Teachers- we've all had our favorites, and we've all had some that we hated to be around.
Despite how we may feel about them though, theirs is one of the most important jobs in
the world, as they are responsible for teaching the next generation.
Part of that instruction is not just arithmetic, grammar, and history, but also proper codes
of conduct and morality.
Many studies have shown that due to the sheer amount of time students spend around teachers,
they can be one of the most influential figures in a child's life.
But what happens when good teachers go bad, or when bad teachers are given responsibility
over a classroom of young, impressionable minds?
These real-life incidents just might shock you...
Surprise Field Trip High school chemistry teacher Travis Lechien
was quite popular amongst the students of Hanover Central High School in Cedar Lake,
Indiana.
That's probably because he would often invite many of the students over for after-school
study lessons at his home, and by study lessons we mean he would give the kids alcohol and
smoke hookah with them.
One day though he found out that it was the birthday of one of the students hanging out
at his house, so he piled all the students into his van and took off for a nearby club.
But as you may have guessed from the other activities he engaged in with the students,
this wasn’t a normal club.
No, let’s just say it was a club that is supposed to be for adults only.
After a few hours of this very enlightening field trip, Lechien was driving the boys back
home when he got pulled over for speeding.
Suspicious as to why the 31 year old man was driving around at night with a car full of
young boys, the police questioned the students and discovered where he had taken them.
Lechien was promptly fired from the school, though he would have likely been fired soon
anyways as rumors about what Lechien invited students over to his house to do had reached
the principal, who was already cooperating with law enforcement to investigate Lechien.
In the end Lechien lost his job and was charged with three counts of contributing to the delinquency
of a minor, a class A misdemeanor that earned him a year of jail time.
It Pays To Be The Principal Over in Harry Potter-land, we mean the UK,
Jo Shutter was a headteacher, or principal, who had won an award for her great leadership
skills and the performance of her students.
While she was running a tight ship at school though, she was also secretly funneling much
of the school's budget towards her own expenses.
Shutter would routinely misappropriate money and then secretly use it for such things as
seven thousand pounds spent on her birthday party, ten thousand pounds on travel, and
a whopping three thousand pounds on flowers.
Shortly after her money mismanagement came to light, she got a double-whammy as she was
accused of cronyism, giving school jobs to her family and friends over other well-qualified
individuals.
Authorities may have been slow to suspect that Shutter was such a crook though given
that the BBC had asked to film a documentary about her, given her brilliant and inspirational
leadership.
The only problem with that is that the documentary was directed by her own sister.
In the end Shutter didn't face any legal repercussions, but was banned for life from teaching.
Sometimes The Past Comes Back To Haunt You Melissa Petro was a regular, unassuming elementary
art school teacher, well liked by staff and her students.
For three years she taught various art classes to children without incident, and despite
her new life she was hiding a very dark secret.
This secret would only come to light when Ms. Petro admitted to it publicly on her own
volition- probably not a great move.
It all began when Craiglist decided to take down its adult services section, a part of
its site which was well known for being used by people to offer certain adult services.
It turns out that Ms. Petro had worked as a professional companion for a brief time,
a fact she admitted to in an opinion piece she wrote for The Huffington Post.
Describing herself as being in difficult financial times, she engaged in this work for several
months though soon quit, finding it to be “physically demanding, emotionally taxing,
and spiritually bankrupting”.
As soon as her school found out about her past, they promptly fired her.
Humiliating Special Needs Students No doubt teaching is a difficult job, but
even when you're dealing with the stress of handling a room full of teenagers, you should
still have the composure to deal with the behavioral needs of a special needs student.
Amanda Terrell had one such kid in her class, a fifteen year old boy with Asperger's syndrome
who would sometimes act out.
Rather than try and handle the situation delicately, Terrell grew tired of his behavior and built
a 'bad kid fort' out of cardboard boxes to place around the student's desk.
Enraged over the humiliation of their son, the child's parents took issue with the school.
Terrell was suspended over the incident, but was then re-hired for the next school year.
The school board defended its decision, saying that Terrell was still a good teacher who
had simply made a mistake.
Breaking Bad Breaking Bad is a revolutionary tv show made
possible by two unique realities of America: teachers get paid next to nothing, and healthcare
is so expensive that you literally have to run a drug cartel to stay on top of your bills.
Seriously, this show couldn't have taken place anywhere else in the world.
Except it sort of did, although not for the same reasons that Walter White started peddling
meth.
Across the pond in the UK once more we find an IT teacher named Mohammed Sarwar.
Liked by his community for his charitable work and always a good example for his young
students, Sarwar unknowingly led a secret double life.
After clocking out of school, Sarwar would clock in to his 'real' job, which was the
running of a criminal network.
While he may have had the neighbors fooled, he didn't have British police fooled who had
bugged his car and been tailing him for weeks.
Eventually they recorded Sarwar talking about cocaine with one of his students and then
was followed as he took the student to a drug deal in a local retail park.
The police made their move and Sarwar was in custody shortly thereafter.
Confessing to ferrying kilos upon kilos of cocaine around Britain, Sarwar earned 21 years
in prison, with no leniency for his role as an educator.
A Drink To Unwind Maria L. Caya has a very stressful job as
an Elementary school teacher.
Watching over a bunch of young children is no doubt enough to wear the nerves of even
the most level-headed teacher, and certainly nobody would ever fault a teacher for having
a drink to unwind after a long, hard day.
Caya however apparently needed to unwind way, way before her work day was over.
While chaperoning a field trip to a bowling alley, Caya decided to have a couple of drinks.
Unprofessional but well, it's a bowling alley and drinking is sort of expected in these
places.
What was a couple of drinks though turned into a couple more drinks, until eventually
the other teachers chaperoning the kids had to call Caya's husband to come pick her up.
Violently ill, Caya was taken to the hospital instead, where she was found to have a blood
alcohol level as high as .27- over three times higher than the legal limit of .08.
While there were eight other teachers present on the field trip and the kids were never
in any serious danger, Caya clearly showed a lack of responsibility and professionalism
both with her decision to pour back a few dozen cold ones while still on duty.
Fight The Power!
Ryan Pleune was a passionate environmentalist, and honestly we can't blame him.
Our parents used to make fun of hippies who wanted to save the planet, and thanks to them
making fun of hippies we're now running headlong into irreversible global warming- thanks mom
and dad.
With the health of the planet very much at stake, and along with it the prosperity of
our own civilization, Pleune decided that he wanted to set a good example for his students.
While he was a qualified teacher, Pleune was instead working as a bus driver for a local
high school.
On the way back from a field trip, Pleune decided on an educational detour, and instead
drove the kids to a local protest outside of the Salt Lake City courthouse.
Environmental protesters had gathered there and according to Pleune, he wanted to make
the kids aware of the cause.
He even thought that the school would be pleased with his actions, but it turns out that basically
abducting a bus-load of children without telling anyone isn't exactly high on the list of things
a school wants their bus drivers to do.
Pleune was fired but faced no criminal charges.
Mocking Students Chicago is world famous for being a rather
tough town.
With a very high rate of gun and gang-related violence, it's no surprise that the city can
make some people pretty hard inside.
Yet we would at least expect our elementary school teachers to show some compassion towards
their kids, and certainly not to mock them mercilessly on social media.
On school picture day one of an elementary teacher’s students showed up with jolly
ranchers woven into her hair.
The teacher immediately took a photo of the student's unusual, but decorative hair style,
and sent it to her husband, then posted it on facebook.
Soon the picture was the laughingstock of the online community, despite all it ever
being was a little girl's excited impromptu hairdo.
Upon learning of the humiliation, the little girl's parents sued the school while the teacher
was put under investigation.
Sure, the hairdo may have been out of the ordinary, but tell us that you never did something
silly when you were seven years old.
School and Alcohol Don't Mix Teaching might be a more stressful job than
we're aware of, because in Toro Canyon Middle School Californian teacher Tonya Neff was
found intoxicated while teaching.
Or, we guess, trying to teach anyways.
Police were called when Neff showed signs of intoxication, and when they arrived she
was being treated by the school nurse.
It turns out that Neff had mixed prescription drugs with alcohol, and likely didn't mean
to get so intoxicated, underestimating the interaction between the medicine and the alcohol.
Neff was taken to a local hospital for treatment and then was booked into jail to face felony
charges for child endangerment.
Too Much School Spirit For this next story we go north to America's
top hat, Canada.
Back in 2010 a Canadian high school decided that it would hold a dance competition for
its teachers to show off their best school spirit at a pep rally.
The event turned out to be wildly popular, though not for the reasons the school hoped
for.
One of the teachers ended up performing a lap dance along with a male teacher, gyrating
their hips to the beat and dancing provocatively.
The incident was recorded on two different phones and the footage soon went viral.
The teacher was fired and ended up losing her apartment, forced to live out of her car.
She was relentlessly slut shamed for the inappropriate stunt and said in a later interview that she
had contemplated suicide.
Today though she's left Canada and works occasionally as a substitute teacher, though she uses her
husband's last name on any job applications.
Meanwhile the male teacher involved in the scandal by virtue of being male is largely
forgotten and didn’t have to suffer years of humiliation.
There's a certain amount of trust that goes into the teacher-student relationship, and
while many students complain of mean or strict teachers, few can probably claim that their
teachers were as terrible, or perhaps as naive, as the ones on this list.
What about you though?
Have you ever had any crazy teachers?
What stories can you share?
Let us know in the comments!
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