In 1953, Eleanor Roosevelt convinced Congress to create a day to honor educators. Advocacy began with a teacher from Arkansas who wrote letters to Congress for years, and Congress declared March 7, 1980 as the first National Teacher Day. The PTA expanded this to a full week in 1984, moving it to the first full week of May in 1985, now celebrated annually. However, students never really know what they go through on a daily basis. So, here are some of your favorite teachers’ worst experiences in their teaching careers .
Today, Mr. Kunde talks about teaching during 9/11, Mr. Stripens recollects a student’s drug-fueled rant, and Sra. Walk narrowly avoids lactose projectiles. This is today’s issue of Teacher Horror Stories.
“The worst day of teaching for me was 9/11. I came into school. It was just before school had started, when the first plane hit the tower. My principal at the time said, ‘Mr. Kunde, you might wanna take a look at your TV. A plane has flown into the Twin Towers in New York City.’ At that moment, we were thinking that it was just an accident, you know? Some air traffic controller made the wrong call and moved him over town. They weren’t supposed to; it’s supposed to be dead airspace that they can’t fly through. Then we turn the TV on, we’re watching, and the second one hits. When that happened, we all knew right then. It was terrorism that was likely taking place, and the concerns. I helped [students] understand some things that they’ve not heard of before. That’s where we first started hearing words, like, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and so forth. I knew about a little bit of that, [be]cause of teaching current events, and having done a lot of research on terrorism at that point in time.”
“Well, there’s the one that really sticks in my mind, [which] happened, I don’t know, maybe 15 years ago, maybe a little bit more. It’s hard to remember. I had a homeroom back then. Now I have an art-based home[room], and back then, it was just a random homeroom. I had seniors. So every year you would keep the same group, like from freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, you got to know them really well, and it was really cool. Then that year, I inherited a super senior who had not made it through the first time around. He was not happy to be there. So one day he came in for a homeroom, maybe 15 minutes late, which is very late, and I just asked where have you been? And he said, ‘You know, drugs.’ So I said, ‘Well, that’s…you know, that’s not okay. I’m gonna have to just send you down to the office.’ And he went off on me, just like every swear word in the book, just like really, obviously did not want to be at school any longer, just called me every name in the book. Then asked me if I would like to take it out to the parking lot. To which I responded, ‘No, thank you.’ Then I had to report this to the administration, and I said, basically what I’m saying now, I said [that] he threatened me, [and] he used a lot of profanity in front of the entire class and directed [it] towards me. My administrator at the time, who’s no longer here, said, ‘Oh, no, I need to hear exactly what he said.’ So, I had to type up the most profane paragraph I’ve ever written in my entire life in an email and send that to my administrator. So, the student was, I think, suspended for a week. But then after that, we kind of came to terms, and we finished out the year on good terms. And I would even see him after he graduated. Things were better, but it was just like, he was having the worst day of all time and just happened to share that with me.
My most recent horror story is: a student who gets an upset stomach when drinking milk (unbeknownst to me) came to my class with chocolate milk. Later in the class period, he threw up in his own mouth and then threw up in my trash can. I sent him to the office as I assumed he was sick, and he was sent back within five minutes. What did I do? Class continued…and I never allowed him to have chocolate milk in class again!
Della Taylor, Staff Writer
tayde29@sages.us
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