We’ve all had bad teachers.
Maybe they would yell too much; or perhaps they would grade a little too harshly.
However, our list of the worst teachers in the world will put even your most terrible
teacher to shame.
Teachers are people, and therefore will make mistakes, but this list of 15 teachers takes
these mistakes to the extreme.
Join us as we go through what they did, and how it cost them their jobs.
Our 15th worst teacher took motivating her students to do well on tests a little too
far.
It is bad enough to receive a failing grade.
Looking at all of the “x’s” in red ink is pretty demoralizing.
This teacher took an extra step and attached a McDonald’s application to each failing
test.
The thought process may have been this would motivate a student to work harder, so they
wouldn’t end up flipping burgers for the rest of their lives.
Unfortunately for the teacher, the parents of these students did not find this motivation
helpful or even funny.
They quickly brought it to the attention of the administration and the teacher was reprimanded.
The 14th worst teacher on our list comes from Corner High School in Birmingham, Alabama.
Mr. Harrison taught geometry class.
He repeatedly used… unique scenarios with his students when having them calculate different
angles and lengths.
Mr. Harrison consistently used a hypothetical assassination of the then United States President,
Barack Obama, in his scenarios.
Many citizens of the south may not have voted for Obama, but this was taking things a step
too far.
Mr. Harrison was investigated by the FBI.
In the end he had to go through many hours of diversity training, and made a public apology.
Regardless of what you teach, or who you voted for in a political election, it is probably
best not to teach a bunch of high schoolers the trajectory angle for an assassination
of the president.
We’re pretty sure the FBI also agrees with this.
For our 13th worst teacher we will be heading across the Atlantic to Suffolk, England, where
a teacher at Sudbury Upper School chose a unique—and cringeworthy—way to try and
be tough in front of his students.
The class was being rowdy and Mr. Rouse couldn’t get them to quiet down, so he did the only
thing he could think of… he ripped off his shirt and threw it to the ground.
This did have the desired effect for a few moments; until the class broke out in yells
and laughter.
One student had filmed the whole incident and posted it on the internet.
Not only had Mr. Rouse committed indecent exposure in front of a classroom full of teenagers,
but he even threatened to throw a kid out the window.
It wasn’t long until word of the incident reached the administration.
Mr. Rouse was immediately fired.
He is no longer allowed to work in Suffolk County.
Bullying is all too common in schools.
Regardless of if you are at a fancy prep school, or an underfunded public school, there will
always be kids bullying kids.
But our 12th worst teacher didn’t just let the kids do the bullying, she participated
in it herself.
In Overton Elementary School in Chicago a computer science teacher asked a 7 year old
girl to pose for a picture.
This alone was shady, but what the teacher did with the picture was even worse.
The student had done her hair in braids that she had seen in a magazine.
The teacher decided it would be funny to post the picture to Facebook, so that all of her
Facebook friends could laugh and make fun of the girl’s hair.
Another parent who was the teacher’s friend on Facebook saw the post and reported it immediately.
People on Facebook were mocking the 7 year old’s hairstyle.
The evidence was saved on a CD and then shown to the administration.
This is one time justice was served to a cyberbully, that bully just happened to be a teacher.
And speaking of making kids feel bad, this next teacher went out of their way to crush
some young student’s dreams.
As the holidays approached one teacher took it upon herself to inform her students that
Santa Clause isn't real.
She adamantly told the children in her class that it was their parents, and not Santa,
who brought them presents each year.
In one day this teacher was able to crush the hopes and dreams of the 7 year old children
in her classroom.
Sure they would have found out eventually that Santa Clause isn't real, but it probably
wasn’t the teacher’s responsibility to drop a bombshell like that in the middle of
an elementary school classroom.
Our 10th worst teacher comes from Hillcrest Elementary School in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
Ms. McElhenny didn’t make this list because of what she did to the students of the school,
but instead what she did to the other teachers.
Ms. McElhenny created a hostile work environment at the school by sending excessive amounts
of inappropriate emails to the other teachers.
It was documented that over the course of the year she spent around 60 hours of work
time emailing other teachers about her drug and alcohol use, her sex life, and how much
she disliked her job.
She did this using the school’s email, which wasn’t very smart.
In her emails she insulted other staff members, students, and parents.
This all happened while she was supposed to be teaching and working.
She even opened her own personal pharmacy and offered to share her drugs with other
teachers at the school.
She made the other teachers so uncomfortable that in the middle of the year she was escorted
from the building and forced to resign.
We are now in the single digits of the worst teachers in the world with number 9.
Mr. Mantel from Brick Township High School in New Jersey lost his cool.
And by lost his cool, we mean he really lost it.
A student in his class caught him on video yelling and cursing at students, demanding
they stand quietly during the National Anthem.
As a rule of thumb teacher’s are not supposed to use profanity in the classroom, but Mantel
was recorded using some very intense language.
When one of the students did not stand, and instead sat quietly saying it was his First
Amendment right not to rise for the National Anthem, Mantel yelled in the student’s face.
He then kicked out the chair from under the student causing him to go crashing to the
floor.
After the video was released more students came forward saying that this was not the
first time Mantel showed intense anger, in fact this was a regular occurance.
Regardless of if a teacher believes everyone should stand for the National Anthem or not,
screaming and kicking out chairs from under students is one way to make the worst teachers
in the world list.
Our 8th teacher is a little more peculiar.
She claims students took advantage of her leporiphobia.
You may not believe what happens next.
Leporiphobia is not the fear of leprosy, or even the fear or leopards, no, leporiphobia
is the fear of rabbits.
Ms. Marion taught geography at a high school in Vechta, Germany.
It was here she took teenage students to court and sued them for defamation.
Apparently, students found out about her fear of rabbits and drew a rabbit on the chalkboard.
When Marion saw the drawing she ran out of the classroom screaming and crying.
This happened on multiple occasions, so Marion took the teenage students to court, which
inevitably caused immense stress on the students who were still maturing.
It is one thing to reprimand students for making bad decisions—even if it is only
drawing a rabbit on the chalkboard—it is an entirely different thing to drag teenage
high schoolers into the courtroom and have them stand trial.
This brings us to our 7th worst teacher in the world.
We all remember talking to our friends in school when we weren't supposed to.
Yes, students can be chatty, but teachers have ways of dealing with chattiness and bringing
the attention of the class back to the lesson.
However, a teacher at New Renaissance Middle School chose a unique, and inappropriate,
way to stop a student from talking.
The teacher taped the student’s mouth shut.
Apparently she had asked the student to stop talking, which the student did.
However, later in class the student started chatting again.
The teacher came up behind the student and forced tape over her mouth.
The student was told to keep the tape on, but when she had to cough, she removed it.
The teacher ripped off another piece from the dispenser and applied it to the student’s
mouth.
After an investigation into the teacher’s actions, it was found that this was not the
first time she had taped a student’s mouth shut, but after she resigned it would be the
last.
A lot of the teachers on the list so far have done pretty awful things.
But none of them compare to what these next teachers did.
Students called it “Two Teachers, One Chair.”
It was a spirit week rally at Churchill High School in Winnipeg when the physical education
teacher decided to give a colleague a full on lapdance.
This happened in the middle of the gymnasium as a hundred students watched.
Some were as young as 13 years old, but regardless of age, this was probably the most inappropriate
spirit week activity that could have been concocted.
Our 5th worst teacher in the world takes cultural insensitivity to a whole new level.
You won’t believe what she did to her nursery school kids.
Ms. Davies of Hafod Primary School sometimes sprayed the kids with air freshener.
This is an odd thing for a teacher to do, but it gets worse.
Ms. Davies humiliated children who were no more than six years old by spraying them with
aerosol if they smelt of onions or curry.
This clearly was focused towards her Bangledeshi students whose traditional cuisine consisted
of these aromas.
She would tell the kids ‘there is a waft coming in from paradise,' before she sprayed
them with the air freshener.
Little kids can smell, especially if they have an accident, but spraying them with air
freshener is not appropriate.
And spraying specific kids based on a curry or onion smell is just racist.
Luckily the school board agreed, and Ms. Davies was fired over “child protection concerns.”
Being a teacher is stressful, there is no arguing against this fact.
However, the way that a teacher handles this stress needs to be appropriate, and should
never be taken out on the kids.
Unfortunately teacher number 4 on our list, Ms. May, did just this.
She lost her cool on a student who would not focus and kept calling her names.
If you are about to lose it, the appropriate thing to do is step away, and remember that
the students are just kids.
This is not what Ms. May did.
Instead, when the student banged a glue stick down on their desk, Ms. May took it and did
the same thing right back.
Except she slammed the glue stick down on the student’s hand, cutting it open.
Ms. May regretted her actions, but hurting a student is up there with the worst things
a teacher can do.
This brings us to our top 3 worst teachers in the world.
Each one will shock you more than the last.
Students are warned every year in health class that they should stay away from drugs and
alcohol.
However, Ms. Sproch at Propel Charter School in Pittsburgh went a different way with these
substances.
Ms. Sproch was caught giving alcohol to minors.
It started when she threw a party at her own home and invited teenagers from her class.
The weirdest part may be that one of the teenagers present was her 14 year old son.
She encouraged the students to get drunk and have a good time.
This escalated to a point where the high school boys no longer felt comfortable, and left.
They ended up recounting the incident to the police who then charged Sproch with providing
alcohol to minors, along with corruption and engagement of minors.
Needless to say, after Sproch served her sentence, she was not welcomed back as a teacher.
As seen previously alcohol and teachers don’t always go well together, especially when the
teacher is drunk during class.
In a California school Ms. Neff was found teaching her middle school class while drunk.
Not only was her behavior odd because of the alcohol, but she had also combined her drinking
with prescription drugs.
These two narcotics mixed in her system rendering her completely inoperable as a teacher.
She was taken to the school nurse where she waited until the police arrived.
They escorted her to the hospital, and once she recovered, the police arrested her and
took her to jail.
We have now reached the top of our list.
Although no drugs were involved, what this next teacher did may make you think they were
on something.
A teacher at Leigh Church of England junior school in Manchester, England definitely took
things too far in his classroom.
He is ranked the worst teacher on our list because he locked a kid in a closet.
But wait, it gets worse.
The student had a learning disability called dyspraxia that affected his motor skills,
speech, and made learning more difficult.
Any normal teacher would do their best to support the student any way they could.
However, this is not what the teacher did.
Instead, the teacher at Leigh Church of England felt the student was not writing fast enough
in class, so, as punishment, the teacher locked him in a closet.
The student could not help that he was writing slowly because of his disability.
The teacher was punishing the student for something he had no control over.
The student later recounted being locked in the closet multiple times, sometimes for over
an hour.
Locking an 11 year old kid with a disability in a closet is definitely the way to get yourself
at the top of the worst teachers in the world list.
Now go check out “WORST Punishments Kids Received From Their Parents.”
Or watch “The Worst Breakup In History.”