Suspended for being the target of violence. I didn’t even fight back but the zero tolerance policy also meant i got suspended too. It was a random event from someone who i had never interacted with so it wasn’t like i provoked them into stabbing me.

Throwing a dime onto an empty stage in highschool. “Could have been assault”

“Swearing”

5th grade, first day at a new school. I’m trying to meet new kids, but I’m terribly awkward. I try to lead one conversation with some humour “Did you know the Bible says you shouldn’t covet your neighbour’s ass?”

Cue some other kid running off to find a teacher, which resulted in me having to skip recess and write an essay about how I shouldn’t swear because it is a bad influence on younger kids.

Over the following four years I was on the receiving end of invective many times more aggressive and offensive, sometimes right in front of teachers, but I never saw another kid punished for foul language.

Got suspended in 8th grade for “smoking on school grounds” because I stood outside the front door finishing my fruit snacks before I walked into the school (we weren’t supposed to have snacks outside designated food areas). Some rocket scientist of a teacher saw me standing by the door with my hand occasionally going up to my mouth (I think it may have been cold enough outside to make my breath steam) and said, “AHA! This child is smoking!”

She literally grabbed me by my collar and dragged me to the assistant principal’s office. Multiple other kids, and an adult who must have been someone’s mom, told her I wasn’t smoking, but she wasn’t having any of it. And the assistant principal just believed her out of hand. Wouldn’t even let me finish a sentence to say something in my own defense.

They had the security guard escort me off school grounds. And I just stood there for a while looking back at the school, still holding my fruit snacks, trying to figure out wtf just happened.

I pretty much checked out mentally after that. That kind of stuff ended up being pretty much par for the course. I hung out with the metal/punk/skater/stoner/goth crowd, and that was some kind of unforgivable sin at that school. My friends and I were constantly being singled out for minor or imagined infractions and never believed or given the benefit of the doubt. I went from a 3.8 gpa to something like 0.6 that year. I’d have to sit through all these meetings about how I was “so smart,” and how “I could go so far if only I would apply myself.” And I’d straight up tell them what was going on, and they’d be like, “It’s just a mystery why you won’t apply yourself.”

It’s been like 30 years and I’m still mad about that shit.

Not sure which is dumbest so I’ll write a couple

In senior year of high school, when I received my schedule, I realized it was a class short. I’ve always had this very big issue of “trying to do the right thing.” So I marched to the office of the person in charge of that, asking if I could get an art class to fill the period. She said everything was full and she couldn’t do that. So I said “well thank you for trying” and was getting up to walk away when she stopped me and said “No, you are not allowed to have a free period, this must be fixed right now”. I was part of the yearbook club and told her I would just use the time to work on the yearbook. She would not have it at all. So she added on the only free class, one about taxes. The thing about this class is that it was FULL of bad kids, they were all dumped there. To make matters worse, my sort of stalker was in this class as well. The first day I showed up, she noticed me and stood up in front of the class and exclaimed that if anyone messed with me, that she would mess with them. It was quite embarrassing. The class was abysmal to be a part of and not much got done. My friends made fun of me for my stupid choice there. I should have just kept quiet.

During lunch time. In 1st grade my friend didn’t want to go to the bathroom alone and asked me to go along with. When we were on the way, the girls bathroom door was wide open for some reason with 6 girls standing by the entrance. It was odd, but we kept walking to the boys bathroom, did our business and left. On the way back we say one of the girls talking to one of the lunch aides. She apparently told her we had gone INTO the girls bathroom. We were forced to stand facing the wall for the rest of the lunch period. I was more upset that my friend convinced me to go, since I didn’t really need the bathroom in the first place.

I got detention for being ahead in reading. We were reading a text in class, people got turns to read part of the text out loud. And they were reading so slowly that I was way ahead of them. So when the teacher gave the turn to read out loud to me, I didn’t fully know where the previous reader had left.
My neighbour whispered the next line to me, but that line appeared twice in the text.

So I started reading from the second occurence of that line but with the next line after that there was a lot of confusion in class.

The teacher told me to stay behind for detention, because of that.

Reading ahead in class. I wasn’t reading ahead, I am just a fast reader. Yes, I really did finish that chapter already. Yes, when you said to read it. No, I’m not showing off.

What kind of teacher complains that a kid is reading too much?

Got arrested for self defence against a bully

fuck the school admin

and ACAB

In 2nd grade the teacher had to step out of the room for several minutes and put me in charge. If anyone misbehaved, I was to write their name on the chalkboard. One group of boys did misbehave, so I wrote down their names.

When the teacher returner, she scolded me for “being a snitch” and sent me to the principal’s office.

In 3rd grade (maybe age 8), when coming back from the playground, my teacher had a rule:

STRAIGHT LINE, NO TALKING, NO TOUCHING

One day, when coming back from recess, I noticed that the kid in front of me, Joe, was crying. Now, I didn’t like Joe, he was a bully and had made fun of me and my friend group since the 2nd grade. But I still didn’t like just letting someone sit there upset. So I put a hand on his shoulder and said, “hey, are you ok?”

Thus breaking two of the three most important rules you could possibly imagine. The teacher came over and chastised me for “playing around in line”, completely ignoring Joe (who was still crying). I tried to argue, but to no avail.

Later that day, the teacher made a huge speech in front of the class about how sometimes you think you’re doing the right thing, but you still need to follow the rules, and gave me a citation in front of the entire class.

Also, Joe continued to bully me.

Calling a Jewish girl jew. Wasn’t derogatory, someone asked if so and so went to the local catholic school with me and I said no she’s a jew. Had to watch Schindlers List and write an essay even tho principal acknowledged the teacher was wrong for thinking jew was offensive. This was in 2002.

Teacher handed out some blank pages and wanted a couple line response to something we were doing that day. I wrote it down and decided I wanted to doodle so I (neatly) tore the page in half and handed in my answer. Got points marked off for not handing in a full piece of paper (my response/answer itself was good). WTH? Since when was that a requirement for such casual assignments?

A literal paddling for being late to homeroom in middle school. Bad as schools are now, they have been worse.

Also, wearing a mini skirt on a football game day, when the cheerleaders had to come to school in their uniforms (skirts much shorter than mine.) this is the only time my mom backed me up, she said it was stupid and picked me up I was not in trouble. Dress code should be the same for everyone, if you have one.

5th grade music (singing) class. We’re practicing a song for an upcoming assembly. It’s cheesy. An excerpt:

We can fight all the evil, we can fight all the hate
If we do it together, it won’t be too late
If we do it together, it won’t be too late

During the song, two adjacent kids start laughing every time it says “We can do it together” because “do it” = “have sex” even though most of us don’t know what it entails at this age, myself included. The teacher glares at them but does nothing else. Several other kids including me chuckle at the scene. This goes on for 3 weeks.

Now comes the dress rehearsal. Today is special because two 5th grade classes are having a joint rehearsal. All of us are a little giddy because there are double the kids crammed into the same space.

In anticipation of getting caught up in the infectious laughter, as the words “do it” approach I hide my face behind my sheet music. Suddenly, the backing CD track cuts out. I lowered the paper from my face she was already halfway to the clown kid sitting beside me. Except… she comes to me. In this abrupt silence she explodes at me, point blank, index finger brandished:

“YOU NEED TO GROW UP! IT IS NOT ABOUT HAVING SEX!”

She singled me out. I was embarrassed.

Only after class did I learn from my homeroom teacher that the two instigators had recently been given a very stern talking to, such that the music teacher thought it was resolved until my hiding face gave her the impression it was not. Thankfully my homeroom teacher understood and I received no further consequences other than all of this living in my head for the next 30 years and forever.

Using an unabridged dictionary instead of my 4th-grade textbook’s glossary.

Every new unit in social studies had a vocabulary box with about a dozen “new” words. The teacher’s first assignment in each unit was to write out each word, then the complete definition of that word from the glossary. Each assignment was worth 10 points. Anyone who “failed” the assignment (less than 7 out of 10 points) was given a lunch detention: no recess.

Some units had only a handful of words; the assignment would end up being 2 or 3 pages. Some units had a lot more. They would end up being 5 or 6 pages.

She took off points for each misspelled word, missed punctuation, bad handwriting. The assignment had to be completed in ink, and she prohibited corrections of any sort. No erasable ink: If you made any error anywhere on the page, she expected you to rewrite the entire page. If the ink stopped flowing in your pen, and it produced an interrupted line, that was a point off.

It had to be turned in on standard ruled paper. Using college rule was an instant failure.

Once, I found a nice pen. It was a 1mm ballpoint. It produced nice, thick, clean, dark lines. It wrote smoothly. It was the first pen I found that I actually liked writing with.

Points knocked off immediately: she called it a “marker”, and the assignment was supposed to be completed with a “pen”.

One night, I had forgotten my social studies textbook at school. I decided against even attempting the assignment, and resigned myself to another lunch detention. Dad had other ideas. He insisted that I was exaggerating; the the teacher would be reasonable and accommodating. He said that she would appreciate the effort, and might even give me extra credit for going above and beyond.

He called around, and got the vocabulary list for me. He sat me down with the list and his big, unabridged dictionary, and told me to start writing. I remember that I filled two whole pages with the definition of a single word, and that I turned in 15 pages.

When she was grading my assignment, she called me up, and asked me what I had done. I explained that I had used a dictionary. She pulled out a big red marker, wrote a giant “F” across the first page, and gave me two lunch detentions for my obstinance.

She fucked me up for a few years. All I learned from her was that if I couldn’t achieve absolute perfection, there was no point in even trying.