Hey, respect is a two-way street, right?

In the power struggle that is teacher vs. students, the teachers are usually in charge and get to call the shots – but there are those special occasions when the kids turn the tables and totally lose it on an educator.

Like they did in these AskReddit stories.

1. Bully

“I had a Spanish teacher who, in order to get kids to like her, would single out a student to make fun of and kind of ‘bully’ for that hour of class. Of course, other students would sometimes laugh, because the class was super boring so it was like a show.

I HATED that. Of course she would pick the shy students who didn’t reply back to her provocation, the low profile type, and of course, she would use the perfect excuse just after being mean like, ‘Oh, it’s just a joke, haha!’

One time a guy who never did anything to anybody was her victim of the day. She picked him as an example to describe a homeless guy in a picture. After 10 (long) minutes, he stood up and left the classroom crying. When she stopped him before his exit, he told her that his dad died the previous night and pushed her away.

Once the door closed behind him, she paused for a second, and then used a whining voice to repeat what he had just said,’My dad just died! Cry, cry, poor baby!’ Before I realized it, she received my book to the face and I called her ‘ugly’ in Spanish.

I got detention for a week, but she stopped picking on students. Oh and she stopped ever talking to me directly, too. As for her, nothing really happened. Teachers need to literally physically hurt a student in purpose and in front of others to get fired from national education in my country.”

2. Nail in the coffin

“When I was a senior in high school I had an AP English teacher that would grade people based on how much she liked them, essentially. I had long hair and stretched earlobes, so she despised me even though I was an excellent student in all aspects.

She claimed I didn’t turn in assignments on time to justify my grades, so I spoke with my guidance counselor and she investigated for me. It turned out she had sorted completed assignments into piles of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and would arbitrarily grade the papers based on who she felt sucked up to her the most that day.

One time I presented a book report on The Odyssey, which was by far the longest and most detailed presentation of the whole class and she gave me a D.

I told her, ‘Forget you, this is the end of your career,’ and walked out because I had sent an identical copy to the guidance counselor. She presented it to the school board, eventually got her fired, and the best part was she was also a driver’s ed instructor and lost her job doing that as well. Apparently, I wasn’t the first to speak up about her, but I was the one that put the nail in the coffin and it felt great.”

3. Snapped

“When I was in high school, a girl absolutely lost her mind on my math teacher. The way class generally went was we’d go in and he’d have the day’s assignment written on the board. He’d spend the first 20 minutes of class teaching new concepts and going over problems, then he’d give us about 30 minutes to work on our assignments and he’d sit at his desk and answer questions. Overall, I really liked this style, but some did not. This girl did NOT.

About 3/4th of the way through the year, she snapped.

The class was no different than any other; he explained the new stuff and did some examples, and then said, ‘Anyone who needs individual help, just line up at my desk and I’ll be happy to talk.’ She fre*king lost it.

‘What do you mean that’s it? I don’t wanna wait in line for 20 minutes, help me now! This is bologna! I hate you!’ She was getting angrier and angrier, and to my teacher’s credit, the angrier she got, the calmer and quieter he got. The calmer and quieter he was, the more furious she would become.

Teacher (calm): ‘I understand you’re upset, how about we go to the hallway and talk about it?’

Student (yelling): ‘No, fre*king help me with this here and now!’

Teacher (calmer, quieter than before): ‘Now, there’s no need for that kind of attitude, we can discuss this civilly and I’m happy to help you any way I can.’

Student (even angrier and louder): ‘FORGET YOU! FORGET THIS! I HATE THIS fre*kING SCHOOL!’

Teacher (still very calm) ‘I’m sorry you’re so frustrated, what can I do?’

Student (screaming as loud as she possibly could): ‘FORGET THIS, GO AWAY!’

incoherent screaming and cursing

That’s when the principal walked in and took the girl out of class. The teacher left for a moment to talk to the principal while we could hear this girl screaming all the way to the office, just every expletive in the book, all directed at the teacher.

When it was all over, the teacher calmly walked back in, stood at the front, and said, ‘Well, if anyone else has a problem with me, I’m happy to discuss it if we can be civil.’ No one said a word. ‘Ok then, anyone who needs help, come see me.’

Class went on like normal after that.

In retrospect, that teacher handled that cr*p like a total pro in every possible way. I never saw that girl in class or in school again, so something had to have been going on to set her off like that. I’ve never seen a student go off like that before or since, and I’ve worked as a teacher and sub for nearly a decade.”

4. Made her cry

“I had a teacher at (private) college that enjoyed calling everybody stupid, saying that we were only studying there because our parents wanted to show how much they earned. There were a lot of scholarship students, myself included, but who cares.

I can’t be quiet when I hear those kinds of things, so we discussed it almost every class. She failed most of the class on the first exam, we fought with the dean, and she let us take another test with another teacher.

Everybody passed.

On the second exam she gave us, the same thing happened, but that time the dean said we were being dramatic. Then the teacher decided that there would not be a test, only a group presentation, and she picked the groups. I got stuck with two lazy guys who did nothing, so I wrote the entire paper and the presentation. Both of them got a 9 (A) and I got a 7 (C-). She did it on purpose.

She wanted to fail me. I argued, didn’t work. She didn’t give me the grade the paper deserved, she gave the grade she knew wasn’t enough for me to pass.

I needed a C to pass the class, and I failed because of a point. I tried to talk to the dean, but she didn’t listen to me so I had to take the course again. I could’ve done it with another teacher, but I chose her. I wanted my revenge. I was the worst student she ever had.

I sat in the first row, always made a fool of her, and once I made her cry.

She’d been having a bad day already and wrote all over the whole board. At the end, she erased everything and started over. Everybody ripped their papers off and started copying again. Halfway through, she stopped, looked at the board, and erased everything again. I said, ‘If you don’t know, get out and let a better person teach us.’

She started crying and left the classroom. The next year she wasn’t a teacher there anymore. She made me lose my scholarship because of that grade, so I do not regret it and would do it again with an extra bit of cruelty. I still don’t know why she started it though. I don’t really understand why she was a teacher if she hated her students, to the point it becomes personal.”

5. Racist

“I had a French teacher in high school who was incredibly racist. I had heard about it from my older sister, but we all brushed off her concerns because she was generally dramatic about everything. But then he actually recited racist jokes in class and told kids not to tell anyone outside the class because it’d be out of context.

He would also give better grades to white kids who worked on the same project as nonwhite kids. Having had enough of it, I decided to withdraw from French as I felt I already knew the language and didn’t need his bullcr*p. I took a free block instead where I worked in the library.

Other French teachers tried to talk me out of withdrawing from the program, but he argued that I wasn’t very good at French anyway so it was probably for the better.

One day one of my friends who was a visible minority came running into the library crying. I don’t remember what he’d said to her but it was pretty culturally insensitive. I marched up to his classroom with her and called him out for his racism, telling him off in French. After that school year, he stopped teaching and returned to France.”

6. Lacrosse coach

“I played lacrosse in junior high, and our indoor coach was one of the teachers. I was the goalie. I don’t remember the circumstances that started it all, since this was like 15+ years ago, but one night after practice, my mother confronted the coach.

They had words about me, in front of everyone.

After that, the coach had it out for me. I showed up to one of our indoor games, ready to play as the only goalie. I was all suited up when she told me I wasn’t going to play, so I asked why.

She said that I had called her some awful names. I was so confused because I’d never said anything about her, ever.

I got undressed and went to find my dad to tell him what happened. He confronted her, but she still refused to let me play, so we left.

I was so infuriated at that woman. Then one day during school I was in social studies when the teacher got a call on the room phone and told me I needed to go down to the main office.

I went down there and coach lady was standing outside the main office, ready to confront me.

She accused me of saying all kinds of crazy things and wanted me to apologize, but I refused since I didn’t do anything. We were basically screaming at each other in the hallway; I was like 13 and this woman was in her 30s or 40s, accusing me of lying, calling her nasty names, and all these things I’d never done.

I stormed away without giving her an apology.

A couple years later, I was on the Varsity lacrosse team playing in a tournament. My old junior high coach was there because our Varsity coach was her boyfriend.

Seemed suiting, as he was a j^rktoo. I quit the school lacrosse team because of him. He was your typical high school varsity coach – hot-headed, works you hard. We were a good team, I get it. When I got put on Varsity, I was the only goalie.

And I was a fre*king great goalie. However, I also did not like the conditioning part of practices – running the mile, running sprints. But ‘lacrosse is a running sport’ as he would tell us all the time.

I was never overweight, I’ve always played sports, but I hated running. I would try to get out of it whenever I could (looking back now, this is probably why what is about to happen next happened).

A bit into my second season on Varsity, sophomore year of high school, he decided to bring up some of the JV/junior high girls onto the team.

Two or three of them. One happened to also play goalie. But she was a few years younger than me and had quite less experience at the goalie position than I did. Anyway, the girls were all good, they did deserve a chance on the Varsity team, but we had really great girls on the team already.

Anyway, for several games he started this new girl in goal. I’m baffled. I’ve never done the team wrong; sure there were bad games, but we’ve all had them. He was even sitting out some of our best players for these new girls.

Ok… My mom finally makes me ask him why I’m sitting out so much. So before a game, I ask him. He says if I was a team player, I wouldn’t be asking such a question. But, again, I’m confused because I know I’m not injured and haven’t played poorly in the past, but he decides this 13-year-old would suffice.

Well, I was getting tired of it and of him yelling at us constantly. Oh, and if we were not doing well during a game, he’d just stop coaching us, walk to the corner of the field, kneel down and watch.

Saying nothing. He was just an overall pr#ck. I finally told him I was quitting. He didn’t seem sorry about it. After I left, I heard some other cr*ppy things he did, like playing a girl who he knew had a concussion (which I think is what got him fired from the position, actually).

He also threw some of the lax sticks at the girls. I get it, Varsity is competitive, but there are better ways to be a coach than he did.”

7. Please help

“A long time ago in 3rd grade, we were having a math lesson and the assistant was helping our teacher out. I wasn’t great at math at that young age, so I would ask her for help and then she would ignore me and move on to a different student.

One day I finally got her attention and asked her if she could please help me.

She said yes but then moved on to a different student, so I got ticked and slammed my fists on the desk. The whole room went silent and I said, ‘I need help on my math, can I please have some help?’

The principal came down and talked to me, asking why I did that since I got reported for being ‘disruptive.’

She was really nice since I’d never gotten in trouble before and I told her what happened. She gave a death-glare to the assistant and had a talking with her. It was the last time she was allowed to assist with a math lesson.”

8. Medical emergency

“My freshman year of high school a teacher wouldn’t let me leave to go to the ER. While peeing in the bathroom, it started burning and I saw that I was peeing out blood instead of regular urine. I called my mom and told her what’d happened, and she told me that she’d come pick me up from school and take me to the hospital.

After all that happened, I went back to class, and my teacher complained that I was late and told me to sit down.

When my mom arrived outside, I told the teacher I had to leave and that it was an emergency.

He told me to sit down, as I was already late to his class, and that I couldn’t leave. I kept on insisting that I had to leave because there was a problem I had to deal with, but he wouldn’t listen.

I got fed up with him and just straight up walked out of class. He called out to me and asked me where I thought I was going, and also asked if I wanted to continue learning in his class. I told him I was going to the hospital, and that everything I learned in his class was self-taught and that he was a totally useless teacher.

When I arrived at the hospital they kept me there for an entire week and ended up diagnosing me with kidney stones. I had to go through an operation to remove them as they were too large to remove through other means.”

9. Good riddance

“When I was in 7th grade there was an old English teacher who really shouldn’t have been working with kids. Sitting in her class was brutal because everyone was walking on eggs shells trying not be the one that she would target out for harassment that day.

She was in her mid to late sixties, and the best way I could describe her is that she was just fully miserable and took it out on her students.

One day I did something to upset her, not sure what it was, but ultimately I was a good student and never really did anything to intentionally upset the teachers. While I can’t remember exactly what it was (probably because it was quite insignificant), I do remember the way she proceeded to treat me.

She walked around handing out an assignment and when she got to me, she just gave me an evil smile and kept walking.

Knowing I would get a zero for the paper if I didn’t do it, I raised my hand and said, ‘Excuse me, I didn’t get a paper,’ to which she replied, ‘Don’t talk to me.’

I told her I needed a paper to do my work, and again, she responded the same.

I went off on her, saying that it was extremely unprofessional of her to tell a student not to talk to her and prevent him from learning. I told her she was disgraceful and that I was going to the principle.

I walked out and marched right down to the office where I told the principal, who then spoke with my mom and she came down right away to formally file a complaint.

Apparently, it wasn’t the first complaint against that teacher, but since she had been tenured it was basically impossible to terminate her. She resigned at the end of the year; I’m assuming it was somewhat of a forced resignation, but either way, good riddance.”

10. A real witch

“My IT teacher (who was actually the French teacher, so completely unqualified) wanted to inspect my work and she ‘accidentally’ deleted the file. I was upset and tried to point out that she just deleted my work.

Teacher clicks delete file Teacher: ‘Whoops, looks like I just deleted your file.’

Me: ‘What the…oh it’s ok, just restore it from the recycle bin.’

Teacher empties recycle bin Teacher: ‘Whoops, looks like I just deleted your file.’

Me: ‘What the heck?!’

She started to shout at me, telling me I should have saved frequently. I shouted back, telling her that wasn’t the issue because she outright deleted the file.

It got pretty heated. My parents were called. We were straight up yelling at each other for a good couple of minutes to the point where we were both in tears. I was about 14 at the time, and she should have known better (I still never knew why she did it).

A few years later my sister had her when she went to that school and she berated my sister, calling her names. What a witch!”

11. Malicious

“I once flipped on my German teacher (I’m German). She obviously didn’t like me and her marks were biased as heck. One time she gave me an F on a poetry interpretation. Grading that is ridiculous since you can just interpret it as whatever you want and the mark depends on the teacher’s mood.

She was 100% malicious.

I always got an A for grammar, because the witch had to give me credit where my work was quantifiably good, but that was it.

Anyways, after handing the papers back out to the students, she did some debriefing about the whole thing, comparing what everyone wrote.

She told the whole class how good my thoughts on the poem were and wanted me to read out loud what I wrote. I just said, ‘You gave me an F!’ stood up, and left.”

12. Small, angry man

“When I was in high school we had this small angry teacher that played rugby, or at least tried to, who was always belittling students to feel better about himself. One day we had phys ed and our teacher couldn’t come, so the little and always moody teacher that played rugby came to replace her.

Little teacher was trying to show off his skills at rugby and making our class play some game where we had to tackle who had the ball.

We didn’t tackle hard enough, so the little guy joined to hit some students and show off his grandness. He was having fun being unstoppable and yelling at us, ‘Is that all you can do?!’ I was kinda mad so I just went running at full speed at him, and he got tackled and hit the ground quite hard.

He was a bit surprised, from that point he acknowledged me as a potential rugby player and then told the rest to be equally brave.

Still, that was something our class laughed about all year.”

13. You think I’m a dog?

“I had a high school English teacher, Ms. Blades, who was ignoring me for a while. It’s worth mentioning that she didn’t really like me for some reason. I wasn’t a bad or annoying kid; in fact, I was very non-confrontational and mostly kept to myself in and out of class, so I don’t know what that was about.

Anyway, one day I had my hand up because I had to use the bathroom. She kept pacing about the room, answering other kids’ questions, but would glance at me and immediately look away.

After about 5 minutes with my hand up and getting ignored (and about to cr*p my pants), I whistled as loud as I could, even though interrupting anyone was completely out of character for me.

Well, once upon a time, I had a chipped one of my front teeth, so I could whistle extremely loud as a result. It was the whistling equivalent of firing a weapon in a closed room. Absolutely deafening.

The entire room got quiet and she snapped her head around so fast.

As her name might suggest, Ms. Blades was staring daggers into my face. Then one kid said, ‘Ooh, he just called you a dog, ooh!’ She gained serious momentum from that one-off and said, ‘Oh, I don’t think so!

You think I’m a dog?! You think I’m a dog?!’ I got sent to the principal’s office for disrespecting an ignorant teacher, and used the bathroom on the way there.”

14. What a story

“One time in high school I threw a book at my math teacher’s head, she fell backward, and slammed her head on the board. She didn’t get a concussion, but was very stunned, enough so that I had time to grab my stuff and bolt away while screaming obscenities at her.

The back story is that my mother is trash and was messing around with my math teacher’s husband.

Of course, the spurned woman wanted to make ME pay for it and turned my life upside down, abusing and demeaning me in school. That day I just snapped.

What saved me from being expelled was that I didn’t storm out of school but straight to the principal’s office, where I said that I’d either switch classes or I would go around saying why the teacher was treating me so badly.

That would have been quite a bad thing for the school, so I was transferred but still treated like a pariah for the remainder of my year there. The j^rkteachers and staff knew I was beaten every frigging day and didn’t do a single thing about it.

May they rot feet first in a lousy 3rd class retirement home.”

15. That’ll show her

“My 2nd grade teacher was Sister Brigid. She didn’t like me at all. One day I was feeling ill, and I asked to use the restroom. She told me I was lying. As she tried to tell me why I was a liar, I vomited all over her shoes.”