Though I’ve seen students do some incredibly rude things to teachers, I’ve never actually seen a student scream at and criticize a teacher openly in front of the whole class. That was, until one of my students did it to me.

I started class exactly at 12:30pm – exactly. The clock ticked; I started talking, and we immediately began an activity. In the middle of that activity, about 5-7 minutes into the class, a student walked in, shuffled himself into his seat and loudly asked, “What are we doing?”

I said, calmly, “I’ll let you know in a minute.”

“No,” he explained, “I don’t know what we are doing. Tell me, what are we doing?”

Attempting to be teacherly, I said, “I explained the assignment at the beginning of class, you came in late, so I will explain it in a second when we’re done with this part of the activity.”

“This is the first time I’ve been late; explain to me what we are doing!” The more he talked the louder her got.

I felt bullied; I really didn’t want to cave to a bully. “I don’t want to take up time to explain this again, so I’ll let you know what we’re doing after I’m done with this part of the assignment.”

He broke into an all out roar -
“NO! THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I HAVE BEEN LATE! WHY CAN YOU NOT TELL ME WHAT WE’RE DOING? YOU ARE NOT HELPING ME! YOU ARE NOT TEACHING US!” He was shouting, full tilt, and then he started to stand, “YOU ARE A BAD TEACHER!”

wow… this is weird… this is crazy… is this really happening? What really creeped me out was that he started to stand.

Bewildered, I caved. I raised my hands in peace and calmly said, “Hey, hey, no worries. I’ll explain what we’re doing.”

“Thank you.”

Immediately after class he left and went to the teacher of record with this complaint:

“Ben is not helping me. I think it is my accent and he does not understand what I ask. When I ask something he ignores my question and moves on to something else. You need to talk to him about this.”