For calling myself gay. My teacher just assumed I was using it as an insult and referring to myself as being terrible. It took a visit to the principals office with the teacher and going “No. Seriously. I am an out of the closet homosexual. Ask anyone in that class.” They ended up apologizing but I was just kinda pleased they were taking it that seriously in the first place.
When I was in second grade, my teacher saw me bend a paperclip once. For the rest of the year she would scream my name every time she found a bent paperclip and insist I must have bent it. One time she took away a snack I had because there was a twist tie on the bag and she insisted it was one of her paperclips I stole and bent.
Another time she got mad at me and insisted I was chewing gum when I was actually just eating graphite from my mechanical pencil. I don’t think I can really blame her for that one though
The mental image of a kid explaining they were just eating graphite with stained teeth made me giggle, thank you
Using an unabridged dictionary instead of my 4th-grade textbook’s glossary.
Every new unit in social studies had a vocabulary box with about a dozen “new” words. The teacher’s first assignment in each unit was to write out each word, then the complete definition of that word from the glossary. Each assignment was worth 10 points. Anyone who “failed” the assignment (less than 7 out of 10 points) was given a lunch detention: no recess.
Some units had only a handful of words; the assignment would end up being 2 or 3 pages. Some units had a lot more. They would end up being 5 or 6 pages.
She took off points for each misspelled word, missed punctuation, bad handwriting. The assignment had to be completed in ink, and she prohibited corrections of any sort. No erasable ink: If you made any error anywhere on the page, she expected you to rewrite the entire page. If the ink stopped flowing in your pen, and it produced an interrupted line, that was a point off.
It had to be turned in on standard ruled paper. Using college rule was an instant failure.
Once, I found a nice pen. It was a 1mm ballpoint. It produced nice, thick, clean, dark lines. It wrote smoothly. It was the first pen I found that I actually liked writing with.
Points knocked off immediately: she called it a “marker”, and the assignment was supposed to be completed with a “pen”.
One night, I had forgotten my social studies textbook at school. I decided against even attempting the assignment, and resigned myself to another lunch detention. Dad had other ideas. He insisted that I was exaggerating; the the teacher would be reasonable and accommodating. He said that she would appreciate the effort, and might even give me extra credit for going above and beyond.
He called around, and got the vocabulary list for me. He sat me down with the list and his big, unabridged dictionary, and told me to start writing. I remember that I filled two whole pages with the definition of a single word, and that I turned in 15 pages.
When she was grading my assignment, she called me up, and asked me what I had done. I explained that I had used a dictionary. She pulled out a big red marker, wrote a giant “F” across the first page, and gave me two lunch detentions for my obstinance.
She fucked me up for a few years. All I learned from her was that if I couldn’t achieve absolute perfection, there was no point in even trying.
There’s a unique trauma that comes from watching your parents be wrong like this. If your teacher were a normal person, your dad could have been correct. A normal teacher may have said, “this wasn’t the assignment, but good effort, good proactive problem solving, good teamwork with your dad”. Instead, your dad, who you trusted, who you looked up to as brilliant and infallible (I’m generalizing here, abt kids and parents, maybe not your relationship specifically), convinced you to think outside the box and then you were punished for it.
My mom had a typewriter and then we were one of the first families to have a computer and a printer among my classmates, and my mom always made me type my homework because she thought it would impress the teacher. I got in trouble because I was supposed to be practicing handwriting. The teacher never told my mom tho, so i was made to type at home every night. And then I’d just re-write it on the bus in the morning. And it would look bad because the bus was moving haha! And now I have TERRIBLE handwriting!
That souds so horrid I would claim it was unrealistic if this was the first time I heard of a teacher behaving unfairly.
Unfairly? You’re being too nice.
That teacher is a bitch and should be no where near children.
This is correct. This person was not a teacher and makes everything worse for all of us who actually want to encourage and educate young people. I rarely feel anger, but this kind of thing absolutely enrages me. Why would you do this to a child??
In 2nd grade the teacher had to step out of the room for several minutes and put me in charge. If anyone misbehaved, I was to write their name on the chalkboard. One group of boys did misbehave, so I wrote down their names.
When the teacher returner, she scolded me for “being a snitch” and sent me to the principal’s office.
Entrapment
Two classmates got into a fight in class and I bailed out of there because I wanted no part of it. The teacher got mad at me for bailing and said I should’ve done something. I was 12, what do you think I could do?
Damned if you, damned if you don’t.
You were just at the wrong place, wrong time, and the teacher blamed you for it.
“You should have done something so we can punish you too”
Two kids were playing catch with a milk carton to see who it would burst on. One kid missed and it hit me and burst. I was blamed for it and the teacher tried to make me clean it up no matter how much I explained that I didn’t do anything wrong. Fortunately, those two kids owned up to it and they cleaned it up but the teacher was super upset about it and still insisted it was my fault. Idk if she had some sort of vendetta against me or if she just couldn’t accept that she was wrong and doubled down.
Putting my arm around my girlfriend’s shoulder while we were sitting at an assembly. I wasn’t doing anything inappropriate, we were just sitting there. But the principal took me aside at one point and told me to stop.
One day at 5th grade recess I was just walking by myself when some kid jumps on my back and starts choking me. I reflexively bent forward causing him to fall. I was suspended for a week. He got nothing
Reading ahead in class. I wasn’t reading ahead, I am just a fast reader. Yes, I really did finish that chapter already. Yes, when you said to read it. No, I’m not showing off.
What kind of teacher complains that a kid is reading too much?
Same teachers that complain that a kid is reading at to high of a level, or solve a math problem a different but completely functioning way.
Teachers that are not capable of dealing with kids at different levels or different ways of learning or doing and need all children to do everything exactly as the teacher says at exactly the same pace.
5th grade music (singing) class. We’re practicing a song for an upcoming assembly. It’s cheesy. An excerpt:
We can fight all the evil, we can fight all the hate
If we do it together, it won’t be too late
If we do it together, it won’t be too lateDuring the song, two adjacent kids start laughing every time it says “We can do it together” because “do it” = “have sex” even though most of us don’t know what it entails at this age, myself included. The teacher glares at them but does nothing else. Several other kids including me chuckle at the scene. This goes on for 3 weeks.
Now comes the dress rehearsal. Today is special because two 5th grade classes are having a joint rehearsal. All of us are a little giddy because there are double the kids crammed into the same space.
In anticipation of getting caught up in the infectious laughter, as the words “do it” approach I hide my face behind my sheet music. Suddenly, the backing CD track cuts out. I lowered the paper from my face she was already halfway to the clown kid sitting beside me. Except… she comes to me. In this abrupt silence she explodes at me, point blank, index finger brandished:
“YOU NEED TO GROW UP! IT IS NOT ABOUT HAVING SEX!”
She singled me out. I was embarrassed.
Only after class did I learn from my homeroom teacher that the two instigators had recently been given a very stern talking to, such that the music teacher thought it was resolved until my hiding face gave her the impression it was not. Thankfully my homeroom teacher understood and I received no further consequences other than all of this living in my head for the next 30 years and forever.
In 3rd grade (maybe age 8), when coming back from the playground, my teacher had a rule:
STRAIGHT LINE, NO TALKING, NO TOUCHING
One day, when coming back from recess, I noticed that the kid in front of me, Joe, was crying. Now, I didn’t like Joe, he was a bully and had made fun of me and my friend group since the 2nd grade. But I still didn’t like just letting someone sit there upset. So I put a hand on his shoulder and said, “hey, are you ok?”
Thus breaking two of the three most important rules you could possibly imagine. The teacher came over and chastised me for “playing around in line”, completely ignoring Joe (who was still crying). I tried to argue, but to no avail.
Later that day, the teacher made a huge speech in front of the class about how sometimes you think you’re doing the right thing, but you still need to follow the rules, and gave me a citation in front of the entire class.
Also, Joe continued to bully me.
can’t help other people being bastards. can control yourself, and you did the right thing. Good job
Oh yeah, I don’t doubt that for a second. Ms Schwalbach was a genuinely miserable person who had it out for me, for some reason. She taught me a valuable lesson that day, just not the one she tried to teach.
Edit: I was curious, and looked her up just now. She’s on the school district’s committee. Only the best make their way to leadership, I suppose
Making a fireball with the schools powdered coffee creamer.
Reading a book in English class. Had a high school English teacher that was out sick half the time and spent literally all of the remaining time they were actually in to teach us, reading through the assigned novel for the curriculum. (barely 20% of the curriculum overall) I was/am an avid reader so had the novel finished on my own in about a week and a half and got bored of listening to the terrible accents and voices being attempted by the teacher so Brought in my own book from the library and hid that in the cover of the prescribed novel to read. Teacher caught me and sent a letter home to my parents. Absolute nonsense!
In eighth grade, part of being in student council was helping an assigned teacher with various tasks during study hall. Well, when that teacher didn’t have anything for us, my friend and I would go help the librarian with various tasks instead. We were “caught” and given detention (my first and only). So dumb.
I got sent to the principal’s office in kindergarten for saying my teacher had big hands after another kid called them “bigfoot” while they were standing on a step-ladder. She apparently was insecure about her massive, gigantic, galactic-sized hands.
