Being a teacher can be one of the most stressful jobs there is. The constant pressure of trying to remain patient and calm while teaching rooms full of troublesome kids can get the better of even some of the best teachers, causing them to break down in various ways. Here are some of the most intense teacher breakdowns that students have ever witnessed.
A Hands-On Teacher
“I don’t know if it really counts, but our former latin teacher once slapped a kid across the face because the kid made fun of her dead husband. The teacher got suspended shortly afterwards.”
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Torn Apart
“Junior year in university, my genetics professor was in the middle of a lecture when authorities took him out of the auditorium (thank goodness) and informed him that his wife (the dean of our college) had been struck and killed by a motor vehicle that morning. He retreated to his office and proceeded to tear the place apart like a tornado had gone through it. He ripped the top of his desk off its frame, pulled down all of his book cases; books, pages, papers, all sorts of documents and furniture strewn everywhere in pieces. By the time I graduated he still wasn’t the same man as he was before that awful day.”
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A Broken Heart Changed Everything
“I had the same morning tutor from the age of 11-16. She was really, really lovely. She was an English teacher and we always chatted about literature and films. She was always up for a laugh and joked around with us all the time. A few times a year she’d buy a load of food and treats to dish out. Then, when we were about 14 she got engaged. A year later, the relationship was over and she was a wreck. She suddenly got really quiet. Then, one day, we were all talking and laughing but she was trying to get our attention. She couldn’t get the attention, and suddenly burst into tears. Took off her ID card and – in the dead silence of the room – said: ‘I can’t do this.’ She walked out of the room and we didn’t see her again for weeks. She’s now traveling the world. I have her on Instagram, last time I checked she was in Nepal.”
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Finally Pushed Too Far
“In high school our government teacher freaked out on my class. We had a few talkers in the back corner, and they finally broke him. He flipped his lectern over and started screaming at us. He called us the worst group of kids he’d ever had to teach and that he was 110% sure that we were going to be nothings. Then he went to his desk and drank his entire thermos of coffee. A few years later, he was having a retirement party at his house, (I was close friends with his son) he revealed that the thermos was 80% vodka and 20% coffee.”
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Nice Cover-Up
“Maybe not a meltdown per se, but I had a chemistry class that was held in a huge auditorium with really steep stairs. The professor always walked all around the room while we took quizzes and tests. One day he tripped halfway up the auditorium stairs and took a hell of a fall. He landed facedown — unhurt apart from bruises — on the floor and before we could really react he starts banging his fists on the floor and screaming, ‘ENTROPY ENTROPY ENTROPY!'”
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Getting Horrible News
“It started as a normal lesson with the teacher giving the class a lecture. Then his phone rang which happens really rarely but instead of hanging up like he would usually do, he answered. When he hung up, he had the most distraught face I’ve ever seen and stayed silent for close to a minute. ‘I’m sorry, a friend just committed suicide.’ He said before sobbing quietly and excusing himself out of the classroom.”
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Take A Seat
“In primary school some kids were misbehaving and she broke down into tears started screaming and threw a chair. We never saw her again.”
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A Devastating Trauma Brings A Classroom Together
“In my senior year my English teacher was assaulted by a serial rapist. She was going to check her mail and he grabbed her. She was tiny, but she fought him off and he ran when someone came to see WTF was going on. She wasn’t raped, thank god, but she definitely had PTSD – this was in ’89, so she wouldn’t have been diagnosed with anything. I don’t know why she decided to tell our class, but she fell apart when she got about half way through. She wasn’t the only one – there were a couple of big old boys in that class who were both star football players. Gotta say, until this I thought they were just another couple of jock meatheads. They were both in tears. She finished her story. I can’t say that any of us did anything amazing or, actually anything at all, but she didn’t ever have to walk to her car alone and some of the students who lived in the same apartment complex kept an eye on her. They got the bastard who attacked her about a year later. He was a very bad man and nearly killed one of the last women he attacked.”
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A Very Sensitive Substitute
“Year 9 maths class. Our teacher was off sick and an early 20’s substitute teacher came in to cover, she was lovely, kind, friendly, although a bit timid and shy. One girl in our class used a fountain pen to flick ink on a skirt she was wearing one day. Poor woman noticed her do it, didn’t say a word and just went to her desks put her head in her hands and sobs, doesn’t move to 10 minutes at least. Eventually a friend of mine goes to get another teacher. The sub was escorted out, still crying and was seen for the rest of the day just crying in her car, didn’t move for another 4 or so hours.”
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Ay Dios Mio
“I had a Spanish teacher in middle school that was so tired of us turning in broken Spanish on our homework assignments that she screamed at us and called us stupid Americans before throwing pieces of chalk at us one after the other. Another time she got on her knees and started praying the rosary in front of us when a girl said ‘el pollo nugget.'”
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An Uncomfortable Situation
“We had a physical education teacher who sweat like a mofo whenever sexual subjects were raised. He ended up having to be a substitute teacher for one of our sex-ed lessons. We were very aware of his discomfort discussing the subject and asked him lots of in depth questions, making sure we used all the correct anatomical terminology. The guy had a class A anxiety attack (pity no-one had taught us about those), and I was genuinely afraid he was going to have a heart attack. Red-face, profuse sweating, breathing difficulty and a look of primal terror in his eyes. We got the early mark we were fishing for, but I think we did the poor fellow some real emotional damage.”
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Just A Quick Scream
“I was in band. One day, one of the regular always in trouble/disruptive students was being extra disruptive while the director was trying to tell us something important. So after about five different times of going the normal route to get him to settle down, he cracked. It got quiet and then the director bellowed “[Student’s Name]! ARE YOU STUPID, OR JUST DON’T GIVE A SHIT?!, the whole room was quiet, all eyes were now on the disruptive kid who was then trying to hide behind his tuba, then, the director continued with his announcement like nothing happened.”
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Breaking Point
“This was in high school. We had a band teacher. His nickname was Pinky because he had very red hair and pale skin with a red tint. Borderline albino. Every time he got mad his entire face turned tomato red. I don’t remember the sequence of events, but he was already frustrated. Everyone in the room knew to shut up so that we didn’t piss him off. Well, everyone except this one dippy girl. She asked something along the lines of ‘Are you mad’ and kept pestering him. He finally snapped. His face turned that familiar shade of tomato red and he threw the pencil he was using to conduct across the room. He then stormed out, and slammed the door hard enough that it could be heard on the other side of the building. He quit soon after.”
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Mental
“English teacher brought a gun to school. She thought one of her whole classes was trying to kill her. She was in a mental hospital the last time I heard.”
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Hairy Situation
“We had an art teacher in year 7 (11 years old) who would lock himself in the supply cupboards and scream and rip his hair out. It was unsettling..”
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Revealing A Whole New Side Of Herself
“Not so much a breakdown but a ‘break’ in normal behavior for sure. Our freshman English teacher was a small, soft-spoken woman who was kind of known to be a teacher you could walk all over with little (but not no) repercussions. We were in a review session after school and some upperclassmen were just hanging out in the hallways making lots of noise, so she was constantly poking her head out in the hall asking them to be quiet. As we are all very silent reading or something the classroom door absolutely SLAMS shut. So hard the latch didn’t have time to catch and the door bounced back open. The teacher immediately yells ‘Oh hell no!’ kicks off her heels and takes off out the door. She caught up with the kid, who had taken a running start and kicked the door shut, and berated him for a good ten minutes, which we could hear clear as day from the end of the hall. It was like nothing we’d ever heard from her.”
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A Total 180
“In high school, I turned in a form to my science teacher a day late. She screamed at me, walked out the classroom and was gone for nearly an hour. Class had started and everyone had speculations, blaming me for what happened. Teacher comes back, joyful and smiling, says she just needed a walk around the campus to recover.”
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Erased
“Tenth grade was in math class and the teacher was getting frustrated that not everyone was understanding a problem and he made various threats on what he would do if we didn’t figure it out, more homework, tests etc… I kept asking questions because I legitimately didn’t understand and he yelled ‘FUCKSAKE’ and threw an eraser at me. I got up and left. Never ratted him out and next day he was super patient with everyone. I think it was his ‘Oh I fucked up’ moment.”
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Tales Of A Teacher
“I taught public high school for 7 years and have been teaching in a university ever since. This topic makes me remember the time I once broke down in tears when a cell phone rang in class. Or the time I threw up in a trash can, brushed my teeth with bottled water right in front of all 42 of them, asked a janitor to come down and take the trash out, and went back to teaching after my favorite student of all time faked barfing noises because he knew it would make me puke.”
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