Sensitive Students Share The Worst Thing A Teacher Did To Make Them Cry
Teachers are often some of the most patient, level-headed, and helpful people that society has to offer. However, not every educator is as compassionate as their students might hope. Most kids end up with at least one teacher who they don’t particularly favor, but landing a genuinely mean educator can make the classroom environment that much more challenging. And when you’re a total crybaby to begin with, having a cruel or unsympathetic teacher can be absolutely crushing!
Students getting chewed out by their teachers isn’t anything new, but some educators take extreme measures when giving out consequences in their classroom. From shouting to throwing chairs to sending kids home for obscure reasons, some educators can’t resist going all-out for their punishments! Unfortunately, their most emotionally sensitive students often suffer the most. These are tales from some thin-skinned Reddit users who completely broke down over the actions of their spiteful, mean-spirited teachers!
Don’t forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#25 Cruel Punishment For Forgetting Their Calculator
She wouldn’t let me go back to my locker to get my graphing calculator before a test. She had two on her desk and I couldn’t use those either because I should have brought my own. She told me I had to take the test without it, but the problems on the test were impossible to do without a graphing calculator. The girl I sat next to saw me crying at my desk as the teacher passed out the test, and went around to every kid in the class asking if they had an extra calculator I could use and ended up getting one for me. She was one of the nicest/most popular people in school, and, thinking about it later, I was so shy that I wasn’t sure I would have done that for another student. I did try to be nicer to people after that. That teacher was always horrible though.
#24 Ridiculous Emergency Phone-Call Rule
My professor for Materials Science in college was notorious for being extremely hard on people that used cell phones and left early. One day a kid gets a call, answers it, gets really silent and then starts to leave. Our professor was livid, demanding that he come to the front of the class to apologize, and when the kid protests he practically started screaming. The kid is in tears at this point walking to the front and apologized to the silent classroom.
Yeah, it turns out his grandma died and that’s what the phone call was about.
#23 Severe Teasing Over Velcro Shoes
My 1st-grade teacher mocked me for not knowing how to tie my shoelace. I liked Velcro, but she complained it made too much noise. She wanted me tested for a learning disability.
I tie my shoes like a pro, Ms. Redacted. And I never make my students feel the way you made me feel.
#22 Too Poor For Paper
In 9th grade, I had this World History teacher, Mr. Wyatt, who had a big issue with spiral bound paper. All I had was spiral bound paper, my parents didn’t have money for loose-leaf paper because we were dirt poor. He made this huge deal about “everyone has a DOLLAR for paper” in front of my class and pretty much called me a liar and I cried. He actually sent me to the in-house detention because I was lying and not following his rule about the stupid paper— every day for about a week. A nice office lady asked why I kept going to the office because I seemed like a “nice girl” so I told her and they gave me a stack of paper, a 3-ring binder and some pencils.
#21 Brutal Art Portfolio Opinion
My high school art teacher when he reviewed my portfolio and said he hoped I wasn’t planning on using it to get into art school when he knew damn well I was and had spent all year pouring my heart into it. Anyway, I did get into art school and ended up turning down my place, so take that, Mr. McConnachie.
#20 Bitter Bike Ride For A Textbook
I was sent home to retrieve my textbook (nevermind that I did my homework, had everything else with me and I could share my friend’s textbook), even though I lived 40 minutes away by bike. So by the time I would be back, the class would already be over. I cried the entire bike ride home because the teacher was so angry at me (I have never caused any trouble before). I cried even harder when my friends told me other people also didn’t bring their textbook but didn’t have to go home to get it. I’m still upset about it, ten years later.
#19 Ripping Apart Their Project
I was in my 6th-grade math class, and the teacher had it out for me for whatever reason.
I was a really good kid, and I was quiet and pretty good at math, but I didn’t like it. I did, however, love to draw.
So one day, my math teacher finishes the lesson and tells us all to work on homework. For context, in my language arts class, we had been given an assignment to illustrate a chapter of the book we were reading.
I was sitting quietly and working on my drawing for my other class, and the teacher comes up behind me and asks me why I’m not working on homework. I tell her about the assignment from my other class, and she starts yelling at me in front of my whole class that she meant MATH HOMEWORK and how could a DRAWING POSSIBLY be HOMEWORK ANYWAY?
Then she tore my drawing in half and I cried.
#18 Coach Too Quick To Punish
I was in first grade. My PE coach really did not like me, she was always putting me in time out for breaking the rules. Rules I didn’t even know were rules, like sliding or swinging on your belly or picking up rocks off of the playground.
One day we were playing a game of Telephone in the cafeteria on a rainy day. The girl who whispered in my ear… well, I couldn’t understand her. It just sounded like wet spitting in my ear. I asked her to repeat herself and she did. Wet spitting. At that point, I was scrambling to make something up to pass along, and the coach was loudly pressing me to hurry up and think of something. I guess I thought about it too long, because she snapped at me that I’d ruined the game, and then she put my nose in the corner for the rest of PE time while everyone else played. I just sat there quietly crying, and I wasn’t even allowed to look out the window at the rain because she’d tell me to turn my head back to the wall.
#17 A Bathroom-Withholding Bully
In 1st Grade, I had a teacher, we’ll call her Mrs. R, that became very mean halfway through the year. I can remember one time she refused to let me go use the restroom. I obeyed like a good boy and waited until I couldn’t handle it anymore. I asked once more and she refused, resulting in me peeing myself in front of the whole class. When she found out what happened, she yelled at me, called me a baby and sent me to the principle. My parents became suspicious and complained to the school board (they had friends on the board). Turns out, Mrs. R was going through a nasty divorce at the time and was taking her anger out on us. I was moved to a different class shortly after and never saw her again.
#16 Mocking Their Math Grade
My 4th-grade teacher called me stupid in front of the whole class because I got the lowest score on a math test, then made fun of me for crying and called me a crybaby. My mom wouldn’t believe me when I told her and my dad just laughed. Turns out I had dyscalculia. Thanks, Mrs. H for destroying my self-esteem, I still remember it 15 years later.
#15 Bizarrely Brutal Parent-Teacher Conference
In freshman year of high school, I had a math teacher who was really great. I struggled with math and she would let me sit in her class during my free periods to study, gave me additional tutoring, and was always so nice to me. She was really young and her classes were pretty rowdy because she didn’t have the courage to dole out punishments, but I was super shy and didn’t contribute to that vibe very much, if at all.
During parent-teacher conferences, she completely FLIPPED on me and told my mother that I was the worst student with an awful attitude and was ruining her classes with my disruptions, etc. etc. My mother believes this at first and rips into me upon exiting the classroom, and I burst into tears in front of everyone and their parents. She starts to calm down when she sees how genuinely horrified and hysterical I am and considering that I’d never been seen to do anything like this before. I ended up calling classmates over who were also very confused and vouched for me, too.
The next day my mother had an unpleasant meeting with the Principal and the teacher and transferred me out of her class. I saw her later that day walking back to her classroom in tears and she never spoke to me again. I think she moved to a different school the next year.
#14 Consequence For Epic Victory
1st grade Montessori— our PE teacher always had us warm up with two laps around the recess area. For some, this took 90 seconds. For others, it would take five minutes.
One day, I beat the fastest 3rd grader in our class by half a step. He wasn’t paying attention and I got a jump on him at the last moment and won. I was SO happy.
Our teacher wouldn’t believe me and sent me on another lap, no matter how I pleaded. Third-grader and his friend kept their mouths shut because nobody could know he lost in a foot race to a 1st grader. I was so angry that I cried the entire third lap.
#13 Crushing Confidence In Cancer Remission
6th grade: a year after being in remission for cancer, I had just grown out my hair a few inches I was really happy (obviously) but I had gotten a little pink streak. So, I was touching it a lot because I was a bit self-conscious and my teacher called me up in front of the class. Told everyone that grooming was not allowed in his class, told everyone that he counted how many times I touched my hair, told me if it’s such a problem he would have the school nurse shave it.
I started bawling my eyes out, hated him all year.
#12 A Cruel Birthday Phone Call
In junior high, my math teacher stopped class to call my parents and tell them what a bad student I was. She didn’t get an answer so she left a voicemail. She did this in front of a class full of students AND it was my birthday. After school, I’ve never biked home so fast. I was trying to get there before my parents so I could delete the message. But I arrived home to find my dad listening to it. When the message finished he just stared at me without saying anything and pressed repeat.
#11 A Numbers Game Gone Wrong
My first-grade teacher made me apologize to the whole class for making a mistake during a game. Here’s how the “game” worked: all of the students sit in a circle, and then you count by five around the circle. I didn’t know how to count by five, but the teacher thought that I was saying the wrong answers on purpose. She seemed to pick on me for the whole year, for seemingly no reason.
#10 Terrifyingly Explosive P.E. Teacher
5th grade PE teacher had a rule that we cannot play tag during lunch time because she did not like disheveled-looking prepubescent girls. Being the annoying kids that we were, we completely ignored the rule and played until the bell rang. When she called us to line up, she exploded. She shouted at us to tuck our shirts and wipe our faces. So, I did. She threw an armchair at me, screaming who the heck told me to move. The metal part of the arm chair hit my legs and I wailed.
#9 Making A Show Of Their Emotion
I had a teacher that would openly mock me in class regularly. Then, when I tried to hide behind my hair because I was crying, they would make me stand up and tie my hair back so everyone could see that I was crying.
#8 Homework Name-Change Debacle
When I was in 3rd grade, a boy stole my homework out of the turn-in bin, erased my name and wrote his name on it.
The teacher gave me a zero and said I should have written my name on my paper if I wanted the grade.
You could still see my name under his.
#7 Confusing Concussion Spurring Frustrated Teacher
At the end of Thanksgiving break in 2nd grade, I was playing football on the front lawn with my brothers and a couple of friends, my oldest brother laid me out so hard it knocked out a tooth.
The next day we were back in school and I could not stay awake no matter how hard I tried and kept falling asleep, in addition to dropping things left and right, and just generally being out of it.
In 2nd grade, we did these quizzes called Math Minutes (or something like that) that had like 20-30 quick, basic arithmetic questions on them, I almost always finished first in the class. On that day, I had been getting on the teacher’s nerves all day (due to above-mentioned issues), and then he passed out the quiz and said once everyone finishes, we can go to lunch then recess. I remember looking at it, not being able to comprehend it, then realizing that he was yelling at me—apparently about five or so minutes had gone by and everyone else had finished the quiz and was staring at me getting yelled at—and I was sitting there with a blank quiz utterly confused as to everything that was happening. He yelled for a bit more, then got the teacher’s aide to take me to the nurse’s office. She called my dad down (he was the guidance counselor) and told him something was off with me. An hour later I was in the ER waiting on a CAT scan. Turns out I had (as should be obvious by now) that I had a moderate to severe concussion. Spent the rest of the week at home.
#6 A Strange, Esteem-Crushing Survivor Game
In the height of the Survivor craze, my grade six teachers decided it’d be fun if students could vote each other out of certain class activities.
She couldn’t grasp why having 12-year-olds scheming together to decide who didn’t get to participate in class activities was a horrible idea.
I was an overweight high functioning autistic kid with no friends and dealt with so much bullying on a daily basis and was nervous.
I pleaded with her not to go through with it, but she’d already made up her mind. Sure enough, by a near unanimous decision, I was the first kid voted out. Each time she read my name out, the class laughed louder and louder. All I could do was hide my face and sob. To this day if I hear strangers laughing, I assume it’s at me.
#5 Announcing Their Failing Grade
When I was in 8th grade I took English with everyone’s favorite teacher. One day in class he was announcing our grades for the semester, and he said if you want to hear it say yes, if not say no. Well, I knew I was failing so when he came to me I said no. And he said in front of the whole class “Well you have a 56, and if you did your homework you’d have an 85. You’re gonna get eaten alive in high school.” Thanks.
#4 A Rudely Acussatory Reading Teacher
My 3rd grade reading teacher apparently didn’t realize that some people read slower when talking out loud than in their heads. That means, when I finished reading my book really quickly after I stopped reading out loud, she straight up called me a liar in front of the class and made me pick up the book again. As a very honest and innocent kid, I took that totally to heart and totally broke down with a panic attack. Long story short, my mom (who worked in the school) was called down, and I single-handedly ruined the friendship between the reading teacher and the homeroom teacher.
#3 A Heavily Reprimanded A.D.D. Mistake
Yes. I had undiagnosed ADD as a kid and forgot everything. This particular instance, we were to write a little essay thing about what we had done over winter break. In one ear, out the other. Totally forgot until he asked for it. I and maybe like four other kids didn’t do it, so he launched into a tirade about personal responsibility and whatnot, and how he was sending a note home to our parents, and I got myself so worked up about it that I burst into tears. The whole class looked at me, and I ended up having to be escorted from the room by a friend. It was a nightmare. I still think about it.
#2 An Unoriginal, Uber-Strict Art Teacher
It was 8th-grade art class. I will never forget the humiliation of this day.
I was in art, doing art stuff, something with charcoal. I think it was a perspective house that I was doing. Anyways, I had my own technique that I liked to do. I didn’t like doing the art teacher’s way, because I didn’t want my hands to get completely covered in charcoal. I knew it was inevitable, but the way I did it helped. My grandma, who is an artist, taught it to me when I was a kid.
ANYWAYS, she’s walking by and see’s that I have a tissue under my hand as I’m shading, and she took it out from under me. Just took it, didn’t say anything. So I grabbed another tissue, sat back down, and went back to work. The teacher then proceeded to yell at me that I wasn’t doing it “the right way.” I told her that my grandma taught it to me and that she is an artist and that I liked it better this way. She didn’t like that. She proceeded to scream at me in front of the entire class. I started to bawl— I was terrified! I ran out of class and into the bathroom and sat in there for the rest of art and half of my biology class.
#1 Smearing A Kid’s Face With Sandwich
In 2nd grade, I had a teacher, Mrs. Knapp. One day at lunch I opened up my sandwich and it had mayo on it. I hated mayo, so I wrapped it back up into a ball in the aluminum it came in and threw it back in my lunch box. Mrs. Knapp saw this, and when we got back to class, she made me take out the sandwich and tried shoving it down my throat, yelling at me that it is bad to waste food. My mom accidentally put her sandwich in my bag that morning. When she found out, she went to the school in a rage because of what the teacher did to me. Nothing was ever done and she was not disciplined in any way. But this was the late 80’s, so I am not surprised at all that no action was taken against her. She made me cry in front of the entire class, as she literally smeared the sandwich across my face.
