Top 20 WORST Mistakes Made by Teachers
Being a teacher is hard, but these mistakes were definitely avoidable! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the times teachers made the worst decisions on the job you can think of.
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00:00The middle school teacher removed from class accused of leading a secret life.
00:04Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the times teachers made the
00:09worst decisions on the job you can think of. I said to them, you know, is there anything
00:13that I can read you that you'll get interested in? And they said, well, how about you actually
00:17try and write a book about us? Number 20, inappropriate math question.
00:22Word problems are a good way to help make mathematical concepts more understandable
00:27for students, but this is not an ideal example of one.
00:31In the ninth grade class at Middleburg Heights Junior High School near Cleveland
00:35had some references to naked pictures. Ohio math teacher Daniel Rapp gave his
00:40ninth grade students an assignment with a reference to, of all things, sexting.
00:45This explicit question sparked a furious reaction from parents,
00:49who were rightfully outraged that a teacher would craft such an egregiously inappropriate
00:55problem. Rapp was reprimanded, but, following an investigation, allowed to keep his job.
01:05Hopefully, he made sure to keep his assignments as unproblematic as possible
01:11after this unfortunate incident. Number 19, terror attack assignment.
01:17Encouraging students to use their imaginations is great. That is, to a point. An Australian
01:23teacher gave her year 10 class an assignment in decidedly poor taste. They were tasked with
01:29imagining they had to plan a terror attack as effectively as possible.
01:33It's not acceptable. That teacher should be sacked effective immediately.
01:38It's pretty easy to see why this rubbed so many the wrong way.
01:42I don't really appreciate planning an attack on my own country, whether it be
01:45for an assignment or not. Thankfully, the school administration
01:49stepped in, cancelling the assignment and speaking with the teacher about its inappropriateness.
01:54Some have argued that while the teacher may have been well-intentioned when crafting the assignment,
01:59she ultimately shouldn't have given it to her students.
02:09Number 18, Facebook posts.
02:11Venting about your job on social media is a common, understandable practice.
02:19But if you're not careful, the wrong person can easily see your grievances.
02:31That's what happened to June Talvedy-Seiple, a Massachusetts teacher who
02:35lost her job after making negative comments about her job on her personal Facebook page.
02:40These included remarks about students and their parents that weren't received too warmly.
02:49Though she thought her messages were restricted to her modest
02:56friends list, her privacy settings weren't as tight as she assumed.
03:01Talvedy-Seiple, and likely many others, learned a very important lesson about social media smarts
03:07from this experience.
03:11Number 17, Candy Crush Chaos.
03:15If you've ever played Candy Crush Saga, you know it's notoriously addictive.
03:24However, one Indian teacher seems to be especially attached to the mobile game.
03:28App usage records, checked on assistant teacher Priyam Goyal's phone,
03:33revealed he would spend close to two hours a day playing Candy Crush on his phone.
03:38Other significant portions of time, in a five-and-a-half-hour school day,
03:42would be spent talking on the phone and surfing social media.
03:46Goyal was suspended for prioritizing his phone over his students.
03:51Maybe he could try teaching a class on how to play Candy Crush.
03:56Number 16, Teaching Under the Influence.
04:00The first day of school can set the tone for the rest of the term.
04:03The first day of school can set the tone for the rest of the term.
04:07So it's good to start it off on a high note.
04:09However, Oklahoma third-grade teacher Kimberly Coates went down an unfortunate path,
04:15kicking off the new school year with some alcohol.
04:27After she was reported for exhibiting strange behavior,
04:30she was questioned and charged with public intoxication,
04:33due to failing to pass a breathalyzer.
04:43Substance use disorder is, unfortunately,
04:46not uncommon in a stressful and demanding field like teaching.
04:50And this story is a sad reminder of what it can lead to.
04:56Number 15, Impromptu Sword Fights.
04:59One of the most vital parts of learning chemistry is safety.
05:04However, New Mexico chemistry teacher Loviata Mitchell doesn't seem to have gotten the memo.
05:17In a lesson about metal and melding,
05:19Mitchell had her high schoolers fight with samurai swords.
05:23If that already sounds like a bad idea, they didn't have any protective gear either.
05:28One student was left permanently disabled after getting hit by a sword,
05:32and Mitchell tried to cover up the incident.
05:41A lawsuit was filed against Mitchell and the school district.
05:45Between this and Breaking Bad,
05:46Albuquerque chemistry teachers really deserve better representation.
05:52Number 14, Giving Kids Melatonin Gummies.
05:56Working with kids can be exhausting, especially when they're kindergarten age.
06:01But that doesn't mean teachers should be giving out supplements to them.
06:15In Texas, it was revealed that a special education kindergarten teacher
06:19was giving her students melatonin gummies to calm them.
06:22This led to students coming home lethargic and exhausted,
06:26without parents knowing exactly why.
06:32Once the truth was revealed, the teacher resigned.
06:35Though you might think of melatonin as a benign sleep aid,
06:39overdosing can and does happen to children.
06:42Hopefully, the parents and children alike are both sleeping peacefully after all this.
06:52Number 13, Inappropriate Turtle Feeding.
06:55The death of an animal can teach a young person a lot about the cycle of life,
06:59but usually it's not anywhere near this graphic.
07:07Idaho teacher Robert Crossland fed a terminally ill puppy to a snapping turtle,
07:12right in front of his students.
07:14Unsurprisingly, this caused widespread outrage,
07:27leading to Crossland being charged with animal cruelty and the turtle being euthanized.
07:33Crossland was ultimately acquitted and able to keep his job,
07:36and his students have since come to his defense.
07:39Still, we're guessing he'd much rather be in the classroom than in the courtroom.
07:52Number 12, Insensitive Lesson.
07:55A topic as serious as the slave trade needs to be handled carefully in the classroom,
08:00and certainly not like this.
08:02I can't imagine the humiliation that those students felt.
08:06In a lesson about slavery, Bronx social studies teacher Patricia Cummings
08:10used black students as literal props,
08:14having them lie face down on the floor as part of a demonstration.
08:17It was alleged that she had stepped on at least one student's back.
08:21She was fired for the incident, but she didn't stop there,
08:24filing a $120 million lawsuit against the New York City Department of Education
08:29and her lawyer announcing plans for a $1 billion class action suit.
08:36Number 11, Unauthorized Art Business.
08:40Art classes can help students to hone their creative abilities,
08:43but this Canadian teacher sought as a way to line his pockets.
08:47They put their heart and their soul in the artwork,
08:50and they get an A, a B, a C, or a D on it, but he's getting $118 in his pocket.
08:57Quebec art teacher Mario Perron had students make creations in the style of renowned artist
09:03Jean-Michel Basquiat, and then he tried to sell them online in a store discovered by parents.
09:09Some of the price tags for these works from 96 different students were listed at over $100.
09:15A lawsuit was filed against Perron and the school board for this breach of trust.
09:26As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and this story, even more.
09:36Number 10, Would You Like Fries With That?
09:39There's nothing wrong with a teacher guiding troubled students with their career choices,
09:43but have a little tact while doing it.
09:47Well, the teacher, or teachers in this scenario, definitely did not have tact.
09:53They just stapled a McDonald's job application to their students' failed tests or assignments
09:58and called it a day. There are actually multiple versions of this story online,
10:03so we have to assume it's a common practice for fed-up profs to encourage failing students
10:09towards the food service industry, something that's more than a little insulting to fast-food
10:14employees. However, if it encouraged even one student to try harder, hey, maybe it's not all bad.
10:32Number 9, The Sweet Smell of Racism
10:35There are certainly enough tormentors in school to go around. We don't need teachers
10:39getting involved in the act, too. At an elementary school in Swansea, Wales,
10:44schoolteacher Elizabeth Davies was in charge of a group that included a large number of
10:48Bangladeshi students. Claiming the kids constantly smelled of curry, Ms. Davies made a habit of
10:54spraying them with air freshener. Her teaching assistant said she suspected Ms. Davies was
11:00guilty of racism and would often smugly say that there was a waft coming in from paradise.
11:09As a result, she was summarily sacked. Number 8, Our Lips Are Sealed
11:15Silence is golden, but this is ridiculous. One exasperated Florida teacher took this
11:21to the extreme, however, when she taped a disruptive student's mouth shut.
11:25And when the poor girl had to remove the tape to cough, the teacher didn't miss a beat. She
11:32simply put the tape back and muttered, what happens in my classroom stays in my classroom.
11:39Or in this case, on the local news. Unfortunately, this isn't even the only teacher taping a
11:46student's mouth shut story circulating online. But let's be clear, this will only result in
11:51a sticky situation for the offending educators. Number 7, Dirty Dancing
11:57This student from Stovall Middle School in Houston, Texas will likely never forget about
12:01his 15th birthday. That's when his 42-year-old teacher decided it would be a good idea to give
12:11him a four-minute full contact lap dance in front of the entire class. And by all accounts, it was
12:18a very explicit dance. As if it wasn't already inappropriate enough, she capped off the whole
12:24performance with the words, I love you baby, happy birthday. Yikes. Miss Felicia Smith was
12:30subsequently arrested for an improper relationship with a student and was sentenced to three years
12:35probation. Number 6, I'm Rubber, You're Glue
12:40Exasperated that one of her students would not focus on his work and kept calling her rude names,
12:46our teacher Linda May reached the end of her rope. According to court transcripts, yes, this
12:56went all the way to court, the student banged a glue stick loudly on a desk. To give the student
13:02a taste of his own medicine, Miss May took the glue stick and did the same thing right back,
13:08except she accidentally hit him in the hand, drawing blood. She was ultimately acquitted
13:15of the assault charges, but even so, we assume she still wishes she had glued him to his chair
13:20in detention instead. Number 5, Risqué Writing
13:25We get it, getting a kid to read is like pulling teeth. Well, a UK teacher known to her students
13:31as Miss Rusty solved that little problem. To encourage her troubled class to develop an
13:38interest in literacy, she wrote an erotic novel. Well, actually, it was worse than that. The
13:50characters were modeled after her and her students, and they also engaged in drug use and criminal
13:56activity. Ultimately released online, the novel
14:08Stop, Don't Read This caused a big kerfuffle, leading to the termination of Miss Rusty's
14:14employment, but she did get her 15 minutes of fame. Number 4, Trapped in the Closet
14:19What's an appropriate punishment for children at school? Time out? Detention? Lock them in a closet?
14:26Uh, no, definitely not the last one. Well, one teacher at a Manchester,
14:34England school thought that was a good idea. Unfortunately, one of the students she kept in
14:39the storage cupboard was an 11-year-old with dyspraxia, a developmental coordination disorder
14:44that can affect motor skills, speech, and more, making learning difficult. The teacher decided
14:50he wasn't writing fast enough, so she sent him off to the closet. In fact, the poor boy told his
14:59mother that he'd been locked in the closet alone for at least an hour at a time before.
15:04Number 3, Sex Ed, Up Close, and Personal To celebrate the arrival of summer,
15:11and to commemorate their time in the fifth grade, California elementary school teacher
15:15Crystal Del Fonte put together a DVD compiling the best moments of the school year.
15:30Unfortunately, she sent them home with both a memento and a crash course in sex ed. Yes,
15:36she accidentally included one of her own very personal videos on the DVD. When families
15:42innocently sat down and selected one of the options on the menu screen, they were taken
15:46to a shot of Ms. Del Fonte naked and pleasuring herself on a couch. We're sure it was an honest,
15:54albeit really stupid mistake, but it still prompted plenty of birds and bees talks.
16:00Number 2, Removing Hearing Aids One of the great things about technology
16:05is that it can allow students with disabilities the same opportunities as others. For example,
16:11hearing aids can help let students with hearing disabilities hear just like their fellow students.
16:18However, in a Reddit thread that answered the question,
16:21who was the worst teacher you've ever had, one student, who was deaf, recounted the story of how
16:27his sadistic teacher used his hearing aids against him. In order to punish the child in question,
16:33Mrs. Barron would frequently remove his two hearing aids to isolate him from the others.
16:38She'd then force him to go sit in the hallway by himself.
16:52Number 1, Part-Time Problematic Podcaster Depending on the context,
17:07a teacher having a side gig as a podcast host might sound like an endearing story,
17:12but there's nothing charming about this.
17:21Often discussing what she sees as the failings of the education system,
17:26on her podcast called Unapologetic.
17:28In 2018, Florida Middle School social studies teacher Diana Volitich came under fire when
17:34it was revealed that she hosted a podcast where she espoused racism, anti-Semitism,
17:40and other bigotry. Using a pseudonym, Volitich brazenly talked about how she would share her
17:45vile views with her students. When she was caught, she claimed her offensive show was an act of
17:54political satire and exaggeration. Unsurprisingly, she submitted her resignation
18:00the following month. Do you have a bad teacher story? Let us know in the comments.