If I Ever Had Any Of These Supremely Toxic Teachers Growing Up, My Blood Pressure Would've Gone Through The Roof
People over on Reddit are answering the disturbing question, "What did your teacher do that made you call them the 'worst teacher ever?'"
Unfortunately, their stories were pretty gruesome and intense, and have left a very damaging mark on them years later.
So, here's what some of them had to say:
Note: Some submissions were pulled from BuzzFeed Community users and this Reddit thread.
Note: Some submissions include topics of verbal abuse, sexual harassment, suicide, and threats of violence. Please proceed with caution.
1."I had a teacher who was standing up while talking to our class — everyone was quiet, and either listening or at least wasn't actively disrupting things. He stopped mid-sentence, threw his coffee mug against the chalkboard, angrily said, 'Fuck it — learn it yourselves!' and stormed out. Everyone just looked around and was like, 'Who was talking? Was it you? No?' None of us could figure out what the hell set him off, and we could see him outside the room pacing back and forth, muttering something. Five minutes later, he came back into the class and started talking, acting like nothing happened."
2."My third-grade teacher got frustrated with a kid's stutter and started pounding the kid's desk with a closed fist while mocking his stutter."
3."In primary school, one of the kids had smeared poop on a cubicle toilet. So my teacher asked us one by one to take a look at it. Then we had to bend over, bare-assed in front of her so that she could look at all the boys' butts. I remember her smacking my six-year-old butt, saying, 'Nice bottom.' I tend to get flashbacks of some really bad parts of my childhood, and [this is one of them]."
4."The worst teacher I ever had was my ninth-grade English teacher. She had one of my siblings six years before me and hated them so much she never even gave me a chance. She failed absolutely everything I turned in (most of the time without even looking at it) and tried to kick me out of her classroom for no reason. She admitted to the school administration that she knew I was just like my sibling and wouldn't waste her time on me (for perspective, my sibling barely graduated, and I averaged 80s and 90s). I ended up doing a private study for English that year with the vice principal because it was a small school with no other English classes to transfer into."
5."I've had some super-horrible teachers and some super-awesome ones, but my second-grade teacher was the worst. I was a little kid with raging ADHD, and I couldn't organize for the life of me. She just equated this to me being an 'idiot' and refused to actually teach me anything. This year, I'm 18, and I'm still trying to learn elementary school math because I missed so much. My best teacher was probably my English teacher in my last year of high school — I missed class/was late all the time, but that never bothered him. I got a ton of work done, and it was done very well, and he was always encouraging. He never diminished me or my ADHD."
—Col
6."There’s a substitute teacher at my daughter's middle school who refused to let the kids go to the bathroom. One boy was shaking in his seat because he was to the point of wetting himself. She refused to let girls go when they were concerned they’d gotten their period in class or were about to bleed through. She also told my daughter the way WE pronounce OUR last name was incorrect. The school had a fundraiser where the kids could donate a dollar, and the teacher with the most money raised would get pied in the face at an assembly...guess who won by a landslide?"
7."I had really severe eczema on my hands as a kid. I used to keep them tucked up in my sleeves to avoid people seeing them and getting blood on my paper (yes, it was that bad). She called me out during a test and said to take my hands out of my sleeves because 'it’s not like that’s gonna help my grade.' I was a shy kid and silently cried through the rest of the test. Also, I was a straight-A, 'gifted' student, so why she was acting like I had a poor grade, I'll never know. I’ll never forget that woman being needlessly cruel to a child who was already in physical pain."
"It was extra weird because prior to this, I had never been in trouble in her class, and I liked her. Although I was socially shy, I was not shy in her classroom. I participated regularly in class discussions, answered questions, and volunteered to read. I genuinely got the impression that she liked me as a student.
After she embarrassed me like that, I completely wrote her off and didn’t care to participate or talk to her anymore. I’m almost 37, and I still remember exactly how I felt in that moment."
8."My teacher made a point of belittling me every single day for a year because my interests were different from the mainstream in a small town. It was nothing out of the ordinary, either — I was into pop culture (like the Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons). This was a place where there was no culture outside of football for boys or netball for girls. I'm over 40 now, and I still go back to that town a few times a year. That teacher is lucky I haven't gotten revenge now that the tables of relative strength have turned. He also used to wave his penis around in the changing rooms when we had swimming lessons...every single time."
9."My mother had me relay a question to my kindergarten teacher about an upcoming field trip. When I asked my teacher, she started screaming at me. I don’t recall everything she said other than continuing to call me stupid and threatening to have me paddled by the principal. I just remember going back and wanting to hide under my desk as everyone stared at me. This was just one example of her behavior that impacted me for years."
10."A girl in my math class complained about doing a certain math equation. Our teacher turned around from her spot in front of the whiteboard and shouted, 'Well, it's not like I'm asking you to slit your wrists.' The girl complaining had a family member die by suicide a year earlier, and our whole class went off on this teacher. The teacher just laughed and said we were overreacting while the girl sat and cried in the corner."
11."I had a teacher who gave me failing grades but never returned my assignments. We'd take a test, and then the following day, she'd read our scores out loud in front of the class: '[One student]: 98%. [Another student]: 90%. [my name]: 27%.' I was so frustrated because I was studying my butt off, and I didn't know what I was doing wrong. After fighting with the teacher and eventually having to involve the school board, it came out that the teacher didn't even look at the tests. She randomly gave scores based on how smart she thought the students were and how much she liked them."
12."The first time I ever wore shorts above my knees, my Spanish teacher said I was disgusting for wearing shorts to school and slapped both of my thighs."
13."My second-grade teacher disliked boys, and after I complained about her mistreatment, the school discovered through an investigation, she manipulated the organization chart. All but four (if I recall correctly) of her students were boys — myself included. I think she had 21 girls and four boys, and all of the boys were essentially failing her class. She didn’t return the next year."
14."In my country, we have religious schools held separately. Since my family wasn't that religious when I was growing up, I also wasn't fluent in reading Arabic. There was a substitute teacher (who mistreated me) when I was absent one day. When I came in the next day, the first thing she asked was for everyone to stand up. She went to each person and asked to see their handkerchief (I should add that this was more than 20 years ago — we lived in a hot, humid country, and there wasn't any air conditioning). Anyway, students who did not bring a handkerchief were pinched on the arm — it looked painful, and I thought to myself, I shouldn't get pinched — I was absent. How was I to know this rule?! But nope — she wasn't accepting that reason and went ahead with the punishment. It left a bruise."
"I told my mom on her, and my teacher said she didn't like students wiping their sweat on their uniform. My mom told her off, and afterward, she stopped the punishment (I have no idea how long it had been going on).
I feel bad for her past students — if it left a lingering memory for me after one punishment, what about the others?"
15."In middle school honors algebra, I had a teacher tell me that I 'didn’t have the same spark of learning in [my] eyes that the cis boys did.' I had an A in the class and tutored some of the other students because he didn't care to teach us much. That made me believe I was terrible at math, up until my 100% amazing Advanced Placement calculus teacher went above and beyond to help me realize I was actually good at it."
16."In the fourth grade, my teacher kept making me redo my printing sheets because my handwriting wasn't neat. Eventually, I asked him why he didn't make any of the boys redo their sheets because they had messy handwriting, too. I still remember the look of shock on his face, but I didn't understand the significance at the time because I was just genuinely asking. I don't remember what he said afterward other than the fact that I didn't find his answer satisfying."
17."My seventh-grade English teacher was the worst — it felt as if she had it out for me for some reason. I have blonde hair, and she would call me an 'airhead' and act as if I didn't know anything. She would do this in the classroom in front of everyone. I ended up failing that class because she refused to help me, and I ended up going to summer school."
18."This was my math teacher, who was also the sex ed teacher and a coach. He was very determined to ensure that the girls in his math class knew that STEM was not for girls. He refused to answer questions in class from girls and said things like, 'It's okay if you don't get this — you won't need it after high school' (only to the girls). His sex ed class involved leaving us alone in the room to watch videos on sexually transmitted diseases and schizophrenia and to do self-guided busywork."
19."I had an algebra teacher in high school who refused to teach. He would sit and talk to everyone and tell stories for 40 minutes, and for the last 10 minutes of class, he went over a concept and assigned homework. I tried transferring out of his class into another one with a math teacher who was awesome, but was told that wasn't possible. The reason? The terrible teacher literally taught the textbook backward so that students couldn't transfer out of his class 🤦🏻♀️."
20."My teacher stole stuff out of her students' desks and blamed the other kids in the class."
21."At the end of my first week at a new school, my teacher handed out slips of paper with our current grade. I had a solid A at my old school, but my new teacher said I had an F. I asked her why, and she said I didn't hand in the quarter project. I reminded her I had just moved to the school — she said she'd only give me the weekend to do it. The project was to interview a long-time local resident and write a paper about their experiences. The articles were being collected for a book she was 'writing' — I failed the class."
"How do these people become teachers? These sort of stories make me hope if I ever have kids, they know to come to me with that and trust it'll get sorted out immediately."
22."I was five years old and hyperactive, and she tied me to my chair. She also held my hand during formation in the mornings and squeezed it so hard that my tiny knuckles would crack. When I’d instinctively try to pull my hand away, she’d hold onto it, smile at me, and ask me if it hurt."
23."In my third-grade art class, we had to draw an object that the teacher placed on a table in the middle of the room (there were a few objects to choose from). I started drawing one of them and wasn't happy with it, and I was thinking of starting a different one. Before I did, though, the teacher held up my drawing in front of the class to tell everyone how bad it was and pointed out everything that was wrong with it. I quietly started drawing something else (I was a very shy kid). My new drawing was entered into a local show and won. My teacher never said anything to me about it and never gave it back (she hung it up in the classroom for years). I got the equivalent of a C for that class (normally an A student)."
24.And finally, "I once had a high school theater teacher 'jokingly' tell me to kill myself in front of the entire class because I was crying about something unrelated. Everyone just kind of went quiet, like, 'Huh???' And then she got really offended that we weren't laughing about it. The tech theater teacher (an actual saint) called my parents that night to check on me and made sure they knew because he knew I wasn't going to stand up for myself on my own. Generally, teachers are fantastic and underappreciated, but that woman was something else."
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453(4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.
