Teaching is one of the hardest and least appreciated professions in the world. You’re expected to not only teach kids but to care about them individually – their physical and mental well-being, their histories, their futures, their education – and to be the keepers of good relationships and experiences for each and every one of them.
And you’re supposed to do all of that while you deal with administrators and parents, your own family and hobbies, complete your continuing education requirements, and live on your pittance of a paycheck.
Oh, and if you live in America, you must also be ready to die protecting your students from a school shooter.
If all of that doesn’t make you respect teachers, maybe these 17 personal stories of the darkest moments in some of their lives will do the trick.
17. Like a twisted Quentin Tarantino.
Student would hide in the bushes trying to get near female teachers’ feet.
Had to advise staff to wear closed toe sandals/shoes because he was so interested.
Discovered he was drawing women with their feet cut off as well as drawing severed feet in high heels.
16. This is downright chilling.
Had a student in my class as a sophomore. Every morning her Junior year she would come in and chat in the morning. One day out of the blue it stopped. In fact, she wasn’t at school at all anymore.
Fast forward 3 months, she shows up and looks…broken. I ask her what’s going on. After quite a bit of hesitation, she tells me that she went to a party and was DD. No alcohol in her system. However, she woke up the next morning and couldn’t remember a thing about the previous night. A couple weeks later, she finds out she is pregnant.
She was a virgin before that night. Roofied and raped. She had only told her counselor and now me. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her due to COVID. Her outlook and demeanor was night and day before and after that party.
15. I would have changed schools, too. And still gotten a restraining order.
I was student teaching when I was 21. I had a class of high school seniors.
One boy was caught telling his friend he planned to rape me in my car. I ended up getting transferred about two months into my student teaching experience.
I’ve been assaulted before, so it felt even worse.
14. It takes a strong soul to bring art out of madness.
I’m not a teacher but I had an off hour in high school and I usually would use it for going home or just hanging out. I was asked by my film photography teacher if I could help with teaching by showing some of my examples and helping mostly 9th graders (I was in 11th grade at the time).
I noticed one kid was really quiet and socially awkward but he had really good prints. And after a couple days I noticed a lot of film was missing and so I asked my teacher. He said the the quiet kid paid for some extra film to take home and use. I brushed it off for a while until it came to show some of the prints to the class. The quiet kid was 3rd up and I was over near his desk and I noticed some of the pictures he printed. It was two people who turned out to be his mother and father on the floor with what I can assume a large quantity of drugs and alcohol. Most of the photos were of his living situation. It was one of the saddest things I’ve seen.
He was a bright and happy person. I got in contact with him a couple months ago and he’s living with his grandparents after his mom and dad got into a fight of money.
He now shoots a lot of nature photography.
13. I cannot even imagine.
My mom was a school nurse and always came home with some crazy story’s. One of the most blood curdling thing she has was a girl that was really into cutting to the point where she had a scar that covered the majority of the outside of her bicep.
The girl one day decided that she hated her scar and wanted to get rid of it. At home, by herself, she decided she was going to get rid of them. In her bathroom, she took a knife to her arm, cutting a 4” by 6” pice of scar tissue that was just under and inch thick out of her arm. She the proceeded to stitch it up using a needle and thread and bandage it with gauze all by herself.
She then woke up and went to school the next day so she could go to my moms office and ask if it looked infected.
It was.
12. When it feels like it’s all too overwhelming.
13yo crying hysterically in class, saying random adult voices are telling him to kill himself.
Next day has no memory of incident, but tells me it comes in waves. Disturbing
11. Those are different but equally terrifying stories.
In elementary school we had a kid with a severe peanut allergy and a teacher caught some kids rubbing peanut butter on the opening of his water bottle.
We also had a kid who could describe in detail about how to prepare heroin.
10. I’m sure everyone who knew her felt the same way.
A student during holiday break a few years back murdered her mother and her mother’s boyfriend brutally with the help of her own boyfriend.
Then the bodies laid in the apartment as she left and eventually went to a New Years party days later. Eventually she was arrested along with her boyfriend.
Chilling to think she was sitting in my classroom days before, probably with this whole plan in her head.
9. Well, if that doesn’t make you want to cry.
I was student teaching when I was 21. I had a class of high school seniors.
One boy was caught telling his friend he planned to rape me in my car. I ended up getting transferred about two months into my student teaching experience.
I’ve been assaulted before, so it felt even worse.
8. The rabbit AND the kid, I’m guessing.
not my class but i adopted a rabbit once to keep my other rabbit company. i noticed she didn’t have a tail, and when i asked about it i was told she was a kindergaten pet. apparently the reason she was up for adoption was that one of the children cut off her tail- WITH A PAIR OF FUCKING SAFETY SCISSORS.
she had some issues.
7. What would have to happen for a five-year-old to feel this way?
Had a kindergartener smash a glass measuring cup and stab himself in the arm to the point that blood was everywhere, all while repeatedly crying “please just let me die, I just want to die.”
Had to sit in my car and cry for about 30 min before driving home that day.
6. This story turned me into a ball of rage.
Not a teacher but I did do alot of volunteer work with little kids. One of the 5th grade boys was caught grabbing random girls and trying to pull them into the supply closet and try to kiss them. He was even caught trying to grab their butts or would out his hand on their seat as they started to sit down.
When we finally got to talk to his parents turned out his grandpa was teaching him these things. The weirdest part was when we questioned the grandpa about it his response was “who cares, they’re just little girls.”
5. What a tough, tough young lady.
Not a teacher, but I worked with students. A student was forced to give oral sex in a vehicle while a screwdriver was held to her neck. When he orgasmed, she made a run for it back to her residence.
She had the clarity and ingenuity to keep the semen in her mouth and spit it in a cup for evidence. There was a manhunt and the guy was caught. He was convicted of three separate student sexual assaults across the state.
I was in the emergency room with the student a couple hours after the incident. Standing there as she described what happened, through her tears and in front of her mother, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to witness.
4. That will change a ten-year-old.
Not a teacher, but when I was in 5th grade my school had a “buddy system”. Since I was the oldest out of 7 kids, I grew up learning how to take care of troublesome kids. The buddy system went like this; A 5th grader would be assigned a kindergartner. The 2 classes met every Wednesday and did arts and crafts together. Since my teacher saw I was “strict” with kids and knew how to take care and be responsible with kids, I was put with the most problematic kid. This kid misbehaved a lot, and I got him to become a lot better and didn’t think much of it until one day this happened-
We were helping the kids cut things out, and they gave us big kids real scissors. I had turned around for just a little to ask my classmate what the next step was when i felt a very very sharp pain on my arm. When i turned around I saw that this little kid had cut me. Not a big cut, but still. I didn’t yell, but I asked him why he did that. He then told me that that is what his mom did to him, and that it was just “tougher love”. It turns out that this kid had been abused and cut by his mother so much he thought that it was love. It was rough.
3. Just when you start to think the world is mostly good.
I didn’t see it, but I heard it. I used to work at a shelter for at-risk girls aged 8-18, mainly truancy or runaway cases but some were taken from homes of abuse, drugs, sex trafficking, etc. We housed and looked after roughly 20 girls at a time when we were at full capacity. Many of them had a lot of mental and emotional issues. One of our youngest girls at the time, around age 9, was talking to an older girl (around 13). Teen was nonchalantly talking about how she was raped as a young girl before she came to the shelter.
Next thing I knew, at least 10 other girls who had overheard the conversation started talking about how old they were when they were raped. Some rattled off multiple ages and times when it occurred. Just causally..It was chilling to hear so many young girls tell their tales.
2. This is the one that made me cry.
I am an English teacher and I am the sponsor of the school’s Comic Book and Anime Club. This year, I managed to take my Club to a convention, and many of them had several firsts, such as meeting celebrities, LARPing, participating in panels, speaking to professional artists, and just being with a larger fandom community.
Upon our return, one of my members, a 16-year-old girl, asked to speak to me privately. She proceeded to tell me that she had been molested by her father and uncle ever since she was 12. On her 16th birthday, she finally had enough of the abuse and she contacted the police and told them everything. Before the investigation could begin, her uncle committed suicide out of shame. Her father was about to do the same, but she was able to convince him not to do it. He is now facing trial for his crimes.
She then thanked me, and said that the two days we spent at the convention were the happiest days of her life, and it allowed her to feel like a child for the first time in four years. It was the proudest moment of my career.
1. Some kids are truly awful to each other.
I taught welding and metal sculpture at the high school level for a year. One morning, one of my students (a quiet, awkward, but really nice young man) came in to class and asked me for a bandaid. I asked him what for and he replied that it was for a burn (class hadn’t started yet for the day). He showed me and it was a fresh 2nd degree burn that was already blistering. It was in the shape of an “A”.
Some kids (if I’m going to be honest, they were bottom performers and trouble makers) from a different class of mine had swiped a small metal letter “A” from one of my supply bins, heated it with a lighter, and then branded this kid on the morning school bus.
He had let the kids do it because he really wanted to fit in. He didn’t have many friends and these kids had seemed cool because they were always acting out.
As a mandatory reporter, I reported it. The police got involved. Other than that I have no idea what else happened.
When my kids are in school, their teachers are going to get the best gifts. Just sayin.
Are you a teacher? Do you know one?
Share your own distressing stories with us if you want to unload!
