1. Storytime Suspension
When my little brother was in junior high, he wrote an incredible short story about the end of the world. In the end, a huge device explodes and ends most of the life on earth.
The school tried suspending him. His teacher read the story and claimed he was at risk of blowing up the school and that he needed psychological help if he was writing about the whole world ending.
My mother was outraged. She refused to sign any suspension paperwork. They told her my brother was still suspended, so he wasn’t allowed on school grounds for three days. My mother took my brother to each one of his classes for those three days.
2. Lock Her Up!
Once, in the seventh grade, two popular girls locked a teacher who everyone hated out of the classroom. She stormed in and demanded to know who locked the door; no one said anything. She then singled me out—she hated me—and said that I would get a week’s worth of detention for this because I hadn’t ratted out the girls who locked the door.
I protested because the rest of the class hadn’t said anything either, and I didn’t lock the door.
She then took me into the hall and said one of the most hurtful things I’ve ever heard. She told me no one liked me, no one would ever like me, and that I would never have real friends.
This was all true, but hearing her say it was like a punch in the gut. I just stood there and cried.
3. My Mom Broke Him Down
When my brother was in middle school, some kid slammed him up against some lockers and broke his arm.
The principal refused to believe it was broken, but finally, near the end of the day, he called my mother. Before she had gotten there, the principal told my brother he was worthless and would never amount to anything.
When my mother got there and found out what he’d said, she absolutely LOST it. She stormed into the office in a rage, yelling, “Who told my son he was worthless??? Who”? From then on, that principal was the nicest guy I had ever dealt with.
4. All Or Nothing
I have always been a voracious reader. When I was in elementary school, they had a series of books that you had to read and then do the answer sheet with those cool invisible pens.
We were encouraged to go at our own pace and turn them in as we finished. I thought they were interesting and fun, so I started on them right away. I also thought they were easy.
There were a total of 25 books in the series. I was on number 22 about halfway through the first term before Christmas break. The teacher pulled me aside and said I was doing them too quickly and that I had to wait for the rest of the class to catch up.
So while the other kids read their books, I had to sit at my desk for an hour or two each day and do nothing.
I was not allowed to read, do homework, or do anything.
The rest of the class never did catch up, and I finished the entire school year at the same place they stopped me.
5. Apologize For What?
I was in sixth grade, and it was the day after 9/11.
Right before English class started, a bunch of students were harassing me and asking if I was happy about what my people—I’m Lebanese—had done. Considering my parents left the Middle East to get away from stuff like this and how I was just as upset as anyone else after what had happened, I ran out of the room near tears.
The teacher followed me out and sat down next to me. I thought she was about to console me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, she yelled at me, said I overreacted, and my storming out was unacceptable.
She made me go inside and apologize to everyone, including the students who were yelling at me. It was the most embarrassing and degrading moment of my life.
6. My Teacher Was A Dope
When I was in seventh grade, I started developing horrible seasonal allergies.
One day, I went to the bathroom and spent five minutes draining my head of snot. This must have made my nose look red. When I came back, the teacher took me out into the hall and accused me of snorting dope in the bathroom.
I couldn’t believe it. I was in seventh grade.
Seriously, I had never even had a drink, let alone snorted anything, and I still haven’t. I ended up telling my guidance counselor that it was nonsense, and clearly this guy had a distorted view of me.
I got an A for the rest of the year in that class.
7. Santa Went Psycho
I was in high school, and it was right before winter vacation. We had this one history teacher who was really hard on all of us, so everyone hated him.
One of the last days before break, he came to school wearing a Santa outfit to accompany a lecture he did on the history behind Santa Claus. Some kid was acting like a fool in class that day, being disruptive.
As the teacher was up walking around the class doing his lecture, the kid stood up behind him, and something set the teacher off. His reaction was disturbing. The teacher turned around and put the kid in like an arm-bar headlock combo and proceeded to push him into a wall and then slam him onto a desk.
The entire time he was doing it—in his Santa costume—he was yelling, “Are you OK? Are you OK”?
He seemed genuinely concerned for the kid’s safety while still actively subduing him. I know that at different points in the teacher’s life, he had been in the service and law enforcement, so maybe it was just a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat behind him; I don’t really know.
This teacher wasn’t a small dude either.
It was honestly one of the most bizarre, frightening, and unsettling things I had seen in my life up to that point. No one really said anything after, and although the incident was reported to the administration, I don’t think any disciplinary action was taken as he had been planning on retiring and it was his last week at the school.
8. She Couldn’t Handle The Truth
In first grade, the teacher asked us to write a story about what we did that day. Being six years old, I wrote about how I ate a Kit Kat earlier that day.
I remember feeling good about what I wrote because that’s actually what I did. I handed my story to the teacher, thinking I had done a good job, when she grabbed me and took me into her office.
She told me to put my hands on her desk, and she paddled me right there.
I was shocked I couldn’t react. She told me the story I had written was garbage and that I would never amount to anything.
9. My Creativity Was Crushed
In 5th grade, it was a milestone for all the students to make these big weaving things in art class. They were displayed all over the school as a last hurrah before we went off to middle school.
My mom took me to the craft store to get all the supplies, and I painstakingly picked out the colors of yarn and little details like beads and such.
It took us all about two weeks to complete our weavings, and I was so proud of mine.
Toward the end of the two weeks, my art teacher was making her way around the room to see what we’d done. When she came to mine, she looked down and said, “That just looks ditsy”. I was crushed.
What would compel an art teacher of all people to make such a dig at a kid attempting to display her creativity is beyond me.
10. Funeral Faux Pas
I missed the first day of a college class because I was attending my mother’s funeral. I told the instructor the reason why I was absent, to which he replied, “Well, I guess you can’t use that excuse again. Haha”. I was still pretty much in shock, so I just looked at him blandly, then went and sat down.
I found out later that the teacher wasn’t a total jerk; he was just completely clueless and socially awkward.
11. Unfounded Assumptions
In eighth grade, we had to write a short story from the perspective of someone who survived a Civil War raid.
Unbeknownst to my teachers, I was obsessed with historical fiction and was a darn good writer. I turned mine in happily because my grade needed help, and I was SO SURE this would turn it around.
I thoroughly researched the topic, worked tirelessly, and handed it in.
Three days later, the teacher got up and said, “Good job everyone”, but then made a huge point about how SOMEONE plagiarized and SOMEONE wouldn’t be getting theirs back, and how that person must immediately come to her desk so they can go to the office. Sure enough, I was the one.
The teacher made a little show about stopping beside my desk with empty hands and shaking her head sadly at me.
Everyone was whispering and giggling and I was about to cry. We tracked down the librarian who assigned this and I had to wait in the hall all puffy-faced.
She came out of the class and started in on me in the hall about how I was a cheater. No one listened to my protests, so we went to the office where the principal was waiting with an “I’m disappointed in you” look.
I was a mess from crying but I manage to choke out, “What proof” in the middle of his talk about suspension. He looked at the librarian and my history teacher, who looked at each other.
The librarian said she hadn’t found it specifically, yet. The principal asked what she meant by “specifically”. Apparently, she had graded mine last of fifty-four and decided that because it was four times as long and better written than the others, I had to have cheated.
They shifted around for a minute and sent me to PE without so much as an apology.
12. There Was A Hole In Her Theory
My German teacher was a crazy lady. She always talked about how girls were better than guys, and she pulled the hair of her students, etc.
One time, she told us that cheese was a male word because cheese has holes. It was always utterly silent in her classroom because we were 12 and terrified of her. Then, one kid mumbled, “But I thought women had more holes”. Her face went pale, and without saying anything, she stood up, took a sponge, soaked it with water, and squeezed it into his sweater.
13. Calm Down!
I had a good friend, Ross, who lived down the street. He was a good kid, but a bit of an odd duck. If something didn’t go the way he expected, or people picked on him, he would go into these violent rages.
I was so used to it, so I knew how to calm him down. I could usually get him to stop hitting immediately within a couple of minutes. We were in sixth-grade class and working on a project at the end of school.
One of the kids started picking on him. Ross went into one of his rages as the bell rang. I was at the door trying to talk to him and get him to calm down.
He was starting to look at me, which was a good sign when the teacher came over to the door and told me to leave. I pointed out that he was calming down. She then yelled, “No”, and punched me in the chest.
I had never been punched; it hurt and made me sick.
My mom came to pick me up from school and asked what was wrong and I told her. I lifted up my shirt and a bruise was already starting to develop. My mom went to the guidance counselor and the principal.
The guidance counselor tried to defend the teacher’s actions and then went around bad-mouthing me. The principal refused to do anything. Finally, my mother convinced them to move me to another class, where I had the kindest teacher ever.
14. Snakes Alive! I Was Mortified
I peed my pants in first grade and ran from the classroom. I was sitting outside too scared to go back in. The teacher came out, sat next to me, and proceeded to tell me a story about how her uncle was sitting outside one day and was bitten by a snake and didn’t survive.
She said if I didn’t come back inside, the same thing would happen to me.
I will give her points for effectiveness—as it got me inside—but it was a pretty terrible thing to say to a first grader who had just been socially traumatized in front of classmates.
15. I Ran For My Life
In 6th grade, I had a terrible teacher.
I was playing paper football with three other guys at our table. The teacher came over, grabbed me by the shoulder, and said she was sending me to the principal’s office. I was shocked that I was the only one going for something so stupid.
She wrote a note to the principal saying that she had repeatedly told me not to play paper football, which was a lie.
The principal took it way too seriously. He told me I would receive three hits from the paddle.
I was shocked but asked if I could change into my jeans because I was still wearing my gym shorts. Instead, I ran out of that school. I got lost walking around trying to find my way back home.
I finally made it to a main highway where I was spotted by a state trooper.
I took off running and hid in a small cove. The next thing I heard was dogs. Apparently, an officer had a dog with him and came and sniffed me out.
They pulled me out, handcuffed me, and brought me back to school. I was walking back into school just when it was letting out. In the end, I was suspended for a week but never paddled.
16. My Computer Teacher Hit A Glitch
A teacher I had would make offensive and inappropriate jokes all day, every day for the most part. The student body was afraid of him, but me being who I was, I threatened to report his actions.
In response, he decided to make an example out of me. He went to the office and reported that I knew the admin password for the computers in the school.
It was the password he gave me as an IT teacher to help repair computers, which was the class he was teaching.
I had no idea I was not supposed to know the password since he had openly given it to me. When the office asked if I knew it, I replied, “Of course, why wouldn’t I”? From there on out, it became my word versus the teacher’s, which was not a good situation to be in.
The VP of the school and the admin for the district both realized I was helping the school by fixing broken computers.
I was thanked by both of them. In response to all of this, the teacher threatened the VP’s job, stating if he did not expel me, he would report him. Now, this teacher not only had the students submissive under him but the school’s staff too.
The VP told the teacher he expelled me, but because I had all of my credits completed, he really let me graduate early. This way I could go to college without a hitch. Six months down the road, I met a guy who hired me to do some website work.
After two or so months of working, he started complaining about the teacher who nearly got me expelled, not knowing I had any connection to him. I couldn’t believe it.
My old teacher was blackmailing a client of mine!
I told the client exactly some of the terrible things the teacher had done to me and others in the past. In response, he took the teacher I had to court. I never heard the response from it, but I’m sure it turned out bad for that jerk in the end.
17. The Cards Were Stacked Against Me
During junior high and high school, I played Magic: The Gathering, and in my downtime while in class, I would peruse through my deck and cards and make adjustments and tweaks. While in 8th grade, I had a substitute teacher in one of my classes.
On that day, I had my deck sitting on the corner of the desk; I wasn’t touching it or anything.
The teacher walked by, picked up the cards, and started sifting through them, the entire time shaking her head and making a “tsk, tsk, tsk”, sound. She then looked at me and asked what church I went to and if I knew what I was getting myself into.
I curtly responded that I didn’t believe in going to church. Her response was infuriating: “I should have known”.
She then lectured me about how I needed to rethink my life and that I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
In disbelief, I looked at her and said, “I don’t know what your problem is, but it’s just a card game”. I ended up getting a month’s worth of detention for using profanity, and the deck was confiscated until my parents came to talk to the teacher and retrieve it.
18. Quickly Cut Off For No Reason
I had a huge history project, and my group’s subject had to do with education reform. The project involved going up in front of the class to explain our research and findings. My whole group, except for me, was in a different period.
I got up and started to do my presentation, and less than a minute into it, my teacher said, “OK, that’s enough. You obviously don’t know what you are talking about”. Except I did, as I had done more than half of the project alone, and the subject matter was my idea.
19. Disgraced For My Dyslexia
As a child, I had a speech defect and was unaware of the fact that I was a dyslexic dysgraphic. One year, my reading and writing teacher took it upon herself to decide that I was simply faking difficulties for attention, especially since I was in the gifted program.
Her solution was to force me to read every assignment aloud in front of the class, write every assignment up on the board, and subject me to public mockery.
It was an utter nightmare. She berated me every time I got a word wrong.
I also used to love to write little stories, but this woman found my journal and threw it away, telling me that, I “needed to learn how to write properly, or just not do it at all”, because my handwriting was so terrible. Being a stubborn little kid, I wouldn’t cry or react in any way, let alone tell my parents.
So, she decided that I was also headstrong and rude. She made it her personal mission to make me cry in front of the class, subjecting me to verbal harassment and telling my classmates not to play with me at recess.
I withdrew into a shell, and would spend my time out on the playground reading or doing math drills on my own, further bolstering her claim in her mind that “nothing could be wrong with me”.
Winter break rolled around, and as soon as I got home, I began to open up again.
Then, when the first day of school rolled around, I had an all-out panic attack. My parents asked me what was wrong, and the whole story came out. They pulled me out of public school, attempted to homeschool me, and eventually put me into the school that I stayed at until high school.
My parents told the school board what happened, but they did nothing.
20. This Teacher Just Flipped
When I was in third grade, I was fairly hyper. I was diagnosed with ADHD and annoyed my teacher. I wasn’t really that bad but I got all my work done in a quarter of the time it took everyone else, so I was always bored.
Rather than giving me more to do, she told me to sit quietly, which I obviously didn’t do. One day my teacher wasn’t there so someone in my class suggested we throw one of those “parties” you saw in movies.
People were throwing paper at each other and everything.
I was assigned as the lookout. When I saw someone coming, I warned everyone and sat in my seat. It was our teacher. When she saw what was going on and saw me sitting in my seat, she blamed me for the whole thing.
Then she went too far. She came over and started yelling at me, got angry, and flipped one of those heavy desks on me, spilling all my stuff over the floor.
I was always small and light, so having a solid metal school desk fall on me hurt a lot.
I was obviously upset and when I got home, I told my mom what happened. Apparently, my teacher had called her over lunch and told her it was an accident and she was trying to get a textbook from my desk when it flipped, so my mom didn’t believe me.
It took her a full six months to hear about it from another parent for her to believe me and my parents thought it was too late to do anything about it. I went back to see the teacher when I went off to middle school and she still defended her actions and didn’t even apologize.
She claimed she lost her cool dealing with me for the whole year and that it was my fault for being a troublesome kid.
21. Their Backtracking Backfired
When I was in middle school, they were going to hold me back a grade because I wasn’t able to do my homework, even though I aced all of my tests and anything done in class.
My mom fought for me tooth and nail, and eventually, they said that if I was able to do the entire year’s worth of homework for all of my classes within three days—during school—they would accept all of it late and not dock me.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t think that was enough time, but it took me a day and a half.
I remember the look on one of the teacher’s faces when she said that I couldn’t possibly be done and that all of my work must be junk and rushed, followed by the change in her expression as she started looking through it.
Even after that, they tried to take back what they said and only gave me a barely passing grade.
They tried to argue that I must have cheated, even though I had been in a room by myself and one other teacher at all times.
They tried to argue that “that’s not really what they meant”, which basically turned into, “we didn’t think he would actually do that well”. They even tried the “it’s not fair to the other students” approach. Eventually, they relented and gave me the grade they had agreed on, but they did it begrudgingly.
22. A Grade A Blockhead
When I went to meet the teacher after kindergarten registration, there was a huge set of wooden blocks in the room. I was shy, and there were other kids playing with the blocks, so I made a note to play with them when I came back to school.
On the first day of school, I went over to the blocks and started to play. Then, the teacher came over and said, “Those are boy toys. Go play with something else”.
23. His Big Mouth Finally Did Him In
A teacher asked me if I was gay—accusingly—three times in the middle of the boy’s locker room. I was a closeted gay person, but he was asking me because I sucked at football, not because I was checking anyone out.
He also told my female friend, who talked a lot, that “she should not be surprised if she grows up and a man hits her”. He eventually got fired for saying something about people of color.
24. What Goes Around Comes Around
In seventh grade, my science teacher was a real jerk about letting students use the restroom during class. One day, we were all just reading and not doing anything particularly important, like listening to a lecture, and I realized I had to go pee badly.
I went over to his desk and asked for permission, and he looked up from his newspaper long enough to smirk and say no.
I quietly but firmly tried to explain that I had to go right now, and could he PLEASE let me go to the restroom?
Again, he smirked and said, “No”. Being an obedient kid and one who usually was straight-As, I went back to my chair and sat down. I was desperately shifting in my seat as the urge to go got worse and worse.
The teacher was surely aware of it, as my fidgeting was enough to draw the attention of classmates who stopped reading long enough to stare at me oddly for a few seconds. Finally, I couldn’t hold it anymore, and the dam burst.
I peed all over my new dress, the chair, my backpack under the table, and the white tile floor.
Everybody near me immediately was scooting away, and other students further away were pointing and laughing.
I immediately started crying, and the teacher realized that maybe he had made a mistake in not letting me go. He took me to the office, where I had to sit alone in cold, wet clothes until my mother arrived.
He never mentioned it to me or apologized.
For the rest of the year and even the following one, I was known as “Potty”. When I was getting ready to move out of state, some people even signed my yearbook that way.
“To Potty: We’ll miss you; don’t forget your diapers”! I imagine they got some poor janitor to clean up my puddle, but I like to imagine my teacher having to clean it up himself. Later that year though, he got some payback as another student put Ex-Lax in his coffee and was expelled for it.
25. Lost In Place
When I was in the third grade we were reading out of a textbook. Every time the teacher would call on me, I couldn’t find our place. She would call on me every other time.
I tried as hard as I could, but couldn’t find where the other kids were reading in this book. Every time she would call on me she would call me an idiot and ask me what was wrong with me.
She had everyone in the class laughing at me. Near the end, she finally came over to show me where to read. It turned out my book was a different version from the others. So, she told me to shut up and just listen until they get can get me a new book.
She didn’t apologize or anything.
26. An Excercise In Civility
I was a heavier kid in the third grade and a bit of an outcast. We had a sub in geography class one day, and he was the typical “cool teacher” who would joke around and further try bonding with kids by reinforcing their cliques. I ended up dropping my pencil and as I bent over the desk, in front of everyone, he said, “I bet that’s the most exercise you’ve had since your Nintendo broke”. At first, I just sat there in shock.
Then I cried my way to the principal who called my mother to pick me up. She opted not to confront the teacher because she was afraid of her own anger. The teacher eventually gave me an in-person, but private, apology and was removed from subbing at our school.
The kids in that classroom though never forgot it and made the rest of school difficult.
27. Her Threats Went Out The Window
In 10th grade, I had a math teacher who hated me for whatever reason. One day, I got to class and had forgotten my calculator.
I asked if I could borrow one of the spares provided by the school for just such occasions. She told me that I could not, and then threatened to throw me out of a window if I ever forgot my calculator again.
A few weeks later, I had to stay late in the class before to clear something up, and didn’t have time to go to my locker and grab my calculator. Not wanting to ask her for a spare again, I sat quietly in the back of the room for most of the period, not doing any work to avoid being reprimanded.
Eventually, she called on me and asked me what the answer to a question was.
I had to admit that I didn’t have a calculator. She said, “Well it’s a good thing I don’t have the windows open”, and then sent me to the principal’s office with a write-up for “being disruptive”.
28. Red-Light Rubbish
When I was in elementary school, my school decided to implement a “stoplight system”. It was used during lunch to control the volume of students.
Green meant talk away, yellow meant time to get quieter, and red meant no talking whatsoever. I was a talkative kid in my own world. I’d get really into a topic and keep talking, not because I was rude, but because I’d forgotten it was red-light time.
When they caught you talking, they’d send you to the corner in front of everyone. It happened to me on more than one occasion. It was supremely demeaning, and they actually forgot me and left me there once.
Incredibly upset, I went home and said to my mom, “I’m bad. I’m bad and I can’t be good”. I was crushed.
29. She Shattered My Love For Science
When I was younger, I was fascinated by astrophysics but knew nothing about it so I’d come up with these completely unsupported theories as to why a collapsing star turned into a black hole.
I would discuss it with my friend after class, away from other people. Instead of supporting and redirecting my interest into productive studying, the science teacher came up to me and said, “You don’t know anything. Stop pretending like you do”. It completely ruined my passion for science.
30. Playground Payout
Back in second grade, I was wandering the school playground and came across a $20 note lying on the concrete near the kindergarten classrooms. I thought I would be responsible and give it to my teacher to return it to its rightful owner.
I went back to class and told her I found it in the playground. She took it, said thank you, and put it in her purse as she walked away.
31. No Erasing My Humiliation
When I was in sixth grade, I was in English class, bored out of my mind.
My mind drifted, and at one point I began drawing on my desk. I was drawing in pencil, and it was a very small drawing, that was entirely erasable. I meant no harm. Rather than asking me to erase my drawing, the teacher, to drive home a point about scholastic diligence, pointed at me and said, “Now THIS is an example of a BAD student”.
“There you are drawing on your desk when you should be listening”. I was a straight-A student and that moment was the most humiliating thing I’d experienced in some time.
I erased it immediately. My mom came to the school and reamed her out for choosing to dishearten me when she could’ve bragged about a student she liked. Shortly after that my mom pulled me out of school, tired of dealing with those imbeciles, and homeschooled me herself.
32. Good Judgement Was In Short Supply
I had a very short classmate, about 4’11”. Once, during a test, the teacher who was distributing the test sheets said to him, “Since you are half a person, you only need one-half of the test”. He then ripped the test sheet in two, handed him the top half, and proceeded to distribute the exam to the rest of the class.
He only handed my classmate a new test sheet after he assured him that he would be able to cope with such a huge test.
33. Struggling To Deal With This Teacher’s Nonsense
When I was 15, I was almost held back because of mental health struggles.
I was crying because of it, and it obviously annoyed my teacher. A couple of months prior, I had been in a psychiatric hospital for thoughts of taking my life. My teacher knew all of this and told me that I should throw myself in front of a bus.
She also told me I was too stupid to go to university, yet I went on to pursue a master’s in physics.
