Being a teacher is a thankless job that often comes with a lot of complexities to deal with. One of those things is managing students’ actions that may garner some serious consequences. So when Reddit user u/_Planet_Mars_ asked: “Teachers, what is the worst thing you’ve seen a student do?” so many teachers provided their stories. Here’s what they said below.
1.“There was a loud pop and a flash in the back corner of the classroom. I asked the student sitting there what happened. She said it was firecrackers. I sent her to the office. While she was still in the office, I realized the electrical outlets in the room didn’t work. At that point, another student fessed up that the student sent to the office had put a pair of scissors in the outlet. I’m not sure why that student thought it was better to lie and claim she was doing fireworks inside the school.”
2.“Stab another student in the back of the head with a pencil. It went in right at the base of the skull. Luckily, it didn’t hit anything important; it just needed three stitches. But it was deep enough that it stayed in before the doctors took it out.”
—u/Linusthewise
3.“I was teaching for three months in an inner city school in London (UK). It was terrible because the school’s management was super ridiculous and refused to protect or stand up for their teachers. I quit after three months, at the end of the first term – the school begged me to stay and promised me a pay increase.”
4.“It gets very hot here in the warmer months, so the school put out those big containers for everyone to drink. Well, one student was caught peeing into a bag and dumping it into the containers. The student was 11 or 12.”
—u/huzzahserrah
5.“When I was teaching preschool, I had a little girl, between 3-4 years old, walked up to another girl who was sitting on the rug reading a book, grab her by the hair, and slam her head into the wall. They hadn’t been interacting in any way prior. When I asked her why she did it, she said, ‘she wanted her to know it hurts.'”
6.“I’m an early years educator specializing in children with S.E.N. (special educational needs). Eating feces. No competition. Seeing a child chewing their own shit is something that stays with you. Having to try and hook it all out of their mouth with your finger whilst they bite you is something you forcibly forget. Children with complex sensory issues, particularly those with hyposensitivity to smell and taste, will often seek out particularly strong smells and tastes, and things that we find disgusting are not to them and instead are stimulating. Combined with the delays to their development, which means they are still likely to be at the stage of exploration where everything is tested in the mouth, this can obviously lead to situations that are very unpleasant to us.”
—u/just_some_arsehole
7.“Ignite a senior school administrator’s office by throwing a trash bin full of lighter fluid while trying to block the door to prevent her escape.”
8.“My wife is an elementary teacher and has a kid this year that likes to slip under their desk and lick toes (we live in a warm state).
—u/CherryManhattan
9.“They stole my class pet, a fish that I really loved. They claimed to have flushed it down the toilet. Another student said they gave it away to a kid on the street in a water bottle.”
10.“During class, one girl was sitting with her hands in her lap shaped like a bowl. Upon further inspection, I noticed she was collecting her spit in her hands. She said her name, made eye contact, drank it, and wiped her hands on her shirt. She didn’t make a move to ask to wash hands, so I sent her to.”
—u/Condition_Boy
11.“I had a kid superglue both hands to his desk. He thought it was really funny until they sent the janitor to try to get his hands unstuck.”
12.“Once caught a child looking up furry porn on a class iPad. That was something.”
—u/SpiderMonkeyfromMars
13.And finally, “In primary school, a kid in my class held a pencil upright on the chair while another boy sat on the chair. Then, another classmate pushed down on their shoulders as they sat on the pencil. How f*cked up are some 9-year-olds?! The boy had to go to hospital.”
Teachers, share with us the wildest thing you’ve seen a student do in the comments below.