Teachers Share The Most Awkward Moment They’ve Had In Class

Teachers Do What Parents Can’t

“I am pretty sure I witnessed the most awkward moment in a teacher’s career.

I was in my high school biology class, and we were going over punnet squares. The teacher handed out a worksheet on trait inheritance and gave us the rest of the period to finish it.

About 15 minutes later, a girl in the class broke down sobbing as she found out she was adopted because it was impossible for her to inherit her appearance from her parents. Later I found out the parents actually thanked my biology teacher as they didn’t know how to tell her that she was adopted.”

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When Awkward Turns To Disturbing

“On the final day of class of an introduction to photography class I was teaching in college, a girl turned in pictures in the which her younger sister had a black eye and her grandmother’s hand look messed up.

I asked about the theme and how she faked the look of abuse to which she said they were not fake. She then went on to tell us in detail how she hit her sister and BURNED her grandmother’s hands. At first, we all thought she was joking, but as she went on, it was obvious it was not.

Everyone was speechless, I was completely at a loss. All the other students turned to me as if I could just blurt out what everyone was thinking. I stopped the discussion and moved on to another student’s project.

Later, I reached out to her advisor to inform them of the incident. I never heard back about any developments – not surprised as discussing students amongst faculty is not allowed.”

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They’ll Never Forget The Moment Their Teacher Exposed Them In Front Of Class

“During my sixth-grade health class, everyone was sitting in a circle, and the teacher was talking about getting a stiffy and how they were completely normal. It was an enlightening discussion until I felt myself starting to get one of those random feelings, so I decided to employ the old backpack-on-the-lap technique and continue with my day.

My teacher then started to talk about ways to hide them, like placing a backpack on top of it, and everyone in the circular turned to look at me, noticing I had a backpack on my lap.

I got super red and everyone started laughing, and I’ll never forget the moment Ms. Gomez exposed me in front of the whole class.”

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Well, That’s One Way To Start Your Teaching Career

“A female colleague and I caught two grade 11’s hooking up in a stairwell.

They weren’t just making out or feeling each other up. It was full-blown banging over the stair railing.

I was a wreck behind the ears of the 22-year-old first-year teacher. I was shocked speechless that these kids would do this because I taught at a higher end traditional Catholic high school with fancy uniforms and everything. The students were upper middle class, but not snotty or snooty. Well behaved and polite. I was called ‘Sir’ by kids barely three years younger than myself.

My colleague, who as a 20-year veteran teacher, didn’t miss a beat. She stopped maybe 10 paces away and cleared her throat really loudly. The kids jumped and scrambled to get their underwear up (in the case of the girl) and trousers done up (in the case of the male).

They each received one week of suspension, one month of detention, and mandatory weekly counseling sessions with the visiting priest. That last part was probably the worst.

Personally… well, I’m no longer a Catholic, and even when I was, I was not a ‘good’ Catholic by any stretch of the word. If it were up to me, I probably would have hit them with a few weeks worth of detention and a called home to their parents.”

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They Made Her Life A Living Nightmare

“My middle school orchestra teacher was young, pretty, down to earth, loved all her students, and we loved her. She was just an all-around great teacher. She even let all the classes vote on which songs we learned. We played Led Zeppelin, Daft Punk, Michael Jackson, all kinds of stuff we liked. It was a blast, and it was everybody’s favorite class.

The high school orchestra teacher, however, was a fat old witch. She constantly screamed and yelled like a drill instructor if we messed up. She chose boring old Christian gospel music for us to play. She also played favorites with students too. Some of the students were little angels who could do no wrong, but the rest of us were spoken to like hoodlums who were up to no good.

About three months into the school year, the entire class turned on her and made her job a living nightmare. We all stopped caring and would intentionally mess up the songs because we knew it ticked her off. It all climaxed one fateful day when she stopped conducting to scream at one of the violinists because he was playing the wrong notes, and the kid screamed right back at her, told her she was a horrible teacher, called her every dirty word in the book, and finished by placing his violin on the ground and walking out of class. He was followed by like 10 or 15 other kids. She broke down into tears and ran into her office. We were left in a room of probably like 50 ninth graders holding musical instruments, with no idea what to do. Everybody was dead silent. All you could hear was the sound of her sobbing in her office. She came out a few minutes later and very timidly continued the lesson, she never yelled like a drill instructor again. She had been defeated.

If I remember correctly, it was her last year teaching at that school. I’m not sure if she quit or retired, or moved to a different school or what, but looking back on it, she was very passionate about music, an extremely talented musician, and had an excellent singing voice.

In her early days, I’m sure she was great at teaching, but it probably just wore her down over time. She could be pretty nasty though. Whatever she’s up to now, I hope her talent is being put to better use.”

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The Reason You Don’t Write Your Sister’s Book Report

“My sister definitely caused some awkward moments in her second-grade class.

Over the summer, my sister, my mom, and my 14-year-old brother came over to hang out a lot. She brought over a paper that said she had to do some summer reading and would be doing a small report on whatever book she chose during the first week of school.

She brought the paper over maybe a week before school was set to start and she asked me if I would help her with it. So I said sure, but I don’t have many books in the house.

My sister came back with the only book in my house that had pictures, a nonfiction memoir from different members of Hitler Youth. My mom told me it was okay, as long as I dumbed down some of the reading material to her level, she wrote her report and all was good, or so we thought.

During my sister’s second week of school, my mom called me around 11 am one day and told me the school wanted to do a meeting with both of us. When my sister finished reading her report out loud, she told the whole class: ‘My sister read me this book. She loves Hitler. She also has a bunch of books on how to murder people [true crime] but she won’t read those to me.’

It seems like it would be an awkward situation for any teacher.

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It Was A Tough Day For Teacher and Student Alike

“My dad passed recently so my grieving process is still pretty fresh, and I’m working through it as best I can.

I teach preschool, and a lot of the times the kids will say they miss their mommy or daddy, so I’m used to that already. However, last week one of my new students told me that he misses his dad, and I said, ‘I know you do, hun. I miss my dad too.’ He went quiet for a minute and then he dropped: ‘My dad is died.’

Not dead. Died. He wasn’t old enough to fully structure a sentence and had to explain that his dad passed away. My co-teacher kind of stopped in her tracks, not really sure what to do, so I just scooped him up and hugged on him and told him that my daddy died too and it was okay to be sad.

What made it more difficult was that the theme for that week was ‘Families.’ It was hard for both of us.”

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Just Another Day Teaching Teenagers

“When you teach junior high and freshman students, you get piles and piles of these awkward moments.

I could tell you about the chubby kid who loved pro wrestling that tried to do a Shawn Michaels pose and ended up splitting his pants in the middle of the gym. He then, face beet red, ran to the locker room, the large hole in his pants now revealing that he was going commando. The same kid would later get in big trouble for streaking and having to be tackled to the ground by a geography teacher.

There was also the time the shy, yet very pretty young girl who decided she wanted to ‘come out of her shell’ and said that starting next week she was going to try to fit in and begin to dress like the rest of the popular girls did. Keep in mind, before this she wore no makeup, had frizzy hair, and wore huge baggy hoodies year round. Monday rolled around, and homeroom began, and in she walked, wearing more makeup than a stage actress, and a button up shirt that was about two sizes too small. And no, she wasn’t fat, it just turns out that underneath those baggy hoodies she was absolutely stacked. And the buttons on her chest were hanging on by a prayer. She was clearly mortified by the newfound attention, stares, and side conversations that were clearly about her… which culminated when one of her shirt buttons popped off and whacked a cheerleader in the back of the head. The cheerleader made a big issue over it and gave her the nickname ‘cow’ for the next couple of weeks.

And of course, I couldn’t forget about the time a kid nearly had to go to juvie because he found kids hooking up in the bathroom, and (from outside of the stall) filmed it on Snapchat so he could have proof that it happened. He claimed that the teachers wouldn’t believe him if he just outright told them. (He was normally a pretty bad kid, so he wasn’t completely wrong). Well, evidently the act of filming that sort of act between minors in any way can be considered child smut, so he almost ended up in more trouble than the couple who committed the act in the first place.”

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That’s Not What They Expected To Hear

“I asked my students what they had done over the weekend. The replied with the usual stuff you’d expect from a class their age. That is until one of my students raised his hand enthusiastically.

He was super bright, so I was expecting something interesting, but he announced that his mother ‘had a miscarriage’ over the weekend.

He apparently didn’t know what that meant because he was very excited about it. Yea, I had to have an extremely awkward conversation with him and his mother after that one.”

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Despite How It Looked, He Wasn’t In Trouble

“One of our boys had a broken zipper in his pants that somehow his mother didn’t catch.

He also had a hole in his underwear.

We had to send the poor guy to the nurse, all the while assuring him over and over that he wasn’t in trouble and had to have someone sit with him while we waited on his mother to bring new pants.

These were autistic kids, and he was very low functioning. He was convinced we were sending him to detention and calling his mom so he’d be grounded.”

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This Guy Just Couldn’t Escape The Awkwardness

“When I started teaching, I was hired at an all-girls school as a 21-year-old biology teacher.

I had just moved to the city and was pretty green about all the other schools. Unbeknownst to me, my clothing on the first day matched the uniforms of our brother school.

So there I was, wondering why all my students, all young women barely five years my junior, were walking in and out of the class with a very odd face.

Eventually, one of them asked what I was doing there. I explained to them I was the teacher, but they laughed it off and thought it was a joke.

Luckily, the lab tech came in and asked the girls to sit down and that I was indeed their new biology teacher. She started laughing and looking at me because she had now noticed what had happened.

The first day of my teaching career started with 20, 17-year-old girls and a lab tech laughing at me due to a fashion faux pas.

The embarrassment didn’t stop there. I lied to my students for the first few years of teaching about my age, but they finally found out when my colleagues wrote ‘Happy 23rd’ on the board one day.

Then the entire school found out my age; things got a bit awkward after that. Being a young guy at an all-girls school is an exciting job setup.”

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Don’t Say One Thing And Expect Another

“I was in a Women’s History class during my first college semester, and the class was going okay up until this point. The teacher clearly had an agenda with this subject, but most of us just listened and studied our notes. It came time for us to take our midterm, and the entire class failed. The average was 60%, with one girl getting a 90 and the rest in the low 50s. The next day, half the class dropped out and the rest of us tried to discuss what happened. The teacher was livid, and explained how none of us studied and that we weren’t taking the history of women seriously.

We pointed out that she gave us subjective questions to answer (ex. ‘In your opinion, why was slavery so popular in the 1700’s?’). She denied that and said she only wanted factual answers. She said us putting our opinions on it was skewing the facts of the matter when that’s what she asked for. Keep in mind, we backed up our opinions with facts, but she just wanted facts and no opinions even though she literally asked for them in every question. We explained to her how the entire class flunked the test and it was because she asked for objective answers after giving us subjective questions.

She was quiet after that, and the entire class was so awkward because she refused to admit she did anything wrong and blamed us failing on our ‘close-minded thinking.’

We only had about 10 kids at the end of that class, and I don’t blame anyone dropping out.”

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He Was A “Magnet For Awkward Situations”

“Oh, boy I’ve got a few. I seem to be a magnet for awkward situations.

In the sixth grade, there was a low functioning autistic kid in our class, who didn’t understand physical boundaries or personal space. He dropped his pencil, and I picked it up for him, and he became completely ecstatic, and picked me up in a bear hug and started jumping around and screaming. He was galavanting around the room squeezing me and carrying me, we were both screaming, and the teacher had to pry this kid off of me, and figure out how to tell him he couldn’t do that, all the while I was having a panic attack and trying to figure out what just happened while the class was in hysterics.

In middle school, we discovered that two teachers across the hall from each other, both married, were having an affair. We puzzled this together after overhearing absurd amounts of dirty flirting, and eventually, our suspicions were pretty much confirmed when one teacher interrupted class, to come in and sit in the others lap and flirt. Needless to say, they couldn’t very well explain that one away.

As a freshman in high school, we had a class the school called freshman transition, which was essentially the school’s way of avoiding telling us that only freshmen had homeroom and all the other grades had an off period. Unfortunately, my homeroom ended up in the language department, which at my high school, was notorious for having one great teacher, and several absolute wackos. My first semester, my crazy, white, Spanish speaking drill sergeant of a homeroom teacher felt the need to interject to save me from Catholic girls interrogating me about how I supported gay rights and how that must mean I was gay (they were half right). My second semester, I got stuck with a crazy French teacher. She would call you up in class to get a progress report on your grades, social life, and see if you needed help/counseling. One day, she called me up and before I could even get to her desk, she shouted for everyone to hear: ‘YOU LOOK LIKE ADAM LAMBERT!’ Needless to say, my vague resemblance to Adam Lambert really only led to more gay jokes. It certainly didn’t help that right after that all the girls in my class decided that with a little ( a lot) of makeup and hair product (a ton of hair product), I would look just like him. Being a chubby Adam Lambert lookalike for a day did wonders for my ‘I definitely don’t like boys’ act, and while everyone around me thought it was great, my teachers were quite off-put, and didn’t really know what to tell me to make me less of a distraction.”

Awkward Situations Follow This Guy Like A Plague

“I teach guitar, and we mostly have one-on-one classes. I had one younger student in class playing and another one listening. While I was telling him some really important stuff, I farted. Only the student playing heard it, and we started laughing like crazy. It was still awkward and we didn’t explain it to the other student.

Another time, I wanted to open some windows in the classroom and we had this one tiny window that looked into a tiny courtyard. There were a lot of pigeons there, so when I opened the window, there was THE NASTIEST smell of pigeon poop in the air, and we could only see pigeon poop wherever we looked.

I work in a German-speaking country and German is still new to me, so language misunderstandings happen often. One dad called me on the phone and asked if he could talk to his kid. (He had a class at the time he called) I said: ‘ok’ and hung up. Ten seconds had passed and he called again, asking: ‘Sorry, is my son here? Can you put him on the phone?’ That’s when it dawned on me that he wanted to speak to him on the phone. For some reason, I thought he was at the school and wanted to come into the classroom and have a few words. I told the kid how I got confused in hope that he would laugh. He didn’t.

In the same school, the kids sometimes forget to come to guitar class, so I have to search for them around the school. During the spring/summer days, the kids like to play in the garden. So, I had to search for my student in the playground. When I found him, he was on the football field crying. His teacher wasn’t there, so there were about 15 students and myself all talking at the same time in Austrian German. Some of them were asking me if I would teach them guitar… while my kid was still crying…on the ground.

Their main teacher finally came and was very confused when she saw me (I look 12), so I had to introduce myself as a teacher. After that, I had to wait for another kid to apologize to my kid for pushing him while all the other kids ignored that and wanted to talk to me, asking me if I really knew how to play the guitar.”

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