I imagine that teachers who have been in the business for awhile (or even a single year) have more than one example of a moment when they were dealing with something that wasn’t covered under their paltry salary.
In fact, most of what they do is worth more money, but I digress.
These 15 teachers are able to recall with some humor these moments when they thought to themselves “I don’t get paid enough for this s*%t,” and now they’re sharing them with you.
15. Definitely not worth it.
I got paid $11 an hour to teach piano. I had a mother who would put her ear up against the door of the room, for the whole lesson.
The SECOND I would show an example – if I say, “try positioning your hand like this” and I’d play the line from the piece – the mom would open the door and say “This is my daughter’s lesson, I want to hear less of you playing, thanks”
And she would just stand there!!! There was a secretary in the waiting room who I mentioned this to, and she says “she’s paying for the lesson” and sided with the mom.
Also… this daughter was on the 3rd book from a beginner/primer series. The mom signed her up for the Grade 3 conservatory exam, and only told me after the refund period was up. She says “well, my daughter IS taking this exam” and I tried to make the comparison… like a kid doing “beginner class 3 ” of swimming taking a 3rd year diving exam or something.
It just made ZERO SENSE and I don’t know where she even found the information!!!
That was stressful!! And the pay!!! Not worth it.
14. What happens next?
A student punched out another student. I called the Dean for assistance (as is protocol).
No one showed up. The period ended.
The injured party and the puncher were kept apart, but no one showed up from security, the Dean’s office, administration or the nurse… and we had campus police too…. no one showed up. 50 minutes.
13. No hazard pay, either.
I teach at an inner-city school for at-risk youth. We are basically the final stop before the student goes to prison. I love my job, I love teaching high school, and a lot of the kids are so unique and interesting.
But some crap, I do not get paid enough to deal with. Myself and 3 others had to restrain a kid for 20 minutes while waiting for the police to arrive. In those 20 minutes, all of us were bitten at least twice, and that was really scary.
Most teens know that biting is a really pu**y move to pull, especially the street kids. I actually called him out on it at a later date when he tried to tell other kids that we were “forcing it” on him (Basically saying we were too rough) and that he was a total bada**. I mentioned to the class that he resorted to biting people and that shut him right up.
I’ve had entire desks thrown at my head. I’ve had to restrain kids who have 100lbs on me while also being punched by the other kid involved in a fight.
Again, I love my job and the people I work with, but some days just feel like the perfect storm of bulls**t that get me wanting to just walk out the front doors and drive away.
12. Battle conditions.
Probably the active shooter training when we were told we would need to equip our classrooms with a “toilet bucket” in case we had to put our classrooms under an extended lockdown.
We were also told that our district would not purchase the toilet buckets, so we would have to supply our own.
11. That kid is a monster.
Pregnant teacher kicked on the belly.
Kid I went to school with had serious issues and the teacher had the audacity to break up a fight with the teacher’s aid and the kid.
Kid said “don’t telling me what to fu**ing do b%*ch” and Sparta kicked her on her full term pregnant belly.
The teacher and the baby were ok and healthy and was told that the kid was sent to a military school.
When the teacher came back the whole school gave her so much love. We had a diaper drive for her and gave her probably a childhoods worth of diapers in various sizes, and Tons of cloths and gifts for mom and baby.
10. Pretty much all of the parents.
The actual teaching and working with young adults is very cool. The parents ruin everything. This year I have been forced to send screenshots of blank assignments from Google Classroom to parents because they believe their child over me.
I had a lady insist that Google Classroom deleted her son’s assignments. A global corporation had something against her 14 year old. She could not believe that maybe he did not do his work. Summer cannot start soon enough.
9. It’s always the moms.
Lol, the wife is a teacher. She got told by one mom not to congratulate other kids on a job well done in the presence of her kid, as it made her kid feel bad not to be the best student.
My wife put in notice because nut job mothers are ruining her mental health.
8. Daily assaults by a 4yo.
Being stabbed with scissors by a 4 year old.
We had told the head teacher for a long time that this kid had issues and needed serious psych help (he had a horrific background which should have put him on the radar anyway).
Head teacher said he simply needed breathing exercises and mindful techniques (I sh*% you not).
We ended up having to photograph each other’s injuries everyday. Blame was put on us – we weren’t dealing with him appropriately etc etc.
Eventually, during one of his moments (which happened daily), we called the head teacher. When she got there, we emptied all the other kids outside and left her to it (she insisted she could deal by herself).
That afternoon, the child psychologists were called by the head!
We took 8 months worth of daily assaults. She couldn’t do 8 minutes.
7. It’s never the kid’s fault.
Sister is an elementary school special ed teacher, she had one special needs student who was a biter and had other well known behavioral issues, kicker was he had TWO moms who were like that! Their little psycho was precious and NOTHING he did (no matter how violent/unacceptable) was EVER his fault. lol
They were also the type to shove their lifestyle in everyone’s face if not use it as a BS excuse/reason for why their son was being “unfairly” treated/targeted if he acted out too much (which was nearly every day).
To be honest, she’s told me so many horror stories about psycho/entitled parents that I seriously don’t know how teachers manage to not snap and tell parents like that to step the F off or teach the kid/class themselves!
6. Administration can be a bear.
Personally, I would say that someone who lacks both the ability to empathize and the ability to trust employees that they themselves vetted for trustworthiness should not be allowed in management roles.
If you don’t trust my word, my ability to manage students, or my concerns, why the heck did you hire me?
5. That would wear on anyone.
I’m a Music Teacher that got forced into being the classroom teacher for Primary French Immersion because I have a French qualification, but haven’t used it in years. Also, I was forced into teaching Distance Learning when the rest of my school was in-person.
I still had to be at my school though, so they put me in an unheated, windowless office and shifted my schedule to not line up with the breaks at my school. I didn’t even get students from my own school.
This has resulted in me teaching all subjects by myself (half of which are supposed to be delivered on French) to a bunch of black boxes on a screen on an unheated office, and couldn’t even interact with my colleagues at break times. I have never taught most of these subjects before (because I specialised in 2 subjects with the intention of being a rotary teacher for those subjects) so planning takes my entire evening every evening to make sure I’m ready for the next day.
I have not been very successful at delivering the subjects that are meant to be taught in French, in French. I feel like I have let everyone down. I’m exhausted all the time. There are 3 weeks left, and I’m just so over it.
4. One day is not enough.
I teach high school math and, as many teachers do, had cafeteria duty periodically. Had a kid failing pretty bad in my 4th period(right after lunch) that hadn’t come to class in 2 weeks. It wasn’t too surprising, low SES school, student had home issues and really didn’t care much for school as a whole.
I had called home multiple times before and got no response so I stopped about midway through Q3 when I realized, and informed the parents via voicemail, that he had no shot of earning credit for the year with how badly he failed the first semester (21%). In the last week of school, I saw him come into the cafeteria for the first time that quarter, hang out with his friends, play basketball, then leave towards the classrooms with everyone else.
He took what I thought was the long route to my class and after 10 minutes of him not being in class I realized he wasn’t going to make it. Marked him absent and went on with my day.
His mom finally returned my calls later that day to assert that her child went to school today and therefore should be passing. Had to take a deep breath before telling her that there are students who come to class every day and still aren’t passing, one day is just not enough, and further, he came into the building for lunch, played basketball, and left before 4th period started. She didn’t like that very much and called the principal.
Principal ended up backing me up but it went on all Summer as the superintendent had to get involved. All the while that she was fighting my grade, said student hadn’t attended a single day of the Summer school class.
I taught the Summer school class and he failed that too.
3. Why are boys?
Gym teacher here. Went into the locker room after class and kids seemed to be trying to piss into each other’s mouth.
Turned around and walked right the heck out.
2. So many reasons to scream.
I had a father yell at me because his daughter failed a take-home test and his stance was that it was perfect because he even had the mother double check the answers he wrote.
It was a 3rd grade math test.
1. The trouble starts young.
I heard a parent on the phone literally talking s**t about me as I am in a google meet teaching her kid and her kids class virtually. Her kid hadn’t shown up to my class for 3 weeks, and I asked where she had been, nicely, was, which apparently the worst thing I could have done.
I had to re-teach her the project we had been working on for 3 weeks, while simultaneously teaching the rest of the class, meanwhile her mom is trash talking me in the background.
This was 3rd graders.
I cannot imagine the patience it takes to teach other people’s kids day in and day out. I really can’t.
If you’re a teacher, share your moment like this in the comments (or one of them, anyway).
