Teachers Losing The Plot: 10 Teacher Breakdowns That Got Them Fired

There are many reasons why an educator may find themselves dismissed from their post.

Budget cuts, incompetence, violations of school policies, inappropriate relationships, and harassment are just a few examples.

Strangest Reasons Teachers Got Fired

Recently, online users were prompted to share the most bizarre ways their teachers were fired and some of them are truly strange.

1. For Abandoning Students During a Thunderstorm

This PE teacher at a Florida high school earned his badge as ‘Florida Man’ by taking his freshman students on a canoe trip and abandoning them when a surprise thunderstorm hit.

According to the user who shared this memory, students tied their canoes together and rowed back to the school, arriving drenched and late for their next class. “Our teacher was just standing on the dock, not a care in the world. He got fired like two days later.”

2. For Getting Drunk

Many can relate to watching documentaries during history class. For one online user, their high school teacher hosted regular movie days, during which she would sit at her desk and drink a cup of tea.

On this user’s last day, their class found the teacher unresponsive by the end of the film and called for help. The school administrator not only discovered the teacher passed out drunk but also the numerous bottles of alcohol stashed in her desk.

3. For Swearing at a Student

This netizen described the incident succinctly, “[They were fired for] cussing out a student. It was a librarian at an elementary school.”

A commenter joked, “Bet that student got an expanded vocabulary after that.”

4. Having a Public Breakdown

“Our AP calculus teacher in high school had a mental break, ranted for an entire class period about some nonsense, then drank an entire bottle of salsa, stormed out, and never came back,” shared one Redditor.

Unfortunately for the AP students, the substitute hired was not a calculus teacher, which put them at a disadvantage for the AP test.

For any interested people, the Reddit user also clarified that it was a party-sized bottle of El Paso Medium Salsa.

5. For Distributing Porn

One teacher was fired after they committed a major 21st-century blunder. Instead of including a Google Form, they added a link to a p*rnographic video in an email to students.

One of these remembers the event fondly: “Many students then commented on the video with a lot of great jokes, funny times.”

6. For Lying On Their Resume (And Dating Brad Pitt)

Another user recalled having a teacher who was a “chronic liar.” The specific falsehood that got her fired was lying about having a master’s and a different undergraduate degree.

Other colorful tales included being an ex-member of a gang, dating Brad Pitt, and “even being a multi-millionaire but just enjoying teaching.”

7. For Painting a Buttocks

A high school art teacher soon discovered there were limits to self-expression when he was dismissed over an old YouTube video of him “painting with his *ss cheeks.”

The Redditor who shared this story concluded with, “We held a protest to try to keep him around, but they fired him anyway.”

8. For Giving The Students Drugs

Cheerleading can be a dangerous sport, but it is even more so when your coach is distributing drugs.

A student teacher was dismissed for providing a cheerleader with prescription pain medication (narcotics) without prior authorization from her parents.

“Never heard if she managed to get a teaching license after that,” the Redditor wrote, “It’s pretty uncool to give a kid opioids without permission.”

9. For Showing an inappropriate YouTube Video

Most YouTube users are familiar with the comedic web series Drunk History, where an inebriated narrator recounts an episode from history with the help of the host.

In an attempt to interest middle-schoolers in his subject, a history teacher showed his seventh-grade class an episode of the show.

9. For Showing an inappropriate YouTube Video

According to the user who shared this anecdote, “[t]he goodie-two-shoes of the class narc-ed [i.e., snitched] and told her mom, who complained to the school.” The teacher was gone by the end of the week.

One commenter added insightfully, “That’s the girl that asks if we need to turn in assignments right before class gets out.”

10. For being a Rwandan genocide denier

In 1994, the African country of Rwanda experienced a brutal, government-led genocide, during which armed groups murdered some 800,000 fellow citizens in an attack systematically targeting the Tutsi ethnic minority.

According to one Redditor, their university professor was placed on administrative leave and deported after being charged with participating in the genocide by Rwandan authorities.

10. For being a Rwandan genocide denier

“He ended up being found not guilty, although I think he’s still in a Rwandan prison for denying that the genocide happened,” the user said, and later explained, “To be more clear, his opinion was that the genocide was not a genocide and that it was a civil war in which the Hutu were victimized as much as, if not more than, the Tutsi.”