speak to their students...

There’s No Need To Publicly Embarrass Students

1) “We were painting in class. I was about 9 years old. We were painting a fruit bowl. I am colorblind, and I painted my oranges green as to me that was right. A girl in my class told our teacher, who came over looked at my painting, then held my painting up, showing everyone what I had done wrong and all the kids laughed. I went home and as my mom asked what was wrong, my friend told my her what happened in class. My mom went mental. She and my dad wrote an amazing letter. Sent it to the head of the school. The teacher had to make an apology to me in front of the class.”–

2) “When I was about 9 years old, our teacher asked the class what we wanted to be when we grew up. One kid said he wanted to be a garbage man. The teacher went on a rant, saying that jobs like these were for the lowest, most unintelligent people in society and that he should aspire to be better than that. Finally, she asked why he wanted to be a garbage man anyway. ‘Because my dad’s one,’ said the kid, by now in tears.”

3) “I think I was probably in the third grade. There was a teacher who was known in my school for being an absolute witch. When we were working on math, any mistakes on the previous day’s assignments had to be corrected before we could move on to the next assignment. I, of course, was and still am absolutely terrible at math. One day, I had a lot of corrections to do and math was at the end of the day so my teacher kept me after class to finish the work. I was getting increasingly frustrated because every time I went to her desk for her to check over my work it was wrong. I was already stressed out because it was the end of the day and my mom was waiting in the parking lot for me. Her friend came in the room about 10 minutes after the bell rang with me being the only student in the classroom still working, and as she glanced over to me my teacher said in the most condescending tone imaginable, ‘This is the girl who still doesn’t know her multiplication.’ I remember as an 8-year-old feeling so mortified that these two grown women were laughing at my expense and it didn’t stop even when I was silently sobbing.”–

4) “In elementary school, my school did this thing called ‘Reading Across Canada’. So you were supposed to read for 15 minutes each night at home and as your time accumulated you would move across a map of Canada. Sounds decent right? Well, my second-grade teacher took it a little too far: she not only had a wall with a map of Canada and our names but the second wall with pictures and names of students who had not read enough (according to her personal feelings). She straight up called them ‘the wall of fame’ and ‘the wall of shame’. I got many calls home because she felt I wasn’t reading enough. I never moved from the wall of shame at all that year. She never stopped to consider that I actually didn’t know how to read at all. But instead shamed me and others in front of the entire class for a whole year.”–

5) “In junior high, I developed cystic acne, which was ugly and painful. I was very self-conscious of it and did my best to be as inconspicuous as possible because it was embarrassing. One day in class, my teacher stopped her lecture and just asked me out of nowhere what was wrong with my face. This incident completely devastated 12-year-old me and shattered what little confidence I had left in myself.”–

6) “In the first grade, there was one boy in our class, Reggie, who lived in a van. Most of us kids knew about it because a counselor had come around to talk to the class after someone had teased him about not changing his clothes. The counselor did a great job explaining to us that now was the time he needed support and friendship, and so we were all pretty nice to him after that. Then after winter break, we were all sitting around at sharing time talking about what we got for Christmas and Reggie said he got a Super Nintendo. We knew this probably wasn’t true but we went along with it so he wouldn’t feel bad, but the teacher totally called him out on it, saying, ‘You’ve got a Nintendo in your van? Nobody likes a liar Reggie.’ The kid just wilted. It was awful and just the pure lack of compassion she showed has stuck in my memory for 25 years.”

How Could Anyone Be That Cruel

7) “I once had a classmate who was born on leap day. The year we were in kindergarten there was no February 29th, so her parents opted to celebrate her birthday on March 1st. The teacher told the girl’s mother, who showed up with cupcakes and what not, that her daughter didn’t have a birthday that year so she wouldn’t be having a party in class. I remember the little girl crying, and her mom took her and they left. I think she must have transferred schools because we never saw her again. I can’t imagine being so mean to a child…”–

8) “I had a tax teacher in college point out a kid who was wheelchair-bound and had an aide who would take notes for him and say that he wouldn’t get far in life because of his disability. And that was just the way his life would be. The teacher knew this because ‘his mother was also bound to a wheelchair as well’. This made me so angry, sure he’s going to have a tough time but no teacher has the right to tell a student what they can an cannot accomplish in life. That teacher was a jerk, I told our coordinator and wrote it on our end of year evaluations.”–

9) “My third-grade teacher meant well, I think, but she was near retirement and exhausted and just generally kind of up-tight by the time I got to her class. There was one kid who was really sweet but hyper and was known as a little bit of a trouble-maker. One day he gets up to order lunch (this was at a private school and we did this at the beginning of the day, for some reason) but she assumes that he’s just getting up to cause trouble. So she screams at him in front of the whole room, ‘David! You sit down!’ ‘But I’m just trying to order l-‘ ‘No! I’m not gonna tell you again. Sit down. Now.’ ‘But I j-‘ ‘SIT DOWN!’ So the poor kid almost cries, and at lunch that day he’s hungry and pouting. She gets him a sandwich from the teacher’s lounge but then says, ‘It is not my fault you didn’t order lunch.’ I don’t think she realized what she did, but it was still pretty rude. Then there was this other thing that happened, to me this time. In elementary school, they’d pick two kids to go return all the library books. We had been doing some kind of arts and crafts assignment where we traced our hands – I guess we were doing Thanksgiving turkeys – right before I left. When I got back to the room from the library, she was holding my art up in front of the whole laughing class and mocking it because it looked a little too round to be realistic. When I sat down, she put it back on my desk and just said, ‘It looks like Casper the ghost drew that,’ and walked away.”–

10) “My father died in a horrific accident when I was 9 years old. I returned to school a few days later and after attendance was taken the teacher said to me in front of the class: ‘The class got together and sent flowers to your father’s funeral, I paid your share so make sure you bring in $2 tomorrow as I need to be paid back.’ She continued on with the lessons. I asked to see the school nurse and was sent home. Once I made it home I told my mother. I never saw the teacher again. I don’t know how my mother handled it.”–

11) “Not even six months after my mom died, a teacher made my class write an essay about our home life (which in retrospect was a messed up excuse to snoop into my situation) and didn’t like how I used humor to cope. She pulled me out of the class to yell at me for five minutes for not being sad enough. I don’t even remember what I wrote besides cracking some jokes about my dad’s outfits.”–

12) “One of my best friends has a troubled past and some severe issues mentally. You would never know unless you knew her, as she comes off as carefree and mostly happy. The school knows about the stuff that happened. One day, her anthropology teacher yelled at her one day saying, ‘I don’t care if you have some mental issues, that’s no excuse for being lazy. I will fail you,’ along with some other less than tasteful things. This was enough to send my friend down a pretty dark path. Unfortunately, she’s in a situation where she has a hard time being able to tell people in authority about things like this.”

The Constant Put-Downs

13) “My theatre teacher in high school told me I was too fat to act unless I played the fat idiot sidekick, would never be in a musical, and that I wouldn’t make it in the world of theatre. About a year later her husband cast me in a musical and one other show because he really liked me. All of her comments for the four years I was in high school really screwed me up and made me rethink wanting to do theatre which is one of my only passions. I’m glad I stuck with it and continued on through my senior year even though she was still awful to me.”–

14) “When I was in third grade, I missed two weeks of school due to a horrible case of chickenpox and fell behind with whatever it was that we were working on. A month after I came back to school, I was still struggling with math, but was too young and scared to ask for help. We had a test that I failed. So, Mrs. Nudell (my math teacher) brought me to the front of the classroom and shamed me. She told the entire classroom that I will ‘never succeed in math.’ I ended up crying and going to the nurse with a ‘stomach ache.’ I’ll never forget how awful she was to me and I struggled with math for the rest of the time that I was in school.”–

15) “We had this obnoxious kid in our AP Composition class. He was failing and would disrupt class for attention. One day our teacher had apparently had enough and told the kid: ‘You should probably just start using now. That’s where your life’s heading anyway and maybe it would get you to shut up for once.’ Then the teacher just continued on with the class. As far as I know, the teacher never got in trouble.”–

16) “I was once in a class where a teacher referred to a student who was holding his hand up to answer a question as ‘Tom’s slightly uglier friend.’ The whole class laughed at this kid and he just looked so taken aback and hurt. The teacher should have been fired for that. This was in the seventh grade, the first year of high school in the UK, so the kid was 11 years old at the time. I was that kid.”–

17) “When I was in high school, my calculus teacher announced that if you weren’t paying to take the AP Calculus test, he wasn’t going to bother to teach you. He didn’t have time to spend on ‘idiots’ who were just wasting his time. Well, I couldn’t afford the exam because I was already paying for the AP English and AP Chemistry exams, and each exam cost $75. Since he flat out refused to answer any of our questions, my friends and I played cards all semester while he belittled us and told us girls that we should only plan on being housewives. The school wouldn’t do anything because he had tenure. You should have seen his face when I graduated fifth in my class even with the bad grade he gave me. It was even better when two of my other card-playing buddies took the AP Calculus exam (they came up with the money at the last minute) and scored the two highest scores in the class, even though he refused to teach us.”–

18) “A teacher was having a go at a girl for wearing makeup at school. As we walked past, we heard the teacher shout in the girl’s face, ‘What do you mean you’re not wearing makeup? You look like a bloody clown!'”

When The Teacher Completely Gives Up On Their Students

19) “‘You are all here because your families can’t afford private school.’ A high school English teacher said that to the entire class. We were in public school. This was an Honors English class, in what was an ‘okay’ high school at the time. There was no reason for her to bring up the financial background of anyone. Period. You don’t shame students for their lot in life.”–

20) “During ninth grade, I had a math teacher that I hated. I had a 96 percent in her class because I’ve always excelled at math. She always singled me out and made me answer questions/etc during class, even though I’m fairly reserved and told her that. A few days before our final, she gives us a review packet. And having a 96%, I looked over everything and saw I knew everything, little to no studying needed. I pulled out a book, trying to be respectful while also catching up on late reading. Without asking me, she wrote me up. She made a huge scene of it, telling the class that I was going to fail in math because I could never pay attention. I was pulled in to the vice principal’s office in the middle of the day and we just laughed about it. It still ticks me off thinking about it.”–

21) “Earlier this year, my Chemistry teacher told our class: ‘Congratulations. You’re a forest of idiots. I honestly don’t understand how any of you are still my class. Just drop and take Agricultural Chemistry or Physics, like the morons you are.’ She single-handedly insulted the entire junior class in five seconds. She is, without a doubt, the worst person I’ve ever had to deal with. And somehow still isn’t fired.”–

22) “When I was in elementary school, I got confused at lunchtime and threw my food out early and wandered outside for recess (alone). Realizing my mistake and having no idea what to do, I went back inside and told a lunch lady and asked what I should do. She dragged me by the arm to the center of the lunchroom with a live mic and told all the students about my mistake and how no one should do what I did because it was a bad bad thing. She told everyone I was going to get expelled. I was sobbing at that point. I kept asking her what expelled meant but she didn’t answer me. All I knew was that it was a bad thing.”–

23) “My high school government teacher told me I was faking an autoimmune illness and that I’d never make it anywhere with my laziness. She was trash. I was not faking it, I even had medical documentation to back me up. I am now nearly finished with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and I am headed to medical school next year, after surgery.”–

24) “In high school, we were watching a movie in Spanish class. I laid my head down on my desk with my arms stretched out and during the movie, I somehow knocked my open water bottle onto my lap. I was horrified because it was high school and lunch was about to start. I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but I do remember my teacher yelling that I did it on purpose for attention. I remember not knowing what to say. Like why? Why would I do this on purpose? Who knows what I actually said. It was weird, I had always got along with that teacher until then.”–

25) “I once had a Chemistry teacher that got annoyed easily with my class and one day specifically said, ‘Alright, screw this, you’re all going to fail this exam.’ People in my class would never shut up and it was the last week of school so he was just done with us.”

False Accusations And Claims

26) “In high school, there was a subject I really really liked. It was called ‘Informatics 2,’ but it was mostly basics of graphic design and creative digital stuff in general. I was really inspired for a project we had to do and really excelled in it (made a green-screen at home, did some advanced video editing, it was through the roof). The professor, Mr. V, who was in charge on that subject, loved it. He gave me an A+ on the project and showed it to other groups of students. I was later told he would show the video presentation to future students as an example of a well-done project. The other professor, Ms. M, who taught the same subject (but not to my group) met me a few days later in the hall and told me: ‘I saw what you did for professor V’s class. Congratulations, it’s very good, but you shouldn’t have done it.’ Why? ‘You’ve raised the bar for everyone else, so somebody who would have gotten an A+ could now get a B or less.’ I actually took it as it is and it kinda messed me up for a while. Wish I could go back in time and tell her to screw off. I’m not in charge of grading and I’ve got the right to excel as much as I want.”–

27) “‘I don’t care if you fail. I still get paid.’ I want to clarify that he’s actually a very good teacher and his classes are usually very engaging. He’s also very good at getting the lazy students to participate, but sometimes he can say very cruel things and is very lucky that none of us have reported him.”–

28) “I have a heart condition which gives me very low stamina. It was always very embarrassing because I am 6 foot 2 inches tall (I grew about 10 inches in one year in middle school) and uncoordinated (especially since I grew so fast so quickly but also because I couldn’t really practice sports because my stamina was so bad). Well, seventh grade was the worst of it. I had recently gone through the growth spurt, had the heart condition, and also a huge ingrown toenail that would later need a minor operation to correct. I was in gym class and the coach had us all running laps. I’ll never forget when he said very loudly, publicly, and condescendingly, ‘We’ll get you into shape soon enough.’ The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t in shape or that I was lazy. The problem was that I had a heart condition but was too embarrassed to even bring him aside and mention it to him. Looking back, I always felt like he could have known something wasn’t right and asked me about it. This is also the same gym teacher who would have kickball team captains pick players until there weren’t any players left. I was always one of the last. I couldn’t believe I was having to be subjected to that. If it was now I think I would have gotten a waiver out of gym class. I mean people literally drop dead from playing sports with my same heart condition.”–

29) “I had been working on my homework for the next period in my art class while the art teacher was going over the plan for the day, which really rustled her jimmies. After she finished she pulled me out of class and our conversation went something like this: Her: ‘Do you think you’re better than everyone else?’ (Super condescending tone) Me: (So taken aback I could barely respond) ‘Um I was just finishing up my German homework for next period.’ Her: ‘You must think you’re better than everyone else if your other homework is more important than class.’ Me: ‘I can listen and write at the same time. We hadn’t even started anything yet.’ Her: ‘No you can’t!’ Me: ‘Look, I’m sorry I was working on something else, but I heard you.’ Her: (Some other completely dismissive stuff). At that point, I realized there was no reality to this woman other than hers and went along with it. She ended up ruining high school art classes for me. Her criticism was more condescending than constructive, and she would eschew my creative ideas and push hers instead. I wouldn’t take another art class until college.”–

30) “My brother is basically a musical genius, he is capable of playing more than 30 instruments and only took lessons for piano and bass guitar. When he was a freshman, he took some band class and picked the tuba to play. He taught himself how to play and practiced for hours. He told the teacher he wanted to pick another instrument to learn. When she asked why he said it was his goal to learn how to play every instrument. She told him he would never be able to learn to play all the instruments, it was a ridiculous goal, and he should pick one instrument and stick with it. My brother was so crushed but decided to continue learning to play as many instruments as he could get his hands on. The next year, the teacher desperately needed someone to play baritone horn, and guess who she asked to learn to play it?”

31) “When I was in the eighth grade my class had a new teacher. I don’t remember her name but we called her ‘Drawer-Woman’ because whenever she talked, her jaw did this motion that resembled of a drawer opening and closing. I was always a good student and never made trouble in her class, but there was just something I didn’t like about that woman. Somewhere around the middle of the school year, I started wearing contact lenses for the first time and my doctor told me to carry these special drops with me in case my eyes ever got dry. One time, during her class, my eyes got really dry and I asked her if I could go to the restroom to put the drops in my eyes. She put on this ticked off face, said I was lying because she was a medical professional and she knew that I didn’t need them. She then took my eye drops and only gave them back to me after that class. A few weeks after that, I was late for school so I wasn’t very careful when putting on my contacts that morning. On my way to school, I could feel some kind of a pain in my left eye. While I was in her class I noticed I couldn’t see well in my left eye and then it hit me – the lens strayed away and got stuck on the side of my eye. I couldn’t get the lens out so I started panicking and crying. I asked her if I could go home and she started yelling at me: ‘Fine! Get out of my class!’ That was the first time someone threw me out of their class. Screw that horrible woman! If I never see her again, it will be too soon.”–

32) “When I was in high school, we used to get a lot of teachers in training from the local college. They would come in and shadow a teacher. We had one of these student teachers in my history class. Normally, they always teach when the original teacher is present, but one day our history teacher was sick. They let this the teacher in training teach the class solo instead of finding a substitute. Now, this guy was young. In his early to mid-20’s. He was clearly trying to show off to the class a bit and wanted our approval. We played along and started asking him a ton of questions. So many that eventually, they got very personal. Someone asks if he has ever taken any illicit substances. He thinks for a slight moment then reveals that he had. He then tells our class about his experiences and ends it with, ‘I would encourage everyone to try it at least once.’ I believe he ended up getting a job at the school later on.”