If you're not a fan of 2000's r&b you might, as the chorus teacher did, believe "The Pony Song" had anything to do with ponies. It does not.
It absolutely, positively, does not.
It does, however, feature a chorus that starts with the plead "If you're horny, let's do it. Ride it, my pony."
Thing is, this student was developmentally delayed and didn't understand why the song he selected, got approved, and performed with vigor and enthusiasm (he sang and danced, fam. passionately. he was lord of the dance for the briefest and most glorious of moments) was suddenly not appropriate.
His performance was cringey not just for the content, but for how poorly the teacher handled the meltdown that came from his legitimate inability to understand. She wasn't prepared to handle his needs. She wasn't ready with any tools or understanding of his condition or the way his mind worked.
The whole thing was such a "please stop" moment that one of the seniors who was a close neighbor and understood how to manage the students meltdowns had to step in. The teacher was obviously in way above her head, her lack of training caused some serious missteps, and unneeded stress on the student.
This story has a happy ending, though.
The teacher was so upset about unintentionally hurting that student by not understanding his needs that she went out of her way to study up and gather resources - way more than the school would provide. Fast forward a few years and she has left public education and is now one of the most successful and well-loved music therapists in her state.
All because of a love of Ginuwine, a love of education, and some "passionate" dance moves.
So when one reddit user asked:
What was the "please stop" school presentation that you witnessed?
That's what immediately came to mind. Digging through the responses had us cracking up, so we figured we would share a few with you.
Sorry to say, but none of them have as awesomely wholesome an ending as mine. There are, however, several songs. So we're thinking maybe it's best to just avoid singing in presentations. It's awkward for everyone.
Gatorade What?
Was in a video/film making class in high school. One group of guys did a parody of those Gatorade commercials where the athletes sweat is colored like Gatorade but it was a sweaty guy masturbating. Apparently there was a Gatorade money shot but the teacher just turned it off immediately before it got that far.
An Invented Example
GiphyIn high school a student died in a car accident where she was driving. There was no record that stated she was distracted by her phone or anything, but the school decided to have an assembly shortly after talking about distracted driving and using her as an example. They told the whole school she'd be alive if she was doing what she was supposed to.
- Orsus7
Hey Mister
For 8th grade talent show, 2 girls sang the "Mr. Bledel" song (Mr. Bledel was a good looking, recently college graduated teacher) that basically was about how cute they thought he was.
Even then, it was incredibly uncomfortable and I remember looking at the teachers face and he didn't seem very amused.
Porn Is Good
For a Public Speaking class in college, we had to give a persuasive speech. One kid did his speech about porn.
If he had had a legitimate argument, like "sex work is real work," or "porn has a negative affect on a person's self-image," the speech would have been fine - we were all mature adults. But all he did was list the different kinds of porn he liked - in detail, with visual aids.
I remember that he was into cartoon porn (but not hentai - I remember that his example was a Scooby Doo porn parody) and Asian porn (I remember that he showed a bunch of Tweets from Asa Akira).
The professor stopped him after a few minutes, and asked him to explain what he wanted to persuade the audience about. He answered: "Porn is good."
The Fear Boner
Once in college I was in my Spanish class and our desks were in a "U" shape, I was on the very end of the "U".
So some guy is giving a presentation, he is standing behind a podium. Gets a boner. I'm on the side and no one is opposite so I can see it.... dude just kept going on and on and on, I think he was trying to outlast the fear boner but his nerves just made it worse. He ended up getting it down before he had to sit down. Was like a 10 min presentation that only needed to be like 3 min though. In Spanish.
Poor guy.
They Heart Hitler
Presentation on WWII. Student had just discovered all the neat transitions you can use between slides and decided to use a different one each slide.
They used the flashing heart transition between a photo slide of a mass grave and a photo slide of Hitler.
In Blackface
In 1984, when I was in 6th grade, each class did a winter concert. The 8th grade football team sang "I'm dreaming of a black Christmas"
In. Blackface.
The teachers didn't stop them because the teachers were the ones who organized it as part of the holiday show. Green Bay Wisconsin, Bay View Middle School.
Tractors
GiphyGrade 12 advanced placement English. We were assigned books then had to do a presentation on a topic somehow related to it. The book I was assigned was "the Stranger" by Camus, so I presented on existentialism in literature.
One girl was assigned Animal Farm. She started her presentation on...
Kinds of tractors used in farming.
She hadn't read the book and assumed it was about actual animal husbandry.
It was a very long presentation. The teacher had to actually hide her face.
I Am The Cringe
It's me. I did this. I cringe about it to this day, nearly 20 years later.
I was 16 and in high school. My high school was going to do a spring talent show. I wanted to be in the talent show and show off my talents. The problem was, my actual talents are not ones that I could show off at a talent show. So I decided to try singing.
I have never sung in my life. I have never had voice lessons.
I was in my prime weeb stage and chose an anime song to sing. I didn't know any actual Japanese, I had just memorized the lyrics from hearing the song so many times.
Luckily I didn't make it past auditions, but several people saw an overweight girl in a Sailor Moon shirt try to sing 'Butterfly' despite having never done any singing or voice training ever in her life.
Nearly 20 years later, and remembering it keeps me awake at night.
Never Stop Praying
My elementary/primary school was a religious school. So one day when we had an assembly by the religious members of our school, they were explaining the importance of praying and all the discipline issues. While one of the members were saying stuff about faith or whatnot one of the other members interrupted him and started to say to never lose focus while praying.
She then went on to say that even if there is a house fire to not stop praying, the most "yikes" thing was when she said that even if your parents are dying and asking for help to not stop your prayer. I was completely shocked by this and couldn't believe what she said to the whole school of children ranging from (4th grade- 8th grade). I looked around to see the reaction of everyone but everyone seemed normal.
Coming out of the whole presentation. I told one of my friends how messed up that particular message was. Basically someone heard me saying that and like a little snitch went to tell that lady what I had said. I was called to meet her and she confronted me about saying bad stuff about her speech.
I told her that yes, I did because one of things she said didn't stick to me well and told her which one I disagreed on. She said "well that's how we are suppose to be when praying." I was lucky she didn't take my words too seriously and let me off the hook.
I thought it might've been a slip of the tongue kind of thing she must've said in the presentation, But by the end of the confrontation I was proved otherwise.
The Applause
One day a group of highschool girls wearing really...uh appealing clothes went to the stage at my school's talent show and started twerking thinking they were nailing it. Everyone cringed so much, and the people with the middle schoolers were super uncomfortable. When they finished the teacher presenting the show went to the microphone and said "Congratulations! You got the whole audience clapping!"
But no one was clapping.
The BEST Best Friend
GiphyWhen I was in tenth grade, the english honors teacher made us present projects in front of all of her classes. There was like 100 of us gather in the auditorium to watch this. One of the popular people connects her USB drive to the laptop, which is connected to a projector where a bunch of her nudes appear on the screen. It took them a couple of minutes to realize this happens and one of her friends had to jump in front of the projector.
Another Invented Example
My principal in high schools biggest beef with us kids, was that we all constantly skipped class. He held an assembly in which he told us that we wouldn't get anywhere if we kept skipping class and that we'd be stuck in a minimum wage job forever. Sounds like a normal, hardass principal speech, right?
Well the example he used to show this to us was a former student. She worked at McDonalds, was the oldest of 6 kids, and her single mother was an alcoholic. She had to drop out of school to take care of those kids. He said that she was to blame because she skipped school to go to work. She did what she had to to take care of her siblings, that shouldn't be ridiculed.
A Passion For Pokemon
Did a presentaion with a friend about Pokemon. We made a page for every gen (4th was new at the time) every Pokeball, type, a few selected Pokemon and other stuff that is important in the Pokemon games. In the middle of the presentation my friend took over and started to rush through. He told me that he realized that nobody (including the teacher) wanted to listen to that many details or Pokemon in generel. My teacher was happy that he finished fast and we didn't use up the whole time. Now I cringe thinking about me being so oblivious xD
- Domitaku
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.
The Virgin Diaries
GiphyCo-worker told his class he's still a virgin. He's 45.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That Boom Ba-doom-boom Bass
GiphyWe 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.
Tough One
Cleaned the sweat out of my 8th grade mustache during an exam using his finger while saying "tough one, no?"
This wins the award. An 8th grade mustache is nauseating. Someone touching it? And empathizing on the flop sweat. Jesus.
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.
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.
Middle Schoolers Don't "Go Potty"
GiphyMy 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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
