Schools are a powerhouse source for drama, rumors, and scandals. Students can get caught up in a lot of mischief, but so can the teachers. These users expose the school scandal that was entirely a faculty member's fault.
Content has been edited for clarity.
Rumors Spread Fast
“When I was in seventh grade, my history teacher had to leave a third of the way through the year because he had been arrested. Originally nobody knew why he wasn’t there but news traveled quickly as one of our classmates was the daughter of an involved officer. Unfortunately with that news also spread rumors, some tame and some very nasty.
The most clear that the story became was that his wife and he had been fighting (they had a rough marriage) and at some point she fell and either hit or landed on one of their children on her way down. She then called the police and accused him of domestic violence and he was detained and pulled into a big legal mess. Ultimately he and his wife divorced and he returned to his job teaching.
Just last summer, something happened to his wife (the rumor was an overdose but it may be just a rumor) and she passed away leaving him with custody of his children. Now I don’t think this man is the greatest teacher, he has a bad habit of grabbing your shoulder as he is walking by and is very insistent on high fives. That said I feel bad for the man. Seeing how he takes care of his children is truly heart-warming and by all accounts he seems to be a great father. I also feel bad for him because even years later there still are rumors that spread about him and the scandal he was pulled into. I wish all the best to him, he is a good teacher and father who found himself in a very difficult situation.”
Speeding For No Reason
“In third grade (the US school year that is approximately 8–9 years of age), we had a substitute bus driver who was horrible at her job. She had a clipboard with all the stops clearly marked on a map right next to the steering wheel, but she kept blowing past them.
Because it was a bus full of elementary school children, the sight of home whizzing by sent the kids into a panic. There were cries of ‘Stop, STOP!’ and ‘Here, STOP, STOP!’ up and down the aisles. Little kids crying, older kids frantically trying to get her attention, total pandemonium.
The woman got it in her head that the children were only making noise to be obnoxious, and she got angrier and angrier. She was driving at a crazy, stupid rate of speed for being in a small residential area. The kids got more and more panicked, and louder. The bus went faster and faster, as if she were stomping on the gas to show us how angry she was.
She abruptly twisted in her seat (not watching the road at all), screamed, ‘YOU WANT ME TO STOP?!? I’LL STOP!’ and slammed on the brakes as hard as she could.
Kids had been half-raised out of their seats to watch out the windows for their houses. Of course, there are no seat belts in a school bus…or, at least, there weren’t back then. Children flew forward, then backward, falling across seats and tumbling down the aisle. I don’t know the total extent of the injuries but I believe one girl had a pretty severe collarbone issue and a boy cut his head open on a corner of the metal first-aid box bolted above the door. I was cowering in a ball in the corner of my seat in a sort of tuck-and-roll position, and in spite of my delicate spinal situation I escaped injury altogether, which was pretty miraculous. (I was certain, when she turned around, that she was going to rear-end a car, and I was bracing for impact already).
It’s annoying that my memory immediately after she slammed on the brakes was a total blank. I want to remember what it was she did. Did she calm down and drive us somewhere we could be attended-to? Did she radio for backup? Did someone call the police? I don’t remember ambulances or anything like that. I just remember eventually getting home and disembarking shakily, my knees knocking together in an almost cartoon-like way.
I do remember the next day at school, though. Our normal bus driver was back, and she was very quiet. One by one, we were called out of class and told to report to the cafeteria. I have a very clear memory of standing in front of a cafeteria table full of School Board members, brown tweed suits and Geraldine Ferraro haircuts staring me down from one side like some weird 80s Last Supper portrait. It was like a hearing, really. Like a formal hearing, and I was a kid so I felt way out of my element. I felt like maybe my parents should have been there with me. I recognized the principal and the vice principal and someone in a police uniform, and that was it. They asked me what happened and wrote down my responses on yellow legal pads. The cafeteria was just beginning to make lunch and the whole place smelled like tater tots and steam, I remember that. And that was it… I was dismissed, and they told the school secretary to call down the next student.
I never found out what happened to that bus driver, and when I asked my mom years later she said she couldn’t remember. I assume they combined the testimony of all the kids who had been on the bus and factored in the two kids (at least two kids) she put in the hospital, combined with whatever evidence, and at the very least fired her. If the policeman was there, I’m sure that there were some sort of criminal charges involved. I have no idea what her problem was, but she was singularly unsuited to the bus driver career path, that’s for sure.”
Everything Changed
“In sixth grade, I had an amazing literacy teacher. He seemed genuinely happy to teach us and never called us out for stupid questions (unless they were about farts. He despised fart jokes for some reason).
One day, for the first time, he was absent and we had a substitute. Most kids just assumed he was sick or maybe his baby daughter was sick and went on with their day, but when he didn’t show up for 2 more weeks, we all got worried.
He showed up for his final day tired-looking and cold. He didn’t have any emotion in his voice and he lacked the usual spark he had.
He never taught at our school again. Nobody knew what happened until I finally got the nerve to ask the (especially honest) vice principal.
She told me the truth, which was that he told his wife of 7 years that he was actually gay and had never truly loved her, divorced her, had a mental breakdown over losing his daughter, drove to a town nearly 5 hours away, broke into a house, and got arrested. This was the weirdest and most insane thing I’ve ever heard, but it was true. I moved away after sixth grade and I don’t know if anybody else ever found out, but it was kept pretty secret while I was there.”
You Could Say She Was Pushed To The Edge
“I had an old teacher who was constantly being bullied by some idiots. One day this guy puts a pushpin in her chair and after she sits all the laughter begins, but she doesn’t react at all and she moves on with the lesson. When the bell rings she stands up, walks towards the door, locks it with her keys, looks at the students and says something like ‘I’m not going to waste my time asking for who did it, so nobody is leaving this class without being pricked’. So as the students are coming out she pricks them one by one in the hand with the same pushpin they put in her chair. She was kicked out of the school right away, and all the students had to take blood analysis in case one of them got some kind of infection.”
The Class Still Thinks Its Their Fault
“My brother’s grade seven class had so many extreme personalities in it and they ran the teachers ragged. The students were not violent or defiant or unkind. But half the class were comedians and they were competitive about this, and the other half encouraged them.
The class was to put on a series of skits for the whole school during an assembly. The students broke into groups to write their own skits. The teacher did not pay much attention since they weren’t bothering him and they seemed to be working. He did not monitor or approve the skits. He didn’t know the content. Students that age require supervision.
The skits were bawdy in nature. There was inappropriate content and innuendo and boys dressed up as girls with beach ball bellies and lewd dances and they sang songs badly that they wrote themselves, and they finished all together singing limericks!
The principal and the other teachers were furious! Such red faces, but we thought it was so funny, even if we did not understand the content. Boys pretending to be pregnant girls dancing back and forth lifting their skirts was funny!
The whole year was like that. Then one day during class, the teacher excused himself and went downstairs into the boiler room and hung himself from the pipes and died.
Just like that.
Nobody talked to his class about this.
Not a word.
The entire thing was ignored and the students were ignored.
This left the class thinking that the teacher did this because of them. They thought this death was their fault.
My brother is 69 now. Even last year he said that for a long time he felt that death was because of the students.
Schools do a good job of debriefing nowadays, but when we were kids nobody talked to us about anything important. One good conversation from a respected adult about mental health issues would have taken care of this.
It was scandalous that the adults in charge were such dreadful educators.”
She Has A Point
“In my senior year, one of the popular football players was killed while he was driving under the influence. It was obviously big news on campus and just a few days after, the school had this giant memorial on our football field dedicated to talking about how great of a guy he was and how he’ll be dearly missed. He also got like 5 consecutive pages in our yearbook dedicated to him.
But not long before his death, a less popular band student had committed suicide and his death didn’t receive nearly as much coverage. He didn’t get a giant memorial and he didn’t get mentioned in our yearbook.
One girl made this giant rant about this double standard on Facebook and it went viral around our campus. Our school was split. Some people praised her for pointing it out, others were upset and said that what she did was ‘inappropriate’. Even one of my English teachers defended the football player. She said that his was death was a ‘tragic accident’ whereas the band student ‘chose to die’ and that there’s a big difference.
This girl went on to leave the school because she was getting death threats from friends of the football player and our entire campus was completely divided over this whole incident.”
But Why Keep It In His Locker?
“21 years ago, at the age of 16, I began working as a topless hostess at a popular lounge/pub. It was a gray area of the law at the time here and as long as I wasn’t handling drinks then it was perfectly legal.
My work establishment was several miles away from our home and our neighborhood and my parents thought it was unlikely that anyone we knew would come into where I was working.
It was my grade 10 year and I was pretty nervous at the beginning. But after a few months I started getting used to it.
One evening on a Saturday a group of my teachers along with the school principal came in for a social gathering. They didn’t know I actually worked there.
It was awkward to say the least, but the manager convinced them and me that it wasn’t something to be ashamed about or to worry about. I continued my shift as normal and they took a table that was still quite visible to my work area.
After a few drinks and some food they noticed that some other patrons were tipping to have me pose or stand with them for a picture. Feeling bold and comfortable with the drinks, they decided to give me some rather generous tips for the opportunity to stand with me in some photos as well.
It was awkward! But it was also a lot of fun and I made nearly $1,000 in tips that evening.
Seeing them the following days at school was a bit awkward but we went on as if it didn’t happen.
About a month later, one of the teachers had a photograph of me and him kept in his personal locker in the teachers lounge. A student broke into the teachers lounge and stole a bunch of stuff including the photo. The photo was passed around school in a matter of minutes.
There was a big school board meeting about it and there was talk of firing the teachers. My parents actually spoke in their defense. Because of my parents defending them, the result was a reprimand on his permanent record. It was decided that no laws were being broken and teachers should have the freedom to have their own social life outside of school and work hours.
Nonetheless, we had to deal with a lot of ongoing rumors and talk among the rest of the students. I nearly quit and changed schools because of it, but I made a decision that it was my personal choice how to live my life and where I worked. I stood up to them and things slowly went away.
It was definitely a character building experience!”
She Didn’t Care About The Students!
“I went to a 6-12 school.
My dean had an ongoing affair with the principal for about a year and it ended up becoming rather toxic for the two with it getting to the point that he almost shot her on one occasion (that she didn’t report to the police like a normal person because she didn’t want him to get hurt by her doing so.)
The final straw though was when he brought a weapon to school and threatened to shoot another dean, and our assistant principal to her in his office. Of course, she contemplated and didn’t even call the police until an hour later after that meeting in his office.
Then we get into a lockdown with not even the teachers aware of the situation, which while it was argued multiple times that it was an ongoing investigation, it was more dangerous to not notify your staff that the dangerous person in your building was familiar with lockdown procedures and had access to every room? On that note many of my classmates actually talked with the dean before the lockdown and he even casually asked them if they knew where the assistant principal was. Well anyway back to the story, fortunately nothing happened that day but the scandal isn’t so much as what happened but craziness in the days that followed.
The school district decided to release to parents that there were only ‘rumors’ of a dangerous person but that no one had a weapon on school grounds. Completely false. It wasn’t until the next day in the evening that we found out through the local news that it was our dean all along. The principal acted innocent the next day when we walked out in protest, we were mainly angry at the lack of transparency from our school and that we had to become dependent on outside news sources albeit any agenda they may try to push with the story. She claimed she cared for our safety first. Yeah sure, unfortunately we were kinda forced to believe her for a while since we didn’t know the timeline of events before the lockdown.
The week that followed had us continuing our protests, even going as far as meeting with the superintendent of our district, the slow unveiling of what happened which lead to my principal resigning her position and revealing everything, and a lot of talking with counselors and teachers we trust as attempts to heal from the situation. Also remember the Sol Pais thing when the entire Denver metro area was on lockdown and then canceled school the next day? Yeah that also happened that week. Fun.
My classmates and I are waiting for an update of the situation but it seems for now, the dean is in prison and the principal is out a job and her husband left her with the news of the affair. Don’t know how the custody of her daughter is like but I hope she’s with her dad, with limited visitation rights for her mom.”
Absolutely Messed Up
“A couple of days ago in English class our teacher decided to tell us a story about one of his former colleagues.
About 15 years ago we had an English teacher called Mr. T. He was the swim coach, track coach, and worked with the girls’ volleyball team for the last 4 years of his career. During volleyball tryouts Mr. T met a freshman, let’s call her Dana. She was sweet, short, brown haired, green-eyed, and very rebellious. And 14. After a couple of weeks of practices Dana and Mr. T started to become closer; he’d drive her home, tutor her, and spend his off periods with her. Fellow teachers and students took notice, but believed it was an innocent relationship. Little did they know things had become intimate pretty fast. The last day of tryouts she had approached him and broached the subject of relationships. Upon finding out he was married with children, she doubled down on her advances, eventually leading to a full-blown intimate relationship.
They continued to participate in intimate relations for all four years of high school, she’d give him some ‘service’, he’d make sure she aced his class.
Upon reflection later, her father recalled how highly she spoke of him; how he was the best teacher ever and made learning so easy! Consequently, he’d march down to the school guidance office every year and petition heavily for Mr. T to be his daughter’s English teacher. If only he’d known… at this point Dana’s father knew Mr. T very well as he’d been tutoring her for years.
For some obscenely stupid reason Mr. T decided to document every single relation he’d had with Dana in a leather notebook. He sketched her bare form and wrote her long winding poems on the subject of her ‘blossom chest’ and ‘innocent heartbeat’. He detailed EVERYTHING they did in that book.
4 years later and it was time for Dana to graduate. As a gift, Mr. T gave Dana the notebook so she could remember him. Would be sweet if we didn’t know the context…
One day Dana accidentally leaves the notebook open in a place where her dad finds it. Side note: Dana’s father is a retired drill sergeant, think the most terrifying man in the US army, now multiply that by 1000. That was Dana’s father.
After reading the whole notebook, in a state of shock, I’d assume, he rushed down the school, threw the book on the principal’s desk and demanded answers.
‘Mr. Dana’s father’ the principal said, ‘Please, let us handle this. I promise we will take full actions, but you need to leave.’
Dana’s father refused, he wanted to release all his rage on Mr. T. Finally, after lots of pleading by the principal he left.
My teacher was the head of the English department at the time so he was the first one to know about it. His phone rang, and an hour later he was in the principle’s office with Mr. T.
‘What the heck is this? You want to explain yourself?’ The principal demanded.
Mr. T’s face drained. White with shock he fell to the floor in a puddle of tears and shame. ‘Pl-please don’t fire me!’ he wailed. Needless to say he was fired immediately and my teacher said he had a hard time not beating the heck out of him right then and there.
Mr. T did not face charges as Dana refused to press charges. I was confused at this note because even though she was 18 by that time, their relationship started when she was 14, two years before the age of consent in my state. He did however, lose his teaching license and will never ever step foot into a school in the US or anywhere else in the world.”
The Nurse Was Up To Something
“Our school nurse was an ‘adult’ star. Now I know this sounds straight out of a bad movie, but I can’t believe it happened too.
So we had this nurse (let’s call her Carla) who had been working at our high school for years. Her son was a student in my grade and they lived on campus (some staff members could get a place to live if their actual home was too far so that’s what they did).
I had gone to see her once before, along with a friend because we were worried about the mental health of one of our peers. After walking out of the infirmary, my friend said ‘dang she has a huge rack’, I immediately dismissed what she said telling her I was heavy chested too- and herself even more so and that even if ‘Carla’ had gotten surgery, she could do what she pleases with herself and her money.
Months later (I’ll remember that week forever, we were coming back to school after a long weekend), someone found a video of her doing … I think you can guess what. Everyone was talking about it, they were sharing links and laughing whenever they saw her son.
Keep in mind that he was 16/17 at the time. Learning that about your mother like that is pretty traumatizing, especially with how horrible people can be in high school (or maybe he already knew??).
Anyways, the teachers heard about everything. They reported to the principal with the news, and a week later, she and her son simply disappeared.
I don’t know where they are now but hopefully they’re ok and the son is better. I had seen him plenty of times with red eyes due to what people were saying about him. Phrases like:
‘Your mom’s a sleeze!’
‘The reason you don’t know your father is because your mom doesn’t know which guy it was.’
The list continues.”