From class clowns to rebellious outbursts, some students aren’t always the apple of their teacher’s eye. As years roll by, these troublesome students may inherently develop a sense of guilt for their horrible manners toward their teachers that were simply trying to do their jobs and prepare them for the world. Here, people recall downright awful things they’ve done to their teachers that still haunt them today.
All stories have been edited for clarity.
Table of contents
Way Too Far…
“I come from a super small town with a graduating class of thirty-eight students. Depending on the education route you chose, it was nothing to have seniors and freshmen in the very same classes.
Our Spanish teacher, ‘Mrs. A.’ was a hateful hateful woman. Every year on Halloween we would toilet paper her home. She had been with the school for years and our actions were not news to her.
Mrs. A. lived deep in the woods with only one road in and out. Rather than keep watch all night as she had done in the past, she eventually relented and would go somewhere else for the night since nothing was typically damaged and could be easily cleaned the next day.
During my junior year, Mrs. A. had trouble with a group of seniors which in one instance resulted in two expulsions due to threats and actual physical violence. These two guys ended up having to attend computer-based alternative schools in order to receive a diploma. Unfortunately, they lost out on graduation, cap and gown, and all the joys of making it to the end.
By Halloween of the same year, I was prepared with a ton of toilet paper but did not expect the two pallets of toilet paper the expelled students brought in the back of their truck.
Keep in mind I didn’t like this woman as much as the next but I was unprepared for what was to unfold later.
We drove right up to Mrs. A’s house in the middle of nowhere. The only light was coming from the single electric pole in her yard and the moon. About twenty kids went to work wrapping her house in toilet paper from top to bottom.
It wasn’t until about halfway through that I saw kids on the roof with about four paint buckets hovering somewhere around the chimney. Then I noticed them making their way from door to door and window to window.
I was horrified once I saw just how far they went.
As it turned out, these guys took time to visit local port-a-johns and actually shoveled out about twenty gallons of piss and poop and dumped it down her chimney!
I could only imagine the smell.
Things got much worse. These students went to each window and door they could find and emptied cans of industrial-expanding foam into this woman’s home.
To put the cherry on top, her car was this little hatchback that was probably fifteen years old and about six people ended up flipping it over onto its roof.
I ended up telling my parents about the events that night because I didn’t want to get in trouble for vandalism since I had plans to join the military after HS. Around three in the morning, my father and I drove out to Mrs. A’s home to find two other kids from school with their parents as well. The three of us began to slowly undo what had been done hours before. At some point, Mrs. A was notified and subsequently showed up.
My dad ended up turning her car right side up with the use of the winch on the truck and the damage was evident but minimal considering the circumstances.
Mrs. A spoke with our parents and then to us.
She NEVER once asked us who was with us and never encouraged us to rat anyone out. Mrs. A just expressed how disappointed she was in ‘her favorite students.’
Honestly, I hated her even more from that point on. I hated the way she was so awesome about the entire situation.
She turned the cops away when they showed up and I despised the way she never once complained about anything. I hated the way she refused my dad’s offer to make me come by twice a month and maintain her yard.
Come Halloween of the following year, I was excited to finally be a senior. My father and a couple of friends sat out front of her home and turned away about three different kids of different ages in their attempt to do the same.
That was the last time anyone ‘pranked’ her home from the last I heard.”
I’m Sorry…
“This is something I did to a teacher.
I was in AP math. The teacher I had for 9th grade, was the same one my brother had when he was a junior in high school. The following year, the same teacher was moved to teach seniors so she had my brother. The year after that, I was taking senior math. So she had me and my brother for three years.
The teacher was a little annoying, but we could tell she liked her job. She wasn’t fantastic at math and would make mistakes sometimes. I was kind of a loner, and there was someone else in the AP classes with me that also didn’t fit in with the rest of the AP students. I and the other loner would joke around a lot and the other kids looked up to us.
The class actually voted me into student council which seemed to infuriate the teacher. The other loner and I would get singled out frequently, but to her defense, we probably deserved it most of the time. This started the war though.
My bad behavior in her class started with my friend approaching her podium while I went behind her and advanced the clock by ten minutes. Her class was an annex building, basically a trailer classroom so she couldn’t hear the bell and released students using the clock. We all left early. The next day she was furious and we paid for it.
On occasion, she let us out for picture retake day. My friend and I returned and found a very heavy metal pole. I think it was part of one of the football dummies because her building was set by the football practice field.
We manned it like a battering ram and smashed it into the side of her building. We then bolted before she came out to see us. A few minutes later we returned and it had split the side of the building and knocked the projector screen off its anchors so it landed on, and broke, the projector. There were many more things that year.
The next year my brother had her, and I don’t know what happened with him but she had trouble there also. We have a very unique name so I’m sure she knew we were related. All I know is he mouthed off to her and she raised her hand to him as if she were going to hit him. He laughed at her and challenged her to hit him and she broke down in tears and ran from the room.
Then I had her again the following year. I would usually show up five to ten minutes late. I sometimes brought fast food to class. Also, I often slept through class. The teacher seemed determined to just ignore me, and I just ignored her.
She passed me based on my test scores. On one occasion I used one of the calculators. I wrote a program on one that animated some crude childish and highly insulting pictures of her. Don’t ask why I did it… I don’t know.
A few weeks later, a classmate told me about her heartbreaking reaction. My teacher ended up using the same calculator while teacher different class. When she saw the message on the calculator, my teacher abruptly broke down into tears and fled from the classroom.
When I got to class the day I found out, she had everyone raise their hands that used her calculators. Then the teacher asked everyone to keep their hands raised if they knew any coding languages.
I was the last one left.
Right then, I knew I was in for it.
The next time we had a quiz I actually participated, and at the end of it, I wrote that I had written the program on the calculator and that I was sorry if I hurt her feelings. It was never spoken of again.
This was twelve years ago and I still feel bad thinking about it. I’ve tried to locate her online and went so far as to call the high school to see if she still teaches there. I haven’t been able to locate her. I would like very much to apologize to her again.”
Fiesta
“In ninth grade, I was in a Spanish Club and every year we had a ‘Fiesta’ in the spring. That same year, I decided it would be hilarious to bring in some ‘specially made’ brownies.
Apparently, the Spanish teacher brought all the leftovers home and helped herself to what was likely dozens of brownies. The next day, word quickly circulated that the Spanish teacher couldn’t make it in because she was having stomach pain. Some of my classmates got sick as well. It eventually got back to me and I was suspended for ten days.
My secret ingredient? Exlax laxatives.
I was educated on the dangers of laxative abuse and how my little prank was far from simple in nature. The lecture I received made me feel terrible, but it was the news about the fate of the Spanish teacher that made me regret everything.
Later I found out that the same Spanish teacher had to take week off because she never got over the effects and became violently ill. She even had to have an operation performed on her. Considering the lack of litigation, I’m guessing it wasn’t seen as solely responsible. The day before she took leave, one of my classmates told the Spanish the doctors were gonna sedate her and throw her into a sack, and she proceeded to have a breakdown. This was an unpopular teacher as you can see.”
Something Fishy
“My class’ senior prank was pretty bad.
We hated the principal because he had cut the funding for the theatre arts, culinary and band classes. Illegally, I should add.
The principal did this just to fund our crummy football team. He also stopped using local businesses and suppliers for lunch food and started shipping horrible food from out of state because it cut costs by five percent, or so I heard from teachers.
It was one month before graduation and our previous efforts to have him fired had not gone well. Before we lost all hope of getting payback, one of my friends had an idea.
Things were about to get gross.
My friend worked in the butcher shop at a grocer nearby. As revenge, we took all the heads, bones, and organs of the fish from the butcher’s waste and funneled them into his office through the swing window.
We maneuvered a large, suction-based hose and unloaded over one hundred and fifty pounds of rotting fish guts into his office on a Friday night.
The next week, we saw people in hazmat suits and several authorities at school. They were rigorously cleaning out the admin building. For the rest of the school year, when the principal would see us he would loudly exclaim how much he loved fish and deadpan stared us in the eye.
I respected him slightly more after that, but not enough to throw a party when he was fired the following year and thrown in jail when they found out what he did.”
Can You Hear That?
“I did something despicable in high school.
We had this old man as our teacher. He hated me and was always on my case. The teacher taught french which so happened to be my first language. I happened to be very good in his class and when the assignment wasn’t to speak on a specific subject, I would always get A’s in the written things but I’d write about Heavy Metal or the art of tattooing even though I was never interested in getting tattoos. The teacher seemed like an uppity guy so I intentionally wrote about things I knew made him uncomfortable.
The teacher wore a hearing aid and he would always turn it up during classes when he wrote on the board so he could hear when people were not paying attention behind his back.
In one such occasion, I stood up and threw a loonie which was equivalent to a half-dollar coin in U.S. currency. I threw the coin as hard as I could on the blackboard near him. The teacher immediately winced in pain for a least a minute before standing up and dismissing the class for the rest of the period.
I regret that to this day. The entire class knew I did it but I was never caught. He became much more bitter about teaching after that and the rest of the semester tried to find out who had done it.
I never saw him again in the school halls. I guess he retired.
Damn was I stupid.”
Lockdown
“We locked our history teacher out of the classroom Junior year. That guy was PISSED. He ran out of the classroom for a minute and one kid got up and shut the door behind him. A millisecond later we saw the teacher come back to the door and start shaking the knob.
It went from hilarious to oh crap! really fast.
Eventually, someone got the courage to get up and let him in. The teacher KICKED the door open and called us all morons. I don’t blame him but he didn’t single out the students who actually did it. He blamed all of us and the entire class got after-school detention.
He was a relatively cool guy before that. My friends and I used to hang out after class and talk about history with him a lot. Then, after he freaked out on everyone, we kind of gave him the cold shoulder until graduation.”
A Great Fall
“In high school, we had a substitute German teacher that would come teach our class. Foreign language subs tend to be pretty bad, especially in less-common languages like German.
Needless to say, the kids were not very nice to her. I, however, was always very decent towards her.
One day, we were doing an exercise that involved a map of Germany. She was trying to pull down the map but was too short to reach. She asked for help from the class, but none was given.
Fed up, the teacher got a chair to stand on but was still too short. She then grabbed a yardstick to hook the handle of the map. Standing on the chair, trying to get enough leverage with a yardstick to pull down this map, the teacher came to realize that she was standing on a swiveling chair. As the chair rotated around, the look of terror on her face was clearly visible.
The teacher went down hard. The chair went flying out from under her feet. The teacher also managed to pull the map down on her, and it hit her in the head with a thud. The entire ordeal caused tons of noise.
The whole class froze and was silent. After about three seconds, I started laughing hysterically, all by myself. Tears were streaming down my face. My fellow students looked at me with horror. Struggling to catch my breath, I grabbed my belongings and walked out of the class because I could not get it together.
I never saw the teacher again. I’m not sure if she was OK, I never stopped to check, and never asked about it afterward.”
Croaking Good Time!
“When I was in sixth grade, we had been dissecting frogs in our general science class. Well, one of the students had a particular dislike for our Spanish teacher. So, he cut a leg off of his frog on the last day of dissection. The same student then took the frog leg to Spanish studies, which was conveniently our next class. He then hid the disgusting, slimy leg on her podium.
He did it directly, but most of the students knew what was happening. Our Spanish teacher came in to start class and she found the frog leg instantly. She nearly lost her breakfast before tearing out of the room.
It was a mean little prank that I along with the other students let happen.
But the part that always pissed me off about the whole situation was that nearly all the boys in the class ended up in the principal’s office because the girls ratted us out. It would have been forgivable if the girls hadn’t also known about the frog leg and done something about it.
Instead, the girls LET the prank go forward, THEN ratted us out.
Our Spanish teacher was actually quite forgiving about it, chalking it up to middle school shenanigans.
She even gave us a tap on the wrist by saying it wouldn’t have been such a big deal if she didn’t have such a sensitive stomach.”
The Magical Substitute
“We had a sub who had been filling in for my English teacher for about half the school year due to her having a prolonged illness. Partway through the year, we found out our permanent substitute teacher was an avid LARPer and had his picture on a LARP website with him dressed from head to toe in elf/ wizard attire.
I was in eleventh grade and had English in the last period of the day. It was the perfect class to do some fun editing of my next-period assignments.
One day, I took his LARP pic and added some text about his awesome wizard skill and stats on his various spells. These got printed out discreetly in my computer class.
This all worked out perfectly because the teacher had to come from another class and was always a few minutes late after the bell. This was more than enough time to tape my flyers around the class, on the board, and on the podium without him knowing who did it.
The look on his face when he entered the class was priceless.
All the kids couldn’t hold back the waves of laughter at his expense. He didn’t even bother trying to find out who did it, as I’m sure he knew it was me. The had no way to find out for sure and no one sold me out.
Did I mention this certain day was the second day of standardized writing testing? So the visibly pissed teacher handed out what we were supposed to write about, set a stack of blank paper down, and went to his desk without saying much.
Someone raised their hand and asked for some paper to write our topic on. He, noticeably short with his words, told the student, ‘Get up and get it yourself.’
Meanwhile, I was still enjoying the prank in my head. Being a natural smartass, I couldn’t stop myself blurted out, ‘Why don’t you cast a spell to bring a piece over to me?’
The class erupted into laughter again, but apparently, my request was not within the spectrum of his powers. I was sent to the office to finish my paper. The teacher had a look on his face like he wanted to kill me.
The cool part was I never got into any trouble.”
Spare Me!
“I think the worst thing I did to our English teacher, was to shove his tweed jacket into the bin.
I genuinely thought that someone, maybe the cleaners or someone, would see the coat and remove it but they never did. They found his car keys in the ashes of the incinerator.
I put the jacket in the bin in front of the entire class. There were more than a few witnesses, and I was soon summoned to the deputy headmaster’s office. I knew I was in deep trouble and I had been getting into more and more trouble as of late. This incident was something I could do without, so I went into his office and burst out crying. I’m talking ugly, snot-nosed sobbing.
The deputy head jumped up, put his arms around me, and assured me everything was okay. He told me my classmates were bastards and that I clearly wasn’t guilty.
‘How could you be the culprit when you are so upset?’ the deputy soothed.
I couldn’t believe that I had gotten away with it.
A few months later I was sent to a boarding school for badly behaved children, but at least I had got away with that one.”
Noted
“I was in the sixth grade, the first year of middle school, and this took place sometime in the spring.
In my math class, we were doing projects based on probability. We were going to have a fun carnival for our games the next day or the day after.
My math teacher was letting us ask questions about the project and carnival, but he restricted us to one question each. I’m not sure if he was being simply rude or just joking, but eleven-year-old me took it as a rude gesture.
My friend and I wanted to be funny so we wrote in our notebook silly statements as rebellion instead of questions. Things like, ‘HOW DARE YOU RESTRICT OUR SPEECH?!’
I was showing quite some anger but it was also somewhat of a joke and the other kids seemed to really think it was funny, so I kept going.
Now the issue did not happen with my math teacher.
It was in the next class, which was Homeroom, and I was with all the same students from my previous period. I didn’t want to let my hilarious notes die just yet, so in Sharpie, I wrote on a piece of paper, ‘BURN THE MATH TEACHER!’
Oh boy, would I soon regret this.
My Homeroom teacher gave me THE LOOK and started to yell at me. It was technically something I wrote, not said, but it still counted.
I crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it under my desk, and continued with class. When the bell rang, the teacher asked for the piece of paper, and I handed it to her. The next day, in math I got called to the office.
I knew what was about to go down.
An admin took the wrinkled paper from his desk and said to tell me everything that lead up to me writing the note and I wouldn’t get in trouble. So I said everything, and I believed there would be no consequence.
The admin then said I might be suspended for two days, so I balled my eyes out and begged they didn’t. I was going to be in so much trouble with my parents.
What he said next in an attempt to calm me down was, ‘Relax, it’s just an in-school suspension.’
That pretty much meant I would come into school late with a parent and wait for my parent and the admin to speak about my inappropriate behavior. I think he threatened the two-day suspension just to scare me or make me feel terrible but I’m not sure, but I still hate that admin to this day.
He also told me it was against school rules to use Sharpies and I should start leaving them at home. My mom came to the conference for the in-school suspension and the admin basically told her I could be a terrorist and to watch out. He then added that the incident will be taken off my record only if I stay good for the rest of the year.
It was quite the experience. Afterward, I was talking to one of the other sixth graders about what happened, and I cried in front of a lot of my fellow classmates after the meetings with that admin. The entire ordeal truly terrified me. I was also super embarrassed.
Moral of the story: Don’t let fame get to you, and don’t threaten your teachers to be funny or for clout.”
