Some are the result of their own embarrassment, some are from their students, and some are a conglomeration of embarrassment and hilarity that could never be duplicated on purpose. Below are 15 of the best, in my opinion, so please enjoy.
15. A used recorder.
“As I’m sure most adults remember, part of the curriculum in 3rd grade is recorder. Parents buy the instruments for their kids (usually on Amazon) and then the recorders are kept in my classroom until we use them. At the beginning of one of our first classes using the recorders, a little girl raised her hand and announced with tears in her eyes that ‘a tooth fell out of my recorder and IT’S NOT MY TOOTH.’ The classroom aid and I went over to look, completely expecting it to be lint or just a kid’s spitball or something. Oh no. No, no, no. There, on the floor in the middle of my classroom, acting like it had some kind of business being there, was a dried up, half rotted and broken ADULT HUMAN TOOTH.”
14. Plead ignorance.
“When I was student teaching in college, I taught a unit on the Suffrage Movement in the US. One Friday near a break, I showed the movie Iron Jawed Angels. I had never noticed the scene where Hillary Swank’s character masturbated in a bathtub until I was amongst a class full of 16/17-year-old students. To add insult to injury, I had a surprise evaluation from my supervisor that day.”
13. I literally never would have recovered from this.
“I am a general music teacher and I was teaching a 1st grade class a folk dance. Half way through the dance I noticed mud all over the carpet floor. I asked who was outside on the playground in the mud. Nobody said anything. I had them all sit in their chair so I could look at the bottom of their shoes. Nothing. It was poop. As one boy was dancing, he pooped his pants. The turd slid down his pant leg and onto the floor. All of the kids danced through it, rubbing it into their shoes and into the carpeting.“
12. I’m guessing they got a “D.”
“I was a student teacher and took over the 10th grade math classroom for the whole day. We were doing a lesson on the area of quadrilaterals in the real world. I begin teaching and get to a problem about building a kite-shaped deck. It’s my last period of the day and my voice is starting to go, so I’m up there trying to engage the class in calculating the area. With my voice cracking, I ask, ‘how long is your deck?’, ‘how wide is your deck?, and ‘what is the area of your deck?’ (with enthusiastic hand gestures, mind you). My voice had made ‘deck’ sounds like something else. I didn’t realize until a student literally falls out of their chair laughing. The best part was my mentor got it all on camera as part of my performance review.”
11. What would George say?
“When I taught kindergarten, I had a picture of George Bush in my class. The students knew that they could tell all of their ‘tattles’ to him, and I would handle the real issues. One day, a student came to me to tattle that a student called her a name. But before she started, I said, ‘Go tell the President!’ She walks right over to the picture and shouts, ‘Elizabeth called me a motherf*cker!’“
10. A SpongeBob moment.
“I’m a 7th grade teacher. I caught my pants on the lip of the whiteboard marker tray and my pants very audibly ripped. It tore through my pants, my underwear, and cut my butt. My students were taking a quiz so they all heard it. I was MORTIFIED. A quick-thinking girl told me to tie my sweatshirt around my waist. Word traveled fast that I ripped my pants, and I’m still hearing about it to this day. Always bring a change of clothes, folks.”
9. A substitute teacher’s nightmare.
“I was substitute teaching in a middle school art class. I had a really bad migraine that morning, so I took some meds and hoped for the best. The kids arrived in a flurry of excitement, as middle schoolers do, and we got started. I was still not feeling great. When I started taking roll, I felt the urge to immediately throw up, like violently throw up. Like throw up so hard I also started peeing. I shuffled off to an office in the room and yelled something at the class, probably incoherent nonsense, all while still puking and peeing. I finally was able to call the office for someone to come take over and fled the building as soon as they got there.”
8. What a terrible idea.
“I was teaching 5th grade at the time and there was a bathroom in my classroom. I was in the middle of my lesson when I heard the bathroom door squeak open. I looked towards it to see a male student with his pants around his ankles, still sitting there. He’d opened the door to inform me that he had no toilet paper and could I get him some? Needless to say, his peers did not bounce back to learning after this surprisingly bold and stinky revelation in the middle of our lesson.”
7. Did he get extra credit?
“I had a kid who kept slugs in a jar (with some gravel and leaves) in his locker. Why? SCIENCE. That was all the answer I got. Only the principal could get him to bring the slugs outside.”
6. Um, ask your mom.
“I’m a preschool teacher and five years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter, I told my kids that I would be leaving soon to have my baby. One kid asked was a scared, I replied, ‘only about the pushing part.’ WRONG PHRASE! All 12 kids preceded to ask what I was pushing and from where. They assumed I would poop her out since poop is the only thing you push out of your body. Which led to them demanding to know how babies are born and how they got in there — none of which I answered. Thank god for maternity leave.”
5. You keep using that word…
“I was working in a small group with some first graders. As I was writing on the white board, one boy asked, and I quote, ‘Miss B, did you get a hand job?!’ I didn’t know what he meant until he gestured to my nails. Holding back laughter, I said ‘Yes, I did go and get my nails done. Thanks for asking.'”
4. That is so not right.
“I was teaching my musical theatre class how to fit costumes and was using a little girl named Mattie as my model. I wasn’t paying that much attention (and keep in mind, I was just working on a plush body form before class). I was giving a demo on pinning them, where to pin, and how to sew over the pins. Suddenly the class starts screaming and Mattie collapses. Turns out, I HAD BEEN STICKING 1.5″ PINS INTO THIS LITTLE GIRL THE WHOLE TIME. She passed out in pain and at the sight of her own blood. I was mortified. I felt so bad. To this day I wonder why NOBODY SAID ANYTHING?”
3. You seriously never know what they’re going to say.
“I’m a kindergarten teacher. Earlier this year, one of my students surprised me by sprinting out to the playground with his shirt raised over his head, screaming, ‘FEAST YOUR EYES ON MY NIPPLES!’“
2. Not laughing is so hard sometimes.
“I teach 3rd grade. I had a new student and the day she came in, I gave her an invite to the skating party that was to happen the next day in the evening. Her parents would’ve needed to take her. Apparently she was confused and arrived at school the next day wearing rolling skates. She made it off the bus, up the stairs, and down the hall. I told her to take them off and she yelled, ‘No!’ and skated off, but she wasn’t very coordinated and fell. I wanted to laugh so bad.”
1. There were no winners.
“I had a student tell me he didn’t want to be in class anymore. Smart kid, but insanely lazy. He asked to go to the office, nurse — anywhere else. I told him he wasn’t going anywhere until he started passing my class. Five minutes later, he came up holding his bleeding ear and smugly asked to go to the nurse. This boy took a tack out of my wall and pierced his own ear! What choice did I have? He won that round.”
Just more proof we don’t deserve teachers, y’all.