Not everyone should be a teacher. Teaching the future generation is a delicate matter that should never be taken lightly. It’s important for parents to also be invested in their child’s education. Knowing when something isn’t quite right is the first step to ensuring your child is safe and properly cared for while they receive their education. When parents step up, unjust teachers are brought to light and can face the consequences for their actions or lack of awareness. In this segment, parents share the time they got their child’s teacher dismissed from their duties.
All stories have been rewritten for clarity.
Justice Served
“When I went to the bus stop to pick up my son, I knew something was wrong. He had a pained look on his face and was making whimpering noises as he limped down the stairs of the bus. Now my son is severely autistic and doesn’t speak, so he couldn’t tell me what was wrong.
I rushed my son to the hospital. To my horror, the doctor told me that my son’s toes were broken. They were so badly broken that they had to be pinned in place to keep him from losing them and he ended up needing a wheelchair.
I called the school the following morning and demanded to know what happened.
When I told the school his toes were broken, they tried to have me investigated by DCFS.
I never got a reason from the school and they didn’t even tell the principal after I called the first time.
There were three teachers and a nurse in his class because some of the students had severe medical problems and needed meds and other assistance.
So, there were four adults in a class with severely disabled children who had either injured my son or ignored him as he was being injured and didn’t even pay attention to him to notice how much pain he was in. It also could have been them just refusing to let anyone know it was their fault because their jobs were on the line.
One of those adults had medical training and expressed how they didn’t think it was odd that an able-bodied child suddenly couldn’t walk on one foot. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that one of them had abused my son and was coming up with bogus claims to save face.
Also, keep in mind that these are children who might have a seizure at any moment and who have a history of just leaving the room or building without saying anything, so it’s important to WATCH them.
Long story short, I did not back down and sought justice for my son. I got the cops involved and after an investigation, the two primary teachers for my son’s class were fired.
The nurse and main teacher had too much tenure to be fired, so they got to stay. Lastly, the public school now has to pay for my son to go to a private school where he has his own private aide.”
Girl Problems
“My daughter got a ‘0’ on one of her assignments that I knew she worked hard on and turned in. Seeing the ‘0’, my daughter became very upset and insisted that she turned it in. I assured her that I wasn’t mad, and told her I would have a talk with her teacher to get to the bottom of things.
When I contacted the teacher, he insisted that she didn’t do the assignment, even after I told him I watched her do it at home and even helped her with it.
According to my daughter, the teacher was always somewhat mean to her in class. His offenses were often minor in nature, but consistent. Seeing that talking to the teacher wasn’t going anywhere, I then scheduled a meeting with the principal of the school.
Two days later, my daughter and I were called into a meeting with him and some other administrators. The teacher was also in the room and sat with his arms crossed the entire time.
We went over my daughter’s performance and behavior in class, but it was obvious the teacher’s presence bothered my daughter. I sat up in my chair, resisting the urge to bite the man’s head off.
Eventually, the principal asked him to leave the room so my daughter could talk freely. The minute he left, my daughter spilled the beans. Her teacher was ‘more strict’ towards all the girls in the class, but let the boys do what they wanted.
We found out a few days later that my daughter’s complaint about the teacher wasn’t the first from a girl in one of his classes.
After the school conducted an ‘investigation’, apparently he had a problem with girls and consistently ‘misplaced’ homework assignments from girls but never boys.
Once they saw the pattern, and dozens of other complaints from the parents of other little girls in the class, the school had to let him go.”
How The Real World Works
“My oldest son was exceptional in school. He was a straight-A student and took a significant number of Advanced Placement classes in high school, for which he was granted college credit.
One such class was AP European History. Needless to say, we were a little concerned when his report card showed all ‘A’s’ followed by a ‘D’ in AP European History.
My son, visibly upset, told me he had nothing but ‘A’s’ in the class, but the ‘D’ was because he turned in his semester essay one day late. Because it was one day late, the teacher tore it up in his face and threw it away before giving him a flat zero.
Since that was a significant part of his overall grade, the zero dragged him down from an ‘A’ to a ‘D’. After hearing this, I made an appointment to meet with the teacher. I knew where things were headed the instant I met the man.
And I use the word man loosely.
My son’s teacher was a young punk. As I expressed my concerns, the teacher immediately cut me off and told me there was no excuse for turning in a paper late and that any student doing so should be punished.
I told him I agreed with his claims, but the issue I had was the degree of punishment my son faced.
‘I can see how lowering his grade on the paper a notch for being late. But for you to rip it up, throw it away, and give my son a zero? Don’t you think that’s a little over the top?’
I watched as the teacher shrugged. He then responded in a very snotty tone.
‘It seems you obviously know nothing about how things work in the real world. Everyone has obligations and we are expected to meet them. Being late is not acceptable,’ the teacher said and rolled his eyes.
All I could do was stare at him while my blood pressure soared. After regaining control, I asked the teacher if he had a deadline for submitting grade reports each semester.
‘Yes, of course,’ the teacher said.
‘So, if you’re a day late, do they tear the grade reports up and refuse to pay you for the entire semester?’ I asked.
The teacher didn’t like hearing his logic used against him. He immediately launched into a tirade of shouting, so I simply walked out.
The only other thing I could do was submit an appeal to the school. Unfortunately, they refused to do anything about it.
Eventually, my son was able to recover from the grade, and it only lowered his final GPA a small amount.
The only good that came out of the incident was hearing how the teacher had been let go before the start of the next year after multiple complaints of abusive behavior toward his students surfaced.
I may not have been the direct cause, but after multiple other parents launched appeals and filed complaints, an investigation cost the teacher his job.”
Doctor Who?
“My daughter attended a small private high school from 2015-2020 in which she worked impressively hard to get straight As. All the teachers were excellent, with the exception of one AP Calculus teacher.
I won’t go through the shamefully long list of his shortcomings and inabilities, his arrogance was by far his worst quality. It was during a parent-teacher meeting with him and the dean that I finally called him out.
The dean had wanted me to meet with the teacher alone, but I insisted she attended the meeting since, if he was as arrogant as the students claimed he was, there was no way he would resolve anything without his supervisor being present.
Oh, how right I was.
Even with the dean in the meeting, the teacher was unbelievably cocky and said, that AP students should be able to “teach themselves,” and he shouldn’t have to be responsible for any deficits they came into the classroom with. Most of the class consisted of students who were taught last semester by a terrible algebra teacher and who lasted only one semester. Virtually all the students from that class ended up in his class the next semester, so none of them were fully prepared.
I let the teacher know that if the students all taught themselves, there was no need for him, and that it was ABSOLUTELY his responsibility to bring his students up to the level they needed to be in order to succeed in his class. “AP students might learn at a faster rate and they might take on more material but they still need to be taught!” I objected.
The teacher shot me a smug look as he disagreed. So, I let him know that I understood this was his first high school teaching gig, that his only real teaching experience had been as an adjunct at a community college, and that when he had some more experience he might fully understand his responsibilities.
‘Oh, and you may want to stop referring to yourself as ‘Dr.’ Last I heard, you haven’t completed your Ph.D.’
The look on his face was priceless, but I felt no remorse. At the time, my daughter came home on the verge of tears almost every day because this teacher found pleasure in waving his ego around instead of helping his students. I was sick of it.
The dean said nothing that day, but I could see it in her face as well.
That teacher wasn’t invited to return the next academic year.
Last I heard, he was working in his brother’s convenience store.”
