Teaching is one of the hardest professions there is. All day, every day, you're trying to keep dozens of kids in line and to get them to learn something useful at the same time.
Is it any surprise that occasionally, a teacher shows their human side and crosses a line in the classroom? These teachers all did just that. For a moment, they did something unprofessional that they might have regretted.
(Content edited for clarity).
Just When They Were About To Give Up Hope
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“I once told a group of high school kids that if they stopped coming to class I would pass them. These kids, about 5 of them, did nothing all year and made teaching this class impossible. They would play music and have conversations throughout the whole class period. Calls home, referrals to the dean, failing grades did nothing to change their behavior. It was about 2 weeks before they took me up on my offer and they missed the last 5 weeks of class. I still failed those jerks.”
Rubbing It In
“Had a kid steal my pen once. Kids at my grade level don’t use pens yet, and the pen was the exact same brand, style, and color that I always use (I teach in a small school and no other teacher uses that exact pen). Kid said that he ‘found it in the hallway.’ Little prick knew that I couldn’t prove that he stole it, so I just ignored him and went on with the lesson. Fast forward 10-15 minutes and I hear a shout from him. He had been chewing on the pen and it leaked all into his mouth. He then tries to wipe it out using his (brand new) shirt. Shirt gets completely ruined. I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. His sister is a year younger than him and couldn’t wait to tell me the next day that the boy got his rear end tore up for ruining his new shirt. For the next month or so, whenever he didn’t have a pencil I would offer to let him use one of my pens. He never took me up on the offer.”
The Wrestler In Him Comes To The Fore
“I was a young teacher at the time this incident happened. It was a Friday afternoon and I was doing reading outside with my class. While we were quietly reading away, this kid – a huge brute and a known bully in the school – came up behind me and flicked my ear pretty hard. I let it slide.
Then about a minute later he did it again and I just lost it. I sprang up, seeing red as he scampered off, clearly thinking it was a game. I followed him as other helpful students pointed me in the right direction.
I found him hiding out in the boys’ bathroom. He was still cackling. As I entered, he tried to sidestep me and escape, but I caught him perfectly by his shirt front and power-slammed him into the ground – certainly not hard enough to injure him, but definitely enough to scare the life out of him. He was squealing like a pig. I think seeing him lying there mewling brought me back to my senses (luckily, because I think I’d intended on really overstepping the mark). I didn’t say another word… just stood over him menacingly, then left.
Afterward, I freaked out at my actions because I’m usually a very passive person, but that day I’d just had enough. I was super paranoid for a while that the kid’s dad – also a thug – was going to come and want to have it out. He never did. I left the school and teaching soon after (for a while at least) because I felt I couldn’t be trusted around kids.
I’ve now been a teacher for almost 15 years. I’ve never done anything comparable. But in retrospect, that little so-and-so had it coming and I don’t regret going WWE on him at all.”
Playing The Cards You Got
“I had a piece of crap student that made fun of the disabled kid in class, stole from people, and just generally made the school experience harder for all her classmates. Her parents didn’t help, the principal got sick of her, and it was elementary school so there wasn’t much else available.
So I gave her the broken candy cane for the Christmas cards our class makes every year. And the lopsided Valentine cookie. And the squished milk carton for our marigold project.
All year. She always got the crumpled, broken, worst option.
Petty, unprofessional, but boy did it feel good at the time.”
She Gave Up On Art
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“I was the student. I went to a weird art program that was in a block of buildings on the campus of a regular public high school for my first semester of ninth grade. I had a drawing teacher that made my life a living nightmare.
Class started at 6:30 AM and every day were spent with him laying into me. My friends who were also in the program, as well as the life drawing teacher, noticed that he was unusually hard on me but nothing was ever done. He’d tell me my work was garbage. Any compliments about my work were backhanded. He’d raise his voice. He’d tell me that I should quit. So I did. It drove 13-year-old me to give up art.
Fast forward to the end of senior year and I’m a student at the regular ol’ public high school the art program was at. I get a message in my homeroom that I need to go to the Art Academy block by that drawing teacher. He took me into his office, sat me down, and started crying.
‘I’m so sorry. My wife and I, we had a baby to save the marriage. Between the baby and the early morning class time, I was so tired and angry and I took it out on you. I don’t know why it was you, but it was.’
I just kinda said ‘What’s done is done’ and went back to class but, man, that was by FAR the most unprofessional thing I’d ever encountered. If I were vindictive, I would have gone to the principal or something, but I didn’t. Instead, I just gave up on art.”
The Ultimate Comeback
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“When I was growing up in a rough neighborhood, we had this one teacher who was friendly when he wanted to be and a tank when he wanted to be. My school had a lot of fights often, but if he was around you didn’t fight.
One kid though was a little jerk though. He was constantly causing problems in class, and thinking back to it, if he wasn’t in the class everyone could’ve gotten an ‘A’ guaranteed because half the lessons were stopped to deal with this kid’s problems.
Send him to the office? He’ll just say ‘No’ and cross his arms smiling thinking he was untouchable.
2nd year of high school. He was in my math class with the brutal teacher. He tried pulling the same crap there. Teacher flipped out, opened the door and told him to get his scrawny butt to the office or he’ll drag him there himself.
Kid just kinda froze up saying ‘I’ll tell my mom.’
Teacher just shouts in his face ‘I’m nailing your mom!’
The kid walked away.
Turns out yeah, the teacher was nailing his mom because they are now married.
Also, the kid is in jail for forcing himself on a girl and running over his own kid with his car.”
Turning A “Blind” Eye
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“There was this one kid I had to have switched out of my class. He was high functioning autistic but would pretend to be lower functioning in the social department for sympathy. My school is an ESE/autism choice school which means like half of our classes are ESE classes, but because of this, the students were used to interacting with kids with disabilities or were on the spectrum and usually didn’t bully them unless they were straight up jerks.
You see where this is going.
One of the girls this year was trying to be super inclusive to this kid and I’ll straight up say it, she’s one of my favorite students, she’s very mature for a fifth grader and she’s just great. Anyway, apparently this boy began making ‘suggestions’ to her about stuff. Mostly harmless at first (will you be my girlfriend, can I hold your hand, etc), but she wasn’t comfortable with any of that and she told him no to everything.
Every time she’d tell him no, he’d escalate till he was stalking her. I had a full blown stalker for two years before, and I did not put up with this AT ALL. I documented and reported every incident of him continually harassing her. My supervisor was having a hard time transferring him since his mom demanded he be in a typical class even though he’s on the spectrum enough he needs to be in one of the ESE classes.
While his transfer was pending, I let the friends of the girl begin bullying him. I don’t regret it, the poor girl had put up with 6 months of this bull cause of school politics. It took two more additional months to get him transferred, he was relentlessly bullied by the other kids and kept away from his crush the entire time.”
Punishing An Awful Parent
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“I once caught a student turning in essays I knew her mother was writing… and then her mother blatantly plagiarized an essay.
As an opportunity to make up the assignment for a 50% grade, the student (ie mother) had to write a 10-page essay with 15 academic sources (the original was a 3-page essay with 3 sources). I knew the mother would slave-away at the thing, and she did.
I can’t stand parents like her.”
Don’t Attack The Teachers
“I punched a student in the neck. Hear me out.
I’m not a ‘traditional’ teacher, but a self-defense instructor and was running a class on defense vs knives. One thing you have to accept is if you are in a knife, you almost 100% will be cut.
Anyway, the drill was this: each student paired up with a partner and had to parry/block the knife wielder for 2 minutes. I jokingly said, ‘Anyone who makes it 2 minutes gets to teach the next class!’
I’ve got about 18 students. The drill goes on, and at the end, I ask if anyone didn’t get cut at all. One guy (maybe 18-19), who was a kind of ‘problem student’ raises his hand. This is a kid who always questions everything. Nice enough, but kind of a jerk.
Now, his partner for the drill was an older guy, slower, and this kid was in good shape, so I could see where he might have been fast enough.
‘Okay,’ I tell him, taking a rubber knife, ‘Let’s see.’ When he is ready, I come at him, and it takes all of 3 seconds before I slashed him across the midsection.
This is fine. I hand him back the knife and say something like, ‘Not bad, but have your partner speed it up next time.’
I turned around and heard him say, ‘I bet you can’t do better.’
I turned back and he rushed me. Definitely DO NOT ATTACK your instructor. It’s pretty disrespectful.
He lunged at me full force. Rubber or not, these weapons are pretty solid and can hurt. I blocked, and on pure instinct, full force punched him in the neck. He dropped, coughing.
Now, since they weren’t actively working, my entire class saw this. I felt terrible, but most of my students started clapping.
I helped him up, and whispered: ‘Don’t EVER pull that kind of thing again.’ He nodded and at least seemed embarrassed.
Never had another problem with him. A good kid just was out of line.”
It’s Never Too Early To Start
“I teach kindergarten and had two kids who refused to write and kept making up silly and different excuses for it. These two kids are well known for this behavior too. Well after writing, I decided that I could schedule in 20 minutes of free play with toys, play dough, whatever their little hearts desired. Except, of course, those two kids.
I repeat all of their excuses and said they can’t play because of ‘insert problem,’ so they should just put their heads down for 20 minutes instead.
Another time, I go to pick my Kindergarteners up from their music class and see 5 of them just laying on the ground while the rest of the class was participating. Music teacher tells me that they just decided they didn’t want to do anything that day and didn’t care about any consequences, which I’ve definitely experienced with these students also. I walked the class back to our classroom, then took a chair and a sticker treasure box to the front of the room.
I called up students by name and gave them a sticker for ‘acting like big kids during music and not baby preschoolers who needed a nap.’ One by one I called up every student except those 5. I didn’t mention them by name, but you can bet they got the message. Took a decent 10 minutes of class time, but that was the last complaint I got from the music teacher.”
Enough Is Enough
“I had been attending this journalism class and it was held in a lecture hall.
This teacher was an absolute immature nightmare and would spend the first thirty minutes on a diatribe about the immature students and their lack of turning in homework, arriving late, yada yada yada.
After sitting through this for about a month I’d had my fill.
On this day there was this kid who rode public transportation (which is very unpredictable) and he arrived 5 minutes late (it was a test day. If you missed it you were in trouble because it made up 50% of your grade in that class).
This lecture hall had two doors to enter through, across the room from each other.
This kid arrived and went to the door most of us enter through but she had locked it. He saw us looking at him and kept asking for someone to let him in, the teacher was ignoring him while on her rant.
Someone motioned to him to go to the other door which wasn’t locked and she caught the hand signals and, I kid you not…RAN to the other door and locked it just as he arrived at it.
He kept asking her to let him in while apologizing for being late and she stood there yelling at him through the small lecture door window about how she was sick to death of people not respecting her classroom…
She then turns around and ignores him while she yells…literally YELLS at the rest of us for other classes and their disrespect towards her, and she went to the chalkboard and started grabbing erasers and throwing them at random people she was yelling at for past infractions.
Most of these were 18-year-olds and I was a graduate taking an additional course…so the class sat there silent afraid to move.
I’d had enough and thought to myself – This is ridiculous. I’m a married mother and I’m not going to sit through this anymore. These poor kids are terrified!
By now she had her back to us still screaming and scrawling on the board stuff she felt she’d been disrespected about in huge letters.
So I took my heaviest textbook and with all my force slammed it as hard as I could on my desk and stood up simultaneously yelling ‘ENOUGH!! STOP IT!!’
She (and the entire lecture hall) jumped a mile high startled.
She spun around almost possessed-like with her anger to see who had had the gall to challenge her and was shocked to see me.
I continued ‘ENOUGH! THESE ARE KIDS BUT I’M AN ADULT AND I’LL BE DARNED IF YOU’RE GOING TO WASTE MY MONEY SCREAMING AND YELLING ABOUT HOW IMMATURE THEY ARE WHEN YOU’RE BEHAVING WORSE!! ENOUGH. STOP IT OR I’LL REPORT YOU!’
She grew very quiet and then said ‘You’re right. You’re absolutely right and I apologize to you for including you in my tantrum.’
I sat down and shook my head in a nod of acknowledgment and the class proceeded as normal.
Afterward, all the kids came up to me to thank me for sticking up for them and I told them they never have to accept bad behavior from anyone least of all someone their money is paying for.”
Deflecting Blame Onto A Student Stinks
“I farted and blamed it on a student.
I had my 10th graders’ desks in a large semicircle and as I was walking around on one side of it, one slipped out silently. Silent but toxic. Like a crop duster on their desks.
I could feel them stirring behind my back, hands waving in front of their faces, simultaneously offended and shocked.
To ensure her status as blame-free, one classy young lady said under her choking breath, ‘Ew, Miss P faaaaarted!’ Loudly enough for an entire half of the semicircle to hear.
My knee-jerk was to casually shrug with a cool ‘whoever smelt it dealt it,’ but she wasn’t having it. She was insistent that I was the farter: ‘Just admit it, Miss P.’
Turning it back on her clearly wasn’t working; she was insistent and convincing, and this was a power struggle I was losing quickly. Near the end of the semicircle was a quiet boy with a big attitude; I had lost his buy-in early in the semester and his constant disdain for my existence bothered me.
So I said, ‘it was probably X at the end there’ and went back to the lesson. The other students immediately looked down the semicircle at him, and it made sense to them. ‘Oooohhh, yeah.’ ‘It WAS him.’ When he tried to protest I shut him down for speaking out of turn.
Yeah, petty and immature. I know.”
“He Is The Only Child I Have Even Remotely Come Close To Hating”
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“Kid was/is a sociopath. Would purposefully do things to hurt other kids emotionally. Lied constantly, including to his mother in front of my face and when called out on it, the mom laughed. She always defends his crappiness. Kid even accused my amazingly patient, super sweet friend of slamming him against a wall the year she had him. Anyway, in 17 years of teaching, he is the only child I have even remotely come close to hating. After several months of his awfulness, I started waiting for days he was absent to do extra special lessons and activities that were extremely fun, just so he’d miss out on them. Then when he came in the next day, I’d have the kids write in their journals what they learned about and what they enjoyed about the activity just so he would know he missed it.”
When Just Desserts Are Served By Your Husband
“My husband was helping to chaperone a field trip to the zoo with 1st graders since no parents signed up. We were having a bathroom break, and I was still with the girls and the boys were waiting at the tables outside with my husband. One of the boys saw my husband’s phone and demanded it from him. This is how the conversation went.
Boy: ‘Gimme your phone.’
Husband: ‘No.’
Repeat this three times.
Boy: ‘Why can’t I see your phone?’
Husband: ‘Because it doesn’t belong to you.’
Boy: ‘My dad says if someone doesn’t give me something, I should snatch it from them.’
Husband: ‘Your dad is an idiot.’
At first, I was worried because I’m the teacher, but part of me was like ‘YEEEEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!’
The boy was a brat to the max, mean to other kids, cry when they would react meanly back, and thought he was better than others and did not ever understand the consequences of his actions. He thought everyone was being unfair to him. He was older, bigger and dressed cool so a few kids looked up to him and he was even mean to them. Of course, it is not all his fault, even if he did something blatantly in front of me. Facebook stalking his mother proved to be more than interesting.”
Quick Thinking Turned The Moment Into A Lesson
“I quit teaching high school a few years ago.
One year I had a ‘pain in the neck’ girl in my class who was an evil bully. One day she had really gotten to me and close to the end of the class, I overheard her tell another kid to get the eff out of the classroom.
Without thinking I turned around and said ‘why don’t you get the eff out’ while pointing at the door. Her mouth drops open, the class goes silent and she gets up and she walks out. I start to freak out at this point because I never cuss at my students and don’t want it getting back to the principal so I quickly walked into the hall and turned it into a learning experience for her.
‘Did you appreciate me saying that to you?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Do you think other students appreciate it when you say it to them?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Go back inside the classroom and sit down, I never want to hear you say that again’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
One more: a student was irritated because they couldn’t have a hall pass at the moment to go to the restroom. She complained that our high school was like jail.
My quick response: ‘Sweetheart, this is nothing like jail!!! In jail, you can eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom whenever you want!’ She didn’t appreciate that but the rest of the class enjoyed it.”
They Did Not Kiss And Make Up
“My junior year of HS, I got the science teacher that all the students hated.
She had strict rules about food and drinks in her class, as well as talking/behavior rules.
She allowed drinks and food to be in the classroom, but the food had to be kept sealed and in your bag, and drinks you had to be consumed outside the classroom.
She also had a similar rule to the food about makeup. You were not allowed to put makeup or even chapstick on in class.
This all seems a bit crazy, but she was a chemistry/biology teacher- basic chemistry, higher level biology.
We worked with chemicals, molds, bacteria… the classroom tables were fully equipped lab stations that students did dissections on, and she didn’t allow anyone to mess around and endanger themselves in ANY way.
So when this popular blond girl pulled her makeup out one day and sat there putting powder on her face (after having been warned about it in the past), I watched as this teacher waited for her to get powder on half her face, and then she stalked over, snatched the makeup thing up, and chucked it, hard, into the trash. Totally destroyed it.
Girl pitched a royal fit, saying it was expensive, and the teacher just informed her calmly that it had been contaminated by opening it up in class, and for her own safety it had to be disposed of.
The girl kept complaining and disrupting, so she was sent her out and she got detention.
That ended up being my favorite teacher. I passed with a 98.6 in her class, one of the highest she had given out in I think 4 or 5 years.
She took no nonsense from students in her class, and it resulted in a quiet, focused classroom, where I was actually able to concentrate!”