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I know more than my fair share of teachers, and I can tell you one thing for sure – they would rather be spending their time teaching and helping kids than taking things away from them.
That said, kids will be kids and they will try to get away with what they can and push boundaries at every opportunity, so teachers will always have to do this.
Most of the time it’s normal, but as these 18 teachers can attest, sometimes you get your hands on something you really wish you hadn’t.
18. A seasoned teacher.
I confiscated a dildo from my 14 yo class. They’d lifted it from a sex ed class and thought it would be fun to stick it on the white board of their young female art teacher.
She shrieked and I just wandered in and said “wow, a dildo, that’s unusual” and took it away. They were most unimpressed by my complete lack of reaction. Which of course is the way to play it.
17. Why is this so charming?
So this was less “confiscated” and more “this student ended up just leaving this in my room and we had to throw it away”, but it was certainly weird and is among my favorite things.
I have a student this year who has…brought some interesting things in. He’s in 7th grade and this is usually beyond the age students play “show and tell” to begin with. Things included: a “Russian nesting doll” of household items (lunchboxes, crayon bags, a plastic egg and many things in between. 8 or 9 total) leading to a paper with JOE BIDEN written on it, and a jar of other people’s hair (he was asking his teachers to add to it). This somehow beats both.
Over the course of what feels like a week, this student had been collecting cherry tomatoes at lunch and saving them. Eventually, he had a handful of them. He named each one. He drew a face of each. He had created a family of tomatoes. He even began dressing them in tape-created “safety seats”. Only the children tomatoes though. He even had a French fry boat for a “vehicle” to carry his tomato family to each class. Eventually he left it in our class over weekend and the tomatoes went bad. We had to toss them. He asked us not to call “TPS” on him; Tomato Protective Services.
I love this kid.
16. That response, though.
the best note I ever intercepted:
him: can I bite ur boob tonite?
her: IDK, depressed
15. Just like parenting.
A gorilla mask…yes…dude put it on while my back was turned and facing the board.
I laughed like hell then took it for the day until his parents collected it.
14. I mean…
My wife is a teacher and one of her first graders brought her 2 hard seltzers because her mom said they’re good after a long day and she deserved them.
13. All of these are awful.
Over the course of years:
Bottle of Vodka ‘hidden’ in the girls bathroom by 7th graders. “How did you know where to look?” Everyone who came back from the bathroom was drunk so, you’re not as sneaky as you think.
Vape “My mom gave it to me for allergies.” “So, I’ll just give it back to her then.” WIDE EYES. “No!!”
Student banging the primers of two 30-06 shells together in class. — Grab!– “I just wanted to see if they would go off.”
12. Wow, that’s a choice.
Someone in my class had their phone taken because their Siri went off and said
“What do you need from me Slut?”
11. That last bit, though.
Napalm!
Some kids were into petrol/gas sniffing but found it hard to transport and keep hidden so they learnt how to make napalm so they could carry it hidden in their bags. I had to lock down the whole school and get hazmat in to dispose of it.
And how did they find out how to make it? They asked one of the science teachers and he told them.
10. What a little klepto.
Preschool teacher here. I had to convince a 4 year old that his mom’s wedding ring should go into a special box on the front desk instead of on the finger of a six year old girl he had a crush on.
Later he brought in his dad’s car keys, and a bottle opener.
9. This is awful.
Not necessarily the craziest thing to confiscate, but the effect that confiscating the item had on the student was pretty upsetting.
For background, I am an elementary special education teacher for students with emotional disabilities and intense behaviors. These students have behaviors that range from yelling, throwing things, and leaving the classroom to students who have attempted suicide and students who have assaulted their peers or the school staff. I even had a student go for a cops gun one time. The student in question was in first grade at the time and fairly low key compared to some of the other kids I had. This student and I had a good relationship as I was one of the only male staff in the building, he lacked a reliable male figure in his life, and for the majority of his kindergarten year, I was the primary teacher working with him.
One day my student had asked to use the restroom, and for most of my students, our staff will escort them to and from the restroom, so I went with him. Now it’s been several years so the details are fuzzy, but somehow it was brought to my attention that there was burnt toilet paper in the boys restroom. I can’t remember if my student or another student told me, but I want to say it was my own student. This sets off some alarms in my head so I contact my admin team so they’re aware.
As we’re going forward with our day I notice that my student is fidgety and messing with something in their jacket pocket. So I ask them if I can check their pocket and instead of saying yes, he pulls out a little bic lighter and tells me that he found it and asks me to keep it a secret. Of course I can’t just turn a blind eye so I report it to my admin team and we sit down with the student to talk about fire safety. We explained how playing with lighters isn’t safe and that he could hurt himself or others if he accidentally started a fire that got out of control. My student feels awful. He’s apologizing and feeling remorseful. He admits to us that he had been messing around with lighters at home when his mom was sleeping.
We contacted his mother to tell her what had happened and what he had told us, and her response was… unfortunate. She was furious with us. Told us there was no way that he had brought a lighter, and that it must have been planted by a peer. That we coerced a confession out of him and that she was pulling him out of school immediately.
Within a year the family’s house burned down, and my former student was severely burned in the fire.
8. Kids will be kids, I guess.
I had to confiscate hand sanitizer from a student who decided to drink it to get drunk and threw up EVERYWHERE.
7. This all seems very unnecessary.
A crossbow, property of a 17 year old student at the boarding school where I used to work.
The same boy was also fond of bringing pheasants to school that he’d killed on his father’s estate and plucking them in the shower block…
6. She took matters into her own hands.
Know a teacher, she and her 1st or 2nd grade class (can’t remember which) were on lunch. Lunch lady walks up and tells her one of her students just tried to buy an extra something with over $1000 in cash she had stuffed in a tiny coin pouch that looked like a plushy pink duck.
Teacher called the girl’s house and the mom was 9.8 into a full blown 10/10 panic after looking for it all morning. This was the early 2000’s when it was still normal to pay bills in cash, in person.
Apparently they forgot to give the girl her allowance, 50 cents, so she took the paper money instead.
5. How did she get through the front door?
My mum has been a primary teacher for her whole life now (in the UK), and the worst incident she had to deal with was with a girl aged 10 who was having issues with a boy essentially bullying her.
She told her dad, and her dads solution was to give her a sawn-off shotgun to intimidate the boy.
No one knew it was unloaded, but the hell it raised when a 10 year old school girl brings out a shotgun certainly put the boy off from ever coming near her again
4. Asking the important questions.
Penis shaped glass pipe with weed still in the balls/bowl.
Mom asked if she would be getting it back or if the school was keeping it.
3. This is ridiculous.
Not a teacher, but I’m half deaf and my music teacher took my hearing aid and refused to accept that it wasn’t an earbud.
Then he yelled at me for the rest of the class for not playing in tune (couldn’t exactly tell how well I was playing since I could hear it)
2. Kids are so freaking weird.
When I was in fifth grade there was an active market in live bees.
Some kids figured out that the weight of the average fifth grader briefly stepping on a bee, in the grass, would stun it for about a minute without actually killing it. They started going out in teams to scout bees on the field, stun them, and carefully scoop them into plastic sandwich bags — they’d then sell them to other students who’d release them in classrooms to waste class time and scare people.
You could get honeybees for 25 cents apiece. Bumblebees and yellow jackets cost more. Teachers and school admin started cracking down on this — teachers literally confiscated live bees in plastic bags from students when found, and they eventually had to start having someone watch the field to catch students in the act.
1. What a thoughtful child.
A huge black dildo. A child found it in the school’s garden and said “I found a ding dong in the garden and I’m taking it home for Mum”.
That day, I was not professional.
Y’all there are a few good reasons I’m not a teacher but these 18 stories are definitely up there.
If you’re a teacher and have a good/terrible story, please tell us about it in the comments!
