As these Redditors will tell you, teaching isn’t always finger painting and snack time. We all know that kids are generally pretty weird, but others can be downright creepy. These unfortunate teachers had their hands full with some of the most disturbing and nightmarish cases around. One thing's for sure: Teaching is not for the faint of heart.
1. How Do You Not Notice?
My mother is a middle school teacher so she’s got some stories, but this one is absolutely unnerving. As a class was getting new assigned seats and waiting at the front of the classroom while the teacher reads out names and seats, a girl, who was pretty quiet but not exactly ‘loner’ status, lanced a boy in the back with a pair of scissors completely unprovoked.
She jabbed him deep enough to puncture a lung and somehow, this kid didn’t notice. It wasn’t until 10 to 15 minutes later when he asked to use the restroom and another teacher saw the back of him soaked in blood. After they figured out what happened and who did it, the authorities were called and she was taken to a children’s facility.
My mother stopped in at the end of the day to chat with the principal about the incident and what the principal described was quite disturbing. She apparently sat there the entire time the authorities were talking to her about what she did and why she did it and she had absolutely no remorse. She sat there and nodded. No tears. Gave no reason why she did it.
When she was told she would be going into a children’s facility—nothing...no reaction. She just sat there staring. This wasn’t revenge for something this boy did, they weren’t friends and my mom said he’s the sweetest thing who enjoys his small group of friends and Pokémon. She did this completely randomly.
2. Essay Or Manifesto?
I had a student once write a very terrifying and unsettling personal narrative essay. I forget exactly what the prompt was, but it was about an educational experience. It started off with the student talking about how he had always felt alone and isolated and out of place as a student, and it quickly disintegrated into how he was coveting his pretty female teachers.
He said that he felt overly protective toward them, and that he was jealous when other male students talked to them, eventually revealing that his deepest desire was to cut off his male classmates' faces and wear them as a mask. I had never before felt such a bone-tingling dread before while reading an essay.
I spoke with my dean about this, and we called the counseling and advising department, read sections of the essay to them, and they said they would handle things from there on out. The student was withdrawn from my class, and for the next two class periods, an officer was placed at the door of my classroom in case the student showed up.
Here's the kicker: the next year, one of my students told me that her boyfriend was in my class the previous year and that he really enjoyed my class. I asked who it was, and she revealed that it was the student who wrote that bone-chilling essay. I so desperately wanted to tell her, but privacy laws wouldn’t allow me to.
3. Maybe That’s The Launch Sequence
I was a teacher’s assistant. We had a rocket day where every student made mini rockets to be launched. They were in 5th grade and in the cafeteria and I was walking around to help anyone who needed help. One little girl called me over from my class. I came up and asked, “What’s up?” because everyone was almost done at that point. Her response floored me.
She looked me square in the eye, and slowly licked the side of the rocket. Like a seductive lick. I had never been more uncomfortable up to that point.
4. One Man’s Trash…
I was teaching 7th grade a few years ago. One of my students is a bit...off. Not "off" like "I'm going to harm you," but "off" like "I have an old toy chest full of all of my haircuts and a picture of my mom's pretty friend". I will call this kid Carmine. One day, Carmine comes to school and you can hear that he's pretty sick, his nose is clogged and that stuff isn't going anywhere.
Oceans of molten mucus clogging up his nose. He's snorting every five seconds, blowing his nose, hefty meaty blows of the nose. Filling tissue after tissue. On this day, in my class, everyone was reading independently. I scanned the room to find Carmine hunched over his book, sideways in his chair, blowing his nose violently into a tissue.
I thought man, poor kid, should probably be home sleeping or something. Then I thought OH GOD WHY as Carmine opened the hefty, soggy tissue, looked suspiciously around the room, and took a big ol' lick of the contents. Then another. Then I walked up behind him, as calm as I could muster, and said, "Hey, Carmine, throw that away, please".
The look in his eyes was not one of disgrace. It was more like the greedy, defensive look I get when I approach my dog as he's gnawing on a bone. The look was 100% NO THIS IS MINE, YOU CAN'T HAVE IT. I didn’t want it, Carmine, I didn’t want it.
5. An Argument For Buzz Cuts
I was a preschool teacher at the time. I was doing group time (singing songs, reading a book) and all the kids were sitting on the floor. One left to blow her nose. She came back, walked through the crowd of kids to get back to her spot, grabbed a quiet girl’s hair, and kept walking. My assistant thought it was a mistake, but the girl kept walking.
She even bent at the knees and yanked while the poor long-haired girl screamed. That girl had no remorse and would be so unpredictable. She would look in your eyes, but right through them. It was a stressful year.
6. A Lack Of Social Skills
I worked in a nursery and had a little girl there who I had to do one-on-one work with because of her serious attachment disorder. It wasn't diagnosed at that point yet, but the nursery workers were totally underequipped and underfunded to deal with this poor kid. Although she was only three years old, she had really underdeveloped speech, didn't know how to cry, and was the most violent child I had ever met.
She was incredibly strong due to trauma early on (children who have lived in abusive homes generally have much more strength because they're constantly in the fight or flight reflex, high on adrenaline), and was already removed from the abusive home, living with her alcoholic grandparents. I saw her swing a metal pole at a kid's head, stomp on children, shout bad words, you name it. But the most disturbing thing of all?
Her penchant for biting other children—specifically little babies. On their faces. Whenever we had outside playtime, we had to have someone right behind her at all times, especially when the babies were out at the same time as us. One moment, she'd be sweetly playing in one corner, and then, the second you looked away—BAM—she'd be on the other end of the playground, viciously attacking a baby.
She put one of those poor little babies in hospital before I started there, and there were many other incidences during my time too. The good news is that working with her for just a few months, and really really giving her attention and love and patience paid off. She learned how to cry. She learned how to show love and frustration.
And she stopped biting towards the end. It was really incredibly hard work, and I definitely got too emotionally involved, but it was worth every moment. Broke my heart when I had to leave.
7. Regret Was Felt That Day
This one is a doozy. We had a brother and sister that were adopted at birth from Russia. These kids were trouble. Needless to say times were often difficult and one of them seemed to have extremely sociopathic tendencies. For Christmas they got a camera. Seemed like a fun gift idea and there were really excited about it.
I knew their family didn't have much in the way of income, so a cool gift was really special for them. I was happy they got something they both enjoyed so much. But then they brought the camera in and began showing other children the pictures, which is a pretty big problem. Kids were not allowed to bring in cameras to school or anything.
The cameras were a mistake, and most of all, the pictures were some of the most unfortunate images I've ever seen. They were essentially photographing one another as they spread their butt cheeks apart, among other things. Talking about the photoshoot and how they had to do it when mom and dad weren't watching.
8. Honesty Saves Lives
At the first school that I taught at I had a girl come up to me one day and say, "Robert has a knife". I pulled Robert into the hallway to talk with him about it. He said that he didn't have a knife, but that he did have a box cutter. I asked him why he had it and he said, "Because I'm tired of Chris". Chris was an annoying suck-up but wasn't really bad or mean to other kids.
I asked Robert what he was planning on doing to Chris. He said, "I am going to get him in the bathroom". I usually took the class to the restroom after lunch but I didn't that day because they were being rowdy in the hallway. I took Robert to the office and after hearing the story, the principal chewed him out. She then called Robert's mom, and she chewed him out on the phone.
Here's the kicker. Robert knew that he was in serious trouble. He knew that what he was planning was wrong. He just didn't care. Not in a false bravado macho type way. He literally didn't care. I hate to predict a kid's future endeavors, but that kid definitely scares me. By the way, Robert was eight years old at the time.
9. Begging Babies
I taught 3rd graders for a year, so the kids were around nine years old. It was a couple of days before the summer holidays and I asked the kids what they were going to do during summer. I got to this one girl and asked her what she was going to do and she happily announced she was going to Germany with her sister and parents.
I asked her what she was going to do in Germany, and she said she was going to ask people if they have one euro. I was like, “What?” and she proceeded to sit down on the floor with a really sad look on her face, stuck her hand out to me, and said: "See like this. Please miss, do you have just one euro, I'm hungry". She didn’t really see anything wrong with this.
I’m pretty sure she didn’t really understand what she was doing. I was quite alarmed by this, so I informed the other school staff. That's when I learned the horrifying truth: It turned out that even though they weren’t actually poor, her parents were regularly taking their two daughters to Germany over summer where they would make them beg for money in the streets.
I heard the girl and her sister got pulled out of school shortly after that, but I don’t know what happened after since I don’t work there anymore.
10. The Epitome of Determination
My wife and I taught together in the same high school for a while where we shared several of the same students. We shared one particular student with whom we had entirely different experiences. In my math class, he didn't mind the subject or me as a teacher. He was relatively calm and polite with me. However, when he went to her English class, he turned into a completely different person.
He hated her class. He hated it so much that he began to try, on several occasions, to get out of it. Here are some of the highlights that took place within about a week before he was eventually removed from school altogether. First, during passing period on the way to English class, he threw himself down a flight of stairs and swore he was paralyzed and couldn't possibly go to class.
The nurse checked him out, and much to his dismay, he was sent back to class anyway. A few days later, at the start of English class, he attempted escape again. This time, he soiled his pants in class; no hesitation whatsoever. This attempt was slightly more successful than the last because he was then allowed to go home for the remainder of the day.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, he had to return the following day. His final act came another few days later and finally allowed him to meet his goal. Again, while in English class, this student began to pleasure himself at his desk. Due to the lewd act, he was removed from class and was shortly removed from the school altogether.
He was later enrolled at a juvenile detention center to continue his education.
11. A Smelly Secret
The middle school where I used to teach used to be a high school, so there were a lot of disused spaces around the building that the middle school just didn't have a lot of use for other than storage. One of those spaces was the old high school wrestling room. It was essentially used for the storage of some gym equipment and as a hallway.
At some point, people started to notice a bad smell in the room when they went through. They didn't think anything of it at first, but it gradually got worse and worse until they finally went in to investigate...What they found was utterly disgusting. Buried under some other equipment, was a wooden box half full of human excrement.
They just covered everything back up and waited. Eventually, they caught a student who had been sneaking out of the lunchroom and into the wrestling room everyday to do his business in the box. His parents were called, of course. He just thought it would be funny. The best part was that the school sent them home with the box.
12. Exercise Isn’t Always The Answer
I used to teach a PE class to five-year-olds. I had this one kid who used to come with his friend from kindergarten. His friend's mother apologized to me numerous times and said she never would have offered to bring him if she knew what he was like. More than once I had to evacuate the rest of the kids from the gym.
This three-year-old would be running around the gym screaming terrible words at the top of his lungs while trying to punch, kick, or headbutt other kids. You never knew what would set him off. If you asked him to kick a ball, he was equally likely to kick another student or the ball. One time, he got so violent—I couldn't get him away from the other kids.
I ended up wrapping him up in the 'firm cuddle technique' which they definitely don't teach teachers about anymore. I basically dropped him to his knees with me on my knees behind him, arms wrapped around his arms and his chest. The only part he could move was his head and he kept trying to smash the back of his head into my face. But the worst part was the laughter.
He normally had a vague, empty look on his face but when he was trying to hurt someone. He would scream with laughter wearing the biggest and creepiest grin that I have ever seen. I only had him for ten sessions once a week, but oh my goodness, I will never forget that kid.
13. A Moment Of Clarity
I used to work at a school for kids with disabilities. I worked with this awesome little kid with autism who had very intense verbal and motor stereotypes (e.g., repeating off-topic words/phrases in a non-functional way, arm flapping, etc). One day, as per usual, she launched into one of her long-winded scripts. She spoke quietly as she gazed off into La La Land.
But this time, she paused, turned her head and looked at me in the eyes (a rarity) and said with the most clarity I’ve ever heard, “welcome to my world". I was stunned. She immediately reverted back to her script before I had a chance to respond.
14. Jesus Preached Love
I always mention this one because it was literally my first day teaching ever, but a kid in my class carved a girl's name into his leg and bled everywhere. A month later, that same kid somehow managed to take my wallet. Later, he cornered me in the hallway after class and returned it to me. But that's not the most frightening part.
When he gave it back to me, he calmly told me I should be aware of what he could do to me. He let me know that he could do much more since he was able to easily take from me without me noticing. I actually never reported him for that, but soon after, his parents pulled him out of our school because they thought we were too liberal and filling their godly son with bad ideas.
I would argue, however, that we definitely weren’t the problem.
15. Sick To My Stomach
When I was a preschool teacher, we had two students who were aged three; a little girl and a little boy. The little boy was known for being a troublemaker in the class and his parents didn’t care as he was usually only physically violent towards teachers, almost exclusively. But on this day, this little girl had the flu and was being sent home early.
She was sitting beside me crying because she didn’t feel well while we waited on her parents to pick her up. The little boy approached us and asked why she was crying. I said her tummy didn’t feel well and he looked at her for a moment, and then with all of his force just kicked her straight in the gut. She screamed out in pain and started crying even harder.
I, of course, calmed her down while he started to snicker. He had such a smug grin and honestly, I think he was proud of himself for it. In fact, he was going to do it again until another teacher physically restrained him. But that wasn't the end of it. Soon after, he started injuring other students. He was always like this and I really think he’s going to really hurt someone some day.
He completely lacked remorse at such a young age. I’ve never seen that before and it’s terrifying.
16. The Creepiest Smile
I started teaching second grade a few years ago (seven-year-old kids) and one of the students had a very complex personality. He was smaller than the other kids and he showed a lack of empathy. I never saw him have any joy in connecting with other people unless he benefited from it directly, in some way. He was a bit less developed mentally.
I especially remember this one time the class worked with maths individually. The room was completely silent and everyone was focused. I was helping a kid when I suddenly see him standing up and walking over to another kid (who was always nice to everyone), took his ruler, stared at him for a second, and then broke it in half and smiled.
Then he walked back to his own seat while the other kid started crying silently. He sat down and was still smiling. It seems like such a small thing, but I remember this was when I realized how severe his case was and it took me quite a while to stop getting flashbacks of that creepy smile.
17. A Slimy Obsession
We have a small pond at school where kids can find various animals. This one kid took a liking to a frog and he’d hold and stroke it at any given opportunity. After a few weeks he broke one of the frog’s legs, in his words “so that it would have to depend on him to survive". Needless to say, phone calls were made to a few agencies.
18. He’s Seeing Things
After school, while I was coaching a sports team, a student who was trying out for a different team started screaming at the top of their lungs in the gym. We ran in to see what was happening and he was standing with his hands outstretched and his eyes rolled to the back of his head, screaming at the ceiling. The other coaches and I ran over to help.
Once I get to him, I get him to sit down and he's shaking. I put my arm around him and try to get him to snap out of it, the others are calling everyone, especially the nurse. All of a sudden, he stops screaming, his eyes turn normal, and he turns to me, shaking with fear, and says, "I just saw Satan". He then falls back into his fit.
It was the most heart-pumping, adrenaline rush, fear-inducing thing I've ever witnessed. This kid seemed like he was possessed...like in the movies. He eventually goes with an ambulance to the ER. Turns out, his parents changed his meds and did not inform the school he was even on meds. He had a really bad reaction, obviously. Still freaks me out when I think about it.
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19. I Prefer The Lights On
When I was in college, I worked as a Student Nursery Teacher for a few years. Though this event wasn't particularly disturbing, it still gives me chills to think about. I was sitting on the floor, helping some children build a castle out of blocks when one kid gives me a mischievous grin and runs over, climbs up onto the toybox, and flicks off the light to the classroom.
All of the kids around me were silent and terrified, and then one kid pops out of the play teepee beside me, looks me square in the eyes, and says, in a really deep voice: "It's dark. The lions are coming". The lights came back on and the kid smiled at me and ran off. I was left shaking, I’m still not sure why he said that.
Maybe it was a tactic that their parents had used to keep their kid in bed after dark, or maybe I had just witnessed a demonic possession, but to this day, it still makes me shiver.
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20. Is This A Zoo Or A School?
My mother got back into teaching a while back because one of the schools near our house needed some extra help. Anyways, she taught while I was growing up and she was bored so it was something to do and she enjoyed it. She mainly helped out with the Pre-K/Kindergarten classes. But one day, something so horrible happened—she regretted it with every fiber of her being.
One of the students went into the bathroom and literally took a dump in his hand like a chimpanzee, and then proceeded to smear it all over the walls. They basically had to call in a hazmat team to clean it up. That was her first and last day.
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21. There Has To Be An Easier Way
High school math teacher here. Many years ago I had a very entitled young lady who tried to get out of class every. single. day. Her parents enabled the misbehavior every step of the way. On one occasion, as the students were filing into class, I was helping another student at my desk and this girl asked me (as she had done many times before) if she could go to the nurse.
Without looking up, I told her to take her seat and I would get to her. Once class started (less than five minutes later), I remembered her request and called on her to get a hall pass to go to the nurse. When she looked at me, I was horrified to see her eye extremely red and tearing up. She went on her way and as soon as she was gone, another student approached me.
She said that in the previous class she had witnessed this girl pick up a stray, unbent staple and put it in her eye. The nurse called me to confirm (she was in disbelief) and the girl finally got what she wanted, which was several days out of school.
22. It’s Always The Quiet Ones
Many years ago, when I first moved to my current country of residence, Spain, I was working as an English teacher in a summer camp. These kids were there for the full month of August, and while most of them were perfectly normal kids, there was one who was just on a whole other level. To begin with, he was much shorter than the others who were all the same age.
His clothes were dirty and the only belongings he had were all in a plastic shopping bag. Remember, they were going to be there a month so most of them had pretty decent-sized suitcases. It looked like his parents had just driven up and abandoned him at the gate so we all felt bad for him. Well, the kids were grouped up into classes and we would rotate which groups we were teaching each day and work on improving their English.
This kid, though, just wasn't interested, regardless of who was teaching (most kids had a favorite teacher). He would walk off in the middle of the class (they were often outside under some trees) and start kicking at the ground, and was generally unresponsive. Well, one day, during the lunch break, we heard shouting from outside.
We ran out and this kid had gotten into a verbal fight with pretty much the biggest kid there. The bigger kid was yelling at him, but he was just standing there staring at him the whole time until, without any warning, he grabbed hold of the kid’s finger. Then with zero emotion on his face, he bent it backward.
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23. A Warm Wind Blows
I was substituting for a 5th-grade class, and we were playing a game called "A warm wind blows". Basically, a combination of Simon Says and musical chairs. A student would say "a warm wind blows for anyone who (insert subject, i.e. has a dog, likes to play football)" and then all the students who that pertained to would race to get a seat.
In the last round of the game, I had a student say with a straight face, "A warm wind blows for anyone who has dangerous thoughts". Obviously, the mood was ruined and the other students looked confused and upset. I immediately stopped the game and took him to the counselor. I haven't seen the student in a while, as I was moved to middle school after that. I hope he's okay.
24. Safety First
I was told to take my class of 3rd graders down to art class, where I would sit in the back and do nothing while the art teacher did her thing and then I was to deliver the children back to their regular classroom. We get to the art room and the art teacher tells me she has to run to the bathroom.
She asks that I get all the kids seated and to let them know that she'll be right back to start the lesson. Okay, easy, right? Wrong. We walk in, all the kids start finding their way to their seats, and this one kid, Albert, heads to his seat in the back and suddenly stops. "Look!" he shouts, bending down to pick something up…
It's a pair of safety scissors. My first thought is, "Oh no, scissors! they can't have those!" but then I remember that they're just super blunt and made of flimsy plastic. That's when the nightmare began: Albert proceeds to STAB HIMSELF IN THE NECK WITH THESE SAFETY SCISSORS. His first stab doesn't puncture, so he starts sawing at his neck with the blades, all while screaming exaggeratedly.
Honestly, I was like a deer in headlights, I managed to open the door and see the art teacher returning and I just start shouting gibberish at her and she comes running. She runs in, smacks Albert on the back of the head, rips the scissors from his hand, and says sternly, "We talked about this". He calmed down immediately after and literally none of the other children seemed to think this was a dramatic event at all.
25. A Bad Feeling
This was about five years ago. I was teaching 9th grade English and one of the repeaters was talking out of turn while I was explaining an assignment, so I said something to the effect of, "Student, this is the nth time you've talked out of turn in class today. If you continue to act out, I'll give you a detention". His response was terrifying.
He just looked at me and said, "Miss, you know I could get you, right? I'm not going to tell you what I would do to you, because if I did, I could get in trouble. But you know I could get you, right?" I just shrugged it off and sent him down to the office, but later that day, I told my principal I really needed him moved out of my class.
There was just something that I couldn't explain that really disturbed me about him. That wasn't the first time he said something like that to me and I honestly felt threatened.
26. Sharing Is Not Always Caring
I taught first grade for a year. Had a truly evil little girl in class, we'll call her A. A was friends with a nice girl in class who we'll call C. C was deathly allergic to peanuts and A knew this. She brought a peanut-filled candy bar to class one day and tried to slyly share it with C. I caught her and took the candy away.
I pulled A aside to talk to her. I told her that C was allergic to peanuts and she said she knew that. I then told her that her candy has peanuts in it. She said she knew that also. I explained that C would get very, very sick if she ate the candy. A said she knew that also. I explained that C could die. A responded with "So?"
I didn't know where to go from there so I called the principal in. A was kicked out of school shortly after that.
27. Ah, Young Love
I had to step out for a phone call about a student in class, I didn’t want him to hear me talking about him or any other students. This was when I was still working at a middle school. Since then, I've moved on to teach at a high school. I thought it’d be a larger improvement than it was, but thankfully, I haven’t had a situation like the one I had in middle school...not yet, at least.
Anyway, I’m outside of the classroom for a maximum of one minute. They all start talking when I announce I have to leave the room for a moment and pause the lesson. I’m fine with that, but about halfway through my phone conversation all talking stops and it’s perfectly silent. When I return to the class, I'm greeted with the most puzzling scene: A kid is sitting on my desk with a stapler held against his head.
He’s threatening that if his girlfriend (also in the class) doesn’t get back together with him he’ll end it all right there. For some reason, maybe because it was early in the year of 7th grade and they are still young, she completely believes that if he presses that stapler against his head, it’s over. So she starts begging him to put the stapler down and that she’s sorry.
While this was happening, I was basically letting it resolve itself because I didn’t think the kid was really going to do it and the girl was trying to talk him down. Plus, I figured that if I intervened, more people would get more hurt than just a staple to the dome. The situation resolved itself, but I decided to send him to the principal’s office.
It was not something he should be doing. I think the parents should be concerned and I knew it would be hard to focus the class afterward. While I’m walking him to the hallway to explain why I am doing this he screams, “Jennifer, I love you!!” and she starts crying. Hormones make people do some wild stuff.
28. Hidden Doesn’t Mean Invisible
I caught some kid trying to take inappropriate photos of his lady friends in the class. When I noticed him doing something fishy (he was directly aiming the camera to where the female students were sitting), I told him to hand over the phone and he got visibly uncomfortable but complied. I handed it over to his form tutor, who was a lady, and explained the situation.
I figured if there were any photos of female students it wouldn't be okay for me to see it. The first sweep-through of his documents didn't reveal anything, but luckily, I thought of suggesting for her to check the "hidden" category and I'm told everything was in there. School took disciplinary action as a result.
29. She Got What She Asked For
I had a teacher in high school, she was young and starry-eyed. Asking the students to do “outside of the box” essays and such—but some of her prompts were downright disturbing...One of the most memorable ones was: "Your goal is to exterminate an entire population; who are they, what method do you employ and why doesn’t anyone notice?”
It was pretty gruesome; but a great way to actually interest teenagers, unfortunately. Well, one of the students in either my class or another one argued that wards of the state/foster children would be the demographic. They followed through with a well-constructed argument that “people don’t care about them anyway, otherwise they would be adopted”.
He went so far as to detail the method of extermination which I sadly cannot recall. She was genuinely shocked, though I don’t know what else she expected with a prompt like that one. So much so, that she had to call the counselors to have a meeting about it.
30. The First Cut Is The Deepest
One of my four-year-old preschoolers was constantly in trouble. He would single-handedly make the day much harder than it needed to be. One day one of my other students fell on the playground and I cleaned up their knee and gave them a bandage. The "troublemaker" asked for a bandage as well and I explained that we only use bandages on injuries and such.
The boy surprisingly walked away and went to work with another teacher. About five minutes later, I see the teacher bringing him to get a bandage, when I asked what happened she told me she caught him scraping a colored pencil on his arm until he cut himself...Needless to say, we were very concerned about this behavior and reported it.
31. His Name Is Silence
There was a time, not so long ago, that I taught English as a second language. You got a mixed bag of students: the confident, the bookworms, the shy. One class had a peculiar chap called Juan. He was mighty strange alright. He was built like a malnourished werewolf with ginger fuzz. He was late to class once and as he entered and whispered his hello, he floated in silence to his seat like a ghost.
The way he moved was ethereal. Of course, as the teacher, I tried to stop the other students from laughing at his odd behavior. What happened next was not so much disturbing as just plain spooky. One day, I’m writing on the whiteboard. Class listening intently. I turn to write something else. Not five seconds elapse before I turn back around.
This creeper is literally nose to nose with me. I screamed and clutched my heart like a grandma in church and he whisper-asked if he could go to wee. It took me the entire time he was gone to catch my breath.
32. Tom’s Not Here
Around eight years ago, I was on lunch duty in the library. A boy called Tom, who was around 14, stood in front of me and we began talking. His eyelids started flicking mid-conversation and he stopped talking. This carried on for a few seconds. He then opened his eyes and started talking to me in an American accent (he is English).
He asked me who I was and did I know his friend Tom. Then, his eyelids started flickering again. After a few seconds, he opened them and returned to the original conversation pretending nothing had happened.
33. Not So Private Moment
I went to the bathroom near the hallway for special needs classes. When I went in, there were a few girls from the special needs class but no assistants. I entered a stall and as I was doing my business, I looked up and almost screamed out loud. All I could see was one of the special needs students pressed fully against the door, staring through the crack.
I was surprised and a little creeped out but honestly just didn’t know what to do. I finished up and went to open the door and the girl ran to the sink. I went to wash my hands and she came to stand next to me (she was actually much, much bigger than me) and just stared at me, breathing really heavily. There was nothing overtly scary about it, but thinking about it still creeps me out.
34. A Little Too Creative
So my sister taught English a few times in addition to history. One kid was obsessed with war. He wasn't so much about the battles and the tactics; he liked all the civilians who lost family members and loved ones, like “all is quiet on the western front". He was researching injuries and wondering how you could survive some of them that would leave you disfigured but alive.
He would casually look this up. Then she saw his creative writing assignment. It was basically an opera about an extended family that lived in a country that was going to battle, and it was about how all the characters took it. All the tragedies where family members went off to the front lines, where a daughter had a miscarriage and never got to tell her husband that the baby never made it.
Then the husband passed on and one person impaled his foot to keep from being conscripted then couldn't find work. Many of the family members wanted to at least find some things positive but couldn’t. Many times the adults went to bed hungry and they would fight when someone snuck food for the children...My sister didn't read it all the way to the end, but he put a lot of thought into it.
35. Kids Do The Darndest Things
I taught piano to young kids while I was in my teens. Kids were mostly fine and decently behaved, but this one girl very clearly did not want piano lessons. She was really resistant to anything I said and clearly did not care whatsoever about practicing. I mentioned to her offhandedly that I was playing a concert in town over the weekend.
During her lesson, while I was demonstrating a piece to her, she slammed the piano lid down on my fingers. It was insane. She was really calm one moment, and the next she was yanking down the lid of the piano. They had an old upright piano and the lid was heavy. Luckily, I didn't break anything and healed but I wasn't in shape to play the concert.
They even had to find a last-minute replacement. Apparently, she didn't want me to play the concert—I still don't quite understand her reasoning. I was absolutely shocked. She'd only been a little rude and sulky up until that point and I wasn't expecting it at all. Never went back.
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36. That Can’t Have Felt Good
I was a nursery worker in my church, not a teacher, but this story has stuck with me. There was this one kid we had who I’ll call Dan. Dan was younger, maybe two or three, and he was adopted by the mom who brought him to church. I think he was mistreatment until she got him? He walked very weirdly, literally on the sides of his feet, until he got surgery for it.
Anyways, he tended to cry and throw fits a lot more than the other kids. Often, it was over having to share something or to stop standing on the chairs. One day he completely freaked out though. I forget the incident which started this, but I remember he was getting fussy and one of the other ladies telling me to leave him alone and he’ll be fine.
Then he just starts HITTING HIS HEAD on the ground as hard as possible while crying. One of the ladies quickly stops Dan and we get his mom down to hold him. I was so scared and I felt so bad for him. He’s a lot better now though.
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37. On Another Planet
There was a girl in 4th grade who had some of the most severe psychological disorders I’ve ever seen. She lived in a complete fantasy world. The first thing she ever said to me was that she discovered a new alien species that was “half cat, half astronaut, and half octopus". Whenever her friends were absent for more than a day, she thought they'd passed on, and would draw photos of their funerals.
Another time she called a polar bear using one of her earmuffs and proceeded to have a lengthy conversation. She also claimed to be impregnated by a cat, that she was 100 years old in egg years but only 10 in human since she hatched, I could go on. Her mother was an addict which might explain how she ended up this way.
Her mother seemed to be clean when I knew her but I can never know. She said she would lock the kid in her room because she would get up while the parent was asleep and turn the stove on. Spending a year with this child made me truly appreciate how sane I was.
38. No Such Thing As A Harmless Lie
Our school was on a light lockdown. That meant we could go about our business, but no one enters or leaves the room. The details were unclear to me, but it sounded like there was a kid running around the other half of the building (this was the largest school in the district), and was throwing chairs and destroying rooms.
There were obviously some kids who were scared, as many of the kids in there were 2nd grade and lower, and I really wasn't allowed to go into detail with the kids about what was happening (I barely knew the answers myself). But when I came across a 1st grader who was in absolute hysterics, I sat down with her and tried to console her.
Apparently, there was an older kid going around telling the younger kids that there was a murderer in the building who was going to kill them. The absolute rage that I felt was something I had never felt towards a child, but oh my word was I furious. I spoke to some of the other kids and they had all been told this by the same troublemaker.
I had him sit in a safe seat until the lockdown was over, at which point I took him straight to the office. I really didn't say anything to him because I knew if I opened my mouth to this kid, I'd wind up getting myself fired. He was in the office for a long time, and fortunately, I was able to calm a lot of the younger kids down.
39. Teaching Through Trauma
I have a story from the perspective of being a student. I saw my teacher do something very disturbing to demonstrate lab safety and it really freaked me out. He was pretending to play with the mannequins by squirting them with water and laughing while doing it. Then he pulls out some water-like substance and starts laughing.
Meanwhile, this mannequin is being burnt and torn apart by whatever chemical was in that bottle. My teacher then said, "Oops, I burned 25% of Bobby's face". Then he starts laughing and squirts the mannequin more and it disintegrates until it looks like melted chocolate. He then proceeds to put this mannequin on the top of this shelf that says, "Here lies the students who were not safe".
The next day, he had about 20 model heads on this shelf.
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40. Art Is Up For Interpretation
I had this weird classmate that would sit next to me and didn't think much about them as they were always drawing. Once, I glanced over, and it was realistic drawings of a few of us with injuries or in really creepy situations. I must have been staring for a while because I realized, they were looking at me.
They put a finger over their mouth in a shushing manner before going back to drawing. I was creeped out enough to say nothing but they were gone the next week, no one knowing why and the teachers didn't disclose more than the fact something happened and they were expelled.
41. Friends In The Right Places
My mom was a teacher in Southern California schools for 25 years, and not always in the nicest of schools. One High School had a lot of issues with Latino Gangs as many of the students were members. Luckily my mom was well-liked by most of the students. I don’t know why but even the toughest dudes would be all smiles when passing her.
They would then go straight back to being intimidating once they passed. Anyway, during a school lockdown due to gang activity at the school, she had some of her students say, “Don’t worry Mrs. X, we have ways of protecting you, we won’t let anything happen to you". She described it as less than comforting.
42. Self-Reflection Is A Good Skill
I was the reason for at least one teacher’s creepy student story. My parents let me watch whatever I wanted on TV. I was a big fan of the Nightmare On Elm Street series from a very young age, and one day made my own Freddy Kruger glove with some kitchen knives and a cloth glove and brought it to school in my backpack.
A teacher found it and told my parents (I think this was in Kindergarten), but I didn't really get in trouble, except that I was told not to bring knives to school again. In retrospect, I think they must not have been familiar with the movies, because I think they were more confused about why I'd put knives into a glove than anything else.
I didn't threaten anyone and I wasn't violent and had a reputation for being more than a little bit odd, so I think they just saw it as a weird thing to do.
43. Best Be Careful
I had two students approach me after school. I was outside monitoring the kids leaving the building to walk home, and these two boys walked up and started telling me how cute I was as a baby. Being middle schoolers, I didn’t take it super seriously at first but asked what they were talking about. One of them showed me one of my baby pictures on his phone. But that was just the beginning.
He then proceeded to tell me my address and my fiancée’s name. The assistant principal was nearby, so I called him over and had them repeat what they’d said. The information they had was not readily available with a quick Google search or anything like that and I still don’t know how they got it. One of the boys’ fathers was known as being part of a local syndicate, so I was totally freaked out.
The school took the stance of “kids will be curious” and “it isn’t a big deal". I talked to some officers posted at the school and he told me I was well within my rights to press charges, but within 30 minutes of the conversation, the assistant superintendent was at my classroom door, informing me of how “bad” it would look on my evaluation and for potential future jobs if I pursued anything.
44. That’s Why Teachers Take Attendance
I taught at an adult learning college. The student was getting paid by their employer to come to college and get their formal qualification. Their employer was upset that after 12 months, this student hadn't passed a single one of their subjects. The student then complained to the college that there seemed to be a mistake.
The first I knew of it was when the administration staff asked me why he had failed so many classes. I didn't know who he was as he hadn't ever turned up or submitted any work over the 12 months that he was supposed to have been there. That's the first time I've been asked to show evidence of non-attendance. I struggled to find a way to even do that.
45. Deny, Deny, Deny
The same kid would throw epic tantrums that often involved flipping or throwing furniture, destroying anything within reach, and building barricades out of classroom furniture and shelves. We generally tried to remove the other children from the classroom during these instances and it was best to just stay safe, waiting him out.
After one truly incredible and destructive tantrum, he had finally worn himself out and was quiet. As I guided him out from his corner fortress, I explained that the other children were on the playground but before he could join them, he would need to help clean up the mess he had made. Wide-eyed, he looked at the destroyed classroom and asked in what sounded like genuine shock and confusion, “I did that?? Are you sure?”
46. Sudoku Is Difficult
The subject matter for this one was disturbing, but I'll admit that I laughed out loud at the wording. Instead of completing a writing assignment, the student turned in a long, punctuation-free rant about the difficulties of picking a topic for the assignment. He said he had a couple of ideas but couldn't find sources and was so stressed out that he wanted to "commit sudoku".
Presumably, he meant seppuku, and so I got his mom and a counselor involved. Turns out he wasn't serious. He's fine. Just at an age that values histrionics for their own sake. Still...sudoku.
47. The Tiny Terror
I teach four-year-olds part-time, which means I usually do art and recreation in the afternoons. There’s this girl in my class, let’s call her Mary, who is a tiny terror that frequently runs around, making other kids cry. Her moves are very calculated: A hair pull, kicking a toy over, snatching art. She waits until the other child is crying before she relents.
She never wants the toy, just the reaction. On the other hand, this boy, “Jim”, is her polar opposite and often the voice of reason in my class. He’s a gentle giant, the biggest kid in preschool. He shares happily, is kind during playtime, and is probably the most thoughtful human I’ve ever met. Well, one day during "Outside Time," Mary kept targeting Jim.
He was pretty good-natured the whole time. She would snatch a shovel from him and he would respond kindly by saying, “It’s okay, you can have it, toys are for sharing,” stuff like that...Sidebar: Remember those giant red and yellow cars that kids sit in and pedal with their feet? The yard has five of them for the kids to share. Mary was leaning against a wall, and Jim was pushing one of those cars.
The kids like running around with them, so that was normal. Jim was probably a good 30 feet away from her when he suddenly started accelerating. He was aimed like a homing missile, pointing straight at poor clueless Mary. I genuinely believed he would turn away at the last minute or stop. I was wrong. He slammed the car right into Mary.
He effectively crunched her against the wall. I’ll never forget how long it took for her to inhale. I was shaking, I thought he cracked her ribs. Her entire back was bruised, but thankfully no further damage. I was too shocked to be angry. After passing Mary to my co-teacher, I turned to Jim, who was sulking in the corner, and asked “Why did you do that?”
He seemed very calm, and after shrugging his shoulders, he uttered something so terrifying—I'll never forget it: “I was just trying to take care of our problem". 100 percent scared of this kid now.
48. It Follows
One of my female students planned to take care of a girl she saw as a rival for a young man's attention. She handed out knives to five other girls. One ran straight to the office and may have prevented a murder. The girl then got expelled and forced into counseling. The younger brother was not removed from the school, so the expelled child comes with her mom to the school every day.
Her mother told me that the child has ADHD and that's why she's so unbalanced. She was diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder at the age of twelve, not ADHD. This child had a history of terrible actions. After the incident, I changed schools. But that wasn't the last time I saw her. The mom changed her school, and to my dismay, she ended up in my class again.
Then she took my purse and got another expulsion because of it. This girl still comes into my classroom every day after expulsion to say hello, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
49. Know The Rules
So I’m not a teacher yet, but I’m on a gap year, and I've been working at the school I just left with aspirations of returning after my degree to teach there. So all the kids know me personally since I was just a student and that does make things a bit weird but moreover, that fact, coupled with my younger age and lack of experience, means that I’m already not equipped to deal with certain issues and nor does anyone expect me to.
Now, the kids know how to push my buttons but there’s a sort of mutual respect thing going on where they’re easier on me than on the teachers and I turn a blind eye to certain things or at least allow them to act more relaxed around me but some children are just walking problems. Which brings us to one particular girl.
Let’s call her Sunshine. Sunshine is her daddy’s princess—a spoiled brat and the devil incarnate. She’s not that awful to me though. In fact, she’s ostensibly flirtatious with me, which is disturbing on its own but it makes the rest of the story just a little weirder too. One day, Sunshine was in a classroom brawling with another girl while the teacher wasn’t there.
I say brawling, but it was more of a one-sided headlock and the other girl was doing nothing but squirming. Sunshine was really going at it though, squeezing her and pulling her hair. I was passing the room and stepped in when I saw what was happening, clocking there was no teacher present and asking what was going on.
Sunshine let go at first but she was clearly mad because when she saw it was only me, she didn’t even try to play it off or sway me, she went right back to it. I’m fully aware that I am entitled to (as in the staff handbook, of which I only read the interesting parts) restrain a student if they are a danger to themselves or others but I didn’t want to go so far as to touch her.
So I tried to talk her down, and instead, she pulls a pair of scissors, brandishing them viciously in an outstretched hand before moving to cut the girl’s hair. At this point, I decided to intervene and seized her by the wrist. The minute I grabbed her arm she started screaming and I panicked and let go, taking a couple of steps back. Then she did the most outrageous thing.
She cast aside the scissors and removed all her clothes. She knew, evidently, that when a girl is undressed the male teachers can’t be in the same room and the female teachers can but can’t lay a finger on her. I ran for the hills because I was not messing with that power play. About 40 minutes later, I was walking nearby and saw a bunch of teachers gathered outside the room.
I saw the other girl later and she thanked me for stepping in. She was quiet and swift to move away though, clearly hoping I didn’t notice her hair was uneven.
50. The Risk He Took Was Calculated
I instruct circus disciplines and had a kid (who has no problem completing the skill we were warming up with) randomly fall off his apparatus, screaming and crying. We were doing something dangerous so, of course, the facility handles it as a serious injury, the potential for a totally broken arm was there. After he went home, I watched it on camera.
The kid looks at me to make sure I wasn’t looking, lets go, and falls to his own doom. I was so confused. His mom called us later to inform us that he was faking the pain and he thought that if he got really hurt, he'd be able to see his dad. The whole situation went from strange and terrifying to sad and terrifying.
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