Teaching is one of the most arduous careers on Planet Earth; they are underpaid, overworked and underappreciated. The least we could do for our educators is to treat them with dignity and try to make them not cry. Their stress levels are already at a 10 and beyond, especially in this time of Covid. Maybe we should be checking in on them with compassion and just see if they're having a good day. Who knows when they may blow.
Redditor u/Lawlelle wanted to hear about those times things in class became just a little too much by asking.... Has your class ever made the teacher cry? What happened?You Need a Hug
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In middle school science, I had a teacher who was always so sweet. She was an older woman, and she always made sure we had materials for her class, often at her own expense. I remember she went out and bought like 20 plastic pencil cases and filled them with pencils, rulers, erasers, everything we would need for the class.
One day, some of the kids decided to throw a few of the pencil cases across the room, they snapped some of the rulers and just generally broke a lot of the things she provided for us while she stepped out for 5 minutes to talk to another teacher.
When she came back, she started crying and I remember feeling so bad for her. She gave the class little pieces of candy after, apologizing for losing control and getting emotional. We were the ones who should have been apologetic. she was so sweet to us even though the class was full of demon children.
"SHUT UP!"
In 5th grade, we had a psychotic substitute teacher, probably in his late 50s. At the beginning of class, everyone was goofing off and he immediately shut us down by screaming "SHUT UP!" at us, shaking furiously. We all stayed silent after that because he legit freaked us out, but we came to the conclusion that he was hearing voices in his head, because about 20 minutes into class, he stopped talking abruptly, and screamed at us again at the top of his lungs that we would regret being so loud, but no one had uttered a freaking word.
He then stomped over to the desk, violently swept everything off, muttering the entire time to himself, then went to the back of the room and turned all of the lights off. We were all terrified at this point. He silently paced around the back of the room for a while, then went back to the front and slapped the chalkboard. His next words were what I remember the most clearly. He was violently shaking as he yelled, "I'm going to tell your teacher how horrible of a class you all are when she gets back, and I'll make sure she burns you up... To hell with all of you!"
He threw himself back into the teacher's chair, and started sobbing. One of my classmates managed to sneak out and get the principal, he was escorted from the classroom a few minutes later, and we all had to individually go into the principal's office and recount what happened. Apparently he had just gotten a divorce and he had lost it. He was fired that same day. Honestly, I don't think we actually did anything to warrant his initial reaction. He just snapped.
Couldn't Keep it In
I'm the teacher who cried but I guess I can still share something lol.
My class noticed one morning that I wasn't myself and one kid asked me during recess whether I was okay. Normally I wouldn't share about my personal life but I told my student that my grandma had passed away that morning. At the end of the day before I dismissed the class, the class committee handed me a sympathy card with really sweet condolence messages from every student in my class. I couldn't keep it in and started bawling.
Angry Feelings
Angry tears. Had a history teacher one year, really good teacher. He had had a teenage son who had committed suicide, and after he took some time off, he came back to work. Standard class clown kid started acting up in his class, teach asks him to go into the hallway so he can speak with him privately. We heard their exchange get a little heated, but this kid just cranked it to 11 and insinuated teacher's kid was right to kill themselves with a father like him.
Heard that kid bounce off some lockers about a second after. Teacher came back into the room with angry tears and told one of us to call the school resource officer. It became a big hullabaloo and teacher ended up suspended for the rest of the year. At the time I thought it was crazy he'd shove that kid like that. 15 years later and some real world experience later, I'm surprised that's all he did.
Sour Notes
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Elementary music teacher here.
The art teacher next door was having trouble with her classroom behavior management. The assistant principal entered her room while she had a class and completely undermined her. Assistant principal told her she didn't know what she was doing in front of the kids and redirected the class to "show" art teacher how it's done.
Art teacher threw a fit, cursed her out, and left smack dab in the middle of the school day.
Luckily my instincts kicked in and I told my AP to just bring the rest of her classes to me that day, and I had two classes at a time that day.
I get that she needed to fix her management skills, but it's like teacher code... you don't undermine another teacher in front of students.
Bad Moments
I'm a college teacher in the UK. Absolutely love my job, love helping the kids I teach and love helping them reach their Uni courses.
Never really had many issues with most of my classes, but I had this one class that was real lazy, never did their work etc. They got a real crap result back one lesson, average mark was like 30%. I said something in passing and a student made a comment about how I shouldn't guilt trip them.
I explained how I felt like I was working harder than they were and I felt like I cared more about their result than they did, despite they would be going to Uni. At the time I was going through a break up and was living in my car for a few days and I cried then in front of that class. Awful moment, professionally speaking.
Kids are Mean
Our form tutor was a kindly middle aged Welsh gal, pure as anything, just happy to be doing her job. But teenagers being who they are, it made her a joke to many. She announced to the class she'd be leaving at the end of the term or year etc, and they all cheered and whooped. She left the classroom in tears. Kids can be assholes.
these 2 girls....
I had a french teacher once. We were her first class since becoming a teacher, lovely woman but many of us suspected she has mental health problems, always very quiet and mousey and she always came in looking a bit messy ie. Hair not brushed and makeup a bit smudged. There were these 2 girls who would just torment her, they hid pickled mussels around the classroom and were just these loud obnoxious arseholes.
Long story short, turns out the teachers mum had just died and on top of the stress of managing a class with some real horrible kids she had a nervous breakdown and never came back. About 2 years later I was going to a concert and saw her begging for money outside a train station. Just felt so horrible seeing what she had been reduced to all because of some nasty freaking kids that just pushed her and pushed her.
In Year Five....
Yes, in Year Five (9-10). We had this small, pretty cool teacher take over our class because our usual teacher was out doing something. One day, we would not shut up (something happened that got us kids all excited) and I was just doodling. looked up to see the teacher just run out the class in floods of tears. I then realized just how little attention the class was given her and how much they cared because it took several minutes for everyone to notice she was gone then went right back to talking.
I felt really bad for that teacher because she was the only teacher in our year who got no respect from the students.
too cool for school
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I remember in high school getting a teacher fresh out of uni. He was the best - super passionate about teaching, and would often incorporate music and comedy into his teaching to make it more interesting, almost everyone in the class loved him because of it. There were 3 footy players who would always play up in class though, and the teacher spent extra attention on them, trying to get them just as excited about learning as the rest of the class, but they were simply "too cool" to pay attention in class.
One day they took it too far, I can't remember the exact details, but I do remember that one of the footy players threw a chair "as a joke" - either at another student, or at the teacher himself - and it just broke the poor guy. He lost his crap at the unruly students, and you could see the pure frustration in his face. He just wanted to teach, but these few students were hellbent on ruining it for everyone. He ended up just leaving the classroom in tears, and everyone in the class quickly turned against the kids who threw the chair.
R.I.P
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Teacher here. I was witness to the death of one of my former students (pedestrian hit by a car right outside my apartment). This was pretty common knowledge to my students, and during a Kahoot game one of them put her name as their nickname. Couldn't help tearing up, and I let the waterworks start during my prep period.
Mrs. Raccoon will get you....
Multiple times, we were a terrible class.
She was our sixth grade teacher. Our school had this odd system where you had a home room teacher for most of the day, but then rotated around to other teachers for just a few classes. Our home room teacher was also the music teacher, and for some reason during music class all hell would break loose.
She went on vacation for a week and came back with a bad sunburn around the eyes, so we would only call her Mrs. Raccoon. It caused her to get more tanning done.
During one music class she really had to go to the washroom, so she left for about 4 seconds and a fight broke out between a boy and a girl. The girl took the boys head and threw it through a snare drum. He got stuck in there. She came back to thinking he was dead.
Eventually she had a mental breakdown mid class and ran out into the hallway crying. The 7th grade teacher saw this and instead of consoling her walked in and just let. us. have. it.
I'll never forget that day, he said we were spoiled fools for treating a teacher who only ever wanted to help us like trash. He screamed that if he had a teacher like her when he was a kid he would do everything he could to keep her. Yelled that if we kept acting this way we were in for a life of disappointment brought on by our own rampant incompetence.
It worked. Some of us cried, but everyone felt horrible and we were all nice to her for the remaining year.
Chinese Whispers
In High School we had this terrible RE teacher, one of the activities she would make us do was Chinese Whispers (to this day, I have no idea how this relates to Religious Education). Anyway, one day she told us to get in a circle and sure enough it was a Chinese whispers 'exercise', I can't remember what the phrase was we were supposed to be passing round but when it got to the last kid he just turned, looked her dead in the eye and said "RE is a freaking joke and so are you". She burst into tears and ran out of the classroom, about 10 mins later her husband (also a teacher at the school) showed up and went to town screaming at us all.
Flaged
The whole class knew our teacher loves us so much. On her birthday, we decided to surprise her once she enters the classroom after the flag ceremony. We divided into two groups. Some of us are together with the teacher during flag ceremony and some are waiting for the flag ceremony to end and are trying to hide in certain places in the classroom. The teacher had no clue of what was actually happening and when she arrived together with some of our classmates, we started singing happy birthday to her, she was so shocked you can clearly see her trying to hold her tears. It was the class' most successful birthday surprise.
Edit: For those who are asking what a flag ceremony is: In our country, it is held every Monday at 6:30 in the morning. The whole school gathers in a field or gymnasium to honor our country and sing our National Anthem while facing the flag which will be raised by 3 boy scouts, and after that, is reciting the national pledges. It follows a long process (Starts with praying, ends after announcements, if there's any) and lasts for at least 30 minutes.
And also, thanks for the award, kind stranger ! :DD
I Hate Everyone
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In 5th grade, my class was always extremely nasty to every substitute teacher that came in. They'd act out, doing and saying stupid crap, and though we never actually saw any of them cry, our regular teacher told us on multiple occasions that we'd left the substitute in tears after class was done. I hated every time there was a substitute because it would always become a crapshow.
Also in middle school we had a teacher that started out extremely chill. She said she didn't believe in yelling at students. Unfortunately though, a lot of the same little morons from my 5th grade class were in this class too, plus new ones. I don't remember what the cause was exactly but one day she just snapped and screamed at us for a good 10 minutes. She definitely believed in yelling at students after that. It's one of the few things from middle school I remember clear as day.
Kids are Evil
It wasn't my class but my twin brother's class when we were in grade 7. We went to a public school, which was full of delinquents, but his class was especially bad. They had a substitute teacher take over one of their classes for about a month, and one of the kids thought it would be hilarious if he pretended to be severely intellectually disabled. Looking back on it now it was horrible, but at the time everyone thought it was hilarious. He would moan words, throw books, water, spit on the floor and dribble.
The class played along with it but they would all howl with laughter at him. The substitute kept saying things like he can't control it, stop bullying him. It got to a point where he was being especially bad with his 'disability' and everyone in class kept laughing, she ended up crying in the middle of class and later quit after she found out he had been pretending the entire time.
Into the Woods
It was the end of the day and a whole bunch of us 9 year olds were getting ready to go home when this kid who was always trying to make trouble started arguing with the teacher about the next days homework and she made some comment about his mom and then he made a rude joke about the teachers mom and she burst into tears and screamed her mom was dead. Then we sat in silence for like 5 minutes while the teacher cried.
Edit: also that same teacher once came in crying in the morning and when we asked what happened she said one of her past students died of leukemia. The worst thing was that we saw that girl like a week before while the class was taking a walk in the woods and she and her mom mentioned how she was recovering and was feeling so much better.
Coach Burt
No but once in chemistry class the teacher Coach Burt stopped writing on the board looked straight ahead and mumbled "I could probably blow my brains all over this chalkboard and y'all wouldn't even notice" the only people that heard him were me and the girl I was talking too. I responded "coach I think that's a dry erase board nobody uses chalk anymore. And he laughed which made me feel slightly less concerned.
The Door Jam
When I was in HS we were misbehaving as a whole group, just making noise and not listening and, messing around and finding just about everything that was happening far too funny, nothing too major.
A few of us got sent out to stand in the corridor until she got a handle on things. When she came out to speak to us, one dude was leaning up against the doorframe with his hand, and upon realizing we couldn't contain our laughter at this point, she decided to leave us out there and stormed back into the class, slamming the door.
It was at this point, the dude screamed with the force of a thousand suns, I hadn't heard anything quite like it. Teacher comes back out instantly, steam bellowing out of her ears ready to completely destroy our childhoods.
She turned to the kid, and noticed the end of his finger hanging off, instantly realizing she'd shut it in the door, her mood changed just as quickly, and she just broke down into tears, I would've felt bad but it just topped off the list of things I shouldn't have been laughing at already.
Gargle Please
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Her breath stunk from meters away. We anonymously left a bottle of Listerine on her desk. We thought we were being kind, she thought it was a horrible prank.
These days I can see her point.
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