Surviving our school years unscathed is no easy feat. From horrible teachers to mean girl cliques, making the grade often means gritting your teeth and getting it over with. But every so often, those class jerks get exactly what's coming to them in one glorious moment of karmic justice. These are those moments.
1. Her Lock Ran out
I had a kid who threw a lock at my head. Somehow, she didn't get expelled because “It just slipped out of her hand.” She did get expelled a few months later when she brought a weapon to school.
2. Down to the Slammer
I teach kindergarten, and I had a terrible, terrible child in my class last year. He liked to pull his desk away from the girl sitting across from him so her pencils and crayons would go falling on the floor. Finally, one day she got fed up and slammed her desk back into his. Unfortunately for him, his fingers happened to be there. Justice was served.
3. Stuck With Double
There was a set of twins who were both pretty loud and out of control. During a group activity, one of them got the bright idea to stick his head into the hole of a plastic chair. He got stuck. He immediately began screaming, with his brother crying out, “My brother!” All the adults were trying not to laugh. We got him out OK.
4. Keep Your Mouth Shut
When I was in kindergarten, a kid looked me straight in the eyes, bit himself on the wrist, and ran to the teacher to blame me. They sent me to the principal’s office, my mom was called down, and I got yelled at. A week later, the kid did it again...and the teacher saw him do it. It felt so good to have the principal apologizing profusely to me.
5. Not My President
I had a mean girl in the class I taught. I'm gay, and she made it very clear that she didn't support my husband. Mean Girl then ran for senior class president. During this time, she had a thing about me handing her things; she never wanted to touch my hand even by accident. Well, this made her awful ways very obvious, and she lost the election.
6. On the Way out
This girl cussed me out and then stormed out of class. The door bounced off the wall and hit her on the way out. It took all my effort not to laugh at her in front of the class.
7. Facing a Painful Reality
There was this kid in high school who was such a jerk. He got into multiple fights, and somehow that got him thinking he was a good fighter. On one occasion, he got into a fight in the parking lot, and someone actually put his head through a car window, like, fully broke the glass with his face. He didn't learn his lesson, but man was it rewarding for the rest of us.
8. Can’t Have One Without the Other
My brother has a friend who is tremendously smart and never really needed to try hard in school. His final semester, all he needed was a final English course to get his degree. I remember him actually saying to me, “Why try hard to get a 90% when I can slack off all semester and get a 50%?” The school ended up expelling him before the end of the semester.
9. Not Going Very Far
When I was teaching ESL, I once had a kid who thought he was all that. Sporty, relatively bright, and quite popular with his boy classmates, but went out of his way to annoy the girls. He was constantly taking pencils, copying work, messing up their hair, etc. He clearly just didn't know how to interact with females.
One day, he broke his leg and had to be on crutches for a while. As soon as I announced it was break time, the girl next to him took both crutches and ran away with them. Snacks got dealt out one-by-one, so kids weren't allowed to fetch for their friends. His friends all abandoned him for choco-pies, and he was left sitting, immobile and alone.
10. Liar, Liar, Recommendation’s on Fire
There was a compulsive liar of a kid who told me all sorts of doozies for four years. His senior year, he asked me to write a letter of recommendation. I did—because I had an ingenious plan. I included every lie I could remember him telling me as though it was the truth and I was pumping him up. Oh man, it was so good.
He couldn't even show it to his family because I wrote about how he volunteers at homeless shelters every night, raises hundreds of rescue dogs to become service dogs, how he donates blood every week, etc. Any one of the statements was obviously impossible to be true. I hope he didn't try to use it, but I never got a call from anyone to verify my recommendation.
11. First-Grade Justice
Last year, I had a 7-year-old in my class who was just a pain. He would throw things around the classroom, pinch other children, poke them with pencils, and he was rude to everyone but would always blame it on someone else. Talking to his parents wouldn't help because they believed everything their little "angel" said.
One break time, he was harassing another child, and I guess they just had enough. This usually mild-mannered child punched him in the stomach. It was so hard, the horrible child even wet himself. Then, all of the other children who witnessed it completely closed ranks and denied that it ever happened. We couldn't follow it up.
12. We Need to Talk About Kevin
I taught a dissection lab section back in college. I had one kid in a section, Kevin, who never listened to instructions and just dove in with a scalpel, dicing and chopping and generally causing a horrific scene. This led to his first karmic warning when we were dissecting squid. He got squid "juice" on himself, and it smelled awful for the rest of that class. But he didn't learn.
He kept on ignoring instructions and hacking away, so this time karmic justice struck on our very last dissection project: The fetal pig. Kevin really wanted to see the pig's brain. Kevin couldn't get through the skull, though, so he started whacking away at it. I told him to stop, but he had to give it one last, mighty thwack. Crack!
The skull breaks and rubbery piglet brain bits come flying out everywhere, mostly over Kevin. Unfortunately, while he was protesting my clear instructions, Kevin had his mouth open. Thankfully, preserved pig brain, ingested orally, seemed to have a calming, subduing effect on Kevin for the last couple classes.
13. Real-World Consequences
I teach college students to be teachers. My first year doing this, I had a student who was always late, turned in the bare minimum, and always had excuses. I told him he had to improve or he’d eventually get fired on the job. He kept coasting. His first teaching job? He got fired. I laughed, in the privacy of my office, and I'm not sorry.
14. What’d I Miss?
I used to always show up late for my 10th-grade science class. One day, we had a little chapter review quiz at the start of class, and naturally, I was a minute or two late. So, I walked over to my desk and the teacher put my quiz down. I looked at it, and my blood ran cold. It was all super complicated questions I was sure we'd never covered.
After about two minutes, I looked up to see how everyone else was doing on their quiz. Well, everybody was watching me. When I looked up, they all started laughing. The teacher had printed up a single fake quiz with super complicated biology questions just to mess with whatever kid ended up showing up last to the quiz.
15. Double and Triple Checked
When I was a TA for a freshmen English class, I busted a kid for plagiarism. He was furious and refused to drop the course. He was a slimy, smarmy kid who thought I was dumb, but joke's on him—he ended up failing the course THREE ways: plagiarizing, exceeding absences, and not completing the final. You can argue about one way to get an F. You can't argue about 3.
16. The Whole Nine Julliard’s
I was teaching music and had a flutist who was fantastic. He practiced for hours every day, but unfortunately, he also had an ego the size of Texas. He told the girl next to him, who also wanted to be a professional flutist, that she was abysmal and should just give up. He refused to audition for our "pitiful" local honor band even though it was part of his grade.
He would also complain about my conducting in class when I didn't pay enough attention to him. Then he refused to show up to a concert because he was embarrassed to be seen performing with his high school band. This was the last straw—and the consequences were devastating. He failed band and I kicked that toxic little jerk out.
17. Ran to the Ground
There was a “problem child” in my class who thought it was cool to not listen to teacher advice, shrug off reprimands, and make snarky comments. He was hard to manage, but by no means a bad kid. We have a rule at our school that there's “no running on the deck” outside of our classroom. This rule is often ignored when no teacher is looking.
One day, the entire class and I were standing out on the deck when this particular student was coming back from getting something. He decided to blatantly ignore the “no running on the deck” rule and began to sprint toward the class. Right as I yelled his name, he tripped and went FLYING. It was an epic wipeout.
The fall sent him sprawling across the deck, with the entire class watching. I checked if he was okay, and didn't say anything about it at the time, but I was able to remind him later that we do have rules for a reason.
18. In the Bag
This awful kid grabbed a girl’s purse and started rifling through it one day. He then started yelling that she had a knife in her bag to try and get her in trouble. The teacher had the perfect reply. She just quipped, "And you taking her bag is why she has a knife in the first place" before giving the kid detention.
19. Lack of Honors
There was a clique of “popular” kids who were often jerks and acted out in our school. Our city had a living center for the mentally ill that also had a public swimming pool, so we used it for swimming lessons. Well, one day there's a 14-year-old on the extreme end of the spectrum at the pool who had very limited functioning.
This popular “funny” student decides that it'll be hilarious to sit there and growl at the boy aggressively like a hostile dog. The kid loses it and he freaks right out. His support worker figures out what happened, and the “funny” guy is banned from the center. He also automatically fails not only the module, but the entire gym course. He does not graduate on time.
20. What a Scathead
Park ranger here. We do this “urban education initiative” with inner city kids out to a wetland. There was this one kid, Pablo, who was this third-grade classroom's "funny guy." For example, during a live animal demonstration, he asks about its nipples and then repeats the word nipple louder so everyone could laugh.
While we're walking, we talk about animal poop the whole time and of course, I was professional and answered the questions because I begrudgingly know a lot about scat. Pablo would barge into every learning opportunity for the other kids and take everybody out of the moment. It was actually really awful.
Every time I got the kids excited about nature, he would do some lame peer pressure so the vibe was, “No, nature sucks.” I wanted to push him into some briars pretty badly. Well, justice came swiftly when I was explaining poison ivy to half the group. He swaggers over and does some kind of, “These leaves? MINE!” prank.
I wanted to tell him it was poison ivy but instead, I told him to put it down. The other kids were like, “Drop it!” Only the reverse psychology made him caress the leaves even more, so I finally had to tell him what they were before he touched his face. Pablo then cried. His cool guy persona was shattered, and everybody listened to me for the rest of the field trip.
21. Zero Tolerance
It was the very end of the year and I had a student who was failing my class but didn't even bother to try to get help until the last day. Oh, and she failed because she never showed up for class, ever. Like, I didn't recognize her. She came to me and told me, “You're the only class I'm failing and if I don't get a D, I won't graduate.”
I went to check the school grade book to see if this was true and I said, “Hmm, according to this, you have a 13% in Math and an incomplete in Chemistry.” She denied it vehemently, saying that she'd already talked to those teachers and I was the last holdout. Well, I knew just how to get her. I asked, “Why don't we give your math teacher a call ?”
I dialed the extension for her math teacher. I tell him the story and that I've found her 13% in Math in the gradebook. The teacher's response astonished me. He goes, “Actually, the grade in the book is incorrect. I just discovered the one piece of homework she did turn in was actually a photo copy of another student's work. She now has a zero.” She did not graduate.
22. Painfully Enraging
A preschooler used to crawl under the lunch tables and jump off the furniture. One day in the lunch room, he got very angry for some unidentifiable reason. He stood rooted in one spot and screamed that he was NEVER MOVING. During this, he wanted to make a point so he stomped as viciously as he could.
He was wearing really flat-footed sandals on a hard floor, and must have hit the ground with a perfectly level foot. Meaning, it hurt like absolute heck. His face was like a cartoon. His mouth made an immediate upside U and he screamed like that guy on SpongeBob who yells, “My leg!!” It just felt like justice to me.
23. Chihuahua VS. English Mastiff
I teach middle school. We had one eighth grader who was the oldest, meanest kid in class. Put a girl up against the wall with his forearm across her throat so that her feet came off the ground. No other kids even stepped in because they didn't want to get beat on too. He was suspended regularly and didn't seem to care.
Then we got a transfer kid. This huge, and I mean huge, kid transfers in. He's a tough kid, but quiet about it. Doesn't do much academically, but he's super respectful and is just kind of quiet. I've seen a lot of bar fights and this kid carried himself like that dude who knew he could take someone apart but had nothing to prove.
Well, jerk kid walks up to big kid in the hall one day and challenges him to a fight by screaming, "YOU WANNA GO?" up at him with his arms spread wide and his face forward. Big kid quietly says, “Yep,” drops his binder, and then drops jerk kid with the most beautiful jab I've ever seen outside of a boxing match.
Jerk goes down like a ton of bricks and big kid calmly picks up his stuff and heads to the office. Jerk gets expelled, the administration was looking for a reason, and big kid gets a suspension but is suddenly the most loved person in the building. The Vice Principal was actually giggling as he helped jerk kid stagger to the office.
24. Toxic Behavior
I'm a chemistry teacher. This sophomore wouldn't put his cell phone away the entire time he was working on his lab. Surprise surprise, he dropped his phone and it slid under the door into the chemical storage area. I told him I didn't have a key and would have to ask the custodian, after school, to unlock it.
25. Retribution Education
I had a math class in senior year that was held in a science lab with showers, an eye wash station, etc. It was a class that had kids from grades 10-12 in it. One of the seniors was a big dude on the football team who really enjoyed messing with the smaller kids. He was the worst of what high school sports churn out, you know the type.
He liked to get this one dude riled up every day by pretending to pull the emergency shower every time he walked by. He giggled like a smug doofus every time. One day, I had enough and just went, “Hey, Nelson" while he was under the shower. I waited for him to look me in the eyes, then I pulled it. "THIS is how it works!" Didn't even get in much trouble. Still love that moment.
26. Guess Who’s the New Sheriff in Town?
My high school buddy Steve was a troublemaker. We had a really lax teacher in sophomore English, who was a long-term substitute and not in full control of the class. Meanwhile, we also had a student-teacher named Mrs. Gomez who was good and kind, but obviously didn't have full disciplinary power either in the situation.
This leaves room for people to get rowdy, ESPECIALLY Steve. One day after a particularly loud interlude, Mrs. Gomez gets a belly full and tells Steve to be quiet. Steve looks her in the eye and says, “You're not the teacher. I don't have to do ANYTHING you say.” He then goes right back to whatever he was doing. Mrs. Gomez was LIVID.
Her face was bright red and she looked like she wanted to throttle Steve, but he was right and she knew it, so she kept her mouth shut. But she got the best payback. A month later, we walk into class and the old substitute is nowhere to be seen, but there's Mrs. Gomez sitting comfortably at the teacher's desk like she owns it.
The bell rings, and she stands up and says, “Hello, everyone." She then turns and looks directly at Steve, “I'm your new teacher.” Steve didn't get away with much in class after that.
27. Like Any Other Coffee Break
When I was in high school, our music teacher was this awesome older dude who was close to retiring. He would openly tell everyone that he was in it for the pension, but was an awesome teacher and could teach any class from music to hospitality to welding to woodshop. One thing he refused to do, though, was putting up with teenager shenanigans.
Luckily he took a liking to me, but he used to do things like throw chalk at kids and other harmless stuff that got the point across. But then there was a rule change, and teachers weren't allowed to lay a hand on any kid in school at any point. I watched kids beat each other, and teachers just having to watch because they’d lose their jobs if they interfered.
One day, this little jerk who was always causing trouble decided that he was going to start a fight in front of the music room. The awesome music teacher comes in, sees this, and tells him to stop a few times. The guy didn't. So he went back into his office, grabbed his large coffee, and dumped it all over the kid.
28. Today’s Lesson: Word Usage
When I was working as an aide for special needs kids in their fourth-grade class, there was this one boy who was a bit of a loudmouth and called everything he didn't like or understand “gay.” Then one day, he switched it up and informed me that something was “retarded.” I wasn't going to give him the response he was looking for, but then he made it easy.
Before I had time to reply, he said, “…and I'm allowed to say that, since I'm in special needs." "Great!" I replied. "What's your excuse for calling everyone “gay” all the time, then?"
29. In Your Own Words
I created a "homework excuse" form that the kids had to fill out if they didn't have their homework done. One girl with an attitude problem filled out forms with a few with choice things like, “This class sux,” and “I had better things to do.” Well, her grade goes downhill and we have a parent-teacher conference.
The mom defends her daughter's grade, saying the homework was too hard or not clear enough. So I show her the forms, as signed by her daughter. The daughter is completely stunned and embarrassed and so was the mom. I got an immediate apology from both of them, and all her other homework was done on time for the rest of the year.
30. Keep It in Your Pants
I had this one student who kept intentionally farting. After telling him repeatedly to knock it off, I finally lost my cool and said, “Next time you do that, I hope you poop yourself.” Not five minutes later, I see him lifting his butt with that stupid grin on his face. Within seconds, the grin turned to pure terror.
He jumped up and said, "I gotta use the bathroom," and waddled out of the room with a large, wet brown spot on the back of his jeans.
31. Take Five
In middle school orchestra, I was friends with the rowdy girl. We were generally smart alecks, but we weren't rude and we knew our stuff, so the teacher basically just waved us off and only interrupted when we got out of hand. One day, my friend was way crazier than normal, so he sends her out into the hall for five minutes.
Well, he actually ended up sending her out for however long it took us to go over a song. He then asks me to go get her, and right as I open the door, I hear him say, "She's going to say that it wasn't five minutes.” Sure enough, she did. The whole room burst into laughter. He just said, “I know, shut up and play your violin.” We had a lot more respect for him when we realized he was happy to play around with us too.
32. Choice Behavior
A friend of mine is a kindergarten teacher and had one student last year who would always make fun of everyone to the point of making other kids cry. She had another student who was adopted, and the jerk started making fun of him by saying things like "No one wanted you." The kid shut him down with one sentence.
My friend was about to intervene, but the adopted kid spoke up and said, “My parents got to choose me, but yours got stuck with you.” The kid didn't say anything for the rest of the day.
33. Not Very Prepared for a Prep Student
During my first semester of teaching, I was at a very wealthy school with a class of mostly entitled jerk boys. There was a group of four who were the absolute worst though. They never did their work, said disrespectful things to me, and were overall awful human beings whose parents never seemed to discipline them.
I often overheard them bragging about getting away with stuff like being drunk at football games or worse. Although I reported the conversations to the administration, nothing ever got done. They ended up getting detained for stealing a car, crashing it, and breaking into a clubhouse. Also, three out of the four failed my class. That was great karmic justice.
34. Dunkin School
My first year teaching high school, I had a 16-year-old student who would come to school out of his mind on stuff, flirt with girls all through class, and talk about me in Spanish to the other students, right in front of me. I knew sort of what he was saying, but didn't have the classroom management chops or a strong enough grasp of Español to deal with it.
Four years later, he hands me my coffee at Dunkin Donuts on my way to school. We make eye contact briefly, he realizes who I am, his eyes dart to the floor, and he shuffles back to do Dunkin Donuts things. I felt a weird conflicted feeling of sadness and schadenfreude, if it's possible for those two things to mix. I hope he's making better decisions now.
35. There Will Come a Time
I was late for my History class every day, including the day of the AP test. My teacher was always cool about it. In my yearbook however, he wrote, "Get an alarm clock. Someday you're going to be late when it really matters." The very next day, I woke up late and missed the boat from Seattle I was supposed to catch to meet my friend for a baseball game.
I missed the game and my friend was angry. I bought an alarm clock that afternoon.
36. Falling Down Stream
When I worked as an outdoor school teacher, this one boy was being really mean to all of the girls. He probably did it because of misplaced crushes, but that’s not an excuse. So, we were all at the river looking for animals, and he face plants into a massive sharp rock and instantly burst into tears. I console him and ensure he didn't break anything...
Then this little girl comes up to me and says, "Well that was karma for being mean all day long." I laughed pretty hard and kind of verbally agreed with her, although I probably should have been more diplomatic. But honestly, he kind of did deserve it.
37. Really Dropped the Balls
I teach a high school elective course and I had a class with 23 boys and two girls. If you are a teacher, you know this is a nightmare. Teenage boys are definitely pack animals and are constantly in a struggle to establish their hierarchy. These guys were a constant ball of energy and were always doing stupid, stupid stuff.
They went through a phase where they “cup checked” each other. This went on for weeks. Someone would walk up to sharpen a pencil. BAM! Cup check! So, one day in class one student, Travis, asked to go to the restroom. I gave him the pass and sent him on his way. The rest of the class was quietly working when it happened.
Another boy in the back yelled out, “OH MY GOD! Travis just texted me a picture of his balls.” Now, I knew this could end up very badly if the administration dealt with it. So, I immediately got the kid to delete the text, calmed the riotous laughter, and somehow managed to get them all back on task. But I wasn't done yet.
Travis wasn't back yet and I definitely wasn't going to let him smugly get away with this. I called his mom and told her that Travis had done something and he should explain his actions to her instead of me. In walks Travis with this proud grin on his face. He thinks he's succeeded...until I casually look up from my desk and let him know his mom is on the phone.
There, in front of the entire class, he had to explain that he had just taken a picture of his “testicles” and sent it via text to his buddy in class. You could literally hear his mom screaming through the phone. Once he finished, I told her that I felt that she would best handle the situation and thanked her for her time. That day, I won.
38. One-Sided Stories
I had a kid, Ray, who was a real pain when I taught 5th grade. Ray had one of those moms who refused to hold him accountable for anything. It was always, some other kid did it, Ray was just protecting himself, Also, she was one of those moms who would ask Ray if he was guilty, and take his “No” as incontestable truth.
I had a full caseload as a special ed teacher, so I got a helper named Steve. Ray HATED Steve. One day, Ray gets in trouble coming back from recess, and Steve reprimands him verbally. By the time Ray makes it to the classroom, he’s saying how Steve got in his face and shouted at him, even though nope, not what happened.
He asks to go talk to the principal—yay, Ray's gone for at least five minutes! He tells the principal how Steve grabbed his arm. When Mom comes and gets him, he’s saying Steve pushed him. The next day, we get a phone call. Ray's mom and grandma are coming in and want a meeting with Steve and the principal to discuss how Steve choked Ray.
Steve’s freaking out. Other kids were there, but no adults, no cameras, how can he prove his innocence? I tell him, “Go to the meeting and before anybody says anything, have Ray share what happened.” Steve came back smiling. As soon as one story came out, everybody else was disagreeing, “Well Ray told me—,” “but Ray told ME—.” I would have loved to see the mom's face as her kid was proven a liar in front of everyone.
39. As Many Times Until You Get It
I coached middle school football. Some kids have come out of their shell by then, while others have not. Most of the early bloomers were jerks who existed to make life terrible for everybody. The team’s starting halfback was one of those jerks. He gave a defensive lineman trouble and since everybody thought he was cool, they did it right along with him.
This lineman was a big guy, but not aggressive or outgoing. The little running backs took their Napoleon complexes out on the big guy by running by him and shouting “Sissy!” every time he failed to stop them. Rather than fight back to make the play, he would just ignore it and line up and try again the next play.
Well, one day the whole thing just clicked for the big guy and he started making plays. It was a cool thing to see. When he really started getting into a groove, I started putting the jerk guy in front of him and watching him plant that guy in the ground with a thud every time. Except this was just the beginning.
Soon, bruised and beaten, the jerk halfback asked me, “How many times are you going to run this play?” And I responded, “One for every time you called him a sissy.”
40. Told You So
When I was in second grade, there was a boy who was a total jerk, annoying, and an all-around disobedient little brat. He was always getting in trouble with the teacher for one reason or another. Meanwhile, I was mild-mannered and obedient. One day, he was harassing me to no end in the line to go indoors after recess.
So, I say to him, “Kyle, if you keep bugging me, I'm going to scratch your arm so bad it bleeds.” He keeps bugging me and basically calling my bluff, so I do what I promised and scratch him down the forearm, making it bleed a little. When he went whining to the teacher, he must have thought he'd get away with it. Well, he didn't.
The teacher comes to me and asks, "Why did you scratch him?” I told her I'd warned him to stop bugging me or I'd do it. So she only turns to him and says, "Kyle, next time I suggest listening to her warning," and walked off.
41. Bank Shot
I teach the first grade and had a boy who would not stop hitting kids with basketballs. He'd run up and pop the ball right at students. This kid seemed like he was trying to knock other children down, and he'd laugh really hard if he saw someone stumble or if they'd fall after they were hit by his basketball.
After talking with his parents, we told them we'd be taking the balls away from him until after spring break to see if his behavior improved. Well, after spring break was over it didn't take that little jerk even five minutes before he stalked and shot that Spaulding special at this poor little girl, knocking her down.
She cried and pointed at him. As I got up and walked his way, he started to bolt. He ran out of the playground, past the sand pit, and on to the basketball court. He maintained eye contact with me, and before I could take another step, a stray ball from another game bounced off and hit that little jerk square in the face.
He went down like a sack of potatoes. Of course, I ran over to him and made sure he was okay (he's a troublemaker, but he's still a child) and called for the nurse since he was out cold. He woke up with me above him and started crying, saying he'd never do it again. He didn't want to pick up another basketball the rest of the school year.
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42. Evenhanded Justice
In 8th grade, there was this class clown, Zach. Zach wasn't a terrible person, and he had that lucky combination of charisma and humor that allowed him to win teachers to his side. But one day he decided to pick on me. I'm sitting in science class, and the teacher sits this guy right across from me. I know I'm in for it.
He starts kicking the extra chair at the table while yelling at me to stop. Then he throws his book across the table and again yells at me to stop. Eventually, the teacher yells at me to stop. I try to say I couldn't have done it, but she gives me suspension for a day. I was beyond angry, and I knew I had to get back at him.
There was only three days left in school before summer, so I only had that long to get revenge. I figured the fastest way was to beat him up. So, I wait for English classroom to empty out and as we go into the hall, I punch him as hard as I could in the kidney. He looks at me with fake confidence and yells, “You wanna go?!?!” and hurriedly walks away.
43. Total Knockout
I was the big, quiet kid in 6th grade. It was a new school with new people. I had a few new friends who I hung out with, but everyone pretty much left me alone...except this one obnoxious kid. He'd interrupt me constantly, throw paper balls at me, and thought it was funny to randomly hit me all the time, then run away.
One day, we were coming back to class from lunch and I was running a little behind. About 50 feet from class, I hear someone run up behind me. As I turn, this kid grabs the back of my head, puts one of his legs in front of mine, and pushes. He broke my nose and split my lip wide open. I jumped up and started screaming, and all I saw was fear in his eyes.
He ran into class, claiming someone tripped me in the hallway, right as I came in screaming that I'm going to get him. The teacher runs up and asks what happened. Through the blood and tears, I managed to choke it. Then without hesitation, one of my new friends one-punched the guy out cold. We were super tight after that.
44. An Unbelievable, Amazing Deal
This kid was a very strange seventh grader. In addition to not being able to sit still, which is true of most seventh graders, he lacked self-control in every respect. For example, in his midterm project that he emailed to me, he had written a detailed “creative story” that made me cringe and made my skin crawl across the floor.
On other projects, he never did his share of the work and then blamed his group mates. He turned in maybe two homework assignments for the entire year, but it was somehow never his fault. He was also mean to other kids all the time. I had to put up with this strange, annoying and inappropriate child for the entire school year.
On the very last day of school, this kid stole another kid's iPad from his unlocked locker. He then pawned it off to another kid on the bus ride home...for $10. (This kid? Not that smart). So the buyer, who is also my student, came in bragging to me about this amazing deal he had gotten for an iPad. It was only $10!
Of course, I was suspicious, so I reported it to the administration. They quickly untangled the entire incident and expelled this kid from the school.
45. Muay Thai’d up
Back when I was in secondary school, we had a Thai exchange student. He's this small, scrawny kid who didn't speak English that well and, being from a different country and all, he pretty much kept to himself. I decided to befriend him and we got along pretty well, or as well as you can when you can't really communicate too well.
Enter the jerk. He was about two years older than us and loved to pick on said Thai boy. Usually it was just scrapes and bruises, but one day he took it to the next level. The jerk and his whole posse confront us. He challenges the Thai boy to a fight, and meanwhile got his posse to basically beat the daylights out of us.
As this point, the Thai boy is visibly distraught and keeps going, "No fight, no fight." Then the jerk spits in his face. My friend's face completely changes. He grabs the jerk by his shoulders, pins him to the chain-link fence, and proceeds to kick him. The new kid seems to have more strength than his small frame suggests.
The jerk finally collapses, clutching his abdomen and pleading for the boy to stop. He never bothered us again. Apparently, my small friend was a junior Muay Thai champion before he moved away, and though he preferred peaceful interactions, he finally had enough. Can't say I blame him. It was an amazing thing to watch.
46. Money Can’t Buy You Class
I've been a TA for a couple courses at my university, which is fairly competitive and the students are generally all top notch. Once in a blue moon, though, someone slips by the admission process. My worst experience was as a TA for a lower division math course. She was a freshman student, and spoiled doesn't begin to cut it.
Her family was clearly loaded, and I suspect she went to some insanely expensive private school that wrote her application for her. This girl would be in designer clothes and on her phone or laptop the entire time in lecture. Obviously everyone does this sometimes, but this girl was clearly just chatting with her friends and shopping for clothes all the time.
When she failed to turn in the first four problem sets, I sent her a quick email to let her know that homework contributed to a significant portion of her grade. I also said I'd still accept them. I never got a response. So she gets a blatant F on her first midterm. Like, it’s not an F that could be rounded up to anything significant.
She was at a point where she should've just dropped out and try again next semester. I sent another email saying this. This time I got a response, with her stating she could make the grade back next midterm. Alright, I think, suit yourself. So I continue through the rest of the semester. She's still failing...until something absolutely ridiculous happens.
At the last meeting of my discussion section, SHE SHOWS UP! Not just that, but with her parents. Oh my god, it gets better. She stays after the session to introduce me to her parents, and then hands me a stack of papers and informs me that it's all the homework for the semester. Meanwhile her parents are sitting there all proud of their little girl.
I take the stack graciously and, in my most professional voice, let her know that I'd be happy to take a look at it, but she won't get any credit. Her parents' faces completely fall. Her father starts to insult me. So I show them everything: The abysmal attendance record, the 0% homework score, the low, low, low midterm scores.
Now she's starting to tear up and the parents are seriously fuming. Not wanting to put myself in the middle of the rest of the storm, I mumble that I have a class to get to and sprint out of there...but not before I hear the student getting chewed up so loudly that people actually poked their heads out of classrooms. She never showed up for the final.
47. Entitled to Proper Treatment
I had a student who was an entitled little jerk. Like, way more entitled than any of the teens I’ve taught. He thought he could cheat on a test, cuss out a teacher, be cruel to an intellectually disabled student, skip class, throw things at people, etc. Thing is, he could do all this because his mother thought he was perfect and never disciplined him.
She would then immediately try to turn it around on the teachers, saying how they’re always trying to get her child in trouble. Earlier this year, he made an awful remark to a girl classmate who was this nerdy, sweet honors student who would never hurt a fly. But it turns out he messed with the wrong person.
The girl's boyfriend punched the kid right in the face and busted his nose. It was amazing. Even though I obviously had to discipline the boyfriend, I was secretly glad it happened.
48. Junkie Attitude
I had a 5th grader who was a know-it-all menace. He'd interrupt me and say, "Well actually Miiiiissssssssss..." and then state some random fact that was often wrong or irrelevant. Well, eventually while on lunch duty, I see that his lunch every day is a can of soda, a bag of chips, and tons of candy, like the bag is busting at the seams.
I alert the principal because I'm worried that his grandmother, who was raising him, wasn't feeding him properly. The principal calls the grandma and grandma gets angry. She was letting him pack his own lunch and wasn't checking it. So, she's embarrassed that we've called her on it. She tells us that she will only pack healthy food now and tells us he can't have ANY candy.
A week later, the kid is still being a little jerk and ticks off another student. In retaliation, the student runs to the principal and says that the kid has been sneaking candy to school every day. When the principal goes to talk to him, the kid shoves a chocolate bar into his mouth and the principal takes away the Blow Pop sucker he has.
This kid proceeds to roll around on his belly across the entire hallway, screeching and crying so hard that he's choking on the half-chewed chocolate bar. That's when a kindergarten student walks by and says, "You look like a baby." The kid stops wallowing long enough to punch the little student. He got suspended, and I got a peaceful classroom.
49. Einstein’s Kryptonite
This one student had an ego so large it could barely fit into room. Sure, he was smart, always scored near perfect, and wanted to go to med school. But he would also do stuff like bring in articles about how one small minute detail was incorrectly taught in class. If he got one point off on a 99% exam, he brought in highlighted notes from the textbook.
Unfortunately, for all of his knowledge, he did not get into medical school. When he found out why, he was devastated. His guidance counselor followed up with one of the med school interviews he had, and the school emailed back and told them how much of a jerk the student had been throughout the entire meet up.
50. It Didn’t Add up
I interned in a class with this kid who always thought he was smarter than everyone else. He was pretty smart, but not by too much. Yet he always got paired with kids who weren’t as smart as him, so he would always be super smug when dealing with them. During one parent-teacher conference, we found out exactly where he got it from.
His parents thought he was the smartest kid in the school. They built him up as that and they got him thinking it, too. In this meeting, they even went off on the teacher, saying she “was bringing him down” and that she “was terrible.” The conference ended when the teacher left the room crying. But it didn't take long for sweet revenge.
About a week later, there was an event where parents came to watch their children do math games with other students. Well, the teacher paired this smug little kid with the actual smartest kid in class. The kid got destroyed in the math games. His parents were so flustered, they left before it was all done and took him out of school for the rest of the day.
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