At the time it may have felt like the most important thing in the world, but most adults probably look back at their school days with some degree of humor. Teachers going on power-trips on the most ridiculous things, dramatic stakes that were not really that important, rules, norms and behaviors that, in retrospect, are just funny.
Someone asked “What is the dumbest thing you got in trouble for at school?” and people shared their most hilarious stories. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.
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Not me but one of my best friends. Was drinking a Snapple at lunch and it slipped out of his hand and shattered. 100% an accident.
But the new vice principal lost her s**t and went off on him accusing him of throwing it as a weapon. He got suspended and his parents had to pull him out of school. He was shocked and crying (dude was NOT a trouble maker, one of the smartest kids in our class at that).
Until about two days later the vice principal checked the security tapes that obviously clearly showed him dropping it by accident. Lots of apologies but he was obviously more than upset. At graduation I heard him tell her to go f**k herself when she was shaking hands and handing out diplomas. Only time I heard him seriously swear. .
I mooed when my grade 8 teacher called us cattle as we left the gym. Two detentions.
I drank water from the fountain next to the classroom door. When the bell rang, I turned to walk in and my 7th grade English teacher slammed the door in my face. I stood around hella confused and knocked and I could hear her taking attendance. Mind you, I had already put my stuff inside. After she took attendance she let me in and told me she marked me tardy for not being inside when the bell rang. Asked her how I was late when she'd seen me walk by her desk and put stuff down and then turn to go to the water fountain, and instead of answering me she just wrote me up for ISS for "being rude." It was the first time I'd even been punished in school for anything.
To top it off, when I told my mother what happened amd being sent to in school suspension, she made me get in the car and drove back to the school. Turns out because of my sickle cell anemia and the need to stay extra hydrated, I'd had a standing note in my file from my pediatric specialist noting that I was to always have the ability to get water when I needed it. My mother verbally dressed down the Principal, VP, and that teacher for what seemed like forever.
Blowing my nose. I had a horrible cold so I kept needing tissues and the teacher yelled at me and gave me a detention. So next day I stuffed my bra FULL and aggressively dug in there anytime I needed one.
Kid in my high school got suspended for drinking…with his parents…on vacation…in a country where he was doing it legally…again, WITH his parents. Came back from vacation with a picture of him drinking a beer with his folks at dinner. Teacher saw it, reported him. Boom, 5 day suspension. Explanation: “the rules of the school supersede those of the outside world.”.
Public nudity. I was in a locked bathroom stall and I was peeing.
Did the person that 'caught' them get reported to child protecting for looking? I'm tempted to stop reading this list because all my comments will be 'that's ridiculous'...
For drinking water in class without asking the teacher.
No teacher should have right / authority to deny children basic human needs like drinking or going to the toilet. "It disrupts the class!!!!" my a$$. If your class can be disrupted by a student quietly doing their thing, then your class must be excruciating.
Had a teacher who I really didn't get on with in secondary school, and I swear it got personal
I got detention for the following crimes:
*being last in the queue to collect a textbook
*taking my jumper off
*sitting in an alleged sarcastic manner
*getting full marks for homework (allegedly should have been near impossible to do)
*asking for homework not to be given for the next day as I was working that night.
Reminiscent of "Not the Nine O'clock New"'s PC Savage sketch - "Being politically motivated north of Watford", "Walking on the cracks in the pavement", "being in possession of an offensive wife" etc etc
For responding “no” in elementary school when the teacher asked “are we all ready to move on the next step?”.
I threw a snowball...during a snowball fight...that the teachers started. It was my senior year of HS and I had recently committed to play baseball in college. The teacher who tried to give me detention said I should be smart enough to know not to partake in the fight because I threw too hard and someone would get hurt. (A) I had just lobbed the snowball up in the air and (B) WTF? He was quickly overruled by several other teachers.
One of The Incidents™ at our elementary school was when a couple of guys from my class were throwing icy snowballs, one of which hit and injured a young (like 2nd grade) girl. Their punishment was to rewrite the school rules, by hand, several times. They were done somewhere at the end of the school year.
Whispering “stop it” to a kid who kept throwing paper balls at me. I guess the sub thought I was a troublemaker because I was in the back of the room? I got sent to another class for the rest of the period to set an example.
Jokes on him, I was the “smart kid” and sending a big nerd out of the room doesn’t really send a useful message to the class.
I went to catholic elementary school. The nuns were notorious for punishing me because I told the bully to stop doing his c**p. He never got punished once. The lack of compassion and understanding in religious schools is sickening.
Literally got a 2hr after school detention for saying “what” bc I didn’t hear the teacher.
But you should have said 'pardon' like...not even most retired people would these days...
Reading my own copy of Romeo and Juliet in the library while we were studying it instead of a school library copy.
Betting the school library edition had the naughty bits of R&J edited out.
I kid you not, I got in trouble for LITERALLY HAVING A SEIZURE
They banned me from all football games because I “traumatized the students” by having a grand mal. Also nobody was around ?? It was after the game when almost everyone left, I stayed behind to meet up w a friend.
But the VP walked by during my seizure and I s**t you not she tried to yell at me right then and there (I’ve been told) but the paramedics told her to leave.
Anyway. I was banned from all future games, not allowed to participate in any extracurricular for the rest of the year, and for three days detention.
That VP and I go wayyyy back she hates me and it’s mutual 💀.
I was in the hospital for five days. When I came back, I was unable to keep up with all the work I missed and my high school expelled me.
I got in trouble for calling my dad after school to organize a pickup. We were not supposed to use our phones on site, no exceptions. My dad was pretty pissed that he had to park and come to the principal’s office.
I say it should be fine after final bell, since you need to call your parents/partner/whatever
We were practicing for our year six graduation and the teacher asked if everyone understood where they were meant to stand. I said no, because, well, I didn't understand. I got lunch time detention for being "purposely insubordinate".
OOooohhh i will take the cake with this one.
So i got in trouble, and got a weeks worth detention because, and here it comes....
Because i didn't talk back to a teacher while another student was. They where going at eachothers throats while i sat there quietly trying to not garther any attention. Afterwards he called me a sneaky bastard (best translation i could think off). And the other guy didn't get in any trouble.
Now i can hear you asking what did i do for him to mad at me? Because i didn't speak up. That's why i got a weeks worth of detention...
Playing Magic the Gathering at the lunch table. The teachers thought it was “gambling”.
Silly. Everyone knows it's Witchcraft and used to summon the Dark Lord. /s
My kindergarten teacher sent me for a timeout (that reason was legitimate) and placed me in the art supply closet for it. Got in more trouble for playing with the art supplies but my defense is your honor what was she expecting?
I dropped out due to ableism and mistreatment by staff. I was gossiped about by the assistant principal when she thought I was gone, my English teacher was verbally abusive, and the school psychologist refused to evaluate me for autism because a non-mental health professional, some random staff member, said I made eye contact. Then, my parents were blamed for not knowing about resources we were never informed about and we’d been seeking help for…Oh, I don’t know, A DECADE. I had mental breakdowns all the time at school and have been invalidated for my severe anxiety since I was around 8. Rather than helping me, I was constantly scolded even though I did nothing that should get me in trouble. I was made to feel wrong for my mere existence for the majority of my days in school and rather than helping with the 504 plan or IEP, they basically labeled me an enigma and forced me to fend for myself. Since dropping out, my dreams have come true. I’m a professional musician now and I’m a lot happier too.
Ohh boy; I was one of those stereotypical ‘high-functioning girl who masks too well’. If I had been forced to rely on my teachers, both primary and secondary, for an ASD diagnosis, I wouldn’t have one! The strange thing is my secondary school even said they had put in a referral for an ASD assessment in (probably) my third year after some behavioural troubles, but it never happened (I honestly doubt if they ever actually made one). I only got diagnosed a few years later because the lockdown caused my mental health to plummet and circumstances revealing, ‘hey, so you DO actually have that ASD!’.
The clothes I wore didn't meet their standards. I went to a school where at least 80% were rich kids, and my parents broke their budget to pay for our tuition, so we didn't have the money to buy the right clothes.
I had my older sisters' cast offs, and I did manage to sew some clothes for myself, even though I just figured it out on my own, so I wasn't very good at it. They couldn't even afford to buy me the material or patterns to sew more clothes. It was really embarrassing!
Some schools near me use a very simple uniform code and I love it. Khaki pants and a polo shirt (blue or white) can be found a million places. They get the benefits of a dress code without the huge expense
Out of nowhere in 11th grade, I got pulled out of class by the principal and was told that “they knew I hacked the school’s firewall.” They said some kind of proxy had been run off of my student login and was accessing…..
Facebook. I was being threatened with expulsion because someone had bypassed the firewall to go on Facebook.
Long story short, I ended up asking the librarian for help, and she was able to see that all of the logins came from a classroom that I had never been in.
Some people in the programming class (there was only one) randomly started getting into other peoples’ student logins and loading something from a flash drive to bypass the firewall, and yep, go on Facebook.
She stood up for me to the principal, and I was off the hook. I never heard if the people who’d actually done it were caught.
Years later, that principal saw me at the grocery store and tried to come up and be buddy buddy with me. I told him to f**k off and walked away. Legit the only time I’ve ever been mean to a school employee, but that was beyond ridiculous. Certain grudges are worth holding.
When I was in year 12 there was one guy who had managed to bypass the firewall to use sites like facebook on the school computers and his laptop. I think he charged people to do the same on their devices. I didn't have a laptop or facebook at the time, or any real need to use any blacklisted sites so I'm not 100% on the details.
Drawing a hamster smoking a cigarette.
I was always in trouble because my pants were "too tight."
Look, I had a 25 inch waist and a big a*s - the only way those f*****s were staying up was if they werw tight across my a*s.
When my daughter was in 1st or 2nd grade, I got a call from the school asking me to bring another pair of pants for her. As I had just folded laundry, I grabbed a pair of sweats. Then,when she came home, she had a note for me from her teacher saying that she was breaking the dress code. Because she had on leggings. She was very thin with very long legs. The only pants that fit her were leggings. I paired them with tunic tops, which came down past her butt. Told the teacher this. The next day, another call (I wasn't home to bring her anything) another note. Responded with the same answers. Third day (again, not home), the note threatened suspension if it happened again. I raised hell with the school in the morning. You buy her clothes, you can decide what she wears! Turns out the no leggings rule was intended for HS students. I demanded an apology to both myself and my kid.
Filling up my water bottle at a water fountain. It was in between classes when every student was walking from one class to the next. If i remember correct i was given detention or possibly even suspension.
Yawning.
To be fair, I sound like a Whoose (whale/moose), and this was in study hall. I get yawn streaks that can last 10+ yawns in a row. I can’t really stop it, and the teacher wouldn’t let anyone leave the room for the period.
Reading the word yawn, hearing someone yawn, someone says yawn, or just thinking about yawning makes me yawn. I can’t escape it.
If a serial killer was chasing me and got tired, I’d be dead in minutes because they’d find me wherever I was hiding.
People look at me like I’m crazy; this cryptid howl out of a tiny girl, louder than you’d think capable from such a small lung capacity.
I wish I was joking. I can’t even count how many times someone’s gotten mad, told me to shut up, all because of several very loud bellowing yawns in quick succession.
I’ve been yawning even as I type this. It’s hard to see the keyboard when all you can do is yawn.
I can’t even use voice to text, it would come out as gfidnrjtjddnfndirejgdbej.
Btw, this is all true and even my kids yell at me to shut up 😅.
Here!! I found this one off google, idk if it meets your expectations tho lol :) whoose-66d...ab6f2f.jpg
Actual, respectful question. Can whooses (I love that!) seriously not control the volume of their yawns? I always thought they were just jerks who couldn't be bothered.
I got in trouble for yawning once, and I sound nothing like a whoose. I was new to the school and really shy, yet the teacher thought I was pretending to yawn because it happened when we were waiting for another student to answer a question. It pissed me off, but of course I wouldn't speak up to her about how unfair it was. I just hated pretty much every moment I was in class for the whole year. I was only 8 and already not handling the move well.
I haven't stopped yawning reading your post. Didn't your classmates yawn too?
Ok, the yawning thing happens to me. I also have those weird burping sounds. It sucks. I'm sorry.
Telling a teacher he was giving me a headache because he was just yelling while teaching.
Teacher here. If the class is being loud, or there is a lot of noise in the vicinity, or I'm just trying to get the class pumped up, I can be loud. If a student -- in the middle of my explaining something about the subject -- interrupts with some snide "Can you keep it down? You're giving me a headache," I'd be tempted to hand out a detention, too.
There's this local festival every year in spring in my town. My 9th grade girlfriend and I spent all weekend outside at this festival that year. She got a bad sunburn. The following Monday morning we were in the Commons area of the school hanging with friends before class started. I was standing there blowing in her sunburnt shoulders. Harmless. A teacher walked around the corner and saw me and took us both to the vice principal's office and had us wrote up for public display of affection. He said I was standing there kissing on her neck and feeling her up. Me, her, and 2 of my friends told the vice principal what was happening and she acted like she understood and dismissed us both. No write up or anything. About an hour or so later we got called back to the office at separate times. She got off with nothing and I was given 2 days of asr (3 hours detention after school).
Also not me but a friend of mine got a 1 hour dentition after school one time for saying "poopy in my pants" lol.
I got kicked out of 6th grade English class for trying to woo a girl by quietly reading lines to her from a paperback copy of The Hobbit. .
This seems fair. Completely distracted and trying to actively distract another student during class.
So when we were learning about the holocaust, we split into groups with fill in the blank sheets where we had to listen to videos for the sentences on the sheet and fill in the missing words.
On one of the videos, we kept having to rewind it because the sentence was a list of items, and the guy in the video honest to god mumbles the last word so quickly we cannot hear what he said.
After rewinding for the fifth time we started laughing because all we needed was the final answer and the guy says complete jibberish.
The teacher thought we were laughing about the subject matter and would not listen to what we were trying to explain to her. We sat in the hallway the rest of the period.
That was 15 years ago and I still don't know what the final word was.
I have always been one to write the truth and not leave out the horrible details of history when it came to school essays. In an essay about the Holocaust, I wrote that the bread that was made for the people in the camps was made out of dirt, saw dust, and ashes from the people that were cremated (which is the truth, even cited my sources from respectable historians) and my teacher marked me down for it saying they didn't use ashes and I shouldn't lie like that. I took my paper to the principle with print outs of all my sources and he made her change my grade.
I got in trouble for wearing a light sweater. Dress code said sweaters were exempt from being tucked in. They said it wasn’t thick enough to be a sweater and ended up changing the rules because of me.
A friend of mine got sent to the principal’s office for tossing a paper ball in the trash. It’s not like he tossed it over anyone either, and he made the shot. Luckily the principal realized how dumb the teacher was.
I wore a jumper basically every day during the 'winter' terms when I started high school, so I could avoid tucking in my button up shirt. I was so happy when they brought in long sleeved polo shirts, because these didn't need to be tucked in. Mind you, I got cold so easily, chances are I would have wanted to wear the jumper for much of that time anyway.
I am deaf in one ear and have major ADHD. It has got me in trouble more times then I can count in school.
Biggest one I can remember was Grade 11 Advanced English, I was originally seated in the back corner of the class. After a few weeks the teacher got pissed and made me sit in the very front of class. Actually within a few feet of her desk as she thought I was ignoring her on purpose.
So I moved there and just worked my butt off all year.
We got assigned a novel and I read the entire book that night as I could devour books in hours.
Next day I asked the teacher for all the questions for the entire book as I had finished the book. She was furious as apparently she had explained to everyone we would do a chapter a week and I just simply didn't hear her.
So I had to wait an entire semester to finish the book.
It was a really horrible time for me.
That happened to me all the time. I would get all my books completely read through within a few weeks of the beginning of the semester. And then, of course, I was bored (and often acted out). Only two of my teachers in 11 years were smart enough to just get me more to read.
Not doing one small assignment when they had already loaded me down with work.
My grandpa was hospitalized during his battle with cancer (he lived to die of old age many years later). I had been at the hospital until it had become necessary to take me home so I could go to bed. As it is, I didn't get in bed until 10:30; I had managed to get the rest of it done while at the school, between one free moment and the next. The majority of it was for this subject.
I just missed this one. I had no inclination to stay up until 11:00 and finish it. I thought they'd understand, but this incident was when I realized I had "Officer Kirk" for an assistant principal. He gleefully paddled me. I managed to backhandedly insult him on the way out. I survived him.
(5th grade maybe) Needing to use the bathroom. Teacher absolutely refused to let me go. I'm sitting there squirming and shaking and in pain because I can't hold it. Finally said to hell with it and ran out the room because I wasn't going to p**s myself. After class she gave me a scolding about not listening and a bunch of other BS. Probably wanted to give me a write up or something but knew my parents would lay into her for denying a bathroom break.
Once again, denying a student or an employee a bathroom should be very, very illegal.
5th grade. Teacher hated me because I questioned her so much. I literally had gotten 100% on every single test we took so far that year. Realistically I should have been moved ahead a grade. Anyway, three missing assignments in a week was considered a detention. She had a requirement that every single test had to be signed by a parent regardless of the score. I had forgotten to do this one day, so I had three tests that were all 100%, unsigned, and she gave me a detention for it.
I bet the parents loved having to sign things every time a test was done
In third grade I was paddled for drawing 3 'w's (with rounded bottoms) and showing them to a few folks saying they were butts.
In 4th grade we were having a lesson that introduced the concept of bartering. I turned to a girl and asked something along the lines of what would people do back in the day when they needed personal items like condoms. I'm not sure of her response, if she even gave one. She did, however, go home and tell her parents. The next day I was questioned on saying condoms and was once again paddled.
I received an amazing education from that school system overall but, jesus christ, growing up in the bible belt(southern, USA) is f*****g stupid sometimes.
Coughing. In seventh grade we went through a stretch where we weren’t allowed to make any noise in the cafeteria after we were done eating. If you sneezed, coughed, or sniffed you were sick and shouldn’t be there at all. I coughed and was given a choice of swats or detention. Took the detention because the swats would’ve come from the gym teacher. F**k you Mr. Cross.
Okay, this is just dumb. Sometimes your nose just tickles or you have allergies and that doesn't mean you're sick or shouldn't be at school!
One time my friend bought me a “tig ol bitties” shirt and I wore it. It was baggy and not revealing but because of the words they made me take it off. I told the principal I didn’t have another shirt except the spaghetti strap I had on underneath. He told me that was fine lol. So, they opted for me to wear a spaghetti strap that my tits were practically hanging out of, over a shirt with a silly phrase.
I don't really understand why schools would opt for having to control things like this, rather than just having a uniform.
I once got in trouble for climbing onto the roof of the girls dorms. I was into parkour as a kid and thought it looked like a good climb. This all was legitimate reasons for me to get into trouble. however the teacher who caught me knew my mom (who was also a teacher at the school) and knew she wouldn't really care about me climbing about after school, even onto the girls dorms. So she told my mom that I tried to bribe her to get out of trouble which I never did. My mom however called her out on her BS saying that she knows I love money too much to bribe someone.
I got kicked out of the school computer lab for trying to make a game.
I’m now a professional game developer.
I mean, was making a game part of the lesson the teacher was trying to teach?
Saying the word “hell” in class.
I go to a catholic school, saying the word hell in proper context is fine, like when you are talking about the place
Putting on a temporary tattoo.
Family got henna tattoos while at a local Renaissance Festival. Youngest put hers on her upper arm near her shoulder so It would be covered at school. On Monday they tried to give her detention after a teacher (not hers) saw it while she was scratching during lunch. Yeah, that didn't happen
I got a referral (not good) for not doing my homework in english, so I placed it into my one folder. I went to my next class, history.
I had the homework for that class, but it wasn't very good.. anyway, teacher comes around to inspect all of our work, and I realize my referral is in plain view. I was embarrassed, so I slid it behind some other papers so no one would see.
My teacher saw me hide it, got mad, and gave me another referral for attempting to hide important documents from her.
My sister was in grade 5 and I was in 2nd. Same school. She "married" me to my boyfriend and they wanted to suspend her and also said we couldn't talk to each other at school anymore. My mom was pissed and straightened them out.
I was thrown out of class and given a detention for getting picked on.
A persistent s**t kid kept kicking my desk whenever the idiotic math teacher turned his back to write on the blackboard. I told the kid several times to stop without causing a further scene.
My husband got suspended for being punched in the face in middle school. The kid who punched him? No trouble, because the teacher knew his parents. I knew my now husband then and he was a good kid.
I once got detention for going to the bathroom. For the first half of the year, my teacher just let us leave, but the day I was out, she apparently gave everyone passes they had to use.
I didn't have them, so when she asked me for one, and I said I didn't have them, she told me I couldn't go. I went anyway, and when I came back, she gave me those passes and 20 minute detention. I cleaned up her room after school.
Yeah, I would have told her to talk to my mom first about that and left on time at the end.
A bunch of idiots went into the bathroom at the same time and locked the door behind them during the ACT test break (Arizona requires all juniors to take the ACT). They were suspected of cheating on the test. I was also accused of cheating. I was not in that bathroom.
It was actually a surprise to most of the teachers that I was held there. My mom threatened to sue the school over it. I graduated in my junior year and my mom pulled my sister out of that school.
I said “Jesus Christ” and got a detention in high school. Yay private school….
Fun fact: "Saying God's name in vain" originally wasn't referring to saying "Oh my god" or similar things, but using your faith to justify hate, bigotry and intolerance. This is, of course, overlooked by today's conservative "Christians".
Not wearing socks to gym class! My parents just laughed.
Nothing.
I was called to the principals office with my best friend and the principal said something like, “I know what you too were doing at lunch time. I got the reports. That is unacceptable.. yadda yadda yadda.” We were at the mall next door eating pizza the whole time. Not sure what her deal was.
Pop rocks. I ate some right before a pop quiz and they were going off in my mouth when the room fell silent. The kids around me started laughing and they told on me lol. He failed me on the test and I had to sit outside the class the remaining hour. I just enjoyed my pop rocks.
I got detention because the teacher told us not to speak. Then a guy came into class late and the teacher ignored him, so he asked me what we were supposed to be doing and I whispered back to him. She started shouting so I told her that I was explaining the work and she just said it doesn't matter I have detention.
I guess the teacher intended to punish the guy who arrived late by retaining information, and later asking the guy questions related to the task that he couldn't make.
Had a teacher who really didn't like me (fair, I was always late with my homework). Well, in class one day and hand in the stuff for that day but not the stuff I'd gotten an extension for (extension was due that day). Well class goes as usual, but the next day I get told to come in early to see my house master, usually a sign you're in deep s**t, not the sort of thing not having your homework does.
So I turn up at like 7am to see her (hated me too - no real reason) and the original teacher is in the office with her. He says I skipped class that day, I say no I didn't I've got the notes and the handouts to prove it. His argument was "Well I'd decided that if you didn't hand in the work that day I'd put you on report, and I didn't so you mustn't have been there". After 10 minutes of back and forth, showing the notes etc. they finally concede that *maybe* there was a mistake (he'd been so surprised by me handing something in that he forgot) and I wasn't going to get detention for it.
Then have to engage in a 10 minute argument that my house master wants me spending every free period in the library supervised by the librarian studying. I have to point out that classes that can get pretty loud there and distracting, and I have access to the "cadet room" as a senior cadet (cadets is kind of like scouts but with a military spin, the room was where we had meetings and kept all the uniforms etc.) and the room was silent and easy to focus in. Plus it's unfair to punish me for something that never happened.
So basically I had to get up at 5am to get to school to get scolded for something I didn't do, which even when they conceded it may not have happened they still tried to punish me.
Balling up my sandwich bag after lunch and popping it. I got hit. I lived next door to the school, asked to use the bathroom, but ran home and told my mom the teacher beat me. (She hit me with a wooden paddle). My mom beat her a*s. It was glorious.
It’s reasonable to punish a kid for popping a sandwich bag. It not reasonable to hit them
Getting in a fight where the kid jumped my brother.
Went to the bathroom, dude stole my eraser, I asked for it back, and when he wasn't looking, I took it back, then he went and complained, principal's office and parents called for that.
Typo on a computing class, accidentally typed "s**t key".
That's something that should be laughed off. To this day, I remember my elementary school teacher saying "The king $hat out an emmisary" instead of "sent out", we all had a good laugh about it.
Kid in my class (mixed first grade and second, I was first he was second) told me to stomp as hard as I could on his foot, and he wouldn’t feel a thing. We were standing in line to go out for recess. So I (being a easily influenced 7 or so year old) did.
And then the teacher noticed and thought I was bullying the kid. So I got sent to the principals office and even though I tried to explain the circumstances, I still had to stay in from recess and write something (I don’t remember what) to the kid and the principal or teacher or smthn.
Onetime I wore a shirt that showed my stomach so they made me pull up my shorts so it would cover my belly, then I got in trouble cause my shorts were to short smh.
6th grade on the bus after school, before it started even going anywhere, I went up to my twin brother and pretended to kiss him and he backed off but it was all a joke. because in 6th grade I acted all gay n stuff. I got a major referral, cps called on me, and a person who had to follow me and watch me for most of the year. Thank god that principle was fired.
I got suspended for misgendering someone. Even if it was rude I never met the person in my life. They could have been nicer and just corrected me but no they started freaking out and cursing at me and guess who gets in trouble, me.
I call BS on this one. There could be an exception, but every single trans person I've met would first calmly correct someone using wrong pronouns, and get upset only if they insisted on using the wrong ones. This sounds like someone who loves making the "Did you just assume my gender????" jokes playing victim.
For going to Bulbapedia, a Pokèmon wiki, in science class. I still don't get that one.
because you should pay attention to the class, not goof of on the internet.
3 days of ISS for reading during math time in 6th grade. Guess what I did for 3 days straight in ISS.
You shouldn’t be reading other material when they’re teaching in class
I got sent to the office in middle school for eating a lollipop the DAY AFTER Halloween!!
I literally called out my teacher like, ‘B***h! You can’t expect kids to come back after HALLOWEEN without candy!!’
And then this other time, (maybe it was that same year too) the principal had me removed from the talent show for working on my comedy routine for like 5 minutes during a STUDY PERIOD!! I mean, I know I had other work to do but COME ON!! 😡😡.
In 3rd grade my teacher, Mrs. Penn, called for a conference with my parents because I wouldn't eat the macaroni and cheese at lunch. My Mom didn't drive and my Dad worked second shift at his factory job, so they had to cut into his sleep time to come up to the school. Mrs. Penn was upset that since we were paying for lunch, my refusing to eat the mac and cheese (which, for some reason, they always served with peanut butter sandwiches) was wasting money. My, loving and gentle mother wanted to slap her. Instead, she said: "He doesn't like macaroni and cheese. He doesn't eat it when I make it at home. What makes you think he'll eat the slop you serve here? It's our money. If it's wasted, it's wasted." Then stormed out. They came home and Dad got about an hour of sleep before going to work.
I was screamed at by my 5th-grade teacher because she forgot me. On the first day of school, she had us all line up in the front of the class, and she'd call us one by one and assign us a seat. She got through everyone else, and I was the last person standing. She had her back to me. When she started talking about opening our textbooks, we all realized she'd forgotten me. And there was more than one empty seat, so I couldn't even just go sit. So I said "Excuse me?" from behind her. She FLIPPED OUT. WHY ARE YOU INTERRUPTING ME? WHY AREN'T YOU SITTING? WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING THERE??? Everyone in the class was telling her she'd skipped me. I guess she was embarrassed, because she went out of her way to make my year miserable. She called me a "troublemaker", and anytime anyone near me did *anything* wrong, she'd take points off of *my* grade. Not theirs. The only way I passed 5th grade was because of her extra-credit handwriting assignments. I did them ALL. Each one worth 5 extra points.
My fifth grade teacher was an idiot (like, actually stupid) and hated girls. She would always talk about her five male sons like they were made of diamonds. Mrs. White.
Load More Replies...I got detention at age 14 or so (44 years ago!) for eating in school uniform. It was on a Friday, a couple of hours after school let out and I was visiting my grandparents when an ice cream van drove down their street. My granny sent me out to buy some, a teacher walking past saw me lick one and gave me detention. Eff you Mrs Jillings, you old bag. It still smarts.
Junior year of high school. Our school had a big, bronze memorial plaque out front with names of former students who had been killed in war. I and two of my besties got called down to the principal and accused of stealing this plaque. The thing must have weighed 500 pounds and was firmly mounted on a stone frame. I don't even know how we would have stolen it (or why we would want to). They threatened us with the police and everything. Two days later they found out the plaque had been taken for a scheduled cleaning, which they had forgotten about. Never got so much as an apology.
In 6th grade history, I got in trouble by Mrs. Carmen for typing my study notes up on my computer and printing them out. Apparently they looked too 'professional' and the teacher assumed I was cheating and had stolen them even though it wasn't for a test.
Heh. That was my primary motivation for learning to type on a computer (1980s). My cursive handwriting was atrocious, and one day it dawned on me that if I typed up all my notes, they'd be really easy to read. (Unfortunately word processors in those days were pretty limited and I couldn't format stuff into things like charts and columns. I eventually stopped using cursive, since my print handwriting was actually pretty good. And felt vindicated when schools dropped cursive entirely - a holdover from when people used to write with fountain pens.)
Load More Replies...One day (at 8 years old) I was talking about wanting an overalls and one of the teacher heard me and started crying (like a 45 years old grown woman). Turns out in French the word "overalls" looks a lot like the word "s**t", and the teacher thought I was calling her that. I was punish and my mother was called to the principal's office to discuss about my concerning behaviour. (the teacher was my neighbour and she was really mean to me from that day to the day I moved to another town, 5 years later.)
For those going "huh?", the censored letters are L and U, the French word for that is "salop", and that's half of "salopette", French for overalls. According to Google Translate, so take it with a pinch of sel.
Load More Replies...I was one out of 13 students (all 17-18 yrs old) sent to the Dean's office. Because I asked the substitute teacher why he'd kicked out over half the class within the first 20 minutes. I strolled down to the office and joined the queue of kids. Dean comes out, looks around, laughed, and said "did you guys stage a riot?" Nope. We were all "insubordinate" for asking questions related to the material. Dean rolled his eyes and escorted us all back to class.
So legit question, please don't angry down vote me. But; is there something fundamentally wrong with the American education system? Most of these seem to be from America and don't make any sense. I'm not saying kids aren't little shirts, (I definitely was); but the pettiness and the punishment make no sense. How can you get in trouble for legally drinking in a foreign country when you return home?
Its partialy because a lot of the US is conditioned to an authoritarian structure, and schools/raising children reflect that. Its getting better, but its also getting worse.
Load More Replies...Way back in the 1980s I had a pencil holder, sharpener and eraser all in one (the spines were the holder, the nose was the eraser and the back end was the pencil sharpener). One day I was using it to sharpen my pencil when my teacher came marching over, shouted at me to stop messing about and confiscated it. I tried to explain that I was just sharpening my pencil so I could get on with my work but she wouldn't listen.
My teacher went on a rant about a new state law where schools would be funded by money from the state lottery. I think he didn't like that education was being funded by gambling. I was puzzled because I understood that money was fungible (before I even know the word "fungible" existed). So I naively asked what the problem was? As long as any shortfalls were made up out of the regular budget, it was irrelevant. The money was still coming from the state, regardless of whether the original source was the lottery or any other source. Teacher apparently didn't like that, and gave me Cs and Ds the rest of the year regardless of the quality of my work (I was a straight-A student). I confirmed it by submitting papers on subsequent weeks, one with 4 hours of research, the other done in 5 minutes during lunch. He gave me a C- on both. Dropped the class as a result. I didn't want to raise a fuss so didn't report it to the principal. But in retrospect I probably should have.
Posts like this certainly give the impression that American education is more about obedience and conformity than learning.
Oh it is. The teaching method is based on getting kids to pass state tests in order to get more funding, but goddess forbid kids get taught independent thinking and even get into trouble for it in some places. I commented on one of these that for a report I did on the holocaust, I put (with sources from actual historians) that bread made for the people in camps included ash from people that were cremated and the teacher called me a liar and marked me down. Ended up going to the principle and he made the teacher fix my grade.
Load More Replies...Wow, what state or country are most of these from? I grew up in NY, taught in NJ, raised my daughter in NJ. I can't imagine any school in my towns allowing teachers to behave like this.
Washington grammer school, whycoff nj, early 90s: they called my mom concerned because I was wearing black. They also didnt like that a girl would play kickball at recess (or course after, other girls went to play, because its fun).
Load More Replies...My first grade teacher inexplicably loved my best friend and hated me. We had story time in that grade, where we'd all leave our desks and go sit in the book nook area, and the teacher would read aloud to us. My BFF and I decided to use this time to sneak away and write our own book together (a book about our friendship, natch). When the teacher saw us, she lost her s**t and yelled, "LAURA, GO TO YOUR DESK AND PUT YOUR HEAD DOWN, (friend's name), come listen to the story." (Putting your head down on your desk was standard "time out" punishment at that age. Things like that happened all year.
My husband once bunked off and went to (a different) school with his mate. He was in the vicinity when another mutual friend threw a chair out of the window, and all three of them got sent to the head and were suspended. So he managed to get suspended from a school he didn't even attend!
Oh I got a bunch of these haha. Corrected my teachers maths I'm year 3 (7-8yo) and was written up for insubordination, outright told him I wouldn't be insubordinate if he was teaching us correctly (support assistant pointed out I was in fact correct) In year 4 I was given break time detention (recess) because I'd been sent to the heads office for kicking a student. He has been relentlessly bullying my brother for over a year but this point, head went off her rocker at me so I told her if she did her job in the first place it wouldn't have come to this so maybe she should buck up or pack up then promptly left the office leaving her with a ripper to suffer through. Parents got called in for that one and my authoritarian father actually laughed at her and said well the girl's not wrong is she. Sent to time out for complaining I was hungry, I was hungry because they hadn't given me any lunch. That didn't end well once my folks found out. There's so, so much more but no space lol.
Before Covid, when concert lines were packed like cattle in a shoot, it was common to start mooing about it.
Dude, I got in fistfights and once threatened to kill another student on the bus with a knife. Never got detention or suspension. Did get understanding administrators with actual reasoning skills.
My friends and I were writing silly things on sticky notes (nothing mean) and sticking them on each other in 6th grade. We got yelled at in the hall.
In 7th grade when I first started learning about paganism and wicca (I am an eclectic pagan) some friends and I had some books and tarot cards out at lunch, not bugging anyone, and the security guard came over and made us go to the principles. He told us not to bring them to school or wear our pendants anymore (they had pentagrams and I had a snake charm on) because it wasn't allowed. I stood up for all of us and asked why we weren't allowed to have our religious stuff at school when there was a group of kids at the next table over from us reading their bibles and wearing crosses. Told him if he wanted to purse this further that he would hear from a lawyer (totally bluffing cause yea, I was in 7th grade lol). Luckily he dropped it cause my dad would have killed me
I have 2 examples, 1st - we had to bring our own reading material during a Teachers strike. I was 14. My English Teacher asked what I was reading - it was the Diary of Anne Frank, and she suggested it was a little advanced for me, and I laughed and said it was written by a 12 year old, as a result of sassing a teacher, I was moved to a remedial English class where I had to 'learn' my ABC's for the rest of the year. 2nd, I refused to dissect a frog and a rat, so I was 'sentenced' to lunch time detention with the Scripture Union/Church group. It was interesting, but when asked what I had learned from the experience, I said 'absolutely nothing - I will not experiment on an animal living or dead, because that is not going to be important to my future and using religious teaching as a punishment just shows how wrong organised religion is. The Teacher who subjected me to this 'punishment' knew I had grown up in the midst of a religious war and at least had the good manners to look ashamed
First grade, my class ended up getting detention because my teacher followed the "punish the whole for the actions of the individual" belief. I did literally nothing wrong. My dad came into the cafeteria where we were sitting for detention. The admin who was watching us happened to be his teacher when he was a kid, and she vouched for me and let me go. Next day, my teacher forced me to sit alone at the very back of the cafeteria, away from everyone else, not allowed to talk to anyone, for "leaving before she said I could". Mrs. Gilliam, I hope you burn in hell, and Mrs. Davis, you were an absolute saint.
I was given uniform detention because I had the collar showing from my skivvy (turtle neck). I was wearing it under my school top and my school jumper. It was a freezing cold day. I didn't go to detention and my mum wrote a letter to the teacher calling her petty.
In 3rd grade my teacher, Mrs. Penn, called for a conference with my parents because I wouldn't eat the macaroni and cheese at lunch. My Mom didn't drive and my Dad worked second shift at his factory job, so they had to cut into his sleep time to come up to the school. Mrs. Penn was upset that since we were paying for lunch, my refusing to eat the mac and cheese (which, for some reason, they always served with peanut butter sandwiches) was wasting money. My, loving and gentle mother wanted to slap her. Instead, she said: "He doesn't like macaroni and cheese. He doesn't eat it when I make it at home. What makes you think he'll eat the slop you serve here? It's our money. If it's wasted, it's wasted." Then stormed out. They came home and Dad got about an hour of sleep before going to work.
I was screamed at by my 5th-grade teacher because she forgot me. On the first day of school, she had us all line up in the front of the class, and she'd call us one by one and assign us a seat. She got through everyone else, and I was the last person standing. She had her back to me. When she started talking about opening our textbooks, we all realized she'd forgotten me. And there was more than one empty seat, so I couldn't even just go sit. So I said "Excuse me?" from behind her. She FLIPPED OUT. WHY ARE YOU INTERRUPTING ME? WHY AREN'T YOU SITTING? WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING THERE??? Everyone in the class was telling her she'd skipped me. I guess she was embarrassed, because she went out of her way to make my year miserable. She called me a "troublemaker", and anytime anyone near me did *anything* wrong, she'd take points off of *my* grade. Not theirs. The only way I passed 5th grade was because of her extra-credit handwriting assignments. I did them ALL. Each one worth 5 extra points.
My fifth grade teacher was an idiot (like, actually stupid) and hated girls. She would always talk about her five male sons like they were made of diamonds. Mrs. White.
Load More Replies...I got detention at age 14 or so (44 years ago!) for eating in school uniform. It was on a Friday, a couple of hours after school let out and I was visiting my grandparents when an ice cream van drove down their street. My granny sent me out to buy some, a teacher walking past saw me lick one and gave me detention. Eff you Mrs Jillings, you old bag. It still smarts.
Junior year of high school. Our school had a big, bronze memorial plaque out front with names of former students who had been killed in war. I and two of my besties got called down to the principal and accused of stealing this plaque. The thing must have weighed 500 pounds and was firmly mounted on a stone frame. I don't even know how we would have stolen it (or why we would want to). They threatened us with the police and everything. Two days later they found out the plaque had been taken for a scheduled cleaning, which they had forgotten about. Never got so much as an apology.
In 6th grade history, I got in trouble by Mrs. Carmen for typing my study notes up on my computer and printing them out. Apparently they looked too 'professional' and the teacher assumed I was cheating and had stolen them even though it wasn't for a test.
Heh. That was my primary motivation for learning to type on a computer (1980s). My cursive handwriting was atrocious, and one day it dawned on me that if I typed up all my notes, they'd be really easy to read. (Unfortunately word processors in those days were pretty limited and I couldn't format stuff into things like charts and columns. I eventually stopped using cursive, since my print handwriting was actually pretty good. And felt vindicated when schools dropped cursive entirely - a holdover from when people used to write with fountain pens.)
Load More Replies...One day (at 8 years old) I was talking about wanting an overalls and one of the teacher heard me and started crying (like a 45 years old grown woman). Turns out in French the word "overalls" looks a lot like the word "s**t", and the teacher thought I was calling her that. I was punish and my mother was called to the principal's office to discuss about my concerning behaviour. (the teacher was my neighbour and she was really mean to me from that day to the day I moved to another town, 5 years later.)
For those going "huh?", the censored letters are L and U, the French word for that is "salop", and that's half of "salopette", French for overalls. According to Google Translate, so take it with a pinch of sel.
Load More Replies...I was one out of 13 students (all 17-18 yrs old) sent to the Dean's office. Because I asked the substitute teacher why he'd kicked out over half the class within the first 20 minutes. I strolled down to the office and joined the queue of kids. Dean comes out, looks around, laughed, and said "did you guys stage a riot?" Nope. We were all "insubordinate" for asking questions related to the material. Dean rolled his eyes and escorted us all back to class.
So legit question, please don't angry down vote me. But; is there something fundamentally wrong with the American education system? Most of these seem to be from America and don't make any sense. I'm not saying kids aren't little shirts, (I definitely was); but the pettiness and the punishment make no sense. How can you get in trouble for legally drinking in a foreign country when you return home?
Its partialy because a lot of the US is conditioned to an authoritarian structure, and schools/raising children reflect that. Its getting better, but its also getting worse.
Load More Replies...Way back in the 1980s I had a pencil holder, sharpener and eraser all in one (the spines were the holder, the nose was the eraser and the back end was the pencil sharpener). One day I was using it to sharpen my pencil when my teacher came marching over, shouted at me to stop messing about and confiscated it. I tried to explain that I was just sharpening my pencil so I could get on with my work but she wouldn't listen.
My teacher went on a rant about a new state law where schools would be funded by money from the state lottery. I think he didn't like that education was being funded by gambling. I was puzzled because I understood that money was fungible (before I even know the word "fungible" existed). So I naively asked what the problem was? As long as any shortfalls were made up out of the regular budget, it was irrelevant. The money was still coming from the state, regardless of whether the original source was the lottery or any other source. Teacher apparently didn't like that, and gave me Cs and Ds the rest of the year regardless of the quality of my work (I was a straight-A student). I confirmed it by submitting papers on subsequent weeks, one with 4 hours of research, the other done in 5 minutes during lunch. He gave me a C- on both. Dropped the class as a result. I didn't want to raise a fuss so didn't report it to the principal. But in retrospect I probably should have.
Posts like this certainly give the impression that American education is more about obedience and conformity than learning.
Oh it is. The teaching method is based on getting kids to pass state tests in order to get more funding, but goddess forbid kids get taught independent thinking and even get into trouble for it in some places. I commented on one of these that for a report I did on the holocaust, I put (with sources from actual historians) that bread made for the people in camps included ash from people that were cremated and the teacher called me a liar and marked me down. Ended up going to the principle and he made the teacher fix my grade.
Load More Replies...Wow, what state or country are most of these from? I grew up in NY, taught in NJ, raised my daughter in NJ. I can't imagine any school in my towns allowing teachers to behave like this.
Washington grammer school, whycoff nj, early 90s: they called my mom concerned because I was wearing black. They also didnt like that a girl would play kickball at recess (or course after, other girls went to play, because its fun).
Load More Replies...My first grade teacher inexplicably loved my best friend and hated me. We had story time in that grade, where we'd all leave our desks and go sit in the book nook area, and the teacher would read aloud to us. My BFF and I decided to use this time to sneak away and write our own book together (a book about our friendship, natch). When the teacher saw us, she lost her s**t and yelled, "LAURA, GO TO YOUR DESK AND PUT YOUR HEAD DOWN, (friend's name), come listen to the story." (Putting your head down on your desk was standard "time out" punishment at that age. Things like that happened all year.
My husband once bunked off and went to (a different) school with his mate. He was in the vicinity when another mutual friend threw a chair out of the window, and all three of them got sent to the head and were suspended. So he managed to get suspended from a school he didn't even attend!
Oh I got a bunch of these haha. Corrected my teachers maths I'm year 3 (7-8yo) and was written up for insubordination, outright told him I wouldn't be insubordinate if he was teaching us correctly (support assistant pointed out I was in fact correct) In year 4 I was given break time detention (recess) because I'd been sent to the heads office for kicking a student. He has been relentlessly bullying my brother for over a year but this point, head went off her rocker at me so I told her if she did her job in the first place it wouldn't have come to this so maybe she should buck up or pack up then promptly left the office leaving her with a ripper to suffer through. Parents got called in for that one and my authoritarian father actually laughed at her and said well the girl's not wrong is she. Sent to time out for complaining I was hungry, I was hungry because they hadn't given me any lunch. That didn't end well once my folks found out. There's so, so much more but no space lol.
Before Covid, when concert lines were packed like cattle in a shoot, it was common to start mooing about it.
Dude, I got in fistfights and once threatened to kill another student on the bus with a knife. Never got detention or suspension. Did get understanding administrators with actual reasoning skills.
My friends and I were writing silly things on sticky notes (nothing mean) and sticking them on each other in 6th grade. We got yelled at in the hall.
In 7th grade when I first started learning about paganism and wicca (I am an eclectic pagan) some friends and I had some books and tarot cards out at lunch, not bugging anyone, and the security guard came over and made us go to the principles. He told us not to bring them to school or wear our pendants anymore (they had pentagrams and I had a snake charm on) because it wasn't allowed. I stood up for all of us and asked why we weren't allowed to have our religious stuff at school when there was a group of kids at the next table over from us reading their bibles and wearing crosses. Told him if he wanted to purse this further that he would hear from a lawyer (totally bluffing cause yea, I was in 7th grade lol). Luckily he dropped it cause my dad would have killed me
I have 2 examples, 1st - we had to bring our own reading material during a Teachers strike. I was 14. My English Teacher asked what I was reading - it was the Diary of Anne Frank, and she suggested it was a little advanced for me, and I laughed and said it was written by a 12 year old, as a result of sassing a teacher, I was moved to a remedial English class where I had to 'learn' my ABC's for the rest of the year. 2nd, I refused to dissect a frog and a rat, so I was 'sentenced' to lunch time detention with the Scripture Union/Church group. It was interesting, but when asked what I had learned from the experience, I said 'absolutely nothing - I will not experiment on an animal living or dead, because that is not going to be important to my future and using religious teaching as a punishment just shows how wrong organised religion is. The Teacher who subjected me to this 'punishment' knew I had grown up in the midst of a religious war and at least had the good manners to look ashamed
First grade, my class ended up getting detention because my teacher followed the "punish the whole for the actions of the individual" belief. I did literally nothing wrong. My dad came into the cafeteria where we were sitting for detention. The admin who was watching us happened to be his teacher when he was a kid, and she vouched for me and let me go. Next day, my teacher forced me to sit alone at the very back of the cafeteria, away from everyone else, not allowed to talk to anyone, for "leaving before she said I could". Mrs. Gilliam, I hope you burn in hell, and Mrs. Davis, you were an absolute saint.
I was given uniform detention because I had the collar showing from my skivvy (turtle neck). I was wearing it under my school top and my school jumper. It was a freezing cold day. I didn't go to detention and my mum wrote a letter to the teacher calling her petty.
