Teachers Share Something A Student Has Said That Made Them Go 'Wow, There Is No Hope Left For You.'

Sometimes teachers just have to shake their heads at the ridiculous stuff their students say and do. Check out these stories on AskReddit about the most memorable ‘lost causes’ that plagued the classroom.

Source list available at the end.

I’m a second grade teacher. I once had a boy who lied constantly about everything. He was on camera once, watching the footage of himself punching a student in the face, when he crossed his arms and said, “If I didn’t do it, then I didn’t do it.” The worst part is, his mom believed every word he said and attacked the school for making him accountable for his actions.

He’s going to do something as an adult and go to jail. When they put him away, I know he’s going to be yelling, “If I didn’t do it, then I didn’t do it!”

foundinthewild17

I had a senior student say she didn’t think it was “fair” (I’ve grown to hate that word by the way) that my exams used short answer questions instead of multiple choice. She said, “Some of us just aren’t good writers!” I responded with, “If you’re a senior in college, and you can’t string a few sentences together, well then, something has gone wrong.” She stormed out of class.

nph333

I was covering cells and organelles in a lesson. I was passing around a model of a cell that highlighted organelles, what they looked like, and where they were located.

It gets to this one girl. She takes a look at it and says, “What planet is this?”

screwstd

“I want to be a drug dealer, but the cool kind. You know like the ones that wear a suit and carry a briefcase.” He was 17 at the time and completely serious. He was expelled a month later for jumping another student.

Icon7d

I had one student at a bilingual school in Mexico, who after being at this school and supposedly learning English for 5+ years, still couldn’t speak it and barely tried to make any effort to learn anything. She didn’t do assignments and failed almost every test. When we mentioned it to her parents, their attitude was: “She doesn’t really need it because she will just marry someone who will take care of everything for her.” My thoughts were: “Who would want to marry someone who doesn’t know anything and makes no effort?”

shweatyyeti

“I don’t have to get good grades. My grandfather owns a house. When he dies, my family is going to sell it for millions. That way, I’ll never have to get a job.”

RestEqualsRust

Kid (being totally serious): “I’m going to drop out. I’ll make money off of YouTube.”

Me: “How many views are your videos getting?”

Kid: “I have four subscribers, so I just need a few more.”

gamsambill

Yesterday, I was in a store. There was a child there who was maybe 9 or 10. From the way she interacted with me, I could tell exactly how her mother would interact with a person. This child stood next to me as I looked through the clothes with her arms crossed. She huffed loudly and told me I was in her way. She then complained when I picked something she had wanted.

Shesgotcake

I am a teacher, but the quote is from my sister, “I don’t need to go to college because it’s easier to see God when you’re in the gutter.”

Five years later, she’s in a trailer with her abusive fianc.

Chel_of_the_sea

I had a student who was always acting up. I constantly tried talking to him about his behavior, and I wrote plenty of referrals. Throughout all of this, I would email and call his mother but never got a response.

One day, he was pacing around and texting someone. I told him to put his phone away and he said, “I can’t. I’m not too happy right now.” I said, “Will you take it out to the hall, and I’ll give you one minute?”

His response really shocked me. He said, “No, I’ll sit down. I just want my mom to turn the water back on.”

When all you know about a student is what you see in the classroom, it can be easy to forget they may not have a great home life. So I did wonder, “Is there hope for him?” It wasn’t truly any fault of his own, he just had a home life where he was stricken by poverty.

A_Turkey_Named_Jive

I had a first grader throw chairs and desks at me for about a week. This was after 2 months of horrific behavior that the parents and administration ignored. One hit me hard enough that it injured my knee before I finally had enough video evidence for the principal to get involved. The student refused to speak to me at all. Eventually, my co-teaching partner got him to explain why he was doing it. “I just don’t like him.”

I feel bad for the kid. He has some serious emotional problems. I don’t know if I’d say there is no hope left because he is only in the first grade, but I hope he gets treatment.

WaxStatue

On Friday, a student told me that she and her mom were walking down the street behind an old man. The old man reached into his pocket for something and all of his money fell out onto the sidewalk. The mom and daughter ran to picked it all up. When the old man tried to take it back from them, they told him it was their money and to go to hell.

DIGGYRULES

I asked my students what they could have done to better prepare themselves for their exam. One responded with, You should have told me to revise better. Apparently, the revision sheets and saying, This is REALLY important just wasnt enough.

TheBlondeGeneticist

I had one student who was in grade nine, and the more I got to know him, the more I realized he was kind of messed up. Not only could he barely read or write (even his own name was a struggle), but he lacked basic life experiences that even the harder cases I worked with had. Anyhow, he was gifted at shoplifting and knew how to survive on the streets for weeks if necessary. He’d been removed from his home more than ten times and always ended up being returned. He begged for help from various departments and agencies to no avail. I did what I could, sometimes more than what I was allowed to, and taught him the most basic reading and writing skills.

One day, he casually mentioned his plan to end his life as that was the only positive thing he could look forward to. I got him into a professional support group, but he quickly left because he had no trust in professionals. The short version of the outcome is, he is still alive and has been returned to his “family.” He no longer attends school, still plans that one day he won’t be around, but he keeps in contact with me during his “hard times.”

I struggle to understand what he has already been through in his life. I can’t imagine where he will end up (nor do I want to), and I’m afraid of the day I hear he is not around anymore. I do have hope for him, but experience tells me different.

lord_dragonian

I teach first year U.S. law students and more than you would care to believe don’t know America has three branches of government, much less what those branches do.

Pali_Upekkha

My mom is a nursing instructor, and she has some horror stories about people who have become nurses. The bad students are rude and entitled. They either skip their work, lie on it, or expect my mom to do every assignment with them step-by-step after class. When the student starts to fail because they are not meeting the standards, the people above my mom will give them alternative (easy, busy work) assignments so that they can pass the program, and the school will still have good statistics. If you get a nurse someday who seems incompetent, they probably are.

WhenIsSomeday

“It’s not what they said, it’s what they didn’t say.” I asked him to read out loud, and he just stared at the paper. I soon found out he read at a kindergarten level as a 5th grader.

He didn’t want to put in the work himself. Instead, he just waited for someone to read it for him. His comprehension was there, but he wanted everything spoon fed to him.

LegionsDemise

My wife had a student in the third grade who refused to do any writing assignments. My wife told him she was going to call his parents to explain to them what was going on if he didn’t start doing his work. He said, “I don’t care. My mom told me I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do because rules don’t apply to me.” My wife called his mom and his mom told my wife that she (meaning my wife) just had to understand how her son was, and if he didn’t want to do the work, then he didn’t have to. His behaviors all made sense after that, and it was a very tough year. He stopped doing all of his work and started harassing other kids (probably, partially, due to boredom since he was doing nothing else by the end of the year). As long as he was happy, my wife couldn’t get the mom on board.

Shostakovich22

I spent 15 minutes on a math lesson, did examples, gave out a worksheet, did one ON the worksheet with them, and a student still asked, “So, you just want us to fill this in with random numbers?” I was speechless.

Mathgailuke

Ive got a class of eighth grade students, and we just got a new student. In his first week, he proceeded to grab a female students butt with both hands. I called him up to my desk and asked him if he knew what unwanted touching. Without any emotion, he said that “yes” he did know, but he was new and needed to make a name for himself. I immediately sent him to the office. The saddest part about all of this… the response I got from administration on how the student was spoken to about the situation, and I needed to make sure they didn’t sit near each other again. There were no consequence for the assault which meant, you could be assured, something like this would happen again.

greenVneck

When is the teacher coming? This wasn’t the first lesson I had with this child.

Billy_Rage

“Okay I need you guys to name some countries for me, let’s make a list”

I get a few examples and then “Africa!”

I proceed to explain the concept of a continent

“So wait, Africa is a country inside of a country? Like Tasmania is a country but it’s in Australia?”

Please keep in my that this was a grade 11 high school class.

Jmoor123

A seventeen year old girl who saw birds walking around outside her classroom and said, “Look, that bird has feet! And so does that one”

onthelevels

I’m a high school Earth Science teacher. I had an 11th grader says, “Wait, we don’t live INSIDE the earth?”

SpacePirate65

I asked a kid what he wanted to do when he grew up and his answer was “I dunno, something to do with memes.”

Errtai_

My 12 year old son told me of an exchange a fellow student of his had with their science teacher, in which the student attested that it was her understanding that the Sun was located on the Earth’s equator, which is why it is so much warmer there. I can only imagine what must have gone through that poor woman’s head hearing that.

larbearbaby

I teach Computer Science in university. I get alot of freshmen that plucked the major because they heard it was a high paying major, but don’t actually like the subject.

But the worst was a recent student that asked if they could just do the assignments by hand. They didn’t want to use a computer, they didn’t really like using them. “People use computers too much, I don’t start doing that.” Also thought computers could do too much, and wanted people to stop using them. This is a programming course. For computers. In a major about making computers do things. You are gonna need to use a computer.

thecinnaman123

University professor here. A student last term never purchased the textbook, so he never did his homework, sat in the back of the classroom, spaced out for the entire class, failed one exam, and then barely passed the other. He came to me during the final week of class and asked if he could do all of his missed assignments, and then he asked me why I didn’t remind him to do them. This is university, I’m not chasing after you.

PeriwinkleAppleTree

I’m a college prof and this happened to a colleague of mine. Two students came into office hours to complain that his biology class was unfair because, “Your exams discriminate against students who can’t think.” He swears this was their exact quote.

NorthernSparrow

My wife told me this story about a time she was lecturing a kid on why he should try to do well in school. She asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and his response was, I want to be in jail. Thats where my dad and uncle are. She had no response. This was probably the only time in here career she was left speechless by a student.