- Hey guys, I'm Stephanie, I am a former preschool teacher,
and we're gonna talk horror stories.
(upbeat music)
- Being a preschool teacher's pretty rough.
A lot of people think ah, it's just kids,
and it's cute.
There's a lot of bodily fluids.
There's a lot of screaming, there's a lot of crying.
- Preschool can be a dream come true,
it can also be somewhat of a nightmare.
You never know what problems are gonna come up
and it's usually what you don't think is going
to be the worst case scenario that ends up being
the worst case scenario.
- Sometimes preschools have twos programs.
Which means, they're not potty trained.
Which means, they wear diapers.
Which you would think would prevent any kind
of bathroom catastrophes,
that is an incorrect assumption,
because let me tell you,
that (bleep) will go everywhere.
(laughs) Including on you.
- We're in the middle of like cold and flu season.
I've had sick kids in class before.
Kids when they're snotting, they're not like,
aware that they're snotting, you know.
So they just kind of go up to you and they're like,
"Miss Emily!" and it's just like ugh.
So I'm always like, "In your elbow," like,
"wipe your nose, blow your nose."
And I once had a girl who was kind of snotting
and I kind of bent down to her level 'cause she was like,
"I need a tissue."
So I grabbed my tissue and I bent down
and I was like, "Here's your tissue."
And I was right in her face, speaking to her,
when she sneezed in my mouth.
This one I was naive.
No one had ever sneezed in my mouth.
And I couldn't like, I couldn't like yell at her,
like it's a sneeze.
(laughs) So I just, I took a minute to panic,
and think about like all the different bacteria
that are now introduced to my system.
And god, I don't remember what I did.
I probably just like Listerined for days.
- I was a student teacher working in my center.
We had gone through the day pretty normally.
Like it was a pretty normal day.
And then lunch time came around
and I'm walking around, cleaning up after my
lead teacher's and such,
and all of a sudden one of them pukes.
And we're just like, oh, okay.
'Cause you know, puke happens, it happens.
So we get that child cleaned up, sent home eventually,
we think it's over.
(malicious laughing)
Later in the day I was cleaning our toys,
sanitizing our toys, and then all of a sudden
another kid pukes, and we're like oh no, oh gosh.
So my lead teacher grabs her and
holds her over a trash can
'cause she just keeps vomiting, keeps vomiting,
it keeps coming out, and I'm like oh, okay.
And then another kid starts puking while this one is puking.
And we're like oh god, oh god.
So we're like trying to get them cleaned up,
trying to get them over the trash cans
before they get on everything
'cause then I have to sanitize it.
It's the end of the day,
so their parents are coming any minute.
And so we're trying to get all of this situated.
So finally they go home,
me and my leader are like oh my god, that was nuts.
We think it's over.
(malicious laughing)
- Now you'd think I am old and wise.
But no I didn't learn.
So I also then had, I'm always very sympathetic
when a kid was feeling sick.
And he was like telling me he was feeling sick,
I was, "What's wrong?" and he looked a little out of it.
So I bent down, I'm short, but you always like,
bend down to the level of the child to really
get them to talk to you.
And he wasn't really talking, he was like, "No, no."
And I was like, "Henry, like what's wrong, what's going on?"
I thought he was being bullied.
He was like, "I don't wanna talk about it, no."
And I was like, "Come on."
Like, "No, no, I don't wanna talk."
And so I got really, really close to his face
and then he just looked up at projectile vomited
all over me like from this distance.
It was maybe one of the worst days of my life.
- So finally they go home,
me and my leader are like oh my god, that was nuts.
We think it's over.
About a week and a half later, it is not over.
We have a staff meeting, we're all sitting,
we have lots of pizza, it's a lot of fun,
we're learning things.
I'm walking back to my dorm and I'm just kind of like wow,
I ate a lot of pizza.
My stomach just feels so full.
And like as I'm sitting in my dorm,
this pizza just feels like it is not digesting,
it's just sitting.
Next thing I know I'm like
blanching, my face is just like phew.
And I'm like oh god, I'm gonna puke.
And it's the dorm, so we have communal bathrooms.
So I have to run down the hall, run to the hall,
puke is getting everywhere and I'm just like oh my god,
oh my god, I'm dying.
And I'm like in the shower.
The maintenance guy comes in he's like, "Are you okay?"
And I'm like, "Not really, but I'll get there."
And so then I am like I have a fever,
I'm like shaking, I get back to my dorm and I'm like oh.
And I Google it, and whatever those kids had
had an incubation period of about a week.
And I was like, ah.
So it's just now hitting me.
So I call out of work only to find out that
a few other teachers had also called out
and we were all puking pizza everywhere.
That was the story of the puke-pocalypse
of my two year old classroom.
- For a few weeks, I was teaching one of my students,
just to kind of, we were tossing a ball back and forth,
and I'm showing them how to lift it up in the air
and catch it, super simple stuff.
One day we took a field trip,
a little minor hike out into the woods
and I watched as this same boy who'd been practicing
throwing a ball up in the air,
throw a rock up in the air.
And he watched it as it came all the way down
and split open his forehead.
Blood gushed everywhere.
He was screaming, other kids were screaming,
other kids were also worried that the blood was going
to get on them.
I definitely felt guilty for not teaching him how to
catch the ball better
and saying like keep an eye on it.
He took it all the way.
So truly it's my fault
and I take full responsibility for it.
- I was subbing at a location I had never been to.
And normally if you're the sub in a class,
it's like guaranteed that you're just gonna be
on bathroom duty the entire time.
Life continued to get worse when I discovered
that I was assigned the only kid in the classroom
that wasn't potty trained and wasn't wearing a diaper.
Hashtag why?
It was one of these parents that were adamant
that their kid was potty trained,
insisted that like he had to learn the hard way
when all that really happened was I had to learn
the hard way that wearing a onesie
and having a number two disaster.
A bad day makes.
- We rushed him down the mountain,
we got him some first aid.
We checked in with our primary nurse
and they're like I don't think he needs stitches,
but definitely need to call the parents.
Parents came, and I was really apologetic
because I do feel like it was on my watch
and it was through whatever training I had given him
or not given him.
But I was shocked that the parent was pretty
nonchalant about it,
like stuff like this had apparently happened
quite a bit to this student.
He was very accident prone.
And the fact that the parents didn't have to
take the student to a nurse or a doctor or a hospital
and get stitched up, honestly, it ranked low for them.
So for me, I'm freaking out, I don't know what to do.
They're like, "Eh, we just call this Tuesday
"in our household."
Which okay, great.
And I really hope wherever you are,
you are alive kid, I really do.
- Once upon a time, it was a Tuesday.
I got to work and a kid had brought in a book
that was about, I don't know, some forest creature,
you know how it goes.
Anyway, at one point, Bambi style, in the book,
the forest, cute little creature's mother died.
To which my student's responded, "What happened?
"Where'd the mom go?"
To which I said, "Dear God, kill me now.
"Then I too, will be dead,
"and have to avoid this question."
It's pretty rough when you reach a moment in a child's life
where you may or may not be the person to break to them
that living comes to an end.
I wasn't really prepared that day for like,
an existential crisis moment.
I basically, I sat down, I looked those toddlers in their
bright, innocent eyes, and I was like, "Well,
"you know sometimes, in nature,
"in the wild, animals exist and then sometimes,
"in the circle of life, you know 'Lion King?'"
And they're like, "Yeah!"
"You know in the circle of life, things happen,
"it's all just a process, it's all a cycle."
And then luckily their short attention spans kick into gear
and then they wanna play with blocks
and they'd forgotten that they asked an incredibly
unnerving question two minutes prior.
- All right guys, I don't what to tell ya but,
blood, sweat, tears, ABC, all of it coming together,
preschool can be absolutely crazy so,
be nice to all the preschool teachers out there.
They're doing the best they can to raise you.
- Now we know that we just need to wash our hands,
sanitize as often as possible.
- Be nice to teachers, especially of young children,
'cause they've probably been thrown up on more than once.
'Cause I know I'm not the only one.
It's a rollercoaster.
You really have to be ready for anything to happen
at any time of the day, so.
But I survived.
- Yeah so when you get hit with those hard hitting questions
that toddlers will volley into your court,
just avoid them at all costs, that's what I would say.
If you ever have a diaper (bleep) catastrophe,
just buckle up, get some wipes, and count your blessings.
It's gonna be a rocky ride.
(bright music)