Fact is stranger than fiction. We’ll stand by that statement until the world ends! Many movies and TV shows about School life aren’t able to hold a candle to the real-life situations teachers have to deal with nearly every single day.

Redditor u/DarkPonyAssassin recently started up a very interesting (and confusing!) r/AskReddit thread about the craziest and most bizarre reasons why educators had to send a Student to the principal’s office. Scroll down to check out some of the weirdest teacher stories. They're a mix of hilarity and some really worrying behavior.

Bored Panda reached out to the author of the thread, u/DarkPonyAssassin, and they answered a few of our questions.

#1

I’m a middle school teacher. I had a student sneak a gas cooker and his moms pork chops into school in a large backpack. He cooked pork chops for his friends at lunchtime, he was sent to the office for unsafe behaviour, his mom was PISSED he took her pork chops she was preparing for dinner.

Image credits: swanathonjon

We were interested to find out about the inspiration behind the thread, so we got in touch with the author of the post on r/AskReddit, u/DarkPonyAssassin.

They told us that some memories from their past made them want to hear about other redditors' experiences as well.

"I just remembered some of the crazy stuff I did in high school," they told Bored Panda.

#2

I sent a kid to the office because he told an incredibly funny joke and I wanted the dean to hear it. He thought it was great and sent the kid back.

The joke was: Why are Catholics glad Jesus was crucified instead of stones to death (with rocks)? Because now they go (make the sign on the cross) instead of (punches himself randomly about the head and chest). To this day I have never laughed at a student's joke as hard as I did with this one.

Image credits: Spodson

#3

A grade 1 student came up to me on the playground telling me another student was making her sick. She pointed to another student about 10 metres away, looked at me, and projectile puked on the blacktop.

Went to the other student...he had found rabbit turds on the ground and stuck them in his mouth and was chasing kids around.

I then puked. I didn't go to the office. But rabbit turd kid did.

Image credits: mollymuppet78

Meanwhile, we were curious to get the OP's take on teaching, discipline, and respect in school. According to them, some of the main signs of a good educator include empathy and knowledge of their subject.

Not only is a great teacher someone who listens to what their students are saying, instead of ignoring them, but they also take the time to continue studying their subject. It's all about good communication and understanding that just because that someone's already become a teacher, their educational journey hasn't ended.

However, not every student is open and willing to accept their teachers' rules.

#4

I’m not a teacher but am a school psych. I don’t send kids to the office, but some of my teammates sure have… some highlights.

Had a kid hop onto the counter the onto the big whiteboard case, and straight into the drop ceiling. He climbed around up there yelling and screaming, knocking down ceiling tiles, before we finally coaxed him down.

One girl took a class chair and shattered a window in a classroom’s back office. On another day, this same girl gave the assistant principal and me a watercolor paint shower. I was lucky… I was standing just behind the AP and only got a few splatters on my jacket while she ended up getting the full blast.

I lied… I guess I have sent a few kids to the office… once… and all at once. It was last year, and I pull into the parking lot of the junior high school I work at. I get a text and pull up my iPad to reply when I realize something is happening in my peripheral vision. I look up to see five students surrounding one other student who is on the ground getting the s**t beat out of him. I’m an ex hockey player. I liked scrapping when I was a middle and high schooler. I have a very high standard for what I even consider a proper fight. This was a one sided gang beat down.

I go flying out of my rig, and charge up to them. “OY!!!” I shout in a kid’s face, startling him. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a mask, so I could only see his eyes, which were wide with shock. Glad I had that effect, as I was woefully outnumbered, I just kept shouting like a drill instructor… “STAND UP!! GET IN LINE!! MOVE!!” Having asserted moral authority, I quite literally marched this line of kids to the office. The victim of that assault was bruised but otherwise okay. I’m kinda glad it was me who came across it and not the majority of my peers. I’m a relatively tall guy in good shape. I can be intimidating if I need to be, and in that situation, I needed to be.

Image credits: The_Best_Yak_Ever

#5

My Dad gets offered like 16 times the pay to be a professor in Pretoria...so we move to South Africa and he has this student who is just scoring like 8 out of a hundred, then 11, and then 7. At the end of class one day he calls this young lady by name and asks her to stay behind for a second. She walks forward and she is stunningly beautiful. My older sister explained she looked exactly like this Vendela Thommessen who was a sports illustrated swimsuit model....my Sis was with him that day, but behind the screen his projector was being displayed on and peeking around listening. My Dad says "I am afraid this work is a bit too advanced for you. I seen that you have taken the prerequisites and received A's in the classes...is something affecting your performance"?

Now this girl has no idea my sister is behind the screen and this beauty says to my Dad "Well, I earned those A's the same way I am going to get an A in your class...on my knees". My Dad walked her to the Dean's office and when he returned my sister was crying and told my Dad he was a jerk for not praying with her. My sister was 10...

Image credits: Cannotakema

#6

Got into a fistfight with their mother outside the classroom door.

Image credits: jl_theprofessor

We also asked u/DarkPonyAssassin for their opinion on what teachers might do to ensure that their students respect them and the rules they set out.

"Tell the school board to get out of the way so that they can enforce their rules," they explained that there's sometimes friction between what the board and the teachers want.

"They also need to follow through with what they say that they will do," u/DarkPonyAssassin pointed out that teachers have to show everyone around them that they mean what they say. They need to be seen as consistent, trustworthy, and prove that the promises that they make aren't something that they'll go back on. That should help set healthy boundaries for what students know they can and cannot do.

#7

I had to write a kid up during Remote School during the pandemic because he used a smoke machine to pretend his room was on fire and then he abruptly dropped out of the zoom for the rest of the day

Image credits: Badloss

#8

A student repeatedly getting on tables and singing Gucci Gang in the middle of class. Every. Day. For. Weeks.

Image credits: CorieMcP

#9

One kid kept stabbing another kid in the neck with a needle. The kid getting stabbed *didn't feel it*, but I saw it. The stabber was sent to the office, and the other kid was none the wiser.

Image credits: Sparklersstars

One of the best qualities that any educator—or person for that matter—can have is adaptability. Life rarely goes the way we planned. So what you need is the ability to react to weird and surprising situations in a way that shows you’re in charge. You need to be prepared for everything by being quick to react.

Say your student sneaks in a gas cooker and pork chops to school. While everyone else is doing a double-take and standing around with their jaws dropped, you’re already handling the situation: talking to the student, calling their mom, trying to figure out what the heck just happened.

Being sent to the principal’s office isn’t always a bad thing. It’s a disciplinary tool, and it all depends on how educators use it. For example, it can be a way to get to the bottom of what’s going on in the student’s life. There is absolutely no substitute for good communication, and being sent to the office can be just the opportunity that the student and the staff need to get on the same page.

#10

I had a student that cried every time I would try to encourage her to answer questions in front of the class. I stopped calling her to the board as I feared maybe she was facing pretty bad trauma or anxiety. So I let her do individual work. One day I find out she, during class time, kept sending inappropriate insulting texts around the class about some classmates and myself. When I emailed her mother about this, she went as far as to use her mother’s account to send me an email back saying “just leave her alone”. The next morning she made a remark that I was very inconsiderate for giving out homework when some students work, I was surprised seeing she suddenly spoke loud and interrupted me during class. She attempted to name other students that work after school just like her, but one of them, Aiden, stood up saying “So? I still get my homework done, except I don’t waste time gossiping about others and using crocodile tears when it comes to showing my understanding in class”. She was shocked, stood there for a little bit, and started crying, which clearly felt forced. I sent her straight to the office, from there called her mother to verify who sent the email, and had her come over for a long discussing.

Image credits: TheRedditDatabase

#11

Not a teacher, but in middle school they pulled my kid into the office for "running a slime racket" - she was selling baggies of slime for kids lunch money. Later that year she was pulled into the office and told to stop "illicit sales on school grounds" - turns out she was selling pencils for a quarter and pens for fifty cents, which was half the price you could buy them from the school directly lol.

Same kid, different middle school the next year, got pulled into the office on suspicion of vaping. She wasn't. They held her for three hours in the office with the principal and SRO trying to coerce her into confessing. She told them to search her bag and locker - *they refused* - she started to get pissed off and winged her backpack toward the SRO and said, "Just f*****g search it so I can go back to class." They called me for cussing at the SRO. I absolutely tore into the principal for keeping her out of class half the day and then having the audacity to only call me because she used the f-word and was "being disrespectful" when they could have just looked through her stuff and been done with it.

Image credits: tamarainspace

#12

When my sister was a substitute teacher a kid ate the dead class fish. It was Monday so it might’ve been dead all weekend

Image credits: natsugrayerza

Teachers aren’t mind-readers (at least, we don’t think that they are!), so if you have issues at school or at home, you have to reach out to them and ask for their advice. One of the best ways that you can tell if you’re dealing with a great teacher or someone who’s just in it for the paycheck and clocks out immediately after the school bell is to look at how they treat everyone in the class. Do they go the extra mile? Do they see the students as actual human beings? Do they actually care about your education or just that you get good grades so they look better? 

Some of the best teachers are the most empathetic. If you can empathize with your students, you can find ways to motivate them far more than just by being a specialist in your specific field. Teaching well requires high emotional intelligence, not just a good memory for facts and decent oratory skills. There’s a need for collaboration between students and educators, at least on some level.

#13

I had to send a kid out of my room for an actual live wild rabbit in her backpack! She freaking caught it before she came to class. Fast 5 year old.

Image credits: Pomegranate_1328

#14

Was sitting at my desk one day and a student calls out “hey mister watch this” and then brandishes a bottle of listerine mouthwash and chugs it down in 5 seconds. He then burps and asks if he could go to the nurse so I kindly sent him on his way.

Image credits: Charming_Tax_4317

#15

It was the second day of my first year teaching (5th grade). A student refused to do a writing assignment because she said she forgot how to write in English. When I asked what language she knew how to write in, she said, "I only know Japanese."

Listen... it is plausible a student at my school would be proficient in writing in Japanese. HOWEVER, I had already seen her files. I knew her dad was in a Mexican street gang and that she was being raised by her blind grandmother who was a native Spanish speaker. The likelihood that she knew was fluent in Japanese was a bit far-fetched.

She eventually told me she also speaks Japanese, so I called her out by asking her to say, "I don't want to come to school today" using her newfound foreign language skills. This 11 year old LITERALLY responded with, "Ching chang chong!"

I sent her to the dean's office for refusing to work and man, OH MAN, did it work out perfectly. She sat down with the dean who tried to pry more information from this student...

Only for the dean to explain to the student she herself is half Japanese and attended school in Japan. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when the student heard the dean speaking ACTUAL Japanese to test the students' knowledge of the language.

The student eventually said she only knew a few Japanese words, which devolved into her admitting the entire story was a lie to get out of doing an assignment. On the second day of school. And lies like this went on allllllllllll year long. So many hilarious, yet equally sad, stories from that year that I still laugh at eight years later....

Image credits: 8MCM1

However, educators need the proper support as well. They need to be paid a stable wage and receive proper training to constantly improve their qualifications. Support from their fellow teachers and students can help keep them motivated to keep on trying their best. Meanwhile, everyone has a responsibility to take care of their health, eat well, and get enough sleep so they’re not burned out and exhausted. You can’t deal with pork chop fiascos well if you barely slept the past month!

#16

Jesus my mom. There was a stench in the classroom but they couldn't figure it out for months. A boy was making POOP balls in his desk. Rolling up his turds and putting them where pencils would go on the sides. She has completely blacked out this whole thing.

Image credits: Necessary_Sir_5079

#17

South Side Chicago: There was some kid munching down on a T-Bone steak in class. The succulent, delicious meat was distracting the other students, so they sent him to the office to finish it off! Unclear if he was going for the name "T-Bone". No idea how this errant T-Bone was obtained, but it look and smelled like it was freshly made.

Image credits: ooo-ooo-oooyea

#18

Tossing a chair at a fellow student's head because they didn't want to let them cheat. Then the follow up with the lovely mother who could not grasp that her kid was being suspended and that she would have to pay medical bills. The other student had a deep gash on his shoulder and I was bruised on my left side from trying to intervene.

Image credits: lianavan

#19

One student bit another student in the arm. He was shocked that I kicked him out because he was "just playing". He left teeth marks in her arm.

This was a 9th grader.

Image credits: Gneissisnice

#20

Kid in boarding tried to cook a whole raw chicken with like 5 minutes in the microwave. A whole chicken.

Image credits: Deet1950

#21

I was in my final trainings to be a teacher and working at an elementary school, first grade class and one of my duties was helping kids struggling with their reading.

One girl named Taylor told me that her mom told her that she was too pretty to know how to read. She was dead serious. I end up calling her mom to get this sorted and she comes to the school after the kids had left and tries to f**k me to get her daughter better grades.

#22

Not a teacher, but my dad was a bus driver, and one day, this kid gets on the bus, sprinting, and nearly knocks himself out on the chair. When my dad goes over to see what's happened, he realises the kid had no pants on. The mother, who drove off in her car extremely quickly, had literally sent this poor kid to school with no pants on. My dad got a student he knew really well to sit next to this kid and comfort him, and also make sure everyone else wasn't a******s. My dad, when he finally got to the school, walked this kid into the office and asked for a spare pair of pants. Poor kid. That mother was an a*****e.

Image credits: bananaboy65

#23

My moms been a teacher for many years. Apparently one of her middle school students had been coming in day after day just absolutely filthy wearing the same dirty clothes. She notifies the office and they talk to her and the parents. Apparently the family has been living in an RV with no running water (I’m not sure if this is due to homelessness or what-we’re in a rural area and it’s not uncommon to see people living this way). The school offers to let the girl shower at school and they even have a special “shop” of sorts (free to the students of course) for clothing and things like hygiene items. The only issue is the school needs the parents permission to let her shower there at the school and the parents won’t grant it. I’m not sure why. And yes CPS has been notified several times, but they must be deeming the family’s dwelling habitable in some way, though I’m not sure how the parents are getting away with such horrid obvious neglect. My mom says the kid is just so sweet but she smells bad and looks even worse and she’s afraid the bullying will start soon :/ the area I live in is absurdly poor and very rural so sadly such instances are not unusual.

#24

He stole a door.

Image credits: RascalCreeper

#25

2 stories:

taking a test, a student sighed and I smell alcohol on his breath. Asked him if he'd been drinking... he said no he had liquor flavored gum...I said at can I have some... he said he'd left it in his car.. go to the office and tell them you need to go to your car. Called to make sure he stayed at school and didn't drive off

Again during a test a student decided he wanted to see what would happen if he put a paper clip in an outlet, there was a flash, the paperclip clip flew across the room and my clock shorted out. Had a quick lesson about electrical current, then off to the office

#26

Not a teacher, but a former classmate decided it was a brilliant idea to stay inside the classroom during a break, open the teacher's laptop, pull out every single key and put them all inside a transparent bag next to the trash can

Image credits: fede142857

#27

School Counselor here who is forced against their will to mostly remediate behavior.

2nd grader coming back from suspension shouting I’m back mother f**kas upon returning into the room.

4th grader calling other students parents to tell on them. (I thought it was pretty creative despite everyone else being up in arms).

3rd grader having a meltdown about getting parents called. Not in itself a big deal. But the student then shouts, “and they take all their parenting advice from Britney! I hate BRITNEY!”

2nd grader kicking the cane out from beneath an elderly sub.

4th grade gambling ring based of the schools token economy.

5th grade “snack bandit” who covertly sold snacks because the schools food is so bad. (Again not sure why everyone was up in arms).

I can go on…

Image credits: Cardboard_dad

#28

7th grader in north Philly went into the teachers “lounge” (which was a small room that had a fridge and a table that sat 4-6 teachers) took a teachers meatball hoagie out of the fridge and threw it down the fire exit stairs.
This kid had 12 pages of single space 10pt times new Roman of write ups in power school. Never got expelled, just wasn’t allowed to enroll after 8th grade. This kid was a complete a*****e.

#29

Kid shows up to class 10-15 minutes late to a 40-minute period. 7th grade. Shawn: “Sorry Ms. G I was in a bad mood and I didn’t want to bring it to class.”
Me: “Hi Shawn, I will still have to count you tardy. You’re extremely late and I need to know where you are for safety reasons. In the future there’s a counselor request form on my GoogleClassroom page you can fill out.”
Shawn: “Okay thanks”
Things went normally for about 10 minutes, until another student shot a rubber band. It didn’t hit anyone but Shawn decided to take justice into his own hands. In the middle of me giving instruction he gets up, walks slowly across the room (I assumed for a tissue) and smacks the other student across the face.

Image credits: Pretend_Dog_2253

#30

'Student jiggling ear by the lobe..."oh man, I feel it." Air soft bb falls out of ear onto desk." "WOW that's been in there for two years!" I was afraid to tell my mom when it happened...

#31

Caught a kid playing LoL on his laptop during evening study. Moved to confiscate it (per school policy) and he slammed it shut, leapt onto the table, dashed over several computers like a f*****g spider to the window and tossed his own damned laptop outside. We were on the third floor so of course it shattered.

It wasn’t the last time he smashed his own property rather than give it up for an evening. He was 17 at the time.

#32

A boy threw a (raw in the centre) roast chicken into our staffroom. Opening the door and pausing to throw the chicken slowed him down long enough for us to see who did it.

How do you mostly roast a chicken, and why bring it to school?

#33

My wife is a high school teacher. She was teaching a lower-level math class, and she had a student who was probably too smart for the class, but too lazy (or too "cool") to take a harder class.

One day, out of boredom, he was throwing his pencil up at the ceiling. On the third or fourth try, it got stuck. So he threw a pen to try to dislodge it. Didn't work. He then threw his notebook at it. Missed again.

So he stands up on the desk-chair-combo, takes his notebook, jumps in the air, and swats at the pencil. Pencil fell to the floor.

He lands on the desk, which (if you remember those desk-chair-combos) is not supported by the chair's center of balance. He falls off the desk and lands on the floor.

Oh wait, did I mention the lock box on his ankle? I think I left that out. The lock box pops off and lands on the floor.

He looks for a second, says "OMG Mrs Hymie0 I have to go to the office the police are coming to get me," grabs the lock box, and sprints out the classroom door.

#34

Not a teacher but witnessed this happen. Kid had a temper with the teacher in our woodshop class. Well this kid must have gotten really mad so he walked up to the teacher and threw a big piece of wood (about the size of a toilet paper roll) right at his desk. That's the first time I ever heard a teacher use the f, a , and d word in one sentence ever. Dude who threw wood got a 3 week suspension and turns out he got kicked out from the class.