Teachers have always been there, uniquely positioned to shape and mold lives and communities. Sometimes, though, the stories of their greatness rise above even the ordinary to that of triumph, discipline, and unexpected creativity. Here are surprising facts about teachers that go beyond the classroom. 1. The Loudest Shout Ever Came from a Teacher A … Continue reading 6 Unbelievable Facts About Teachers That Will Surprise You
5 Insights about Teachers: The Backbone of Education
Teachers, the guiding forces behind our learning journeys, have an undeniable impact on shaping young minds. From their influence on academic performance to their role in behavior management, the world of teaching is riddled with intricacies. Dive in as we unravel some curious facts about educators and their realm. 1. The Gendered Grade Conundrum: Research … Continue reading 5 Insights about Teachers: The Backbone of Education
Teachers Disclose The Absolute Worst Thing A Student Has Ever Done To Them
Being a teacher is one of the most noble professions there is, but it’s not a walk in the park.
Teachers are underpaid and underappreciated.
Besides teaching, the amount of drama they have to deal with is unimaginable.
So Redditor TheRealZFinch wanted to hear from all the educators who have had to endure while teaching other people’s children.
They asked:
“Teachers of Reddit, what’s the worst thing a student did to you?”
Evil Parents
“I had a parent push me, spit on me and slap me when she came to my classroom unannounced, because I had given her daughter a detention for spitting in my face.”
“Parent denied it, school did nothing. Don’t teach anymore! I’m in Australia FYI.” ~ Apprehensive-Ad4244
“My girlfriend also wants to quit teaching because of shitty kid’s parents.” ~ NeokratosRed
“I feel for you, you do years worth of difficult training because you want to work with and help children, change the world for the better, and you wind up being crap on every day instead by parents.”
“Luckily, teaching skills are very transferrable, I’m now in the disability services industry.” ~Apprehensive-Ad4244
Bad Kids…
“A friend of mine is a teacher is a rough neighborhood.”
“One day immediately after school she got a call from the principal telling her to stay in her classroom with the door locked instead of leaving like she normally did.”
“The police arrested one of her students, who had bragged to another student about kidnapping the teacher.”
“He was arrested waiting by her car with a knife and zip ties.” ~ SoullessDad
Private School Drama…
“I was slammed against a wall by a 17 year old kid who then wiped his hands all over my face and kissed me.”
“One other student saw and she laughed. I left the position immediately. It was a private drama school.” ~ Ieatclowns
Birmingham UK…
“I’ve been mostly lucky, but I’ve had 2 bad ones, both while training.”
“Both these were in Birmingham UK.”
“A student aged 7 brought a Stanley knife into school and was taking it out of his pocket and messing with it while looking straight at me.”
“It was pretty scary knowing he knew exactly what he was doing.”
“A very aggressive child attacked me, digging his nails into my arm and drawing blood. He then twisted my arm backwards.”
“That was a fun report.”
“I’ve also had a chair thrown at me. Fun times.” ~ Winchesters_TARDIS
“Hey, also Birmingham, UK here!”
“But I am still a student, in Sixth Form right now.”
“The following stories are all from secondary, though.”
“One of my friends almost started a physical confrontation with a teacher, to the point that they were physically yelling at each other and squaring up.”
“Another time a group of boys yelled sexual expletives at a female member of staff (the boys that few people liked, the number of their friends decreased YoY).”
“Teachers started searching students bags because so many people were bringing in weapons. “
“In a school near mine, a teacher got stabbed, chairs were being thrown around, a teachers arm got broken, it was bad – but that wasn’t my school.”
KABOOM!
“Mine still had its fair share of incidents not pertaining to teachers, but we were not that bad thankfully.” ~ mxlevolent
“I’ll never forget the day I had a student light off a firework in my classroom.”
“It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever had a student do in my classroom, but it’s definitely the most unexpected thing that I’ve had happen.”
“I’ve been called things by students, and I even got pushed by a student once.”
“But looking back on all of those situations I feel as if they could have been avoided had I built up better relationships with those students or handled the situations that lead up to them differently.”
“With the firework in class, it was completely out of the blue and not at all something I feel like I could have prevented.”
“It just happened randomly one day, and I will never understand why the student decided to set it off during class.” ~ DerekIsAGooner
Feeling the Bounce!!
“I had a student run into me and bounce off of me.”
“She then accused me of shoving her and hurting her back.”
“I was relieved of my position and I resigned.”
‘”Fortunately the footage shows that I was hit by her, but I still lost my job.”
“After an inquiry with the Texas Education Agency they found i did nothing wrong and I got to keep my license.”
“Fortunately I was offered a position with a government contractor making more money with a lot less stress.”
“I never want to step foot in a classroom as a teacher ever again.” ~ Damnpenguins4269
Let Go!!
“I had a student grab my arm, then later claim I grabbed him back.”
“His parents wanted to press charges, have me arrested, but the SRO refused, as he’d already taken a dozen witness statements corroborating my version.”
“I got very lucky. Another teacher had to sit for months at central office while CPS investigated baseless claims.” ~ lazy_days_of_summer
“Out loud to the whole class, I had a student wish cancer on my unborn son.”
“Had another student say he would shoot my wife.”
“This one wasn’t so bad, but could’ve been—one female student started a rumor that she was my favorite and that I thought she was cute.”
“I had to proactively reach out to leadership to put that one down before it got bad.”
“In general, tons of swearing and disrespect.”
“Most of it is due to childhood trauma and home life, but yeah, teaching is great but being a teacher can suck.” ~ mywifemademegetthis
Feel the Warm
“I taught toddlers, and they consistently wanted to sit in my lap.”
“I had a few girls climb up in my lap, smile sweetly, and pee all over me. It’s amazing how a 5-gallon bladder fits in a pint sized body.” ~ schnozzberryflop
Terrifying…
“I taught elementary kids in Korea and they were honestly angels.”
“But when I subbed for a friend’s high school class for a week I had a student and his friends try to lock me in the classroom alone with them while they acted really overbearing and sexual.”
“It was terrifying, but thankfully didn’t last long at all as the VP came to have lunch with me 2 minutes in.” ~ punctuationist
Crazy
“A colleague was stalked by a kid.”
‘”Found out where she lived, where she shopped, what her routine was.”
“Used to get her friends to stand outside her house and harass her outside Tesco.”
“She would make comments in class, such as ‘aren’t green curtains nice?’”
“Knowing the teacher had green curtains, for example.”
“It got so bad she got the police involved and ended up moving house.” ~ Evening_Rose_619
We need our educators.
They don’t deserve abuse.
Be better kids and parents.
People Divulge Which High School Rumor Turned Out To Be True
The high school rumor mill always seemed to be in full swing.
A few hundred teenagers crammed into one or two buildings was apparently ideal conditions for all sorts of steamy stories and imagined thrills to surface every week or so.
By and large, these stories were false. Or at the very least, wildly embellished.
But every once in awhile, one of them turned out to be true. And that was enough to make us believe all the other tales that flew around the hallways.
Redditor Le_Bayou_Cochon apparently wanted to separate fact from fiction.
He asked:
“What high school conspiracy turned out to be true at your school?”
Of course, sexual rumors were a common go-to.
“There were rumors about a music teacher and a student, but they were both pretty dramatic people and did very little to dismiss the talk. So half the school wanted to believe it for the salacious thrill and half just waved it off as attention seeking and sh**-talking.”
“Teacher got canned without explanation. Most of us just figured it was budget-related. A math teacher filled in on his music/theater roles.”
“Years later I randomly caught up with the student and she said the rumors were true, she freaked out and tried to end things to shake off the reputation, and eventually the teacher showed up trashed and naked on her family’s front lawn, in the rain, yelling out for her.”
“Like a really fu**ed-up version of John Cusack from Say Anything but with less boombox and more drenched wang.” — Dangercakes13
This rumor spanned more than one school.
“That our IT teacher slept with his students. He was attractive, young, friendly etc, then suddenly a rumour went around the school that he was sleeping with a 6th former (aged 17/18).”
“He was suspended for a while but then ‘decided to leave’ after he was ‘cleared’ of wrongdoing.”
“He got a new job at my cousins high school across town…he did it again there. Got caught with another 17 year old and was fired shortly after.” — Hot_potatoos
In a couple cases, the ending was rather unexpected.
“Two of the teachers ‘hooking up’ on a Europe class trip. Gone for a week, came back and the rumours started.”
“Two weeks later a rumour started he got divorced.”
“Last week of school they were spotted at a restaurant together.”
“Looked em up a couple years after graduating. They’re married.” — Gone_cognito
“That one of the cheerleaders was dating one of the teachers (in his 40s). A year after graduation, they got married and had a baby. Still together 11 years later.” — Trailmix
Unfortunately, some other rumors were gruesome.
“There was a girl freshman year who went missing. She ended up being found dead in the river. There were rumors that she was seen on a bridge with her boyfriend the day she went missing. Nothing was ever found and they assumed it was suicide/ an accident.”
“Fast forward 25 years and the boyfriend murdered his best friend of several decades, set a fire to cover it up, and went on the run. Couple days later he killed a woman at a rest stop in the bathroom to steal her car.”
“They reopened the case about the high school girlfriend. That rumor was correct all along. He will be in prison the rest of his life.” — pomegranatepants99
And some were alarming.
“Lead in the water.”
“Our high school tap water was dark brown and we weren’t allowed to bring our own waterbottles or get filtered water from the cafeteria without paying $3. We sent hundreds of emails asking the school board to look into it, but they said it was fine.”
“In my senior year, a student did a science fair project on the illegal amount of lead in the tap water, forcing the school to investigate and fix all the taps.” — xJaneyDoe
This example was intriguing—and terrible.
“I attended a newly opened high school that apparently used to be a school for troubled kids. Someone told me there were padded rooms somewhere in the school so I skipped lunch with a friend one day to walk the halls and find them!”
“They did exist, but by next year they were renovated into offices and storage rooms. I thought that was pretty interesting and seriously wondered what went on there before it was turned into a ‘normal’ high school.” — E-macularius
One school was filled with surprises.
Two to be exact.
“That there were tunnels under the school that led to a hidden pool.”
“Confirmed by my father who was a maintenance man for the school district. The tunnels were just utility tunnels, the pool is below the gym floor and was abandoned due to financial reasons.” — pondcypress
In one case, someone tried to hide the past.
“My old math teacher was a WWF wrestler, i recognized him from my childhood days channel surfing and couldn’t find anything about him on google, but i was so sure it was him I just asked.”
“I was right lmao” — TheTastySpoonicorn
This one sounds straight out of a movie.
“My history teacher/tennis coach made moonshine and hosted cock fights in his barn. I ended up becoming friends with his son and it was all true.” — m011yRadar
As does this one.
“That my high school history teacher was putting whiskey in the 2-liter bottle of Pepsi he carried around everyday.”
“He was caught trying to buy liquor for some senior girls and it resulted in a car chase we all watched. The police had to pull out the spike strips to catch him.” — Tylerurby
And finally, some quick thinking, heroic teachers.
“Due to budget cuts or something all of our metal and woodwork shop machines were to be taken away and replaced with worse versions. The shop teachers and drama teachers that were in the building at the time didn’t like this idea, so they hid all the machines in a false wall somewhere in the building.”
“The people came to pick them up and they told them that people had already come to pick them up and that they were late. They did some looking around and couldn’t find the machines and gave up. A few years and 1 principle later they brought the machines back out from behind the walls.”
“And that’s how the smallest high school of our district with only around 450 students became the best school in the district to learn metal and woodwork.” — imfamuspants
If these are true, there’s no knowing which of the rumors you wrote off in high school may have actually been true too.
History Professors Divulge The One Fact They Love Sharing With Their Students
History is full of fascinating figures and stories.
Humans have been interesting, wild, strange, goofy, ridiculous, horrible, murderous, and pretty much any other thing you can name.
Time has eroded societies and built new ones, introduced technology and killed off hallmarks of the past.
When you specialize in history you become the keeper of this arsenal of facts. And even better, you become responsible for sharing them with others.
In a way, you become the shaper of how we, in the contemporary era, experience history.
A Redditor asked:
“History Professionals of Reddit. What is that one history fact that you just love sharing with people?”
Here were some of those factoids.
A King’s Ransom
“Daniel Steibelt, a top pianist in his own right, challenged his contemporary Beethoven to a musical improv duel.”
“Steibelt did believe he had a shot; he was no kid, and had already composed for Marie Antoinette and operatized a successful version of Romeo and Juliet.”
“He showed up to the improv and played one of his own works, for which he’d brought the sheet music.”
“Once it was his turn, Beethoven turned the sheet music upside down and beautifully f**ked the piece sideways and backwards, overturing Steibelt’s style all the while like a cat teasing a particularly boring mouse.”
“No one ever challenged Beethoven to a musical improv again, least of all Steibelt, who never again set foot in Vienna.”-Tmaffa
“The longest piano piece of any kind is Vexations by Erik Satie.”
“It consists of a 180-note composition which, on the composer’s orders, must be repeated 840 times so that the whole performance is 18 hours 40 minutes.”
“Its first reported public performance in September 1963, in the Pocket Theater, New York City, required a relay team of 10 pianists.”
“The New York Times critic fell asleep at 4 a.m. and the audience dwindled to 6 masochists. At the conclusion, one sado-masochist shouted ‘Encore!’”-Back2Bach
“Julius Caesar was once kidnapped by pirates, and when he found out how much they were ransoming him for, he was offended at how low the amount was and told them to raise it.”
“Meanwhile he spent his captivity annoying the sh*t out of his captors, holding poetry readings and generally being a pompous dick.”
“Oh, and he also joked that he’d eventually hunt them all down and crucify them. The ransom was paid, Caesar was released, then he hunted them down and crucified them.”-Tmaffa
Misleading Names
“I like telling people about orphan trains. During the late 19th-early 20th century, Progressive reformers loaded ‘orphans’ onto trains, sending them to the countryside for what often amounted to indentured servitude.”
“Also, some of the kids that were targeted were not orphans, and the Protestant reformers may have intentionally targeted the children of intact Catholic and Jewish immigrant families to make sure they were converted to the right religion.”
“I’ve found that it’s not a very well known part of the Progressive Era.”-[username deleted]
“The Pentagon wasn’t built that way for any defense reason — in fact, it’s not even a regular pentagon.”
“It was designed to fit nicely into the empty field between five major roads, but then later there was some reason why they had to build it somewhere else, I think it was too close to some city or something.”
“Anyway they’d already paid someone to design this five-sided building so they just said f**k it, it’s a pentagon now.”-Tmaffa
“From the memoirs of a Bill Bellamy, a British WW2 tank troop commander: One of our favourite pursuits was to eavesdrop on other squadron wireless nets while we were resting. This could be very exciting and, on occasion, very amusing.”
“One splendid moment occurred when C squadron were out on a standing patrol and Michael Payne, a young and popular troop leader, was in a hedgerow with shelling taking place to his front.”
“Apparently the whole area was covered with cattle, who paid little attention to the lethal objects dropping around them and concentrated on the job in hand.”
“Suddenly over the air came the laconic voice of Mickey, ‘Gunner, you see that poor cow in front which has just been wounded? Put the poor devil out of its misery will you?’”
“He obviously imagined he was talking on his intercom and not broadcasting to the world, because he then remained on the air with his microphone switch pressed.”
“There was a moment of silence and then a rat-tat-tat of the Besa machine-gun. Then came Mickey’s agonised cry, ‘Not that one you bloody fool, the one on the left!’”
“We didn’t let him forget that for a long time.”-Tmaffa
Today Is War!
“There once existed an alleged theoretical state of war that lasted 335 years and 19 days, and was between the Dutch and an archipelago off the coast of southwest England called the Isles of Scilly.”
“What’s more, there were no casualties (because the Dutch forgot that they were at war with the Isles).”
“It wasn’t until a Sicily historian contacted the Dutch about the ‘war’ in 1985, and received the information that the ‘war’ was still technically ongoing, that a peace treaty was signed in 1986.”-CarbonSpectre
“I’m not a history professional but love talking about how the South Korean and US governments launched Operation Paul Bunyan.”
“And the US went to combat readiness DEFCON 3 (the US went to DEFCON 2 over the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Gulf War; the US last went to DEFCON 3 on 9/11) because of a single poplar tree that blocked the line of sight between a United Nations Command checkpoint and an observation post.”
“To be fair, this was also called the Korean Axe Murder Incident and had to do with the killing of two United States Army officers in the Joint Security Area (JSA) located in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).”
“The U.S. Army officers had been part of a work party cutting down a poplar tree in the JSA that partially blocked the view of United Nations (U.N.) observers when they were assaulted and killed by the North Koreans, who claimed that the tree had been planted by Kim Il-Sung.”
“North Korean propaganda machine immediately spun this incident in their favor, describing how American aggressors forced the North Korean guards to defend themselves.”
“The CIA considered that this was a pre-planned attack and evaluated their options and the US went to DEFCON 3 the day after the two US Army officers were murdered.”
“Originally, the plan was to trim the poplar tree but now it was decided that – back with completely overwhelming force – the tree had to go.”
“South Korea and US initiated Operation Paul Bunyan which resulted in the following:”
“-Task Force Vierra (a convoy of 23 US and South Korean vehicles) drove into the JSA without warning the North Koreans at 0700. The vehicles had a compliment of two eight-man teams of combat engineers equipped with chain-saws to remove the tree.”
“-Task Force Vierra would be accompanied by two 30-man security platoons from the Joint Security Force, who were armed with pistols and axe handles. 1st Platoon secured northern entrance to the JSA via the Bridge of No Return while 2nd Platoon secured southern edge.”
“-Another company had activated the detonation systems for the explsoives on Freedom Bridge and had the main gun of a combat engineer vehicle aimed at the middle of the bridge to make sure that it collapsed should explsoives vailed.”
“They were also building rafts on the Imjin River in case an emergency evacuation was required.”
“-A 64-man task force of South Korean Special Forces accompanied them, armed with clubs and were trained in Tae Kwon Do but bore no firearms.”
“Once they parked their trucks near the Bridge of No Return, they began throwing out sandbags and armed themselves with M16s with grenade launchers.”
“Some of the commandos also had claymore mines strapped to their chests while holding the trigger in their hands, shouting at the North Koreans and daring them to cross the bridge.”
“-A US infantry company in 20 transport helicopters and seven Cobra attack choppers were right behind them. And behind those helicopters were B-52 bombers escorted by F4 Phantom jet fighters. F5 and F86 fighters also took flight to provide overwatch at higher altitudes.”
“FB-111 fighter-bombers and more F4 Phantoms were deployed, and the U.S.S. Midway (aircraft carrier) and its task force was moved just off-shore.”
“Near the DMZ were more heavily armed US and South Korean infantry and artillery units, an air defense regiment with mobile surface-to-air missile batteries and main battle tank platoons were waiting to back up the special ops team.”
“Bases near the DMZ were prepped for demolition in case of a North Korean counter-attack. 12,000 more soldiers and 1,800 more Marines were deployed to Korea, and nuclear-capable strategic bombers were called in to circle over the JSA.”
“Task Force Viera – who was directly responsible for cutting down the tree – totaled a little over 800 men.”
“North Korea deployed about 200 troops in response and were all armed with small arms and support weapons, and were deployed in buses but they didn’t immediately disembark their busses because they were bewildered by the show of force that was arrayed before them.”
“When they finally got out of their buses and set up their machine gun positions, all they could do was watch in silence as the tree was felled. After all of this, a six meter tree stump was left standing.”
“All of this because a tree’s foilage was blocking the view of an observation post.”-Tangowolf
“I love sharing the story of Deborah Sampson. She was effectively the American Mulan. During the Revolutionary War she masqueraded as a man to fight.”
“While she did eventually get caught after being wounded, she managed to avoid that issue once by digging a musketball out of her thigh!”
“She was the only woman following the war to receive a soldier’s pension. Awesome.”-22glowworm22
Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie!
“Melbourne was once terrorised by a crime gang that consisted exclusively of men with one leg and crutches.”
“‘The Crutchy Push, with one exception, consisted of one-legged men. The exception was a one-armed man who kept half a brick in his sewn up empty sleeve. He led his followers into battle swinging the weighted sleeve around his head.’”
“‘Behind him came the men on crutches – each one expert at balancing on one leg. The tip of the crutch was used to jab an opponent in the midriff. With the enemy gasping for breath the crutch would be reversed and the metal-shod arm rest would be used as a club.’”
“It gets better.”
“After several incidences of their member outrunning cops sent to track them down, the police got together the ten most violent police officers in Australia, called them ‘The Terrible Ten’ and sent them to beat up the Crutchie Push with hoses, because Australia is clearly one giant Carry On movie.”-suitcasedreaming
“So about a thousand years ago a Pope, declared that his predecessor was a wicked priest and shall be tried for vile behavior. The problem was that his predecessor was dead and 6 feet under.”
“So, logically, the Pope exumes the body and puts it on the defense stand to stand trial. The corpse loses. Thus the punishment was the cutting off of the three fingers on the right hand used to bless people, and the mutilated corpse was put back to rest.”
“Later the good ole Pope decides that the punishment wasn’t severe enough, so he RE-EXHUMED the dead f**ker, tries him again, finds him guilty, again, and dumps the dead pope in the Tiber F**KING River.”
“Thankfully a monk retrieved the body. The Great Schism between the Catholic and Orthodox Christians happened 60 years later. If you don’t believe me, google the Cadaver Synod.”-Saramello
Truth is stranger than fiction when it comes to history and any history buff will know just how true that is.
And strange things and funny history facts are being added every single day to the ongoing compendium that is the human experience.
Teachers Divulge The Creepiest Things Students Have Brought In For Show And Tell
When I was young I LOVED show and tell. I would bring in all sorts of nonsense.
I loved to “present” to everyone. It’s still one of my favorite childhood pastimes.
Of course there would always be those few kids who ruined it for everyone, and left the teacher scrambling to cover.
Let’s talk show and tell…
Redditor Salmonerd_ wanted to hear from educators out there about the times students made show and tell weird.
They asked :
“Teachers, what’s the worst thing a kid brought for show and tell?”
Let’s hear all about it…
Diamond in the rough…
“When I was in elementary school there was a kid from a different class who brought his mom’s diamond engagement ring to show and tell.”
“I know this because I found a Diamond engagement ring in the wood chips under the swing set.”
“I turned it in and later got a $10 reward, dumb 7 year old me probably should have pawned it!!” ~ GoBuffaloes
MOOOOOO!!!
“In 5th grade, we were studying human anatomy.”
“When we got to the eyes, a kid brought in a bag full of cow’s eyes. His dad worked in a slaughterhouse. Teacher was horrified.”
“I should add that my classmate brought them in, unannounced. The teacher had no plans for dissection, was going to show us a filmstrip about eyes or something.”
“I should add that the teacher put them in the staff refrigerator for the day (this was in the Arizona heat).”
” Afterwards, when teacher returned the bag of eyes to my classmate, he took them home, and on the walk home, gave them out to any kid who wanted one.”
“I’ll leave all that to your imagination.” ~ alvinathequeena
The Dead
“Wasn’t show and tell but once during morning break while I was a student teacher, two 6 year olds came to find the class teacher in the staff room.”
“They had something to show her.”
“She came back with pictures, these boys had found half a dead and decomposed hedgehog and decided to pick it up and put it on her desk.”
“Needless to say hands were thoroughly washed and drenched in sanitiser.” ~ drwhogirl_97
“I took a skeletonized animal from my back yard in for show and tell. I don’t know what animal it originally was and I think I kind of sneaked it past my mother.”
“The teacher was a bit surprised!”
“My cousin took a dead bat in a jar to school once. It was in the house.”
“They hit it with a broom, which killed it, then they put it in the jar.” ~ whatyouwant22
Too Sharp. Too Dangerous.
“I brought 2 knives.”
“My dad is from a region in France where they make famous knives (Laguiole) and I owned two of them (one made of horn and one was bright orange).”
“It didn’t cross my mind it could be a problem, but they called my parents (who weren’t mad at me).” ~lyscity
“My dad tells a story about when he brought his dad’s bird hunting shotgun and ammo to school for show and tell.”
“It was rather uneventful.”
“My grandpa walked out to the bus with him and told the bus driver that he was taking it in for show and tell.”
“Dad got to school, put the gun in his locker, and went and got it when it was time for show and tell.”
“He put it back in his locker after the presentation, then took it home on the bus.”
“Very different times.” ~ wedapeopleeh
Lucky
“The teacher across the hall from me had a student who brought what he thought was a lucky rabbit foot to show to the class and excitedly announced he had enough for everyone in the class.”
“The rabbit foot was a tampon.” ~ Saerica22
“My brother sent me a picture the other day of a sword one of his younger boys made out of the plastic part of a tampon applicators.”
“They have 2 teenage daughters and my friend that was on the text asked if he washed them.”
“The consensus was probably not.” ~ Nate0110
“This reminds me… as a child I had an actual rabbit’s foot. My step dad at the time got it (I don’t know from where), but it wasn’t taxidermied (?) properly, basically just cut off, so there was still some blood and meat inside.”
“I carried it around in a plastic bag for at least two weeks, showing everybody very proudly, until the stench just got too much!”
“To this day I don’t know where he even got it from or how he or I thought this was a good idea.” ~ Reddit
High Alert
“My brother found a scorpion at our house and captured it to bring for show and tell.”
“The scorpion got out somehow and the teacher had everyone on high alert to look for it and capture it.”
“Several children returned to the teacher having ‘found’ the scorpion.”
“That was the day we found out our school was infested with scorpions.” ~ Youaresoogoodlooking
The Skull
“I had a student bring in ‘her grandfather’s skull.’”
“The class was horrified. It turned out that he was a doctor and it was the skull that he kept in his office as a model.” ~ NinjaGinny
Got Tide?
“In my school some kid brought in his collection of ‘laundry rocks’ which were crumpled up pieces of paper that he put in his pockets and when his mom did the laundry they would turn hard like rocks.”
“He said he did it by accident once, liked it, and started deliberately putting crumpled paper in his pockets to make more.” ~ Pro_Gamer_Queen21
Rotten on the inside…
“I taught 5th grade in a school with really rich kids and really low income kids bussed in.”
“One of the low-income kids brought a coconut for her show and tell about Trinidad, where her dad was from.”
“She cracked it open — it was completely rotten inside and smelled awful.”
“I was so worried about the kid being embarrassed, but then one of the rich kids (who was also of a pretty low intellect) looked at it with wide eyes and said “It’s like the earth: the core, the mantle and the crust!” which is something I think he had never really understood before.”
“So it actually turned out pretty well.” ~ sanmateomary
Gas
“1993, grade 3 primary school in Australia.”
“My show and tell was rotten egg gas, I had a class mate hold a test tube that contained sulfur power while I added hydrochloric acid, no protective gear used. None of the adults saw any issue with this.” ~ Unshavensmoe
Show and tell sounds like a game of survival in some of these cases.
But it’s clearly never dull.
Teachers, Which Students Surprised You the Most Later in Life? Here’s What People Said.
People can really surprise us once in a while, don’t you think?
For example, I know a guy who was a hardcore punk rock dude when we were young and we all thought he’d end up going nowhere fast.
Wanna guess where he is now?
HE WORKS FOR THE FREAKING FBI.
Yeah…
Teachers of AskReddit talked about the former students who surprised them later in life. Let’s see what they had to say.
1. Former bad boy.
“I had a student that used to get into fights and was extremely aggressive and violent towards others, on the last day of fifth grade his last words to me and his class were “f**k you!”
Many years later he came back to the school I’d been teaching at and looked for me so he could give me a big hug and apologize. In his words, “I was garbage when I was here, thank you for putting up with me and I’m sorry”.
I cried like a baby – I was so proud of him.”
2. An inspiration.
“I taught in a low income, high immigrant community for my entire career.
I loved where I taught and still have tremendous fondness and admiration for the community, as powerfully challenging as it was to teach a population with such limited resources.
I had a student in 3rd grade who was sweet, kind, and goofy, but the typical never-do-homework, mediocre-to-poor grades type at the time. When I moved up to teaching middle school and had him again in 6th grade, little had changed—I liked him as a person quite a lot, but academically and effort-wise he was a solid Meh C/D student.
Fast forward a decade or so: I had to retire from the classroom early and a bit abruptly due to a health crisis, resulting brain surgery, and the aftermath. This devastated me. At the time, I posted about how much I missed teaching and my heartbreak over it on my Facebook page.
This now adult student, who had added me as a friend but rarely to never posted anything anywhere on FB, commented the most heartwarming words about what an inspiration I’d been and how he felt I’d started him on the path that led him to a degree in chemical engineering from a major university. He was the first in his family to go to college, nonetheless earn a degree.
His kind and generous words made me weep, and his academic success left me stunned. If you had asked me back when he was in 3rd or 6th grade which student would be the one to earn a degree in engineering, I think I would have gone through 2/3 of the class before I’d have even thought of him.”
3. Way to go!
“I teach English as a second language and I had a kid who spoke Arabic who barely could master English in the beginning (to be expected of course). Well 8 years later he’s on his way to being an astrophysicist.
He came to school to find me to tell me last year and I’ve never had a prouder moment teaching. He told me I was the only one who believed in him.”
4. Large and in charge.
“There was a very skinny quiet kid who was super smart. The other kids picked on him quite a lot but he never stood up for himself.
I always thought he would work for NASA or something as he was so smart. I saw his Linkedin a few months ago and he is now a prison officer at a maximum security prison.”
5. Didn’t see that coming.
“I was teaching 3rd grade.
I had a kid that would literally shoot spitballs in class. Through a straw. Kid would bring his own straws to school and chew notebook paper to shoot. This happened every day, probably seven or eight times a day I’d catch him doing it. He would just start f**king with other kids, poking them with pencils and s**t loudly in the middle of class.
Now, I h**e sending kids to the principle because I feel it undermines my authority in the class. This kid was different though. He got sent to the office average twice a week. Just couldn’t deal with it. He goes onto highschool. I don’t hear good things about him. I don’t hear much just that he’d fallen in with a bad crowd.
It’s 2005 when I’m teaching him in 3rd grade. Flash-forward sixteen years and I pull up to a red light on my way home from work. Red Lamborgini. Who is sitting there in the driver’s seat? Of course this kid. No sunglasses, actually he had pretty nerdy/hip Jefferey Dahmer glasses on.
“Mr. Igot!” He says. And he smiled at me. Seemed really genuinely happy to see me. I didn’t even had time to compose myself, realize it was THIS kid and respond before the light turned green and he rocketed off. He had this smile on that I’ll never forget. Good for him!”
6. Wow.
“I taught Gym and had a little dude who excelled in my class but was a thug in everything else. My wifes food truck catered for a bike run where a lot of Outlaw MCs took part.
I saw the kid there and he was now the President of his own Outlaw MC… He remembered me and introduced me to his old lady and other gang members..I was super proud of him…”
7. It was worth it.
“Three of my former students went into my field and actually came back to work for me at my school for internships.
One of them was no surprise. One only a little surprise. But the third drove me nuts. He was a huge problem child in class. This was the kid that make me sympathize with Homer Simpson’s str**gling reaction to Bart. But I kept my cool of course!
And he’s now a respected professional in the field. He still credits me for his career path. I feel like all the stress he put me through was worth it!”
8. You never know.
“Never surprised by the jobs they do. Some make it, some don’t and there’s little to help you to predict.
I get some surprise sometimes when I see them but even that only lasts for a fleeting moment.
The fit, athletic kid who is now morbidly obese, the tiny, pretty quiet girl with 3 kids at 18 chain smoking at the school gate. The kid who you only remember because his name was on a class list who is now an international Ice skating champion. The fat kid who was always in trouble, coming to collect younger cousins looking dashing in his suit and tie…
You go through thousands of children. You love them and care for each of them whilst they are in your care but, the truth is, whilst you want each and every one of them to go on and live happy and healthy lives (even the naughty ones), you quickly accept that once they leave, they are no longer your responsibility. You don’t ‘track’ them or follow them – you don’t have the time because, once they are gone, another group of needy individuals arrive who require your undivided attention.
Don’t get me wrong – we love it when former pupils become successful (in happiness – not finance) and return as adults to tell us so. It’s our collective dream for all of you. But we won’t be following your lives. We don’t have the mental capacity for it.”
9. Look at him now!
“A student whose social skills were non-existent and whose academics were equally as troubling is now in college taking nuclear physics.
I swear he was easily 3 grades behind when I knew him in junior high.”
10. Crazy!
“One girl who used to be so shy. Always stay on the last bench. Was friends with only one girl. Barely had any social skills.
She went on to become the biggest superstar in Indian cinema (Bollywood).”
11. This is messed up.
“I taught pre-K, for about 3 years, almost 30 years ago.
I taught, in separate years, two boys who would go on to be m**dered, together, before even graduating high school. They were t**tured by an adult psychopath, in a flophouse drug apartment, naked, bound, begging, in front of a captive audience including some kids they’d known as long as they’d known each other. They were stuffed into the trunk of a car, driven to the gas station, marched to an area just out of sight of several businesses, doused in gasoline, set on fire, and shot ex**ution style.
The man who shot them was mentally ill to start with, but also used meth to the point of near-constant psychosis. He’d just been cleared for discharge after a 72-hour involuntary psych hold, and had only been home two days. He was still in acute, paranoid psychosis, but had been assessed/evaluated by inpatient psychiatrists as safe to discharge home.
They were the same age as my child. They knew each other from first grade on. They had a lot of closer friends in common, some of whom I’d also taught way back all those years ago. Some of whom had been unwilling witnesses to their friends’ t**ture in the hours leading up to the m**ders.
One of them committed s**cide a week later.
Anyway, I’m now a practitioner in ER and ICU, and have been for 20 years. Spent several years at a Level One Trauma and Burn hospital. Got really familiar with the terrible things people do to themselves and others. None of it hit me like these d**ths had. I hadn’t been desensitized yet, and I’d taught these kids how to tie their shoes and write their names, they’d been in classes, on field trips and sports teams, to birthday parties with my son for so many years.
The way their lives ended (or were irrevocably changed) was as shocking as it was gruesome.”
12. She’ll do big things.
“I started in elementary school. One of my first students I had when she was in 3rd grade.
Her father was ab**ive when she was younger and mom left him and was raising her on her own, but her mom was also heavily involved in gangs. She was very behind compared to the rest of the kids, but she was always very helpful to the other children, me, and the staff. I had a soft spot for her and she ended up being one of my favorites. Teachers will often say they don’t have favorites, but that’s a lie.
A couple years later I was moved to 5th grade and I had her again, she was struggling a lot by this time, but still, I never gave up on her, and she never gave up either. Later, when she was in 8th grade, I was moved to middle school, and once again, I had her again. By this time her mom’s lifestyle had had an influence. She always wore red, threw up gang signs, and used to get into a lot of fights at school.
One thing that was different was she had caught up academically with the rest of her peers, and actually even surpassed many of them. She used to come by after school and started seeing me as a mentor, and we had a connection, as I too was heavily involved with gangs in my teens and early 20s. When she moved on to high school, she kept in touch, her high school was across the street and she used to come by after school all the time to check in.
She eventually got involved in student body, became the senior class president, and was on the honor roll all 4 years. She got accepted into all 8 colleges she applied for. She is currently on a full ride scholarship at Stanford University and plans to continue with graduate school. She is very involved with the community too.
She is currently 20 and a waitress but is planning on doing big things, and I know she will. I’m so proud of her.”
Now we want to hear from more teachers!
In the comments, tell us about the former students that really surprised you later in life.
Thanks in advance!
The post Teachers, Which Students Surprised You the Most Later in Life? Here’s What People Said. appeared first on UberFacts.
Teachers, Which Students Surprised You the Most Later in Life? Here’s What People Said.
People can really surprise us once in a while, don’t you think?
For example, I know a guy who was a hardcore punk rock dude when we were young and we all thought he’d end up going nowhere fast.
Wanna guess where he is now?
HE WORKS FOR THE FREAKING FBI.
Yeah…
Teachers of AskReddit talked about the former students who surprised them later in life. Let’s see what they had to say.
1. Former bad boy.
“I had a student that used to get into fights and was extremely aggressive and violent towards others, on the last day of fifth grade his last words to me and his class were “f**k you!”
Many years later he came back to the school I’d been teaching at and looked for me so he could give me a big hug and apologize. In his words, “I was garbage when I was here, thank you for putting up with me and I’m sorry”.
I cried like a baby – I was so proud of him.”
2. An inspiration.
“I taught in a low income, high immigrant community for my entire career.
I loved where I taught and still have tremendous fondness and admiration for the community, as powerfully challenging as it was to teach a population with such limited resources.
I had a student in 3rd grade who was sweet, kind, and goofy, but the typical never-do-homework, mediocre-to-poor grades type at the time. When I moved up to teaching middle school and had him again in 6th grade, little had changed—I liked him as a person quite a lot, but academically and effort-wise he was a solid Meh C/D student.
Fast forward a decade or so: I had to retire from the classroom early and a bit abruptly due to a health crisis, resulting brain surgery, and the aftermath. This devastated me. At the time, I posted about how much I missed teaching and my heartbreak over it on my Facebook page.
This now adult student, who had added me as a friend but rarely to never posted anything anywhere on FB, commented the most heartwarming words about what an inspiration I’d been and how he felt I’d started him on the path that led him to a degree in chemical engineering from a major university. He was the first in his family to go to college, nonetheless earn a degree.
His kind and generous words made me weep, and his academic success left me stunned. If you had asked me back when he was in 3rd or 6th grade which student would be the one to earn a degree in engineering, I think I would have gone through 2/3 of the class before I’d have even thought of him.”
3. Way to go!
“I teach English as a second language and I had a kid who spoke Arabic who barely could master English in the beginning (to be expected of course). Well 8 years later he’s on his way to being an astrophysicist.
He came to school to find me to tell me last year and I’ve never had a prouder moment teaching. He told me I was the only one who believed in him.”
4. Large and in charge.
“There was a very skinny quiet kid who was super smart. The other kids picked on him quite a lot but he never stood up for himself.
I always thought he would work for NASA or something as he was so smart. I saw his Linkedin a few months ago and he is now a prison officer at a maximum security prison.”
5. Didn’t see that coming.
“I was teaching 3rd grade.
I had a kid that would literally shoot spitballs in class. Through a straw. Kid would bring his own straws to school and chew notebook paper to shoot. This happened every day, probably seven or eight times a day I’d catch him doing it. He would just start f**king with other kids, poking them with pencils and s**t loudly in the middle of class.
Now, I h**e sending kids to the principle because I feel it undermines my authority in the class. This kid was different though. He got sent to the office average twice a week. Just couldn’t deal with it. He goes onto highschool. I don’t hear good things about him. I don’t hear much just that he’d fallen in with a bad crowd.
It’s 2005 when I’m teaching him in 3rd grade. Flash-forward sixteen years and I pull up to a red light on my way home from work. Red Lamborgini. Who is sitting there in the driver’s seat? Of course this kid. No sunglasses, actually he had pretty nerdy/hip Jefferey Dahmer glasses on.
“Mr. Igot!” He says. And he smiled at me. Seemed really genuinely happy to see me. I didn’t even had time to compose myself, realize it was THIS kid and respond before the light turned green and he rocketed off. He had this smile on that I’ll never forget. Good for him!”
6. Wow.
“I taught Gym and had a little dude who excelled in my class but was a thug in everything else. My wifes food truck catered for a bike run where a lot of Outlaw MCs took part.
I saw the kid there and he was now the President of his own Outlaw MC… He remembered me and introduced me to his old lady and other gang members..I was super proud of him…”
7. It was worth it.
“Three of my former students went into my field and actually came back to work for me at my school for internships.
One of them was no surprise. One only a little surprise. But the third drove me nuts. He was a huge problem child in class. This was the kid that make me sympathize with Homer Simpson’s str**gling reaction to Bart. But I kept my cool of course!
And he’s now a respected professional in the field. He still credits me for his career path. I feel like all the stress he put me through was worth it!”
8. You never know.
“Never surprised by the jobs they do. Some make it, some don’t and there’s little to help you to predict.
I get some surprise sometimes when I see them but even that only lasts for a fleeting moment.
The fit, athletic kid who is now morbidly obese, the tiny, pretty quiet girl with 3 kids at 18 chain smoking at the school gate. The kid who you only remember because his name was on a class list who is now an international Ice skating champion. The fat kid who was always in trouble, coming to collect younger cousins looking dashing in his suit and tie…
You go through thousands of children. You love them and care for each of them whilst they are in your care but, the truth is, whilst you want each and every one of them to go on and live happy and healthy lives (even the naughty ones), you quickly accept that once they leave, they are no longer your responsibility. You don’t ‘track’ them or follow them – you don’t have the time because, once they are gone, another group of needy individuals arrive who require your undivided attention.
Don’t get me wrong – we love it when former pupils become successful (in happiness – not finance) and return as adults to tell us so. It’s our collective dream for all of you. But we won’t be following your lives. We don’t have the mental capacity for it.”
9. Look at him now!
“A student whose social skills were non-existent and whose academics were equally as troubling is now in college taking nuclear physics.
I swear he was easily 3 grades behind when I knew him in junior high.”
10. Crazy!
“One girl who used to be so shy. Always stay on the last bench. Was friends with only one girl. Barely had any social skills.
She went on to become the biggest superstar in Indian cinema (Bollywood).”
11. This is messed up.
“I taught pre-K, for about 3 years, almost 30 years ago.
I taught, in separate years, two boys who would go on to be m**dered, together, before even graduating high school. They were t**tured by an adult psychopath, in a flophouse drug apartment, naked, bound, begging, in front of a captive audience including some kids they’d known as long as they’d known each other. They were stuffed into the trunk of a car, driven to the gas station, marched to an area just out of sight of several businesses, doused in gasoline, set on fire, and shot ex**ution style.
The man who shot them was mentally ill to start with, but also used meth to the point of near-constant psychosis. He’d just been cleared for discharge after a 72-hour involuntary psych hold, and had only been home two days. He was still in acute, paranoid psychosis, but had been assessed/evaluated by inpatient psychiatrists as safe to discharge home.
They were the same age as my child. They knew each other from first grade on. They had a lot of closer friends in common, some of whom I’d also taught way back all those years ago. Some of whom had been unwilling witnesses to their friends’ t**ture in the hours leading up to the m**ders.
One of them committed s**cide a week later.
Anyway, I’m now a practitioner in ER and ICU, and have been for 20 years. Spent several years at a Level One Trauma and Burn hospital. Got really familiar with the terrible things people do to themselves and others. None of it hit me like these d**ths had. I hadn’t been desensitized yet, and I’d taught these kids how to tie their shoes and write their names, they’d been in classes, on field trips and sports teams, to birthday parties with my son for so many years.
The way their lives ended (or were irrevocably changed) was as shocking as it was gruesome.”
12. She’ll do big things.
“I started in elementary school. One of my first students I had when she was in 3rd grade.
Her father was ab**ive when she was younger and mom left him and was raising her on her own, but her mom was also heavily involved in gangs. She was very behind compared to the rest of the kids, but she was always very helpful to the other children, me, and the staff. I had a soft spot for her and she ended up being one of my favorites. Teachers will often say they don’t have favorites, but that’s a lie.
A couple years later I was moved to 5th grade and I had her again, she was struggling a lot by this time, but still, I never gave up on her, and she never gave up either. Later, when she was in 8th grade, I was moved to middle school, and once again, I had her again. By this time her mom’s lifestyle had had an influence. She always wore red, threw up gang signs, and used to get into a lot of fights at school.
One thing that was different was she had caught up academically with the rest of her peers, and actually even surpassed many of them. She used to come by after school and started seeing me as a mentor, and we had a connection, as I too was heavily involved with gangs in my teens and early 20s. When she moved on to high school, she kept in touch, her high school was across the street and she used to come by after school all the time to check in.
She eventually got involved in student body, became the senior class president, and was on the honor roll all 4 years. She got accepted into all 8 colleges she applied for. She is currently on a full ride scholarship at Stanford University and plans to continue with graduate school. She is very involved with the community too.
She is currently 20 and a waitress but is planning on doing big things, and I know she will. I’m so proud of her.”
Now we want to hear from more teachers!
In the comments, tell us about the former students that really surprised you later in life.
Thanks in advance!
The post Teachers, Which Students Surprised You the Most Later in Life? Here’s What People Said. appeared first on UberFacts.
Teachers Share Which Former Students Surprised Them the Most Later in Life
You never really know where people are headed in life…
Which, when I think about it, is probably part of the fun for teachers because it’s all kind of a crapshoot.
Teachers, which former students surprised you the most later in life?
Here’s how people responded on AskReddit.
1. The big time!
“I ran a program for kids grades 4-7 for a local newspaper. I would reach them the fundamentals of journalism, and they would write stories for a weekly kids page.
One of my students got a degree in journalism and was a television broadcaster for a little while. Another went into public relations and works for a university, last I heard. Another runs a really cool vlog and has been getting some notice as an influencer.
And another got a degree in journalism, earned an Emmy just a few years out of college, and now hosts a national television show and interviews famous people on the red carpet.”
2. Drove you crazy.
“I had a class of 8th graders one year that I SWORE we’d someday see one of their pictures on the front page of the paper because they were arrested for something (small town). That class drove me crazy.
The one that drove me the craziest was hyper, wouldn’t do his work, copied on tests so openly that I had to pass out 3 different tests every time…the list was endless. He ended up on the front page of our paper, though.
He was a top adviser in the Bush administration!”
3. Big turnaround.
“I retired from teaching after 36 years of working with special education students of varying exceptionalities. There was one female student that I worked with for several years that displayed a keen aptitude in math but also initially had a phobia for math.
Interesting. I would always approach her with math by using the words, “Okay, we’re going to play with some math.” The shift in her approach to math along with the elimination of anxiety associated with the subject was truly amazing to witness.
Within a half a year I mainstreamed her into a regular education math class and she was out performing other students. She went onto the University of WA and was awarded scholarships for her work in math.”
4. On to better things.
“Product Design teacher here.
Can’t tell you how immensely proud I am of an ex student who got out of the small time town, emigrated to Denmark, came out and has become a designer for Lego.”
5. Elite athletes.
“Two former students ended up playing in the NFL.
I reached out to both and let them know I was proud of them for their dedication and following through on their dreams. Both took time to respond and thank me for making a difference in their lives.
I have so many former students who keep in touch, and I love getting to see how they are doing!”
6. Cool!
“One of my kids would only play with Legos and h**ed school because he figured things out far more quickly than anyone else.
He was one of the founders of MakerBot.”
7. From a veteran teacher.
“I teach, and have always taught, in a Title I school. Lots of bad situations, very poor families, lots of things we can not fix or even help.
One of my third-grade boys, many, many years ago, was ANGRY. I mean, not the “pick fights” kind, but the “I h**e everyone, you all suck, there’s no point” kind of angry and far too weary of the world for a 9-year old. He was BRILLIANT. Such a smart kid, and he would work for me, but his fourth and fifth grade teachers could get him to do almost nothing, he did just enough to pass.
They thought I was crazy when I talked about how smart he was. On the standardized test for fifth grade, he basically maxed out the math portion, and won some kind of national award. I wept. Ugly cried. I was so proud for him! He had a rough time in middle school, but by high school, he was doing a bit better. Still angry, still unmotivated, but managing, I guess.
Three years ago, I was in my classroom in the afternoon, and got a call from the office. I had a visitor. I went down, and there he was. With his wife, and the fattest, sweetest baby on the planet. He is in the army, and y’all, he was SO HAPPY, and had a job he loved, and a woman he loved, and a baby. He is still best friends with another boy that was in our class that year. He just radiated happiness and well-being. My heart!
Things could have turned out so much differently for him. Given his circumstances, they should have. I am so thankful he beat the odds.”
8. A real shock.
“The former student of mine who d**d by s**cide this year.
It was a complete shock to all of us who’d taught her in elementary school. She had really been one of those kids with a constant ear-to-ear smile – not just full of joy, but radiating joy; not only was she well-liked by all, but she really seemed to genuinely like everybody.
When my students leave at the end of each year, they go off to middle school, so every year’s end (though always desperately needed) has that bittersweet, vaguely funereal bite to it. This’ll sound strange, but to me it feels sort of like when a parent’s first child gets married – there’s happiness and excitement aplenty, but there’s also a sense of something ending that naturally brings back a flood of childhood memories, and with them usually some tears.
All of that is to say that I was already familiar with the devastation memory can precipitate when I heard the news. But death really does hit different.
The best I can do to describe it is this: there’s no hierarchy in the memories that come after a person d**s. None of them are insignificant. The first thing I remembered when I heard was that her line number was 11 (that is, that when our class lined up, her spot was 11th from the front – in the days before digital assessment or camera-scanning, there was a real time-saving advantage to having students always hand in assignments in alphabetical order as they walked out the door).
Over the next couple of weeks, other such memories were constantly percolating, to the point where at one point one of my current students asked me why I kept randomly pausing in the middle of my sentences.
I wasn’t collected enough at the time to tell them the truth, so I just brushed it off, but if I could have another go at it, I think this is what I’d say:
You have no idea how much we remember of you. You have no idea how much of yourself you give to a classroom, because you would never think of things like the way you write your name, the way you sit, the way you laugh, the way you smile, the sound of your voice, your accent, the way(s) you wear your hair (or maybe the fact that I had to ask you to take your hood off three times a day).
The way you keep using the same pencil until it’s only about 2 micrometers long, the way your backpack looks like it’s eating you when you carry it, the way you find cool leaves at recess and show them to me, the way you tell me every single day about what your pet bird did the night before, the way you said “Yes!” with genuine excitement when you saw the newest Aru Shah book on your desk…simply put, the way you are – as gifts.
But they are, and I can’t even begin to describe how grateful I am to receive them.”
9. Not a happy ending.
“I was his sixth grade English teacher. He joined the class a bit late but he was a sweet kid, and eager to please. Along with a cousin, he was now being raised by his grandparents since the state had recently deemed his mother unfit.
The boy craaaaved positive attention, and at school, he found it. He worked hard, was funny as hell, and he was a freaky good athlete. But academically, he struggled. He was very open about his life and talked openly about how few resources he had at home or about times he endured with his mom. I think the other kids felt bad for him, because they’d ask if they could stay after to help him with his assignments. They’d volunteer. He was a charmer.
I was also a coach then, so I’d see him often. He started confiding in me, coming to me for advice, etc. As he was being recruited, I talked him up, “marketed him” , wrote a ton of letters on his behalf, and helped him and his grandparents complete forms, and forms and forms . His grades were a problem, so it happened later than anyone expected, but he accepted a scholarship to a college out of state.
I hadn’t seen him over the summer, but a few days before he left for college, we had lunch together. He arrived disheveled and barefooted. He didn’t eat, and frankly, he “talked crazy.” I was concerned, but wished him luck and he left for college. He was asked to leave the school less than three months later.
From what I’ve learned since, being away was less than ideal. He was a homeboy and being away scared him. He grew anxious, befuddled…couldn’t sleep. Worse, he stopped taking the antipsychotic meds he’d been on since early his senior yr of h.s. Back home, his grandparents insisted on him taking his medication, and he insisted that he wouldn’t.
He was huge and strong and these altercations grew violent and frequent before long Police would come and arrest him, but that was just a stop gap. He’d return home from a night or two in jail and nothing would change. Jail wasn’t a deterrent, because he had become schizophrenic and jail couldn’t do a thing for him or for his family.
I didn’t know a thing about his mental health issues, or that he was even home. So yes, I was surprised by that boy of promise who grew into a man, who through no fault of his own, deemed it necessary to spend several hours beating his grandparents and cousin to d**th using a pool cue and a set of forty pound dumbbells.”
10. Former gang member.
“My wife is a secondary school teacher. The school she teaches at is rough. One of the students she remembers was a gang member and was acting out in the classroom in front of his friends.
He couldn’t go home after school for family reasons so he would come to my wife after school and ask for maths tuition / time on the computer. He came daily and with the support of my wife he founded his passion and it was to work on cars.
Fast forward 5 years, he is now a mechanic (apprentice learner) for Mercedes AMG in Dubai.”
11. Great work!
“Am a college professor in India, and well, having fair skin is a pretty big issue here, with fairness equated with beauty and class. One of our first year female students was caught ingesting pills and passing out in class.
Some of the disciplinary committee was for suspension of the student, but me and my colleagues from our Department asked that she be let off with a warning, and we would personally see to her, since she always seemed like a pretty good sort to us. We had a talk with her, and she said that coming from the village to a city college, she felt ashamed of her dark skin and round figure, and she had taken those pills because some friends of hers told her that they were slimming pills and fairness pills.
We told her that she was beautiful as is, that those pills actually did her more harm than good (they were laxatives, diuretics and stomach meds). We gave her some extra attention, and besides, her classmates were also pretty nice kids, and she eventually thrived, getting into fitness and dancing, as well as academics. Fast forward a few years, she graduated with honours both from college and university, and was also the Varsity Beauty queen.
She is also the first from her village to receive a NET (National Eligibility Test for lectureship eligibility), as well as the first to be admitted to a PhD programme.”
12. Going places!
“My mom had a student in 3rd grade who was a bit of a troublemaker. She would have pretend trials sometimes in her classroom and made this kid a judge once.
Many years later he nominated her for a big teaching award just because she gave him that opportunity in the classroom, he said it made him want to grow up to be a judge.
Last I heard he was elected as a district attorney.”
Okay teachers, now we want to hear your stories!
In the comments, tell us about your former students who really surprised you later in life.
Don’t hold back now!
The post Teachers Share Which Former Students Surprised Them the Most Later in Life appeared first on UberFacts.
People Talk About When They Automatically Gained Respect for Their Teachers
For some reason, I really can’t recall many teachers that really made an impression on me during my school days.
That might be my fault…maybe I didn’t take school as seriously as I should have.
But I know a lot of people out there had teachers that they loved and respected.
What did a teacher do that made you immediately respect them?
Here’s what people on AskReddit had to say about this.
1. Doing it the right way.
“Treated kids with autism + aspergers like actual human beings.
In my school I was in a special needs unit for kids with aspergers and autism called the CDU (communication disorder unit). The kids in there ranged from having mild aspergers to full on severe autism, and as such most teachers treated everyone from there like they had severe mental health problems just because they were labelled as having autism or aspergers even if it was very mild.
But there was one support teacher in the CDU who was genuinely just a nice dude, whether he was talking to kids who had severe autism or just some mild social anxiety he wouldn’t talk extra slowly or call you “bud” or “pal” at the end of a sentence, he would talk to everyone like they were real human beings.
It might seem like a small thing but when that’s how pretty much all teachers talked to you and treated you in every class it was very refreshing to talk to someone who would talk to you based on who you were as a person rather than treating someone differently for being labelled as autistic.”
2. You gotta figure it out.
“Math class, we’re looking at the programming function of a graphing calculator.
I tell him that finding the surface area of a regular polygon is incredibly tedious.
So, we spend the next fifteen minutes writing out a program on the calculator to do the math for me.
The only math teacher I knew that genuinely understood that you cannot write a program to solve a math problem if you don’t know how to solve it yourself.”
3. Like a real person.
“It was small but he told us he was going to be in a bad mood that day because someone stole his bike.
Just treating us like people was something that was rare in that school.”
4. That’s nice.
“A math teacher went to the hospital several times to visit a student who had been seriously injured in an accident.
The teacher offered companionship, free tutoring, and genuine encouragement.”
5. A great guy.
“Told us a joke about his name (before we could) and allowed us to eat during his classes “because kids your age can’t help being hungry all the time”, as long as we did it quietly.
Great guy. His whole attitude made all of us actually pay attention and do our best.”
6. Just don’t make a mess.
“As long as we didn’t make a mess, he let us eat in class and we were all so appreciative. I didn’t realize the reason, but it’s true, at that age you are just hungry all the time and we had cafeteria lunches that were pretty much just junk food that went right through you.
It’s really a small thing, but it raised him in our estimation quite a bit. It demonstrated that he understood his audience and wanted what was best for us. That brings respect.
He was also an excellent storyteller and had legendary tales of the characters he had grown up with in his working-class neighborhood.
These stories were hilarious and such a welcome break from the tedium of high school, he would even do it by request from time to time. Once, I wrote him a personal note asking him to tell one of such stories and he began the next class recounting it.
He could not have pulled this off, however, if he did not come across as an excellent teacher who had a sophisticated grasp of his topic. Otherwise, I think we would have just seen him as a fun slacker we could take advantage of.”
7. A good lesson.
“Math teacher : “I don’t care if you have good grades or bad grades, if you work hard, I will work harder to make you pass”.
He worked hard for me; I passed.”
8. Be yourself.
“He would let us be who we were, listen to our ipod in class, and encouraged us to think outside “the class”.
I gained respect for him when he saw some kids going to skip and he called them into his class.
Told them “if you’re gonna skip class than come to my class and do whatever you want in the back. Rather have you inside the school than outside”
Everyone loved that teacher while the other teachers couldn’t stand him. He had everyone’s respect.”
9. A safe space.
“I had a business studies teacher who used to be a mental health professional.
So she knew the signs when my depression was particularly bad (for example submitting work at 3am) and would always make sure I had eaten and offered me coffee and generally made her classroom a safe space for anyone.
If you’re reading this you’re amazing!!”
10. No excuses.
“English teacher in high school asked where my homework was.
Responded “I forgot to do it” and he said to the rest of the class “Why can’t you guys be like him?
He doesn’t come up with some excuse he just tells me he didn’t do it.””
11. Zany, but good.
“Had an extremely zany teacher who taught Psychology, and had the last name Ward.
Psycho personality (in the best way possible) to fit her name and job. Never met someone who fit their name and job description so well. (Worse, she taught driver’s ed too, on the side.)
She was the type whose zany personality was a big plus; most of her kids loved her, but if you screwed around in her class, she’d eject you from it, with extreme prejudice.
She still teaches, and she teaches very well.
As an aside, there was also this middle-aged woman who was basically a hall monitor and filled in any other position she could think of, as well as handing out detentions or suspensions if she caught you screwing around instead of being where you were supposed to be. Small lady, absolutely no-nonsense and tough as nails. She wouldn’t take sh*t from you, but also incredibly fair overall.
I realized she knew when to bend. My older two siblings hated her because she always caught them skipping class, smoking, or worse. I got along with her very well and never caused her any trouble.
I asked her once about my little brother, and she said he was a good kid and while she’d had to give him detention a few times, she was also proud of him because when he got into a fight, he did it for the right reasons.
My little bro’s a very tall, hulking guy and never hesitated to defend someone from a bully. It got him a few detentions for fighting but apparently she made it clear she was proud of him for standing up for others nonetheless.
I repeated this later to my brother, and he said she was a very good woman, very fair, and that he’d liked her for that fairness, and her sheer guts.”
12. Finish the story!
“Instead of shouting at my loud class for not shutting up before the lesson began, my history teacher decided to quietly tell the story of a pink elephant that wanted to be an astronaut.
After a few seconds, people started to shut up and listen about the pink elephant. When everyone was quiet and listening, he stopped mid-story.
As much as it made me respect him.. WHY DIDN’T YOU FINISH THE STORY FFS! THAT CLIFFHANGER!”
Now we want to hear from you.
In the comments, tell us about some teachers that gained your respect when you were in school.
Thanks in advance!
The post People Talk About When They Automatically Gained Respect for Their Teachers appeared first on UberFacts.