People Share What Made Their Awful Teachers ‘The Worst’ (20 Stories)

Everyone remembers their favorite teacher in school. But the motivating educators who made learning exciting and fun are, unfortunately, few and far between. It’s safe to say there are more bad teachers than good.

Redditors are sharing their stories of their absolute worst teachers ever. User Ara-Rat asked:

“What did you teacher do that made you call them ‘worst teacher ever?'”

And the answers will make you wonder why these people ever chose to become teachers in the first place.

Here are the top-rated “worst teacher ever” stories according to the people of Reddit.


1. Stutter mocker

“3rd-grade teacher got frustrated with a kid’s stutter and started pounding the kid’s desk with a closed fist while mocking his stutter.” –Ashley_619

2. Inferiority complex

“A highschool writing teacher who circled the word “ebbed” and said “not a word!” in bright red ink, this was a creative writing assignment that I was very nervous to show her. Then when I showed her it was a word in a thesaurus she got upset and asked what brand the thesaurus was as if I had an incorrect book. She never liked me and I never really understood why.” –LittleLulu333

3. Star pupil

“In her defense (1993) she was a middle school English teacher. She tried to explain to me that the Sun wasn’t a star. I argued back and she got mad because I wasn’t the “teacher”. You know that feeling when you get real pissed because you know you’re in the right? That was me. But I just ate it. I wished I would have followed through because I would have loved if she had to explain to her boss how the sun wasn’t a star.” –GaryNOVA

4. Professor Hulk

“My old band teacher threw a projector at his students. He left the district later that year.” –DrummingCouch

5. Klepto

“Stole stuff out of desks and blamed the other kids in the class.” –GoneInSixtyFrames

6. The worst

“Get fired for touching boys in the way you think.” –Equ1nox_1

7. Book snob

“The worst were the teachers who would take books away from me and hold me up for ridicule because they disagreed or didn’t approve of the genre or subject material. I was always into science fiction and horror genre’s and many of them didn’t consider it true literature worthy of reading. I remember my father getting into it with one of the teachers who disapproved of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, to which he pointed out it was on the required reading list of a lot of major universities. Dad was awesome like that, and chewed the teacher and principle out for having the temerity to try to stop any student who wanted to read, regardless of what the genre was.” –LovesMeSomeRedhead

8. Bully

“Made a girl cry and insulting her singing and not helping a kid get up after his wheelchair fell over.” –Random_Guy_9201

9. Rage issues

“Smacked a kid for not taking off his hat. The next semester he went ape sh*t and shot his wife. Then he went room to room and shot each one of his kids.” –sovereignsekte

10. Creep

“She tied me to my chair. I was hyperactive, and also 5. She would also hold my hand during formation in the mornings and squeeze so hard my tiny knuckles would crack. When I’d instinctively try to pull my hand away, she’d hold onto it and smile at me and ask me if it hurt.” –MajorasInk

11. Vendetta

“I had an English teacher and I was convinced he gave me low grades just for the fuck of it. Everyone else thought I was just full of it. One assignment I gave it to one of the ‘class pets’ to look at and I asked for improvements. They showed me their assignment and said “there isn’t much of a difference here”. When I read it the only difference was the odd word choice (synonyms) but the structure was the same. They got 80s and 90s and I got 60s.” –neocuchulainn

12. “Witch”

“My biology teacher took my year book away right before summer break. I didn’t put it away in time. That year my parents divorced and I was moving away. I told her this after class and she didn’t care. She kept it until the last day. I didn’t get any signatures. Ended up throwing it away. What a witch.” –Funny-Tangelo

13. Dress code nazi

“Tried to get me suspended for a dress code violation when I was 15. I was in the only dress I owned at the time because I was going to my best friends funeral. She’d committed suicide 2 days before. I was crying and begging her to just let me stay until my mom picked up my remaining friends to go to the funeral. Said teacher then took me to the office and I had to sit in the front office under a tarp until my mom picked me up.” –reinnsreinn

14. Drunk

“She was an alcoholic and threw out the entire classes final assignments. She then proceeded to accuse 20/25 kids we all collectively didn’t hand it in. Another teacher called the principal in because of how loud we were arguing with her. Eventually we called her a drunk and asked the principal to smell her thermos. They both left and we didn’t see her the rest of the semester.” –Siguard_

15. Trashy teach

“He threw one of my books in the trash when he caught me reading them in class. Fuck that guy. I honestly want to kick his teeth in at that moment and it still pisses me off. Don’t throw books in the trash. Wtf.” –Deep_Scope

16. Guess work

“My 8th grade English teacher never published grades and every time I’d ask her about it she’d answer with, “I don’t know, what do you think it is?” –tiny_dino_

17. Oversharer

“My religion teacher in grade 11/12 was not only the worst teacher ever, she was also the worst human being. She would tell us every single detail of her life, down to how many times she’s had sex. I heard all about her divorce. She played favourites with students. One time she took marks off my assignment and when I asked why she said it was because I seemed like a miserable person.” –BriaFaustian

18. Rude

“I was a business major and was taking either macro or micro economics and my professor told me I was a bad person for working in the car industry and only cared about screwing people over. I was a valet for the service department at the time. Literally just parked the cars.” –baseballandmusic13

19. Questionable art

“He was an art teacher with an exhibition in the school’s gallery. One of his pieces was a close up video of his testicles, painted neon green and lit by blacklight, twitching.” –sheiladeep

20. Delusional

“I went to a small school for middle school and we would switch teachers for some of the different subjects. During history class the 6th grade teacher had us reading out loud from our text books and stopped the class to yell at me to “STOP” what I was doing. I was just staring at my book like the rest of the class. She continued to yell at me to “STOP” and I proclaimed that I wasn’t doing anything. After her continued berating, I asked “what am I doing?” And she said “I don’t know! But you need to STOP!” Then proceeded to give me detention during recess and lunch period where I was not allowed to eat or go outside but had to sit in the hallway where she would check up on me every couple of minutes. Towards the end of the recess period she came out and said that I was, in fact, not doing anything and took her anger out on me but wanted to make an example of me and felt embarrassed in front of the other students for scolding me over doing nothing. Then she made me promise not to tell anyone.” –aHawtMocha