There’s no substitute for a good story about a substitute teacher. We’ve all had them, the unfamiliar uncomfortable man or woman who tries to get through the class with minimal conflict and often with minimal effort. And it’s the kids who often pay the price! These Redditors are teachers and students whose stories of substitute teachers will make you wonder how we learned anything in school at all!
1. An Alarming Tale
I had a Grade 1 and 2 class last year and one student had diabetes. Let’s call him Adam. Adam had a cell phone that beeps when his blood sugar is too low or too high. It’s connected to the monitor in his arm and hip. The cell phone has no other uses, no apps, no data, and is 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 and sweating. Luckily this EA knows Adam’s medical plan, and instantly asks Adam for the phone and he 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, but then she got 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, drank a couple of juice boxes and had a granola bar. His mom picked him up shortly after.
2. Her Own Drummer
Back when I was a teacher, I had a sub decide my plans weren’t good enough for her and went rogue. She decided to show my students videos of animals giving birth on YouTube. I taught English...
3. Heart Of The Matter
I had a sub who demanded I turn over my heart monitor in front of the class. It was my 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.
The monitor buzzed and I went to click ‘send’ when the sub demanded I turn over my cell phone. 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. I’ve never seen anyone’s face drop that fast in my life.
4. By Any Other Name
One sub made an elementary student cry insisting her 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.
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7. Sweet Dreams
My class was amazing and was the sweetest, most thoughtful group I’ve ever had. When I got back the next day, I asked how the sub was. The students told me the sub “took a nap for a while.” I asked the students what they did while the sub napped and they said they just worked quietly until they ran out of work, then they just read silently, as they didn’t want to wake him up!
I had to explain to the kids that they should have woken the teacher up as the teacher needs to be awake in case something bad happens. They just thought he really needed to sleep. Seriously, the sweetest class, ever!
8. The Missing Cat
I had a cool Chinese Lucky Cat that went missing after I had a sub. My students said the sub seemed intrigued by it, talked about it several times, and even moved it from the shelf where it sat and brought it over to my desk. It was gone when I returned the next day.
9. Hurricane Sub
Left my perfectly prepped and neat desk an absolute disaster, did not follow the lesson plan and... took my gel pens!
10. No Class
I had a sub take my dry erase markers and emergency chocolate that I would pass out to kids who got hurt or were sad. After that, I locked my drawers and left them with two pens and one dry erase marker.
11. A Painful Lesson
I vividly remember one incident of having a substitute in Kindergarten. I had an infected cut on my toe and had been prescribed an antibiotic, that morning was the first time I had ever taken penicillin in my life. We were sitting on the floor for roll call and I remember this burning pain in my abdomen, and she told us to get up and go to our desks, I tried to get up only to realise I couldn’t move and just laid back.
This sub was a total cow and I remember she was always really mean. Anyway, she started yelling at me for being attention-seeking and then tried to pull me up. I was in so much pain I started screaming and one of the teachers from the classroom next to ours came in, realized I wasn’t faking it and called an ambulance.
A long story short, I’m allergic to penicillin and my kidneys were failing, I was in the hospital for almost a week before I got discharged. Needless to say that absolute sub was not allowed back at the school, but I will never forget that day.
12. School Drama
Our class had been studying Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story, and our teacher had created a very comprehensive exam where we would be asked to compare and contrast characters, situations, and themes of the two. 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." So she marched in and shouted, "Prepare for an exam," and proceeded to hand it out. When Monday came, the teacher was devastated. He could not count the scores and he wouldn't even attempt to grade it.
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 was lost. Instead, we spent the day reviewing what we could have, should have, would have answered. As you can tell, I could feel his pain.
13. Some Bad Notes
There was a harpsichord in the front of the classroom used both for demonstration and performance. Not knowing what he was doing, the sub tried to tune three notes that had gone mildly out of tune while I was away. He managed to break the strings on all three notes and left a message inside reading, "Sorry about that . . ."
14. Sub Par
Our regular algebra teacher had a baby and was gone on mat-leave for several months. In her place we got the worst sub ever! She was hyper-focused on three or four of the 28 students in the class and just taught them while completely ignoring the rest of us. She’d pass out a worksheet, then go to her students and never acknowledge us again till she dismissed us.
She never checked homework, never acknowledged us, and if anyone outside of her favourite students raised their hand or spoke up they were ignored. This went about as well as you expected with a bunch of 14 and 15-year-olds. That class was just wild, and it was a mess. I’m surprised we weren’t reported or visited by the teachers on either side of us for how loud we were.
After several months with this lady, the vice principal was walking around randomly checking classrooms and walked into our algebra class. He lost it. He yelled at all of us to sit down and shut up and demanded that the sub leave and he sat with us for the rest of the period. We never saw her again and had maybe six or seven different subs after her.
Two weeks after this our regular teacher came back. When she realized we had learned nothing and learned the extent of how useless this lady had been she started tearing up. I passed the classroom on the way to the bathroom during the next period and saw her sobbing at her desk. A friend of my mom’s worked at the central office where they assigned or organized the substitute teachers, and that lady was permanently taken off the substitute list.
15. A Bad Call
I had a sub give out my cell phone number to my high school students so they could call me and give me excuses as to why they weren’t taking their test while I was gone. I was livid. I complained to the sub-office, and that teacher never subbed for my building again.
16. Two Steps Back
A few of the periods I taught were co-teach classes where a percentage of the students in the class have special needs but can work well enough in a general population classroom with assistance from a special education co-instructor. These classes were often very rewarding to teach, but one downside of teaching that population from a logistical standpoint is that every special education student has a meeting about twice a year where administrators, teachers, counsellors, parents/guardians, and the student themself all get together to go over their status and review the various educational accommodations the student is receiving to determine what may or may not need to change to best suit their needs.
I didn’t have a problem with attending these meetings per se, but because they only take one period, and several teachers are rotating through various meetings over a day, the school had devoted ‘subs’ who were more akin to babysitters (at best) than substitute educators. That means that during that one period, everything can fall apart.
One year I had a ‘tough’ student who had some serious attitude problems but was a good person underneath it all and with whom I’d done a lot of work to improve her engagement and interest in my class. About halfway through the year, I got called for one of these meetings during the period I was supposed to have with this student.
In my absence of about 45 minutes, the sub decided to pick a petty argument with my kid, who was rightfully offended but unwisely overreacted and escalated things to making threats and nearly coming to blows with the sub to where she ended up with in-school suspension for a while. Getting the story from all parties and witnesses involved later, it’s pretty clear the sub was to blame.
The kid with whom I’d worked so hard was back at square one. I eventually got her back on track, and she ended up with one of the highest grades in my class at the end of the year, but I could only imagine how much better she could’ve been without the setback and the amount of trust in adults she’d lost.
17. A Sore Spot
Back in school I had super bad growing pains. I couldn't walk, move, and needed a wheelchair. My school was gearing up for sports day so they had each grade take turns walking the oval to win points for their class (1 lap = 1 point). My teacher was lovely and either let me sit out or let the older kids push me so I could still win points and get some sun in winter.
Well my teacher was away for a week I think and we had this sub come in and it happened to be the day it was my class’s turn to walk the oval for an hour, so I'd put all my things down, walked over to my wheelchair at the back of the room and sat down so my friend could wheel me. And boy she didn't like that. She demanded I get out and stop playing in it cause it wasn't a toy.
I knew that, said that and tried explaining, as a shy 8-year-old with a stutter, how I had crippling growing pains. She wasn't having any of it and grabbed me by my arm and threw me out of the chair and told me to get up. It felt like every one of my bones broke. The walk to the oval was horrible, she wouldn't let my friends help me walk, she screamed at me if I fell behind and told me I was holding everyone up.
I was crying and I lost my lunch break because I was "putting on a show". She made me walk the oval after pleading not to. All my joints were swelling and pulsing to the point I felt sick. I got halfway around the oval (our oval was around 1.5 km around) and I passed out. Luckily we were oval walking with an older class and one of the boys ran half the length of the oval to come help and he carried me down.
The sub was yelling at him to put me down cause I was just doing it for attention. He just walked past her and told her to shut up. He took me back to the classroom and used the class phone to ask the office lady to call my mom to pick me up. By that time the sub had returned to the class and the older boy had put pillows on the ground and set up a spot for me to lay down till mum came to get me. The moment he left she just flew off the handles.
I was made to stand in the corner of the classroom, Blair Witch style for the rest of the day as punishment. My legs were trembling. I was crying and each time she heard me cry, another day was added and she "would make sure my teacher knew so she could continue the punishment." My mom showed up just before lunch so I'd been standing there for about 45 minutes and when I saw mom, I just collapsed and mom went off.
My mom is an angry woman and boy, did that teacher cry. The sub called for the principal’s help. However, she was in for a surprise because the whole class backed me up and told him what she had done to me and she ended up being fired. That hour and 45 minutes I had her as a sub caused me so many issues over the next three years with my joints and ended up not being able to walk for about a month.
Apparently, that wasn't the first complaint and she wasn't allowed to sub or teach again.
18. The Exposed Truth
I was showing Clash of the Titans at the end of the year after a unit on Ancient Greece. There is mild nudity at the beginning and the end of the movie, but we were in the middle of the movie so there shouldn’t have been an issue. I left the video paused at the right spot (we still had VCRs like 10 years ago when this happened), but the sub somehow managed to show both the nudity at the beginning and the end of the movie.
The scenes were hours apart and the class was only 40 minutes. Then, the sub wrote an email to the principal about how my colleague made him show nudity.
19. Chatter Box
When I was in Grade 4 my class read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Our reading teacher knew she was going to be absent, so she arranged for us to watch The Secret of NIMH. We watched it over two days, and the substitute talked through the entire movie. She continuously compared the book to the movies, or talked about what would have been better done, but never stopped the movie, and ruined it for us, and there were only maybe eight of us.
Then at the end of the second day he gave us a homework worksheet to fill in about the book versus the movie. Most of us did poorly because we missed things due to the sub’s near-constant talking. If it wasn't for the fact that most of us did so badly, and complained about the sub, I don't know that our reading teacher would have believed us.
20. False Alarm
In Grade 8 we had a sub in English who told us to go to the computer lab. The door was open, so we started to go in. She finally caught up to us and stopped anyone else from entering. She left the rest of the class outside while she informed us we were all being written up for truancy because entering a classroom without the teacher with us is the same as cutting class.
21. Running Amok
I had a sub who let the kids run wild and do whatever they wanted. They were first graders! I was out because my dad was sick. Thank goodness my team realized what happened and all pulled together and cleaned the room/put it back together before I returned to work.
22. Turning The Tables
I came back after being gone just 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 and caught the sub making out with a student! Turns out she was 18 and the teacher was 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 into school myself.
23. Not Woke
When I was a substitute, 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.
24. A Private Matter
This sub didn’t do anything to the kids, per se, but told the kids that the reason I was out was that my mom was having breast cancer surgery. I teach K-5 and I specifically didn’t tell the kids because I didn’t want them to worry. So, when I came back, I had a bunch of kids come up to me asking about my mom, which was so sweet, but not something the kids should’ve had to worry about.
25. Kids Will Be Kids?
In the 90s I belonged to a club that refurbished old industrial PCs and donated them to schools. Sometimes we’d get completely burned out motherboards or disk drives so I took a bunch of those and made displays showing the insides of computers, and I’d let the kids explore them as part of my session. Then I’d dig out a couple of blown PCs and monitors, hand out the screwdrivers and let them rip them apart.
The younger kids especially loved this, and frequently I’d see some kids take home a hard drive controller or a graphics card like it was a real treasure. So one day I went in to do my lesson at a high school (I think freshman or sophomore science class). The class had a substitute and I had an appt right after that session, so I told them I’d come back to pick everything up the next day.
The kids could take whatever they wanted from the old PCs, but please put my displays aside, in the cupboard. The next day I came by and all my displays were still out and they were completely trashed. Worse yet the sub’s attitude was, “Well, kids will be kids.” That was the last session I ever did for that program.
26. A Real Egghead
I had left out eggs overnight 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. I 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 sub had called in sick for her job for that day, due to eating toxic food.
27. This Speaks Volumes
Once a sub made my handicapped classmate who has muscle, joint and vision complications go grab his textbooks from his homeroom. He's not completely helpless but when it comes to heavy things, he needs help. The classmate’s homeroom was halfway across campus and the required book consists of five large-text volumes because they're specifically made for his poor vision.
He can't wear glasses 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. The sub told me he's not there to play games and for me to quit it before he sends me off to the principal's office.
Needless to say, the entire class was shocked. The 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 our classmates. My teacher wrote an email to the principal about it and that was the end of that.
28. Help Wanted
My Grade 9 English teacher was fired (which is entirely another story) and the school had difficulty finding someone to fill the spot. We would have random subs, but they didn't really teach us. Eventually, we had a different person babysit us each day or week. One time it was the scary principal who just glared at us like we were convicts about to escape, another it was the school's security officers who at least talked to us, and various teachers for one-day stints.
I don't know why one of our five librarians couldn't have been in there going through grade-appropriate books at the least. We spent two or three months like that.
29. Now It’s Personal
The sub gave out snacks that I bought with my own money that I kept for kids who stayed after to get tutoring. She also threw out a broken electric pencil sharpener that the kids broke in front of her. Which again, I bought it with my own money and couldn't get replaced by the company because I had no product to send back. I still don't have a sharpener for my room.
She also let the kids go through my things in my cabinets and desk. I lost a bunch of stuff that way.
30. All About Me
There was this substitute who wouldn’t let us do any work. She would start class, 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. Then she would chastise us for being disrespectful if we 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?”
31. “Mrs. Hostess”
Every time my Grade 8 history teacher was out, a woman we nicknamed Mrs. Hostess would usually sub for him. I’m not sure why, as she subbed other classes too, but all the incidents of note happened when she subbed for history class. There happened to be a girl in the class who shared a name with an Irish folk song. Every time Mrs. Hostess took attendance when she got to the folk-song girl, she sang the whole song. Every. Time.
The history teacher kept candy and snacks on his desk. Lollipops, that he’d hand out for correct answers or just because, some leftover Halloween candy, and “The Twinkie.” The Twinkie was not ordinary. The Twinkie was an experiment in processed food. This Twinkie was still in its original individual packaging and looked normal at first glance, but was three years past expiration and rock solid. The history teacher demonstrated this by standing on the Twinkie during one of the first weeks of classes. This is a thoroughly inedible Twinkie.
So Mrs. Hostess subbed again, and we knew she’d discovered the lollipop stash because she was openly eating them during class. But it wasn’t until the next day that our history teacher opened his desk drawer to find that the Twinkie was gone. This woman ate an expired, solid Twinkie as well as all the food/candy in the teacher’s desk.
32. Couldn’t Convert
I taught middle school math and English in the ‘90s and the sub 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 20 vocabulary words and didn't know what half of them meant.
33. Urine Trouble
I was a teacher’s assistant while in college. The teacher and I took a week-long workshop and had a sub. The worst thing she did was not letting the kids go potty. It was Kindergarten and she said all the kids going to the bathroom were interrupting the class. One girl wet herself. The school policy was if kids under a certain age had an accident the nurse would give them a pull up (basically a diaper) to wear.
The substitute proceeded to make fun of the girl to wear a diaper, calling her baby and such. The little girl ended facing repercussions at home too. It was devastating to hear about.
34. Bitter Feelings
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 number and told them to call me anytime if a student had a question they couldn’t answer. I spent about five hours putting everything together after school while battling around a 103F fever.
The substitute completely ignored my instructions. She instead took every single piece of construction paper and cardstock in my classroom from my locker that I had left open for her in case she needed something, and had the students make flipbooks about their feelings. They used thousands of pieces of paper and craft supplies, probably around $100 of my supplies. This was for freshmen in high school. I’m still bitter.
35. Roughhousing
I had a class that contained some pretty rough students including one suspended multiple times for fighting, and some gang members. The sub decided to go after a sweet, petite girl that never caused trouble and was generally popular with her classmates. This set off the entire class, which is when the sub went ballistic and started wildly throwing accusations and yelling at the students.
Security eventually got called and took several students out. My first clue was when the sub got my cell number from the staff directory and went off for more than 20 minutes about how bad my students had been. This was followed up with an extremely long email and a two-page written note on my desk plus a concerned note from the administrator about not having appropriate sub-plans.
The next morning when I arrived at school, the students were waiting for me at the door. Once I got them calmed down enough to tell their side of the story, we discussed how they could have handled the situation differently. I promised them never to get that sub again. On a related note, I had a good relationship with said “rough children'' because I treated them with respect and fairness. They usually behaved for me.
36. Bare-ly Relevant
I went to a Catholic university and my first semester I got a lesbian English professor who screened, without warning, a french movie in which everyone was naked for no reason that was thinly wrapped around a Shakespeare play.
I loudly laughed for over ten minutes when the opening credits got to a part where a woman was jumping up and down on a trampoline facing directly into the camera (as one does!) for literally no reason other than to show her bouncing breasts. The entire situation was so absurd I couldn't stop laughing.
37. Painful Memories
I broke my wrist in Grade 6 during gym. I'd broken my wrist and my hand previously as a child so I knew immediately when I couldn't move my hand that it was broken. The coach sent me to the nurse who said she knew it wasn't broken because I wasn't crying. I have pretty high pain tolerance and wasn't much of a "crier" because my mom taught me to "suck it up."
I had two classes after the gym that I sat through in immense pain but my anxiety disorder made me feel too terrified of facing the nurse again. I rode the bus home and called my stepdad. Again my mom told me to suck it up and I knew my stepdad would leave work immediately to take me to the doctor. Sure enough, I had fractured my growth plate near my thumb and part of my wrist. My parents were furious and came with me to school the next day to discuss with the principal. A week later we had a new school nurse.
38. No Hero Here
My brother had a P.E. teacher who requested he run with a torn Achilles tendon. She was probably older than the Achilles the tendon was named after.
39. Subject Matters
I had a sub who was brought in to teach my history class. What she taught instead was geography. I don’t understand how or why, as the worksheets I left were on German-occupied Europe. She taught how earthquakes can cause tsunamis. Yes, it was interesting but, you had one job and it wasn’t that!
40. A Scary Class
When I was in Grade 5 we had a sub show us the first Scream movie. I have no idea why or how that happened, but some kids in my class were not ready for that.
41. Artistic Differences
I had a substitute teacher in my high school French class show a totally inappropriate movie, but tried to explain that since it was in French it was artistic. It was equally frustrating because while I wanted to see breasts, I also couldn’t stop reading the subtitles because I had to understand what they were saying. The teacher did not come back the next day.
42. A Born Loser
My sub lost more than half of the textbooks that I purchased myself. As well as textbooks that were school property. The administration just shrugged at this. Until they found out the textbooks belonging to the school were around $120 each. He also lost all the book assignments of four classes I asked him to collect so I could correct them at home. Kinda sucked for the students who did put a lot of work on it and didn't have digital copies.
Moreover, he didn't teach anything that I asked him to because he didn't like the subject matter. He also didn't bother grading. When I checked the grades he had given out there was only one grade and everyone was given 8/10, even students who didn't take my class.
43. Imbibe The Spirits
The sub had been drinking and passed out at my desk. The kids wrecked the room and took all my stuff. The kids had the sense to take themselves to lunch and recess, so no one in the school realized anything was wrong until after the kids had left for the day.
44. Burst My Bubble
I would occasionally give out Starburst candies to my fourth graders. The sub ate all the pink ones.
45. A Long List
I had a sub who yelled at one of the only girls in my high school engineering class saying girls don't belong in engineering. He also kicked his feet up on the desk and read the paper the entire day. He banged a yardstick on a desk to get everyone's attention then pointed it at the whiteboards with the daily objectives. All without saying a word.
He disappeared at lunch and came back smelling like weed. These are all reports I got from my students the next day. This guy was a retired teacher, too.
46. Class Dismissive
I was on maternity leave for 10 weeks and the long term sub didn’t grade any of the work that my students turned in. The other teachers I worked with said he would watch The Simpsons on his laptop while not teaching. So I came back from leave and had 10 week’s worth of papers, tests, and assignments to grade. My department chair banned him from subbing for the department ever again!
47. Overdue
In Grade 6 we had a pregnant woman as a substitute who was actually past her due date so she was understandably distracted and uncomfortable. But she just sat there reading the newspaper and didn't even speak to us. Some kids beat up another kid and got away with it because she claims it didn't even happen.
48. We Can’t Speak
The one who found out I had speech therapy for a lisp that had been resolved and decided I needed more therapy. Six more weeks of therapy. I sincerely hope methods have changed since then because sitting around holding water in your mouth for 10 minutes at a time is nasty.
49. Couldn’t Hold It
He urinated in my desk chair. Swear. To. God. He peed in my chair and the students noticed it and mentioned it to him. He ignored them and just sat there anyway with a huge puddle of urine on the floor. The kids called security on him. I came in the next day and sat in the chair. It was wet and about that time a security guard stuck her head in the door and said "Don't sit there, that guy peed in your chair."
50. Casting Dispersions
When I was in Grade 6, I fractured my left wrist but it was my dominant hand so I had to poorly write with my right hand. The teacher forced me to write with my left while I had a cast. I couldn't even grasp the pencil. I cried a lot. Then a couple of months went by and got my cast off, the sub told me to suck it up and write with my left hours after getting my cast off. I felt like jelly and intense pain.
Also, that sub once asked a deaf kid to take off his hearing aids. The other kids tried to tell her he needed them but to her, they "looked like headphones." The sub cried when confronted by another teacher. The teacher was fired at the end of the year because of "unnecessary complaints."
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