There are the usual reasons for sending a kid to the principal’s office. Kids are disruptive, they’re mean to other students, and so on. These Redditors, mostly teachers, shared the weirdest reasons why students in their classes were sent to detention. From surprise fits of rage to the use of questionable writing utensils, these stories will make you wonder what’s really going on in classrooms these days.
1. Bunny Nuggets
A grade one student came up to me on the playground telling me that another student was making her sick. She pointed to another student about 30 feet away, looked at me, and projectile puked on the blacktop. I went to the other student...he had found rabbit poop on the ground and stuck them in his mouth and was chasing kids around. Now it was my time to puke. I didn't go to the office. But the rabbit poop kid did.
2. What A Louse
This girl was known to come to school smelling a bit off. One day she came in constantly scratching her head. Nonstop for a long time. I pulled her over and asked what’s wrong. She told me her head won’t stop hurting. She was on the verge of tears. And she was scratching hard. I told her to let me look. She had a massive bald spot on the middle of her head and was also bright red from the scratching as well as a rash.
I pulled over my mentor teacher. We called her mother while writing a CPS report. The teacher was telling the mom that her daughter was scratching her head and wondered if something happened. The mom took it as an attack and yelled that we said she was a bad mom. My teacher said she didn’t say that and she should come get her daughter and have her checked out.
The mom's response? “I can’t right now I’m with my boyfriend, he’s more important”, and hung up. That was the final straw. She called CPS and I took her to the office. The nurse checked her out, and found that she had a major case of lice, and she also notified CPS. She was out for a week. She came back and I asked how she was doing. She said she’s okay but her mom didn’t want her talking about it.
This was about four years ago. I have no idea where she is or how she’s doing and I think about her all the time.
3. Knock Out
This high school freshman was awful, disrespectful, constantly testing me, not doing any of the assignments, back talking, etc. His mission in life was to make my life miserable. I had to give him referrals at least once a week. Anyway, one day I was trying to help this tiny little freshman girl who had tons of energy but was really sweet and he was sitting behind her and decided it would be a good idea to grab her butt.
Seeing him get what he had coming was so satisfying.
Apparently this girl had a temper and some experience fighting (maybe older brothers), because she just turned around and connected with a solid right cross. Knocked the kid back in his seat and just stunned him for a good minute. I didn't know he had grabbed her when it happened but she explained it to me in the hall while security was on their way and I let her know I wasn't upset with her. He really deserved it and it was awesome.
4. Give ‘Em The Chair
A kid tossed a chair at a fellow student's head because they didn't want to let them cheat. Then the office staff followed up with the lovely mother, who could not grasp that her kid was being suspended and that she would have to pay medical bills. The other student had a deep gash on his shoulder and I was bruised on my left side from trying to intervene.
5. Language Lesson
It was the second day of my first year teaching (fifth grade). A student refused to do a writing assignment because she said she forgot how to write in English. When I asked what language she knew how to write in, she said, "I only know Japanese". Listen...it is plausible that a student at my school would be proficient in writing in Japanese. HOWEVER, I had already seen her files.
I knew her dad was in a Mexican street group and that she was being raised by her blind grandmother who was a native Spanish speaker. The likelihood that she knew fluent in Japanese was a bit far-fetched. She eventually told me she also speaks Japanese, so I called her out by asking her to say, "I don't want to come to school today" using her newfound foreign language skills. Her answer was unbelievable: This 11-year-old LITERALLY responded with, "Ching chang chong”!
I sent her to the dean's office for refusing to work and man, OH MAN, did it work out perfectly. She sat down with the dean who tried to pry more information from this student...only for the dean to explain to the student that she herself is half Japanese and attended school in Japan. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the student heard the dean speaking ACTUAL Japanese to test the student’s knowledge of the language.
The student eventually said she only knew a few Japanese words, which devolved into her admitting the entire story was a lie to get out of doing an assignment. On the second day of school. And lies like this went on allllllllllll year long. I have so many hilarious, yet equally sad stories from that year that I still laugh at them eight years later...
6. Moody Mondays
A kid shows up to class ten to fifteen minutes late to a 40-minute period. This was seventh grade. Shawn: “Sorry Ms. G, I was in a bad mood and I didn’t want to bring it to class”. Me: “Hi Shawn, I will still have to count you as tardy. You’re extremely late and I need to know where you are for safety reasons. In the future, there’s a counselor request form on my GoogleClassroom page you can fill out”.
Shawn: “Okay thanks”. Things went normally for about ten minutes, until another student shot a rubber band. It didn’t hit anyone, but Shawn decided to take justice into his own hands. In the middle of me giving instructions he gets up, walks slowly across the room (I assumed for a tissue) and smacks the other student across the face.
Guess he brought the bad mood to class after all...
7. On The Run
I was teaching a lower-level math class, and I had a student who was probably too smart for the class, but too lazy (or too "cool") to take a harder class. One day, out of boredom, he was throwing his pencil up at the ceiling. On the third or fourth try, it got stuck. So he threw a pen to try to dislodge it. It didn't work. He then threw his notebook at it. Missed again.
So he stands up on the desk-chair combo, takes his notebook, jumps in the air, and swats at the pencil. The pencil fell to the floor. He lands on the desk, which (if you remember those desk-chair combos) is not supported by the chair's center of balance. He falls off the desk and lands on the floor. Oh wait, did I mention the lock box on his ankle? I think I left that out. The lock box pops off and lands on the floor. He looks for a second, says, "OMG I have to go to the office, the fuzz is coming to get me", grabs the lock box, and sprints out the classroom door.
8. Kobe Chaos
This was just weird. Each morning I let my kids talk about whatever they want for five minutes. Kind of like show and tell for teenagers. One morning a kid opens the comment portion by just saying "Kobe"! That's it. No elaboration, nothing. A kid in the back says, "Man, Kobe sucks". The first kid was super offended. "What?!? Yo MAMA sucks”!
Before I could even register the craziness that was happening, the second kid was out of his chair, over the tables, and wailing away on the first kid's face. I had to write up a report of what happened, and the office staff kept saying I needed to finish the report. "This can't be everything that happened"! Oh, but it was. Utterly bizarre.
9. Blame It On The Juice
I teach high school math. Two kids come into class earlier. One of them pulls a bottle of purple liquid out of his bag, turns and looks me directly in the eye and then stage whispers to his buddy, "Dude, smell this"! His buddy takes a big whiff and the two of them start giggling like children. So I walk over and ask them to hand me the bottle.
They both stare directly at the floor and put their hands behind their back. Buddy mumbles that if they don't touch it, I can't say it's theirs. As if I hadn't already seen this whole exchange. I pick up the bottle and immediately smell that it's booze. What were they even thinking? They got a trip to the office and a two-week vacation from school, and came back still completely confused as to how I knew something was up with the "juice" in the bottle.
10. Lounging Around
A seventh grader in north Philly went into the teachers “lounge” (which was a small room that had a fridge and a table that sat four to six teachers), took a teacher’s meatball hoagie out of the fridge, and threw it down the fire exit stairs. This kid had 12 pages of single space 10 point Times New Roman of write ups in power school. He never got expelled, he just wasn’t allowed to enroll after eighth grade. This kid was a complete jerk.
11. Spider Kid
I caught a kid playing League of Legends on his laptop during evening study. I moved to confiscate it (per school policy) and he slammed it shut, leapt onto the table, dashed over several computers like a spider to the window and tossed his own laptop outside. I was totally speechless. We were on the third floor so of course, it shattered. It wasn’t the last time he smashed his own property rather than give it up for an evening. He was 17 at the time.
12. Overworked
I had a student that cried every time I would try to encourage her to answer questions in front of the class. I stopped calling her to the board as I feared maybe she was facing pretty anxiety. So I let her do individual work. One day I found out she, during class time, kept sending inappropriate insulting texts around the class about some classmates and myself.
When I emailed her mother about this, she went as far as to use her mother’s account to send me an email back saying “just leave her alone”. The next morning she made a remark that I was very inconsiderate for giving out homework when some students work. I was surprised that she suddenly spoke aloud and interrupted me during class.
She attempted to name other students that work after school just like her, but one of them, Aiden, stood up saying, “So? I still get my homework done, except I don’t waste time gossiping about others and using crocodile tears when it comes to showing my understanding in class”. She was shocked, stood there for a little bit, and started crying, which clearly felt forced. I sent her straight to the office, from there called her mother to verify who sent the email, and had her come over for a long discussion.
13. School Art Project
I'm a school psych. I don’t send kids to the office, but some of my teammates sure have. One girl took a class chair and shattered a window in a classroom’s back office. On another day, this same girl gave the assistant principal and me a watercolor paint shower. I was lucky…I was standing just behind the AP and only got a few splatters on my jacket while she ended up getting the full blast.
14. Blood Bath
A kid in class next to me was clearly mid-functional autistic. He played with BuckyBalls or whatever they're called. The little magnetic balls you can shape and fold and whatnot. That's all he did every day and that was fine, not sure why he was in that class in the first place but whatever. Anyway, one day I'm taking a test. I look over my stomach drops. There's just blood all over his desk.
Nosebleed. It was all over the little magnet balls he was still playing with. So I told him "Hey man, you're bleeding." And I kid you not, he looks at me and says "I know" and goes right back to it. The teacher overheard and sent him to the nurse. It was such an odd interaction, but I know he was just playing and didn't really register what was happening correctly.
15. When You’ve Got To Go…
A young troubled boy when I first started teaching defecated in the corner of the room during class. I teach foundation phase. I was so astounded I just stood there until the children started screaming. I led the children out and let the boy finish his business. I helped the poor janitor clean it up after I took him to the office. Another time a boy poked himself in the hand with scissors really hard, and when questioned on why he did it he said he didn't know. I would have left teaching a long time ago if I didn't care about these children.
16. T-Boned
South Side Chicago: There was some kid munching down on a T-bone steak in class. The succulent, delicious meat was distracting the other students, so they sent him to the office to finish it off! Unclear if he was going for the name "T-Bone". No idea how this errant T-Bone was obtained, but it looked and smelled like it was freshly made.
17. Cheater Chaser
I was a librarian at a small for-profit college and had to proctor exams from time to time. Usually, it was pretty laid back. Students would do their tests nice and quiet and I'd do my thing. One time though, a girl came up to turn in her test. Then a friend of hers from the same class came up and started going over the answers with her right at my desk. I just stared at them, incredulous. They both eventually looked at me and asked what the problem was.
"You realize that's cheating and you're going to be automatically failed now, right"? Both girls looked shocked, then got wide-eyed when they realized I was serious. They turned and bolted, and I had to chase after them. Not sure what the plan was because I knew who they both were. I had to chase them to their classroom and then they were immediately referred to the dean of students for cheating on an exam and then running when they were caught.
18. Bag It
I was a student aide for the dean in middle school. I saw all the ins and outs of kids' detention/suspension and the like. We had regular classes and gifted classes. One time some kids in the gifted class dared each other to poop in a bag and bring it to school. Of course, they got caught and got suspended. The dean was just shaking her head, going "Fighting, I understand. Why? Why would you poop in a bag and bring it to school”??
19. Moonlight Madness
This was in a country school in the middle of nowhere. So rural, that the playground was not even fenced in. Two grade five boys spent the better part of recess standing by the edge of the playground near the road. All of their friends were playing baseball. I thought that seemed super suspicious. Far off in the distance, Farmer Jones could be seen driving up the road on his John Deere Tractor with a massive hay bale on the front spike.
As he passed the boys, doing about ten miles per hour, they decided to MOON him. Farmer Jones was laughing so hard he almost drove the tractor off the road. Once I stopped laughing, and "straightened up", I told the boys that they had to go into the office and explain to the Principal what they had done. The next day I learned that their punishment was an in-school suspension.
20. Not So Fresh Air
One year I had a kid who broke wind during a quiz and quickly blew it toward the kid next to him with his hands all while saying, “wafting, wafting, wafting”. The class reacted, he laughed and I told them to settle down, that it was a quiz, the whole thing. He did it again and that time I told him that it was a quiz and he was being distracting and if he needed to go to the bathroom I’d happily write him a pass.
He waited about a minute and then did it again. So I wrote him a referral but knowing that not only do the clerical staff write word for word whatever is in the referral into the system but that the admin he’d see usually made them read the referral aloud to start the conversation, I wrote: “Student insistent on 'wafting' his gas to other students distracting during a quiz. Despite being warned twice, he continues to be defiant and forces students to partake in his own personal brand of air instead of working.”
He came back red-faced and silent. I heard him tell the kids while packing up that the admin made him call him mom and explain why it was appropriate to “waft gas” and he was really embarrassed because all the office ladies were listening and laughed. He was irritated with me for writing “wafting gas” because he had to explain what it was to the office lady who read the referral, the admin, and then his mom. It’s still my strangest referral.
21. PE Pantsing
I'm a Special Education Instructional Assistant at a middle school. One student started changing out for PE in an English classroom, while the room teacher and I were specifically and explicitly telling him not to and to please stop. His reasoning was that he was going to be late for PE if he had to change out in the locker rooms. As he's doing this, a female student walked in and was shocked to see this kid with his shirt off.
I looked at the room teacher and said, "So, do you want to write him up or do you want me to”? The room teacher wrote him up and I escorted him to the office. The kid thought he was going to get away with it because the look on his face when the teacher started writing him up was priceless. Maybe I've been lucky so far, but that is the weirdest/craziest reason I've had to write a student up.
22. Freshly Watered
A student walks into my room and sees a half-finished water bottle on the desk from the last class that I hadn’t had the chance to throw away during the transition. The student proceeds to casually open the bottle, look me straight in the eye, smile, and slowly pour that sucker onto the desk and surrounding area. Everyone in the class just stopped and stared at him like “What did you just do”?
I had him removed and custodial staff mopped up the water. While hall patrol was on their way, the kid tried to tell me it wasn’t him. After the situation was resolved and settled, I simply burst out laughing. The kid never showed up to my class again and it was an inside joke between me and the other students for the rest of the school year.
23. Gone But Not Forgotten
This was Thursday, March 12, 2020, aka the last "normal" Thursday in education history. I taught fifth grade at the time, and we were already talking to the kids about the possibility of not coming back from Spring Break (our Spring Break was the following week). Kids were finishing up their spring benchmarks in math and reading so that we have data to guide instruction if we come back after the break (as we always do).
One kid absolutely does not want to finish this math benchmark. He wastes as much time as possible. He begs for a bathroom break. He comes back from the bathroom with something pinched between his fingers: one single live wriggling louse. This guy's a fighter. I've never seen one up close and in person. District policy says I have to send him to the nurse.
The nurse checks him over thoroughly and finds nothing else. No eggs, no other bugs (live or dead), nothing. However, since a live louse has been found on his person, he has to go home and stay there for the next 24 hours. The next day, March 13 ended up being the last in-person day I ever had with that class, so I never saw the kid again (he never did an ounce of online work and his family shipped his district device back to central office before the school year even ended).
Here's the kicker: No other child that day or on the thirteenth had lice. No one got checked, no one was sent home, no one called in sick because of lice. I have no idea where he got the bug.
24. Nature Calls
I am the first step of the office. The school is a complete circus. Once a sixth grader was sent who had been very disrespectful to his teacher. I asked him to tell me what happened. He sincerely told me he wanted to go to the toilet, but the teacher wasn't allowing it, so he peed in the waste bin. I was like, “You really did that in front of the whole class”?
He looked at me, saying very sincerely that his mom said peeing is a human right and if the teacher wasn't allowing him during class, he shall pee into the bin. So he did it. I had no desire to inform mom, since it was known she punched a teacher in another school. I called dad, who was a nice, decent man. Unfortunately, I had to laugh so hard, trying to tell him what happened.
25. Getting Inked
A few things you need to know for this to make sense: A) I am an avid fountain pen user. I always have disposable ones and cheap ones for my students to try. If they really like using them, I'll even go as far as to help them order a starter kit. B) I worked in a really rough part of Detroit. C) I always encourage my students to be creative with projects.
Instead of character analysis essays, they can make a set of Magic The Gathering cards based on the characters, or build a Pokedex with entries for every creature and character talked about in a story, things like that. Anyways, a group of students wanted to order a specific kind of ink for their fountain pens. It is one of the few sepia inks that is made from actual squid ink.
It took forever to get, but they were all super geeked and loved it. It prompted the discussion of what else they could use as pen ink. One suggested using lemon juice as a way of making some sort of UV ink, another wanted to try coffee, and another really wanted to try distilled water with food coloring in it. Then came Stewart. Stewart is a cis girl who started going by Stewart because there were four other girls in her class with the same name.
Why Stewart? No idea. Stewart was weird. When we were talking about inks, she had a very devilish grin but wouldn't say anything. Three days later she submitted a five-page essay, handwritten...in her own blood. Her punishment was to go through the same bloodborne pathogen training that all of the teachers had to do every year.
26. Slice And Dice
I had to send a whole class of biology students to see the head teacher because they refused to do the dissection they were given in a class, and when the irate biology teacher responded by locking them all in the lab until they'd completed the task, they all just climbed out of the window and left the science building.
27. Memories To Last A Lifetime
So, we didn't send anyone to the office because it was in fact graduation day. But this is one of the craziest stories I have. This all happened while the head of the school was handing out diplomas for the graduates. I was walking around the school with another teacher when we heard a weird buzzing sound. We followed the sound upstairs and we found a group of students. One of them had a homemade tattoo machine, and was giving tattoos to the other students.
28. Dressed Up
I have dress-coded exactly four kids in a long, long teaching career. I would rather them be in class learning than in the office. First the two boys: M’dude wore an inflatable t-rex costume to class and wouldn’t stop randomly roaring and attempting to “eat” other students. After a warning and discussion that I was going to hold class today, he kept it up and was sent to the office. He had just decided that the whole school would pause for him to be a dinosaur.
The other kid wore a ghillie suit to class. If he had just sat there, I wouldn’t have cared. He was passing out pieces and making it so that no one was learning. Warned. Off you go. Both of these guys had long histories of disruptive behavior. The girls: Both girls wore rubber/plastic minidresses with only suspender hose underneath. (Seven years apart). They made very obvious decisions to “display the goods” to me. Luckily, they both resorted to “why were you looking”. “The position you were in made me worried for your safety”.
29. The Chase
We were on a field trip and finished up with a mini picnic at a nearby park. A girl runs by me with two college-age boys chasing her. I chased down the guys. They explained the girl came up to one of them and stuffed her panties down the front of his pants and ran off. So "of course" they chased her. I explained that she was 14 and, whatever she did, they were going to leave her alone "or else". When we got back to school I handed the whole thing over to the Headmaster. It was above my paygrade.
30. Ready, Aim
Woking, Surrey, England 1994. The German teacher spins around and expertly throws a board rubber at the student’s head (15-year-old), bonks him right on the forehead, and we all laugh. The teacher turns smugly back to the board. He would very quickly regret it. The student takes a full can of coke out of his school bag and over-arm throws it like a baseball at the back of the teacher's head.
It hits the teacher, who smacks his head on the whiteboard and is most likely unconscious before he hits the floor. Stunned silence, just the pshhhhhhhhh sound of a coke can letting go. We all looked at him and some wag said, "I think you killed him", and a girl went to get another teacher. He was expelled, and for bonus points had the unlikely name of Richard Small. It was the maddest thing that happened, but the easiest to explain. My secondary school was a madhouse/zoo.
31. The Scream
Scream. His nickname was “scream”. He shouted out everything he said. He didn't have a disability, he wasn't deaf. He simply couldn't help but be extremely loud. Whispering was impossible for him. Even when he was trying to whisper, the whole class could hear him. He was always getting into trouble for his “condition”. Most of the time I had to send him to the principal's office for his safety against other students.
32. Sing For Your Life
I'm still an intern teacher. This happened in what we would call year two (I think that would be year eight for most countries). This 13/14-year-old boy, let’s call him C, was acting up the whole class. He was really hyper and kept insulting his friend. The teacher didn’t want to send C out at first, but near the end of the lesson he threw a pen he borrowed from her at her.
The teacher ended up giving him two options: He could either go to the office (which would lead to him getting suspended as he was already on his last chance), OR he could sing a song in front of the whole class. The boy chose not to sing and instead he got suspended for a week. The teenage brain is a confusing concept…
33. Sticks And Stones
A kid had a temper with the teacher in our woodshop class. Well, this kid must have gotten really mad so he walked up to the teacher and threw a big piece of wood (about the size of a toilet paper roll) right at his desk. That's the first time I ever heard a teacher use the f, a , and d words in one sentence, ever. The dude who threw the wood got a three-week suspension and it turned out he got kicked out of the class.
34. Winners And Losers
So I was job shadowing a third-grade teacher and everything was going well. But then indoor recess came around. I was playing Connect Four with a few kids, one of them wins and one kid begins to rage out. He threw the stand and pieces across the room and said many swears, and he was sent to the office by the teacher I was shadowing. I changed my major from Primary to Secondary Education after that.
35. It’s Getting Hot In Here
This was a female 13-year-old student of mine. I made her switch seats because she wouldn't stop talking and loudly complaining about how hot she was feeling. When I turned to the whiteboard, she unhooked her bra, pulled it from under her sweater and threw it through the classroom. She thought it was unreasonable that I sent her out.
36. Itchy And Scratchy
A student was using a book from a novel set used by many teachers amongst my grade level team. He kept rubbing it on his face. I gave him a warning, then sent him to the office the second time. Sounds pretty crazy, right? Naw, the kid had impetigo that had a rash that went nose to chin, cheek to cheek. We weren't allowed to stop him from coming to school, despite his poor hygiene and it being quite contagious. We had to throw out the book.
37. Snip Snip
I was teaching middle school drama, doing a unit where we made "cuppets", i.e. puppets out of styrofoam cups. On the crafty/creation day, I watched as a student got up from his table and walked across the room, scissors in hand, to the craft table. Then along the way, he cut off a piece of a girl's hair. *Needle scratch*. WHAT?! I WATCHED him do it.
I thought he was going to the CRAFT TABLE. But NO, I had to write him up for an attack with safety scissors for cutting off a piece of someone's hair. *facepalm*. 22 years, and that's one of my favorite stories. Although with 22 years of experience in K-12, I do have more...
38. Sticky Situation
I’m no longer a high school teacher but I had to send students from my ninth-grade English class to the office for duct-taping a classmate to a chair. They were supposed to be doing work with a partner and I looked away for maybe 60 seconds to help another student. I look back up. He's duct taped to a wheelie chair and being pushed from one side of the room to the other by two of his classmates. I had to send all of them because apparently he did it to himself and they just helped.
39. Locked Up
A student (who had been problematic all year) disappeared during one of my classes. I went to go look for her, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. Finally, she came back into my classroom and was red-faced and sweaty. I asked her where she was this whole time, and she told me she had gotten into one of the lockers to play a prank on her friend, but then got stuck inside. She had no idea why she was in trouble. This is a female student who is 16 years old, not a young child.
40. In The Comment Section
I taught seventh graders how to use Google Classroom, which has a comments section under each assignment. Even if they delete their comments, every one of them is still emailed to me. One kid wasn't paying attention when I explained all of that and wrote, "Y'all know dis class is poo". He and about ten other kids had an entire conversation that they tried to delete, and adamantly denied it, so I turned on the projector and went through my emails in front of everyone.
41. The Standoff
I teach at a university, so I didn't send him to the principal, just out of class…I once told a student to leave class because he never brought his textbook and constantly played on his phone. So after two classes of this, I told him to get out because he was distracting other students. This kid freaked out, yelling and cursing at me. Keep in mind I am a 5'2” female and this kid is about six feet.
The rest of the class is like, "WTF"? And I stared him down and said, "GET OUT OF MY CLASSROOM". The kid picked up his books and left. From that point on anytime someone screwed up in class the rest of the class would shout, "GET OUT OF MY CLASSROOM" at them. They all thought it was hysterical that I cowed this giant.
42. Wheeled Out
This happened today. By the end of class, I had enough of two of my tenth graders being disruptive so I asked them to go outside for the last fifteen minutes of class so I could actually wrap up the lesson without interruption. I was gonna leave it at that, until one of them grabbed his skateboard and hopped on and rode it across the carpeted classroom and out the open door. He got suspended.
43. Remixed
I got sent to the principal's office and eventually suspended for a day because I wrote a parody song about this kid in class based on Eminem's "Stan", but instead of a fan writing to Eminem it was this kid writing to Colonel Sanders. Let's just say though that this kid was a complete jerk. He would pick on everyone in the class and was a jerk to the teachers too. He was literally a real-life version of Cartman, except Mexican and his name was Alexis. That's why I wrote the song and showed the lyrics to people in class before the teacher caught me and had to send me down because of the language since it was a Catholic school.
44. Political Battle On The Playground
I'm a para-educator at an elementary school. One of my jobs is to supervise the children while they eat lunch. I deal with a lot of arguments and such, but most of it is normal kid stuff. The other day, however, I had a doozy of a fight. The first graders were eating their lunch calmly when all of a sudden I had two little boys start screaming at the top of their lungs.
I was on the opposite side of the room, so I hurried over as fast as possible. I was not quick enough, though. The two boys were throwing punches at each other by the time I reached them. Another boy had jumped out of his seat and put one of the boys in a headlock. I grabbed the two kids by the scruffs of their necks, pulled them apart, and sent the headlock vigilante back to his seat.
They both were crying and screaming. I dragged these two boys down to the office keeping them as far apart from each other as possible. When we got to the office, I found out the principal was out for the day. The secretary asked me to take care of it. When the boys finally calmed down, I asked them why they had been so upset at each other.
One boy had told his friends he liked Donald Trump and wanted him to be president, and the other boy said he was a staunch Bernie Sanders supporter. Keep in mind, these boys are first graders. I had to tie the one boy's shoes earlier that week. One thing led to another, and it came to blows. I wanted to be mad, but I thought it was too funny. In the end, the principal seemed to think so too. I don't think they ever got suspended for the incident.
45. Re-member This
A student was wearing sweatpants that had a hole in it and his member would flap out and was visibly noticeable to myself and other students. I’ve had students attack me and say horrible things, but this was the most memorable. The kid ended up needing clothes, a shower, and a place to do laundry, which the school provided. I remember I tried to get a male staff member to talk to him, but at 17 he did not want to hear it, so we had to resort to the office.
46. Speak The Truth
There was a student with autism who lived in a very literal world, we'll call him, T. You had to be precise with your words as T could not comprehend slang or figurative language. He had an issue with another student at recess the day prior. It was something minor about a basketball. Basically, T had a basketball and placed it under the goal and walked away, another student grabbed it, T became angry, and ultimately gave the ball to the other student rather begrudgingly.
Apparently, T told his uncle and the uncle's response was, "I'd have made that kid eat a poop sandwich"! I bet you can guess what happened next...
T made a quick stop by the litter box before coming to school. He also wrote a note to the other kid saying, "I get the ball today, you can have this poop sandwich”. It wasn't a gesture he viewed as inappropriate, he actually thought the poop sandwich was a viable option for the other student. I had to send him to the office, but my god did I laugh. Even his mom laughed before apologizing. The principal still has the note in the office two years later.
47. Shake It
I was a substitute teacher for a year after undergrad. One time I was subbing a sixth-grade math class at a local school that didn't used to be a "bad" school. Well it was fourth period and the kids were starting to get loud, so I told them to settle down. As soon as I did, this girl jumped up said, "You are not our real teacher, Mr. O”, and started twerking at the front of the class...so I had to send a sixth-grade girl to the office for "twerking".
48. Bag Check
In my country phones aren't allowed in 90% of schools, and in this school where I was teaching, the rules were very tough. On a random day the principal decides to ask me to search the students’ bags for phones and other banned items. My students were all eight and nine-year-olds, so I just asked them to open up their bags and allow me to briefly see what's inside and get it over with, because I genuinely didn't like doing that.
One kid got very obviously scared and when I looked in his bag there was the equivalent of close to $1,000 USD in cash in his bag, along with four phones. Later on, I found out the money was stolen from the school office and the phones belonged to the school staff, which the kid took from them when they went to perform their 1:00 pm prayer, which allowed the kid to sneak in and take everything.
49. Terrible Twos
I was a shadow for a second grader last year. Reasons why he’s had to go to the office include: he cried so hard his nose started bleeding and he spit blood at me, he threw his math book out the window, he smacked his classmate in the head with a metal water bottle, he pulled off the teacher’s wig, he stuck his nails in me so hard that I now have permanent scars. Then, once in the principal’s office, he proceeded to trash it into oblivion. These don’t sound so bad but put together and considering he was a tiny child weighing maybe 45 lbs…
50. Big Brother Is Watching You
Can I tell you what I did instead of kicking a kid out? I was covering another teacher's class in a computer lab and we have a program called Net Support that basically allows you to spy on all the kids' computers. It also serves some legit instructional purposes like allowing you to take control of a kid's computer so you can demonstrate things.
Only this teacher never used it so I don't think the kids knew it existed. I don't normally use it because I don't like the Big Brother vibe it gives off BUT there was a kid being a total obnoxious jerk. He was looking up stupid and distracting videos and laughing loudly about them and making obnoxious comments to show off in front of his friends. I could have blocked YouTube, but I had a better idea. I took control of his computer.
I started typing in "kitten videos" on YouTube, and "My Little Ponies" anything I could think of that wouldn't be cool to him or his friends. Then every time he started to freak out and insist he wasn't doing it to his friends, I gave him control back. And then took it away again. Then finally I made a little pop-up come up on his screen that said, "I'm watching you". I expected him to figure out what was going on but I think he got freaked out instead. It never seemed to occur to him that it was me. So I gave him control back and he did his work quietly for the rest of the class.
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