Teachers, what's the saddest thing you've learned about a student? r/AskReddit | Reddit Jar

teachers have read it what's the saddest thing you've ever found out about a student that the reason that my grade 12 student was falling asleep during math class was because he was working forty hours a week to pay his parents bills I saw his pay stub he was a great kid too when I taught second grade I had a student who walked kind of funny it took me about a week to realize that it was because his shoes were too small I got him some new shoes that came out because kids shoes are cheap I told him it was so he would be able to run really fast in gym class I found out he was living with his grandma because his dad was in prison for killing his mom I started buying him clothes after that at the end of the school year I was packing up some boxes and one of them said snacks the boy looked at me with great big eyes and asked if I really had snakes in the box I cried over the fact that I promoted a kid to third grade who really couldn't read a student disappeared for a few weeks I found out later she tried to kill herself her mother's boyfriend had been arepa her every night for years she never came back to school I had a student who lived at the homeless shelter she was an A student super nice kid and had a baby her mom came into the shelter drunken got them all kicked out another student also an A student and just the nicest person told us that she couldn't go to her senior prom because her mom couldn't pay the electric bill so all of her money that she worked for had to go to paying bills instead of a dress the teachers pitched in and helped her go because if anyone deserved a nice prom it was her I had a very smart kid failing my class because he wasn't turning in any homework when I asked him why he told me he lived in a hotel room with 12 other people there wasn't space and it was too loud for him to focus : open bracket my mom is a public school teacher she has told me some super sad stories about her students at least three a year one kid had some disease wheyhey had rarely brittle bones he was in a wheelchair she said it would break my heart because he would say that he just wanted to be a normal boy to run and play like the other boys she has a little girl in her class this year her mother was a drug addict her father was trying to break the mum of her addiction by I guess locking her up in a room while the drug dealers showed up to get his money the dad answered the door him and the dealer started arguing he shot her dad while the little girl was holding his hand it seems like every year she has super sad stories teacher here I work with emotionally disturbed teens last year was my first year and I had one female student who was the first kid in her family to graduate from high school sweet girl smart and always worked hard I worked hard to get her into college on a full ride she had a lot of demons in her life mom is a drug user sister was as well and she was dating an abusive boyfriend about three months before the end of the school year he disappeared mum left a voicemail while very high saying she hasn't seen her in a few weeks I somehow get to hold of her on the phone and she was whispering her boyfriend in the background was screaming at her she told me she wasn't coming back about a week later the police showed up to my class asking when we last saw her if we had any recent photos they can't say why but mum was as high as a kite I get a call later that night asking if I could come down to the station and identify her because mom is refusing she was beating to death by her boyfriend to the point she was barely recognizable I threw up in the trashcan after seeing a photo of her she was 17 and killed by her boyfriend who left her body on the side of the road mom OD a few days later and no one was left to bury her it was a reality check working with her so bright and had a future but she was a victim of her environment work in a high poverty region learned one of my special ed kids was raped by her mom's boyfriend while Demong still the reasoning was to get her pregnant since she was almost 18 so she could draw a check I found out she was used as a human shield when her father was arrested for murdering her mother seven years old seventh grade student lost an older brother to a drive-by after a few months I was told they had lost two other siblings the same way a few years earlier in elementary school three years down the line and his name was in the local newspaper for killing an eleventh grade boy for his gang that year I had the 11th grade boys little sister in my class I was a teacher's aide in high school for the special ed kids one of the adult aides confessed to us that one of our students mothers couldn't handle that her kid wasn't acting like most boys his age aka that he wasn't trying to get in girl's pants the mom was evidently calling hookers for her son and when they'd show up she'd help him touch them to my knowledge CPS was called no idea how it ended edited cause people want more info the kid was probably 15 a sailfin more I think it was 10 years ago and he was severely mentally disabled enough that he needed his diapers changed was nonverbal and pretty much couldn't move at all unassisted please excuse my lack of tact I shouldn't have even posted this anyway facts are in this case that what the parent was doing was wrong seeing as how the kid was not able to consent in any way one student I treated had bone cancer he had his leg amputated and that's why I was teaching him exercises for his stump and prepping him for his new leg he said he wanted to be a meteorologist two years ago I found out that's another tumor grew on him but that time on his head he died shortly after that teachers assistant here the elementary school I work in has a 53% free and reduced lunch population a first-grade teacher noticed that one of the Hispanic non-english speaking kindergartners would come to school wearing oversized beat-up sneakers with her own money she went out and bought a pair of sneakers and a couple of pairs of spider-man socks for him she took a guess at his size being a mom she had a good idea close bracket he loved his new sneakers but didn't know what socks were he asked her what they were for she had to explain what they were used for and help him put them on boy did his face light up I'll tell a story a teacher friend of mine told me and it really messed with me she had this little girl in her class who was known to act out a lot so they'd gotten used to knowing how to settle her down etc one day she seemed to be extra difficult and when they sent the kids off for lunch the girl came up to the teacher and clung to her leg asking if she could have some food turns out she'd been sent to school with no lunch or money she also hadn't had any breakfast Oh or dinner the night before I really really hate people being hungry it upsets me more than most things in the thought of this little girl starving and not understanding why nobody would feed her messed with me for days and it still gives me a horrible feeling now when I remember it my mom was a high school teacher to other students not at the same time came to live with us as far as I know s was heavily abused by his father pretty sure his father didn't give a crap that he moved in with us n was a senior whose mom moved to another States to live with her boyfriend mm didn't have anywhere to go when she wanted to finish her senior year s became best friends with my brother but my brother didn't really like s his fiancee after the wedding which we all attended he was forbidden from talking to us M is doing great she moved out to go to college she had a very difficult time with her brother and her family in general but 20 ish years later she is a missionary married to a fellow missionary with two adorable kids we lived below the poverty level but what mom had to give she gave not a teacher but when I was in the eighth grade we had a little buddy in kindergarten where we accompanied them to church it was a Catholic school and so did activities with them I got this little blonde hair kid with glasses named Jessie and he was quite the handful didn't really seem to get along with the other kids and was always acting out at first he was tough to try and keep in line especially at church but after a while he seemed to take a real liking to me and started listening we started getting along great and had a lot of fun drawing and coloring together one day I got to meet his mom before school started she handed me a present it was the latest Harry Potter book and thanked me for being such a great buddy to Jessie apparently his dad left them and he took it really hard which was why he was always acting out she said that she noticed a change and thinks that me being so nice to him had a lot to do with it because he would talk about me to her I was in a class in middle school where we had to write a short piece on what we'd wish for one of my classmates had wrote a really good one about how he'd wish his sister didn't die in a house fire when he was very young the teacher went up to his desk and she hugged him I would have to because a sh t was real yo I had a student with severe depression and a really crappy home life her mom was more interested in partying and sleeping around then being a mom to prevent her daughter from telling anyone what was going on the mom told her that she would be taken from her family locked in a padded room drugged so she couldn't walk and kept in a mental hospital for the rest of her life if she told anyone anything and the kid was terrified fortunately we found the drawing explicitly expressing suicidal thoughts and were able to get her the help she needed before she attempted we also reported her mom for neglect and the kid was placed with other family members in a more stable situation one sixth grader told me his father killed his puppy by putting it in the dryer another student was living in a four-man tent with her mother and two dogs for months they put it in a hole with chicken wire around it to keep the dogs from getting out they ended up going through Hurricane Irene like that I currently have another sixth grader in need of a place to live because his mom is her drug addict who can't take care of him she also blames him for DCF investigating because he mentioned his home life to his therapist another student was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy it's a disease wherein the muscles turned to jelly from the legs up people with this disease live up to about only their teen years up until their breathing muscles held out he was seven then mother was dying of breast cancer all she wanted to do was make it to her son's graduation she didn't make it one a student at the top of his class committed suicide he would get so anxious about tests to countless students moved into psychiatric care 3 a student who was homeless and expectant father trying to graduate after dropping out 2x that one ended well but it was shaky for a bit just want to say thank you to the teachers here my mom is a teacher and it is impossible not to see the emotional toll she endured taking care of these children who had families who were struggling to get by or have parents in jail or simply were not cared for it can be a very rewarding but difficult job Thanks I'm not the teacher I'm the kid when I was a kid I was abused a few teachers would realize it anyways I never had lunch at school and I didn't qualify for free lunch because my mom didn't care enough to make sure I ate I was probably one of the skinniest least nourished kids in the school a teacher found out that my mom just wouldn't give me lunch and food at home was scarce so she bought me lunch every day I was at school for two years I looked like the home alone kid so the way I repaid her was to do the aftershave scream face to make her laugh she said laughter was a form of payment since I refused to take free food she had paid for buried but I teach in an alternative high school forty percent of our students are sexually abused or recovering drug addicts it's really rough we have one student in particular who is pregnant with a child that she has elected to keep even though it was a result of rape she's a tough kid it's humbling sometimes to remember that even though these students are young it doesn't mean they are too young to suffer I learn more from them about being a resilient human than I would anywhere else I'm lucky to work with them I taught preschool three-year-olds I got a new student who was in her grandparents care because she had been molested raped by her mother's boyfriend she had all kinds of issues obviously because she didn't know how to comprehend what happened to her and how to deal with it she was so damn smart and funny and great but at the same time had violent outbursts hearing a three-year-old try to describe a sex acts that happened to her was one of the most devastating experiences of my life we had a student get adopted by a great-aunt CPS had found the girl when she was five locked in a closet with one older brother and one younger brother she was always so sad or insanely angry she was often nonverbal eventually we figured out that they had been a younger sister who had died in the closet CPS and the aren't confirmed the story when the littlest one was born the girl I knew had done her best to take care of the baby but baby just couldn't drink that kool-aid double-quote I had a student with some minor behavior issues and also would zone out a lot he was also incredibly small for his age I discover later that he was adopted and had a traumatic childhood born addicted to drugs etc because of his trauma and behavior issues he was on large doses of ADHD medicine and medicine for seizures this medicine turned him into a zombie mommy was a meth addict who was in and out of jail and daddy came to pick up wreaking a pot and referring to mommy as that [ __ ] to his son and no idea what he was seeing at home but he was pervy towards the little girls this is a four year trying to sneak in the bathroom with him multiple times making inappropriate gestures asking if they wanted to see his privates or if he could see theirs I had a student who was looking down I asked her if she was okay she started bawling and collapsed into my arms and all she said was I miss my mom double-quote unknown to me was the fact that her mom had died just a few months before few years ago my uncle was off in Iraq with the army his wife ran off with some drug addict boyfriend leaving my uncle's teen stepdaughter to watch her three siblings while working to help pay bills she did a fabulous job somehow through all that she discovered that she has about a dozen other half-sibling by her biological dad she has since tracked them all down started relationships with them she has gained legal custody of at least three of them to get them out of a foster system she's currently a MGR at a fast food taco place and is incredible at life finally she is at a place where she is going to start college she's about 24 now and studied to be a social worker I don't have many heroes but she's top of the list this threat just makes me want to quit my job and become a mentor so many people in this thread that are quite simply a better person than I I work at a daycare and one of our four-year-olds had just became a big brother there was some kind of complications with the birth that left his little sister in the hospital for a really long time maybe even like two or three months if I recall correctly I didn't want to be nosy and ask too much but I had heard from my co-workers that the baby was starting to do better and was going to get to come home a couple weeks later I found out that the baby had died over the weekend if that wasn't bad enough the little boy came up and told me my baby sister is an angel now and I don't want her to be I want her to be a kid broke my heart so bad Open bracket at my first teaching job I used to give students a one-page assignment about themselves and why they were taking the program one student wrote that he was conceived when his dad came home drunk one night and raped his mom when he was older about nine I think he was walking to the store with his uncle and his uncle was shot in a drive-by he held his uncle and watched him die I stopped giving that assignment afterwards I can't remember what I replaced it with though in spite of his challenges in life the student did really well I went to the same school at Amba Du Bois when she went missing a lot of the teachers took it pretty hard one of my students got diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma cancer at the age of five through his bones and all his mother was a single mother and he is the only child after a year and a half of heavy heavy chemotherapy and non-stop hospital stays he is finally cancer-free still going for radiation every couple weeks or so whenever I'm feeling down about the little things I think of what this five-year-old boy and his mother had been through and are still going through i subbed at a public school in the Philippines the district I was assigned to accepted students from low-income families nearly every student due to financial issues have a sad tale to tell the sad ones are physical abuse from family or guardians some who stopped school together to help support the family by working odd jobs these are kids between 10 and 13 years who would stop coming to class so they can find work or help out with their parents other work menial jobs both day and night like picking up garbage and cans to trade for a few pesos the saddest of those victims of abuse both physical and sexual all those who turn to the life of being a criminal because they have no other choice they often ask me some of these kids how can they be like me and get a job I always tell them stay in school if they can aim for a scholarship for college and be good wife used to be an elementary school teacher she had a student who was buried alive by his mother in an attempted murder but CPS ultimately decided it was for the kid to remain with family i.e his mother then be placed in a foster home same kid also needed medicine for ADHD but never had it because the same mother always used the pills herself also had a student's father died of a sudden and unexpected heart attack student was in class next day pulled him over and checked in he said home is too sad I just need normal today double quote that they watched their father OD and died while on heroin three of them now they live with their mother dad was initially granted custody so now they live with a person who the courts decided was the less fit parent first year of teaching I met several high school kids who had issues major issues then I figured out why they had issues one student watched his father set himself on fire to try to commit suicide the dad changed his mind and ran for the bathroom but didn't make it another boy was turned into a drug dealer by his mother at the age of eight she also sold him out to men for sex kid was severely depressed because her father was her raping her he told her that he will take his life if she ever told someone she told someone he killed himself and she blames herself I just lost a student in September to suicide I remember sitting on the sidewalk with his eighth grade sister as she sobbed for him I still cry special education teacher here been teaching a really long time and have stories for days many good Allard pretty bad had a student whose father dropped dead in his apartment the kid lived with dad you too mom not having custody this kid was really low functioning cognitively and didn't know what to do so the kids sat in the house with the dead dad for days before someone came to check on them I have other kids with similar stories another former student was sitting with mom and mom's boyfriend when the boyfriend stood up took the gun from the side table and shot himself on the head right in front of the kid more stories of kids who aren't able to eat due to parents being hungry and not having enough food for everyone but the parent makes sure they eat so sad I've taken kids home to ensure they wouldn't sleep on the streets but you can't save them all I had a normally disruptive student acts unusually subdued one day I pulled him aside to ask if everything was okay and he told me that someone was bullying him on Instagram and told him and he was the reason his parents killed themselves as it turns out yes his parents both committed suicide at separate times and one of his brothers found the parent each time my heart goes out to that kid he's since been adopted by his aunt and lives with his cousin who's the same age the two of them are like brothers and it's good to know he still has loving family around him this will be buried because I'm late but it's worth it years ago I taught in Chicago's South Side in Inglewood arguably the most dangerous neighborhood in Chicago one of my students was a good kid trying to fix his life he had an older brother heavy into the street life who got locked up because his brother was locked up my student becomes the target of his older brother's enemies he had been focusing on his schoolwork so he could get out of Englewood oh right he had just had a daughter - forgot that part when he gets captured by his gangs aufs dragged him to an abandoned building and shot in the head this kid had been in three AP classes two of them were mine when this happens had been accepted to some local colleges then because of his older brothers [ __ ] he gets executed typing this fills me with rage and sorrow at the same time r.i.p not a teacher but i used to work in a children's psychiatric facility almost all of the kids that come through have terrible stories the worst one I ever heard though was that this little boy was severely abused apparently his parents were drug addicts who would elect him molest him and I'll pay him from the time he was a baby then they started having peep come through their home - I'll pay their son in exchange for drugs eventually CPS got involved and sent the boy to live with the grandparents unfortunately though the grandparents enabled mom and dad and let the abuse of the boy continue he eventually became a ward of the state basically because from years of neglect he was severely cognitively disabled at the age of 10 - 11 he still needed diapers and he could not form sentences he communicated by cooing like a baby he was also found to be on the autism spectrum suffered from attachment disorders PTSD and mental retardation I feel so bad for him and I'm really not sure what ever happened to him after being discharged from the hospital not a teacher my cousin is she works in special ed and she did her student teaching in a rural area known for massive drug issues and low incomes she had multiple students who for some reason hated leaving for the weekends she found out from an older teacher that some weekends many of them would not eat until they returned to school on Monday when they went over curriculum about food and were asked things like where does milk come from she got answers like the government that was eye-opening to me there are kids growing up in America who are amazed by going to the store and picking what you want to eat or that most people aren't only provided an allotment of cheese by the government it's heartbreaking homeless only meals were from school food didn't know how to shower properly at the age of 14 not much clothes stroke so a whole bunch of the school's staff helped the student and his siblings out thank you just thank you for helping all of these kids through life you are far better people than I ever will be I know it's a little off topic but thank you a student was taken from his home split from his siblings and put in a boy's group home six months later the group home van was struck by a truck and he was killed only 12 years old his sister used to play soccer for me and I've had to call the police because he was left at the soccer fields after dark no one knew he was gone when he died the mother set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for his funeral expenses he was by then a ward of the state in which the state pays for his burial I don't know what that mother was going to do with that money but our school reported her the whole thing makes me sick he died in the fall of 2016 by far the worst was when I found out my special needs student died in his sleep the prior night he was the sweetest kindest hearted kid you could never know in fact it was 4 years ago to the day r.i.p Travis my dad's a teacher for special ed students he told me a story about a kid who took two years off of high school anyway the reason this do took the two years off was his dad died and his dad was his only real family after his mom abandoned them he went to live with his his grandparents one day his grandpa took a gun out and shot his grandma he went out to try and save his grandma she literally dying in his arms then his grandpa takes a gun and shoots himself in front of him that's shit's traumatic I don't know where to start I have students who have watched their families be brutally murdered siblings parents etc I have a student whose father is in jail for attempted murder the kid watched his dad try to kill his mom I have kids whose parents have been deported we found out one was living under a trailer under I had a kid who had a child at 14 because she was raped by a family member [ __ ] I once had one of my kids joyriding without a license crash the car and kill two of my other kids leaving a third the quadriplegic for life anyone want to guess how the guy who lived was treated in the community I'm going to have a hard time picking the saddest this will get buried which is probably best anyway but one of my students was kept in a cage for years by his parents his twin brother was next to him through most of it they suffered malnutrition and abuse that can't even be described without feeling pain because stuff like you see on the TV dramas sometimes ends up being true the brother died the remaining boy had developmental issues but actually managed to flourish as he got at his teens I remember sometimes looking at him across the room and pushing back emotions that any decent human would have for someone who had overcome an event so traumatic I have lost contact with him but it is not hard to imagine that the psychological damage of that abuses and claim itself outs in his mind in ways that can't be captured as a vice principal going to juvenile court to testify on behalf of a high school student that I thought had been given short shrift by the school police officers investigation saw how little time his public defender had for him before being ushered into the courtroom the DA essentially dismissed my information despite the fact that he had earlier told me ro we don't get very many Vice Principals in here for the defense without hearing me out the kid was sentenced to months of weekends and j'ouvert for which his parents could not afford to pay when the kid was killed in a head-on crash two years later at the age of 19 I just about lost it he could not catch a break [Music] [Music]

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Id: QvuIVqzwYUQ

Length: 30min 42sec (1842 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 30 2020