People Share The Most Cringeworthy Thing A Teacher Has Ever Done At Their School

People Share The Most Cringeworthy Thing A Teacher Has Ever Done At Their School
Photo by Tra Nguyen on Unsplash

It may have been a while since you've been in school, but we bet if we asked you to tell us about "that one teacher" most of you know EXACTLY who in your life you'd tell us about.

For me, it was a bonkers Latin teacher who was older than dust and had so many anger issues it wasn't even funny.


Buddy creeped on the girls all the time, constantly picked physical fights with the popular boys, and at one point flung a desk and grabbed a student by the throat.

But that wasn't the cingiest. Nay, dear reader. The cringiest thing was the time he commented that he was kind of bummed out that he hadn't fathered an obviously pregnant student's child since "everybody else got a turn."

Someone on Reddit asked:

Whats the cringiest thing a teacher has done at your school?

And it turns out my latin teacher was far from alone in being a creeper, but more importantly that there are about 150 flavors of cringey happening out there, and teachers have mastered them all.

The Hand Dryer

My classroom was next to a girl's bathroom. My teacher would always pause class to go yell at them for using the hand dryers and "disrupting the class", but we knew he was just looking for an excuse to invade their privacy. He would also drop pencils in front of his desk and ask girls to pick them up. He was arrested a couple years later for having porn on his work computer. Not sure where he is now. Hopefully, still in prison.

- SextusRex

The Virgin Diaries

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Co-worker told his class he's still a virgin. He's 45.

- machinegunteacher

We had an older, unmarried religious studies teacher who used it as a point of moral pride that she had remained a virgin. Never thought it was appropriate for teachers to be discussing their sex life and/or lack thereof.

- nella20

I'm not sure if ours actually told people she was a virgin, but we all knew. She was in her 50's (or at least looked like it), extremely Catholic, unmarried and still lived at home with her parents.

- amyeh

The Bossa Nova Jingle

We had a substitute music teacher in 5th grade. I have no idea how she was hired but she had very little patience for children and would use the lesson time to rehearse her own projects on the synthesizer but wouldn't let us participate or make any noise at all. So, we would sit on a large U-shaped sofa and watch her play, bored out of our minds.

One day, two of the rowdier kids (a very, very large girl and a much smaller boy) got into a fight while we were sitting on said sofa. The girl threw the boy off the couch and he fell backwards into a very wobbly shelf that was full of old toys, clown wigs and small musical instruments.

This released a domino effect because -unbeknownst to anyone - the synthesizer cord had been tangled up around one of shelf legs. As the shelf and the kid crashed to the floor, the cord got pulled taut, toppling over everything in its way (music stands, plastic chairs etc).

Then the synthesizer violently crashed to the floor, the taut cord tripping the teacher over in the process, making her land butt first, in a very bizarre cross legged position.

As we watched in horror and disbelief, there was a brief moment of silence where all that could be heard was the bossa nova jingle from the synthesizer.

- parkavenuewhore

Just Sing

I had this math teacher, Ms. Greene (not her real name) who loved to sing. Her voice was fine, that wasn't the problem. The cringey things she did as a result of that love of singing, though...

When we were learning the quadratic equation, she had us sing it to Adele's Rolling in the Deep, and for the next couple of months, if someone wanted to use the hall pass, they had to sing the quadratic equation to get it.

Then there were the birthdays. If someone had a birthday (and a friend in that class who was enough of a jackass to inform Ms. Greene of said birthday,) Birthday Person was forced to stand in front of the classroom while the class sang Happy Birthday. But not just regular Happy Birthday, oh no. Ms. Greene would divide us into three groups and have us sing it in cannon, which does not sound good.

The ensuing four minutes were spent with the class looking down at their desks, mumbling Happy Birthday. If Ms. Greene didn't think you were singing loud enough, she would lean down, look into your eyes, and sing loudly at your face. Birthday Person looked on in embarrassment and pity.

- Bao-Babe

William and Harry

My time to shine.

First day of sophomore(?) year. Had PE class. Teacher was one of those skinny, tiny old ladies with an unreasonably high amount of energy. She starts class off with, "Hope we're all having a good day today! Well, except for Diana's children!"

This was the day after Princess Di's death.

- AlexRaynard

Listening To Jesus

I went to Catholic school all my life. My Junior year religion teacher was discussing with us the Catholic teaching on sex. I forget how it came up, but she explained that, when having sex with her husband, she'd turn the portrait of Jesus over their bed to face the wall, but she said she could sometimes hear Jesus saying, "Go (her name) go" like he was cheering for her.

- AnCearnighMor

Never

My English teacher in secondary school (high school for you Americans) had her husband also work at our school and on Thursdays we had English after lunch. She always showed up to class on Thursdays like 10-15 minutes late and would always have a new stain on her cardigan (she never washed this cardigan apparently because their were at least nearly a 100 of these stains on it).

Another time she told us her fantasy about having the entire New Zealand rugby team run train on her at the same time.

Final one, she strode into class one day grabbed her boobs and announced "breasts, we all have them, we should all get them checked".

She should have never been allowed to teach.

- KassellTheArgonian

That Boom Ba-doom-boom Bass

Giphy

We got a new principal at a small, tightly knit charter school. He was a large, middle aged man who really wanted us to accept and like him. Honestly, it was really hard to. He had an authoritarian approach to an unusually democratic school and seemed inherently inauthentic/disingenuous. One day, he decided to tell us that if we reached these high testing scores, he would dance to Super Bass by Nicki Minaj. We did, because we all thought it would be funny, but the man took it way too far.

He dressed up as Nicki Minaj, wig and feather boa, and it was honestly kinda horrific. He got on a table on all fours, started twerking, gyrating, and it was awful. None of the students or teachers could really look at him the same way. A lot of people said it was the day they lost all respect for the man. It was only a month or so into the year. Most people's first impression was that moment and it was kinda scarring to see.

Everyone had their phone out and I'm pretty sure that it still haunts him (even though it was ten years ago) because he hasn't done anything similar since. I don't remember if anyone cheered, but I do remember the shock my friend's face because she had been sitting at the table he climbed onto and was way too close to his buns, hun.

- Exiled_to_Earth

Tough One

Cleaned the sweat out of my 8th grade mustache during an exam using his finger while saying "tough one, no?"

- senior_cornhole

This wins the award. An 8th grade mustache is nauseating. Someone touching it? And empathizing on the flop sweat. Jesus.

- __my_man__

Quite The Journey

Probably cringeworthy by today's standards, but back in 1983 it was pretty cool. Psychology class...yeah, we had one. Taught by Mr. Greenwood, who looked a lot like Charles Manson, but would get pissed off if you said that. Otherwise, he was awesome.

One time, he had us all figure out our "mantras" and then made us meditate for the rest of class. He would bring a record player in on Fridays (yes...records...it was the 80s) and you could bring in your favorite album and he'd play it while we all had a free hour of study (homework for other classes or whatever) on the condition that you had to agree with him that "Wheel In The Sky" by Journey was the greatest rock song ever.

Seriously. In order to get your album on the turntable, you had to stand up in front of the class and say "Wheel In The Sky by Journey is the greatest rock song ever."

He also put on a presentation about how people around the world flipped each other off...with visual examples.

Probably the weirdest and most inappropriate thing he did was have us hallucinate. He set up this experiment where we sat staring at a poster on the wall while a strobe light and sitar-like music played, and the music synced up with the strobe and after about 15 minutes the walls started to...um...fluctuate.

He explained what he was going to do the day before, and looked knowingly into the back row of students and said "whatever you do...don't drop acid before class."

I'm sure some parents would have had a problem with all that.

- gogojack

Safety Scissors

My seventh grade geometry teacher used to unzip her knee high patent leather boots and trim her overgrown leg hair with safety scissors in the back of class. I wish I was joking.

- ihave-bluehair

Ew.

Date another teach. Not just because she is 25 years his junior or because she was his student when she was in high school, but also because he's still married and with kids.

- boombapqaz

Middle Schoolers Don't "Go Potty"

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My Spanish teacher is one of the cringiest teachers I've ever met. She's a good teacher, but she is just so...I can't even describe it.

We were learning about masculine and feminine noun endings, and the day before the lesson, she told us "ok, so get ready for tomorrow, because I am going to teach you how to go potty."

To a group of middle schoolers. To this day, I can't believe she said that.

- garnetsareunderrated

Serial Home Wrecker

My 12th grade gym teacher was deemed "home wrecker" because she successfully broke up two separate marriages. One was with some guy and the guys son was in my grade and this gym teacher would try to act like a step mom to him while he completely ignored her for obvious reasons. The second was with another gym teacher at the school. She was moving on to her third victim (yet ANOTHER gym teacher) by the time I graduated.

- cswivel

Mr. No Bones

My one math teacher decided to show the class some "real dance moves" this man has been called Mr. NO BONES since.

- PossessionIsBest

A Tampon Tantrum

My 8th grade algebra teacher randomly stopped lecturing, walked to her desk, grabbed a tampon out of her desk, and walked out of the room. That's not cringeworthy, and at that point the girls had gotten on to the boys of our grade about making period jokes so none of us even laughed about it we just sat there and started talking while she went about her business.

She gets back in, we all go silent and wait for her to start lecture again, and she just starts going on a rant about how woman have needs and we shouldn't laugh about it. Again, nobody was laughing or even talking about it. This rant went on for the rest of the period, it just went on and on. We had to finish the worksheet she had given us to learn what we needed for the homework for that night... none of us knew what to do because she was venting about her period in front of the class instead of teaching.

- Tevaconda

Point Made

My white creative writing teacher was reading a rap song a kid had wrote out loud and said everything including the n word multiple times.

He was trying to make a point about how if it is uncomfortable to hear him read it then don't give it to him. He definitely made his point...

- ChessyQuinn

Game Time

Not a teacher, but a substitute. Would ignore lesson plans and teach something random. Ended up pulling the fire alarm during a class she had hijacked for games instead of actual lessons because she was up first for charades. Fairly certain she got blacklisted not just from the school district, but the state.

- blackwoodshippy

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