When Being/Having A Substitute Teacher Goes Wrong; People Share Their Worst Substituting Stories

Substitute teachers are often unsung heroes, filling in when we need them the most and providing a spicy dish of variety to our nation's future leaders. However, when our substitute teachers are on the job, we don’t always get a smooth experience.

Sometimes it is well…flimsy at best and “call 911” at worst. Read these people’s experiences being and having substitute teachers and marvel at the drama-filled tales you hear.

1. It’s Just A Question

My wife was the substitute teacher in this case. She was subbing for another teacher and she had a student pick up his desk and throw it at the ceiling projector.

The desk broke the projector, and very nearly hit another student on the way down, and scared the crap out of everyone. Apparently, that's the student's response to "Did you already turn in your homework?".

kemikiao

I'm a substitute teacher and though I'm in my late 20s, I look much younger. I've been yelled at to move along by other teachers at the high school when I'm out in the halls during and between classes.

My preferred response is to turn around slowly with a smile, look them in the eyes, and tap my sub badge. Then I go on my way. Really, it is a little flattering but it gets frustrating.

Unicorn_Cavalry

A student teacher at our school looks very young. One time, she was lost and was late for our class (she teaches in multiple classrooms).

We have a strict pass policy in the hallways, and if late to a class it's automatic detention.

 She was stopped by a hall monitor who thought she had stolen a student-teacher pass and refused to believe she was old enough to be out of high school.

So while we were all waiting for her, she got lectured until our teacher went to look for her, and backed up her story. It was quite embarrassing.

diepthinking

Something funny happened to my AP US history teacher on his first day. He was a young guy and looked like he could be a big senior.

He walked in on his first day, rearing to go, ready to teach his first class, but when he tried to walk into the teacher's lounge, they wouldn't let him in because they thought he was a student. He had to eat his lunch in the cafeteria that day...

MrBob1

The regular teacher for this video production class I had in high school was hospitalized, so they brought in a long-term substitute teacher. On the first day she comes in, everyone's rather morose.

She says in a joking tone, "You guys are like someone died or something." A popular student had died of a suspected overdose after a school dance the night before.

waiting_for_rain

One time we had a sub in my high school chemistry class, and as he was reading the attendance sheet he called the name of someone who wasn't there and this kid said "Sorry, we lost track of her" or something along those lines.

The next name he called was a kid who'd run away from home about 1.5 months earlier and was still missing and the same kid from before goes "Oh crap, we REALLY lost him"

numbahnine

A student burst out of the cupboard at the back of the classroom halfway through my first lesson. Being unfamiliar with the room I hadn't even realized the cupboard was big enough to hide a human (albeit a small one).

With hindsight, it's mildly impressive he managed to stay in there for as long as he did.

He charged at me with a compass in his hand and tried to stab me in the thigh with it. The little jerk.

Probably not the worst thing ever, but the most unexpected. I only subbed for a few months, fortunately. I don't envy those who do it long-term.

jpuddleduck

I'm a full-time teacher, but on Friday I was finishing after-school detention, which ends at 5 when the long-term sub we have for another teacher on maternity leave approached me.

He was frantic that his phone and wallet were stolen. He proceeded to tell me that he was giving 3 kids a ride home from school(which is a huge NO NO!) well it seems he had his bag in the backseat with the kids and now his phone and wallet were missing.

As he's telling me this one of the students walks by the office. I questioned him and eventually, he admitted it but said they sold the phone at the mall to a salesman at the Verizon kiosk for $60, an iPhone 4s.

I drove to the mall with the kid and his parent, and he pointed out the manager as the one who bought it. 

The guy is freaked out and only says I didn't know they were middle school kids and as he hands me the phone says what about my $60.

The kid says they all spent it on food and each bought a shirt, and the parent says he's not giving the guy a dime, so I tell the guy to call the cops and have them come and you can explain how you bought a stolen phone from 13-year-olds.

He says he'd rather not get the kid in trouble, yeah right? I drove back to the school and gave the sub his phone, and at that point(8 pm) the principal finally arrived so I wrote a statement and then drove home to have a beer. I'm interested to see what happens to all the kids when I get to school on Monday.

Phoenixxmc

I had a sub that was just the strangest guy ever. This kid was sharpening his pencil while he was teaching and it was quite loud.

Suddenly the teacher stops talking, growls, and pulls out a knife. Everyone starts freaking out, and the teacher walks over to the kid, takes his pencil, and starts sharpening it with the knife. Turns out he was actually a really cool guy.

Ruffalicious51

Picture the scene. As I'm sitting in my office (being a full-time teacher, though, I share the office with about 6 others), a 15yo girl is escorted in by the sub for being disruptive in class.

I had never met the pupil before, she sat down to do some work she had been given by the substitute teacher. I asked her what happened.

On this particular day, the argument had more or less finished when the sub called her a "little freaking jerk". At this point, I really started paying attention instead of just shooting the breeze.

Apparently, the pupil and this sub had had running battles for the last few years ("Ever since she popped my birthday balloon when I was 12"), and it had kicked off once again.

The girl in question wasn't normally disruptive, just when this teacher was around.

So the lesson finishes and the sub comes to collect the pupil.

There's more tension, the sub yells at the pupil and then dismisses her. I asked what had happened and she said, "Well she was being uncooperative. I suppose she told you I called her a little freaking jerk? Well I did, and I don't regret it, because she is. Always has been", and flounced off.

She hasn't subbed at the school since, but she may be off somewhere else yelling at kids. I didn't like her and after hearing that, it got worse.

[deleted]

About a month ago I had a student fall to the ground while trying to sit in his chair. Everyone laughed at him and he thought that another student beside him had pulled the chair out from under him (we all agreed that wasn't the case).

The student on the ground started hitting the other student in the leg, and that was when I stepped in and told him to knock it off.

I turned around to talk to another teacher when student B(the one who was hit) stood up and shoved student A across the room.

At that point, I jumped in and asked student B what he was thinking. He said, "Look at my freaking leg!" I looked to see that he had about 1/2 an inch of pencil sticking out of the side of his knee. Student A wasn't hitting him, he was basically stabbing him.

[deleted]

My High School had a substitute teacher who bore a passing resemblance to Morgan Freeman. The resemblance was so uncanny.

He was yelling at one particularly disruptive student and the student stood up and screamed "Yeah, well I hate your movies" and walked out the door.

Morgan Freeman Sub didn't stay around much longer after that. But every time I see him, I always remember that encounter.

Parallel_Octaves

I've subbed for only a semester but I apparently found the worst students. In one class, I had a student decide they wanted to sneak into the dressing rooms (it was a theatre class) and start smoking.

I found out about it when they didn't come back after 15 minutes and ended up walking into a room filled with lots of smoke.

Another, we had a group of students decide that they were curious and needed to get their rocks off so they snuck off during an activity to the dressing rooms again and started to be intimate.

Yeah, I saw way too much of 5 of those humans...it was kind of awkward explaining to the principal too. Writing the report was even worse.

FuschiaFalcon

I'm a sub, and one time a local private elementary school called my house while I wasn't there to ask me to come teach for a few weeks.

My roommate answered the phone, pretended to be me, and accepted the job. He then went and taught at the school under my name without me knowing.

While he was there he discovered that the students in his class were musically gifted, and created a rock band with the students so he could win Battle of the Bands and make money.

OnlyTheCheesiest

I'm not a teacher, but a couple of years back, my class was given a super religious sub a really hard time. She got so frustrated that she went down the rows and insulted each student individually.

She also threw a stapler at one kid, because he kept making fun of her Jamaican accent. In retrospect, this lady would have probably killed us all if the class period had been longer.

Tyler1456

My grade 9 English teacher was absent so they had this young lady sub for her. As usual, I was completely zoned out. She apparently tried to get my attention but I didn't respond.

Some douche in my class then told her that I was deaf ... She continued her lesson but would try to get me involved by communicating with me via body language.

We were sitting in groups so by this point somebody had told me that I was supposed to be deaf and that I better play along. That lesson was so awkward for me.

At the end, when everyone had left, I went up to her and told her that my class was just messing with her; I then apologized profusely. Her reaction was to blush a lot. In retrospect, it was kinda funny.

[deleted]

I'm not a substitute teacher but in grade 11 a fellow student of mine threw an apple at this substitute teacher we had during math class.

  He got really angry and told that student to go screw himself and head to the office.

Shortly after the Principal and Vice Principal came and told the substitute to come out into the hall.

I never saw him again. We ended up finishing off the class playing hangman while the Vice Principal sat at the teacher's desk reading a Time Magazine.

[deleted]

One of my very good friends, Brian, was substitute teaching an AP Chemistry class. One student said, "Hey you look like an addict, we should cook some substances!"

I would assume it’s because he looks old despite his somewhat mid-age since he has been smoking cigarettes since 13. Brian didn't take this well because his mom had a serious substance problem when he was a kid.

He went over to the kid's desk, slammed his fist down on the desk, and told him to talk to him in the hall, he left the door wide open so all the other students could hear what he was saying, he told him off pretty well from what I remember.

Brian started to cry halfway through it and nearly choked him. He went back to his desk and sobbed until one student got up and comforted him.

The kid that he yelled at walked back into the classroom after he was done crying in which Brian gave him three detentions. Then that kid started to cry.

He subbed the rest of that year and found out half the class got super mad at him at the end of the year because they found out about Brian's mom. Sometimes there are good people.

[deleted]

We had a substitute teacher once, we got him for the first time when I was 8 and we took out our English books, and then for 2 hours he ranted about Christopher Columbus instead of us writing imaginative pieces.

I got him again when I was 10 and he kept stopping our class and forcing us to play Chess...

We had him again in the last week before Christmas and we were filling out a superhero book and we had to draw our superheroes.

He stopped our class and told us all our drawings were crap and no one had lines across their bodies where trousers meet their tops. Another 2-hour rant ensued.

Lewis98

The first day I subbed for a fourth-grade class, I got hit with the info that I had a kid with Tourettes who just picked up a new tick. They didn't go into detail on what it was.

I was at my desk and the kid walked by. He leaped like 3 feet in the air and kicked himself in the butt. It really caught me off guard but none of the kids knew what to think.

They all looked at me and the only thing I could think of was to get up from my desk, jump up, and kick myself in the butt. They all got up and did it too, sat down, had a laugh, and got back to work.

templ001

The. School. Caught. Fire. 24 first-graders and a wall of the building catches fire. Cuts off half the evacuation routes, and everyone is confused and running everywhere.

Once we get outside, half the kids are crying hysterically, half are running around like maniacs trying to be firefighters. I have not set foot in an elementary school since.

As a full-time teacher, I was responsible for a horrible sub day. A family emergency came up and I had to leave unexpectedly mid-day.

No real sub plans in place for The Class From Hell (TM). The next morning, the note just listed about 4 names, and then "there were more. many more." referring to about a dozen serious troublemakers.

I ran into the sub as she was going to another teacher's class. She still looked shell-shocked, and said "It was bad. those kids...." but wouldn't elaborate.

cuddles_mcfluffy

I’m a little late to the party but here it goes.. I had a Grade 1/2 class last year and one student had diabetes. Let’s call him Adam.

So Adam had a cell phone that beeps when his blood sugar is too low/high. It’s connected to the monitor in his arm/hip. The cell phone has no other uses, no apps, no data, not connected to the school wifi.

The substitute saw his phone on his desk and promptly took it away as per the “no devices” rule. During gym class, an EA comes in to make sure everything is ok, and Adam is visibly ill.

He was pale/sweating the whole works. Luckily this EA knows Adams's medical plan and instantly asks Adam for the phone to which Ada, explains that the substitute took it away in the morning.

The EA then LOSES IT on the substitute demanding the phone. The substitute calls in the principal to reprimand the EA, then gets reprimanded herself as obviously she did not read the student's safety plans.

She was asked to leave and the principal taught the class the rest of the day. Adam was fine, he drank a couple of juice boxes and had a granola bar. Mom picked him up shortly after.

bookwithnowords

As a student, a substitute I had, Mr.Richard, told a very weird story that happened to him about 3 years ago when he was teaching.

At the school Mr.Richard was subbing in, they had recently enforced a policy where the students could not leave the class for ANY reason so as to not disrupt the lesson.

Well, this one boy, Tyler, asks to get to the bathroom. Mr.Richard explained the new rule and said he was sorry, but Tyler could not go to the bathroom until class was over.

So, Tyler explains he has to take a dump. Right now. But Mr.Richar was NOT allowed to let him leave, so he again apologized and sent Tyler to sit down.

Well. Tyler turns around, faces the class, and his face starts turning red. After a few seconds or so, Tyler shakes a lump of crap out of his pants, then sat back down like nothing happened.

SarahsPotatoFarm

Junior year I was having major heart problems and had to wear a heart monitor 15 hours a day. It had a phone attached that when I had heart murmurs, it would send the data to my doctor.

I was wearing it and started having heart issues. It buzzed and I went to click send when the sub demanded I turn over my cellphone.

I started to explain why I couldn't and she snapped at me so I lifted my shirt to show the wires and sensors strapped to my chest, in front of the class of 50 students. (Choir class)

I've never seen ANYONE's face drop that fast in my life. It was a teachable moment for her I bet.

TKonthefrittz

I was subbing for a gym class. The night before I thought I would expose the kids to something new, so I looked up the rules for Rugby.

I told the kids they were NOT allowed to hit or tackle. But as you can guess one big kid hit a smaller kid and laid the little Bastard out.

When I made it out to the field the little guy was barely getting his wind back and couldn't move without screaming in extreme pain.

He was loaded on an ambulance, I filed out an accident report and we played Bocci Ball the rest of the day. It was a horrible day for me.

Punch_Drunk_AA

I was subbing for a 7-8th grade math teacher. The students were supposed to be taking a skills assessment on the computers.

These tests weren't going to go against their grades or anything. They were just to identify areas where students needed help.

So, I quickly noticed that a large amount of students were on Facebook/Twitter. I went up to each kid individually and asked them to finish the test before they went on Facebook, even if they just blew through it without trying.

One student apparently didn't like this and jumped on my back when I turned around. I have Osteoarthritis in my back, so this pretty much took me right out of the game.

I ended up having to take a week off of subbing and my night job to recover.

Definitely wasn't worth the $80 that I was paid for the day.

JasonSteelflex

Last week I had a student come up to me at my desk during carpet time. She shoved her hand in my face and this foul smell came from her.

She tells me "Look!" I quickly push my chair away from her and ask her what was on her hand and she laughs and happily says "Poop!!"

I asked her how that happened and she said she got it from another student. 

Finally, she fessed up that she had put her hand down her pants after she crapped herself because she wanted to know what it felt like to touch POOP!

I could write a book with all the stories I have from subbing. Some of them are funny but some of them like this one are gross.

conchaespina

Not a sub, but I had a sub in 7th or 8th grade shop class, and it might have been his worst day. He looked like Mr. Bean, and we called him that behind his back, little did we know his actions would fit his appearance.

I was making a baseball bat on the lathe, I had just started in the previous period, so it was still rough. He came over and decided that he wanted to have a go for some reason.

Without explaining himself he just took the chisel from me and stood in front of the lathe. I guess he'd never used one before, because he decided the best course of action was to jam the chisel right into the 3-foot-long piece of ash spinning at 1600 rpm or however fast it goes.

Well, the tool shoots out of his hand and the bat gets torn off the lathe and goes flying up and hits him right in the chest and face.

Myself and all the other kids just kinda stared at him wide-eyed with shock before the giggles kicked in once we realized he wasn't seriously injured.

He collected himself, sat down behind his desk, and never touched another power tool the rest of the time he was subbing. I don't know what he was used to teaching, but it was obvious that it wasn't a wood shop.

RoboSloth

My sister substitutes at the worst school in Denmark (it's official), and one day she busted two of her students stealing wheels off of bicycles while smoking cigarettes, just outside the classroom.

When she confronted them they said that they were going to attack her if she told anyone along with a bunch of other threats. To top this off, they were 1st graders.

ToxicJunkie

One time a couple of friends and I managed to convince our substitute teacher that I had a significant learning disability.

It took 20 minutes to read maybe 15 lines out of Homer's Odyssey and the poor substitute teacher kept encouraging me with things like "oh that's it" or "sound it out now."

Her notes to my real teacher referred to me as "one very brave young man." I have to admit though, I felt a little guilty afterwards.

ngc4594

My first-day subbing ended in a 911 call because a fourth-grade student with fibrous dysplasia basically shattered his hip while on my watch.

I only subbed one more time after that. Then I changed my major in college from elementary education to a completely different area.

I want nothing to do with that kind of responsibility and stress. Teachers are highly underappreciated and definitely underpaid.

RedheadedMama

My friend pretended to be blind. All class, kids were helping him out with simple tasks, reading, walking, and going to the bathroom.

Anyway, he ended up 'playing tag' and sprinted straight into the whiteboard.   

Causing his head to crack. And the board. Funniest class ever.

He ended up having to pay for his minor concussion and the board he had damaged. No other disciplinary action than that though.

oranjeeleven

Not a sub, but I had probably one of the wackiest subs ever. We had an English Class I believe and instead of teaching a lot of whatever it was we were reading, he started making references to his marble collection.

We thought he was just joking around, but eventually, he started telling us about his web page and all these things about marbles.

The man was deathly serious about it, and he'd get hardcore into talking about it and his collecting. He'd just go on this huge dialogue about it and take up the class time, so we used it as a tactic whenever he was subbing.

FrankthePug

I once organized the entire class to revolt when we had a substitute teacher, having everyone begin coughing at exactly 11:37. It was super effective.

The substitute lost all confidence and the class was relatively unproductive for the next week (the teacher was on leave for something). And it didn't even backfire, the teacher ended up bribing us with donuts to not do it again.

Slaptop

I'm a student, and I was convincing enough to be a substitute teacher near the end of my senior year. I had a crazy experience that came out of that.

After AP exams, we do nothing in my AP Chemistry class so instead of going to Chem in the morning like normal I went to my AP Bio teacher to work on the end-of-year project.

Turns out my AP Bio teacher, who also teaches freshmen bio, wasn't there, and the substitute for what would be her freshman bio class wasn't showing up.

I was wearing a dress shirt, I'm tall, I was wearing a tie and khakis, and I can grow a full beard so I made for a convincing recent college graduate.

I went into the room and told the kids to sit down. Looked at the sub plans on the bio teacher's desk, and taught for an hour about cell structure.

Five minutes before the end of class I revealed my identity- one kid recognized me from the beginning but kept quiet the whole time.

The teacher later thanked me for doing a wonderful job teaching the kids, apparently, I taught them the heck out of mitochondria and Golgi bodies.

swagggerofacripple

I've had so many bad subs. One sub made an elementary student cry insisting her own name was misspelled and made her stand up in front of the class and admit her name was spelled wrong.

I asked that she not return but I still saw her around as other teachers had her sub.

Another one worth mentioning was supposed to be my sub for the last 2 weeks of school because I went on maternity leave, this time teaching at a 7th-12th grade school.

The sub ignored all my sub plans, played on his cell phone the whole time, and then like 3 days in got upset at the students and told them off.

And then they watched as he walked out to the parking lot and drove away. Thank goodness some kids went and told the office. When I came back it was like my room had been ransacked! It was awful.

ambereatsbugs

Not a teacher, but I know this was a disaster for my teacher. We had been studying Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story and our teacher had created a very comprehensive exam.

In it, we would be asked to compare and contrast characters, situations, and themes of the two as answers to some very specific questions.

He had spent countless hours ensuring that it was fair and complete. We were going to have the exam the following Monday and he was taking Friday off, so he told us that in addition to the weekend, we should also use Friday's class to prepare for the exam.

His instructions to the substitute were likely something like, "Tell them to prepare for the exam. They already know what to do."

She marched in and shouted, "Prepare for an exam," and proceeded to hand it out. Of course, we protested, but what substitute hasn't heard, "We're not supposed to get the exam today," from a class at one time or another?

When Monday came, the teacher was devastated. He could not count the scores (he wouldn't even attempt to grade them). He did not feel right giving the exam now that we had seen it.

All the work he put into it and all the insight he suspected he might gain from scoring it were lost. Instead, we spent the day reviewing what we could have, should have, and would have answered.

focuswiz

I taught middle school Math and English in the 90's and the substitute teacher didn't know how to convert a decimal into a fraction and kept insisting that the students who did know how to do it were wrong.

She also apparently didn't know how to pronounce five of our twenty vocabulary words and didn't know what half of them meant. I had to ask myself, what she actually did know.

Maxtrt

I caught the flu the week my students had a district benchmark test. I could feel that I was coming down with something, so I stayed late to put together really in-depth review packets and slideshows.

I wrote pages of directions for the substitute and separated the reviews by class numbers. I even included my personal number and told them to call me any time if a student had a question they couldn’t answer.

I spent about 5 hours putting everything together after school while battling around a 103 temp. The substitute completely ignored my instructions.

She instead took every single piece of construction paper and cardstock in my classroom from my personal locker that I had left open for her in case she needed something and had the students make flip books about their feelings.

They used thousands of pieces of paper and craft supplies, probably around $100 of my own personal supplies. This was for freshmen in high school. I’m still bitter.

Threwthelookinglass

I came back after being gone ONE DAY and my students told me the substitute teacher flipped over tables in a rage and was escorted from the building by a cop.

What actually happened is that the sub left the room to take a 20-minute phone call and the kids thought it would be funny to flip the tables over.

The substitute then had to flip the tables right side up while yelling at the kids.

Then, during lunch, my Special Ed. Co-teacher came into my room to set up and caught the sub MAKING OUT WITH A STUDENT.

Turns out she was 18 to his 25 and the 20-minute phone call was to set up the lunch meeting. The principal then had him escorted from the building by the resource officer.

This is why I say having a sub is more work than just coming to school myself. I still had to deal with the fallout from that mess alone.

mewolkens

When I was a substitute teacher, I got a lot of requested jobs because the substitute pool was poor. One such example given to me was a substitute who would just go to sleep. I barely believed it.

Once I was teaching full-time, I had a sub come in for a day. When I got back my students told me that he told them to leave him alone, sat down, and went to sleep.

I believed it then.

tylerbrainerd

When I was in high school there was this sub that would sleep. He would literally introduce himself, pull out his hearing aid and knock out.

There was also this substitute who wouldn’t let us do any work. She would start class, and tell us what our teacher left us to do, but then before starting she would “introduce herself”.

This included 40 minutes of talking about her entire life and showing us pictures of her cats. And she would chastise you for being disrespectful if you did anything but listen to her.

My teacher came back the next day and was like - why didn’t any of my classes get anything done? We didn't know what to tell him.

[deleted]

I had left out - overnight - eggs that I was going to use in a science experiment the following day. I was out and thought nothing about it.

I returned the following day and went looking for the eggs only to find them missing. 

Asked a student where they went and I was informed that the substitute took the class to the special education kitchen, hard-boiled them, and ate them.

I went to talk to my AP and was informed that the substitute teacher had called in sick for her job for that day, due to food poisoning.

teacheroftroubles

Not a teacher but the sub made the handicapped classmate who has muscle, joint, and vision complications go grab his textbook from his homeroom.

He's not completely helpless but when it comes to heavy things, he needs help. My classmate's homeroom was halfway across campus and the required book consisted of 5 large text volumes because they were specifically made for his poor vision.

He can't wear glasses either due to complications. I offered to help because I'm usually the one that goes and grabs it for him during normal class but the sub yelled at me saying he knows my kind and I'm just trying to get out of class.

Sub told me he was not there to play games and for me to quit it before he sent me off to the principal's office. Needless to say, the entire class was shocked.

A classmate came back with another student from the homeroom requesting that next time the sub send someone else to grab the books because my classmate can't carry them by himself.

When my usual teacher came back we requested the sub not return because of what he said to us and did to a classmate. My teacher wrote an email to the principal about it and that was the end of that.

[deleted]

In middle school, we had a thing where if you were failing when progress reports came out our football coach would make us do physical punishments.

Well, I’d missed 2 and a half weeks of school due to pneumonia so when I came back I had an insane amount of rework to be completed. My teachers had put that work in as 0’s until I completed the work, so I was technically failing.

My coach made me run until I was turning blue and falling every couple of steps. My knees and hands were scraped. Another coach saw me and sent me to the nurse's office.

My dad was madder than I knew he was capable of. He was screaming at the principal that he wanted to see the coach who didn’t believe me. The principal told him he didn’t think that was a safe idea at that time haha.

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