30 People Share The Stupidest Things They Got In Trouble For At School
Not to brag, but I never really got in trouble during school. I was the kid who kept my head down and avoided detention, which in hindsight feels like a small miracle. Still, I’ve seen plenty of people get written up for the most ridiculous reasons. Stupid things that barely made sense at the time.
I came across an AskReddit thread where people shared the stupidest reasons they ever got in trouble at school, and it was a reminder of just how random teachers and principals could be. Here are some of the funniest (and stupidest) ones.
1.

“For ‘fighting.’ The school a*****e sucker punched me and I didn’t retaliate. It was even caught on tape. The zero tolerance policy is one of the stupidest things ever.”
anon:
I had this exact thing happen to me as well. When I got to the office, they told me I was being suspended for ‘fighting’.
I then told the principal off, and said ‘That’s like going outside and getting shot, and the police show up and arrest you for getting shot.’
I got suspended longer than the kid who hit me for saying that.”
2.

“I tripped on a loose tile and bumped into a teacher causing her to spill her coffee on herself. I apologized and showed her the tile.
She went on for months about how I did it on purpose. Even got the principal and my folks involved. For the rest of the year she told me I couldn’t come back to her class unless I apologized for doing it on purpose.
Never went back to her class. Though I initially apologized for the incident, I never once apologized for doing it ‘on purpose’. F**k you Ms. Helm.”
ComicWriter2020:
“I honestly hate hearing these stories. I want to hear that someone stood up for the victims and said ‘you are a person with authority over us and you should know better then to act high and mighty.'”
3.

“For using my asthma medication in class. I was told to keep my inhaler in the office, and to use it in there only. I was told it was ‘distracting.’
Know what else is distracting? The sounds of someone gasping for air and having to be removed from class.”
FitzyII:
“I used to have a terror of a spanish teacher, everyone despised her and she couldn’t control a class for the life of her.
One day, in my sisters class, one of the students, who was a class clown but generally respectful, started to have an asthma attack, and asked if he could be excused.
She said no.
He told her it was to get his medication.
She said no.
So he got up and tried to leave.
She blocked the door.
The student, who was a little panicked but not in severe condition, just laughed it off, and said ‘Fine. Who needs air anyways.’
He just bolted for the door when she walked away. I don’t understand teachers who try to use force to discipline.”
4.

“Someone once poked a wasp nest in the school forest, and the whole swarm came out upon the school. The entire school sat detention for an hour. Understandable if you don’t know who did it, but that’s not the problem. We were sitting detention because the principal’s son got stung. As it eventually turned out, it was actually his fault the swarm came down on us.
I have cursed his name since the day I found out.”
5.

“I once got in trouble for reading Stephen King.
They were like ‘you’re reading dark books it’s the reason your behavior is bad’.”
6.

“Clearing my throat before reading out loud to the class. She yelled at me and threatened detention because she thought I was faking it for attention but I don’t see how.
Also more context I was a quiet kid so I wasn’t one to create drama to begin with, it just made me not want to talk more than I already didn’t want to
Edit: bruh this blew up a lot. shout all to all my quiet and awkwardly shy homies out there who feel the pain of being reprimanded for the rare times we actually do talk.”
7.

“I got in trouble for ‘cheating’ on one of my math exams. The teacher found a piece of paper in my pencil case.
I got sent to the principal’s office. When the principal asked me about what I wanted to say in my defense, I simply told him to take a look at the note. It turned out to be a shopping list.
I was allowed to retake the exam the following week.”
8.

“A couple of friends and me sat next to our favorite teacher at lunch. We chatted joked around it was fun. Then we left. After lunch the janitor complained the cafeteria was trashed and asked who was responsible.
The teacher who we sat with and talked to during lunch blamed us. We got detention and had to stay after school to clean. We all went to the teacher and said hey we sat and joked with you. You know we didn’t make a mess. Didn’t care stuck with the punishment.
Oh but it gets worse. I missed the bus home I lived 12-15miles out of town. I had hours of chores to do when I got home. Taking care of animals stacking firewood. Hard f*****g chores. Called my mom to pick me up. Got home they had called my dad. He didn’t care the reason I got an a*s beating for getting in trouble. Not like oh a spanking. Whipped with a belt that left welts making it hard to sit.
My mom believed me so the next day she went to the school talked to the principal and teacher. Neither of them cared.
To any teacher that reads this. Please you know the kids that are getting a***ed even if you don’t have solid proof. Please try to help them out. Don’t do this s**t that puts them in more physical danger and stress.”
9.

“Correcting a teacher’s spelling of congratulations.
It was a substitute, and it was English literature.”
roccotheraccoon:
“My biology teacher didn’t know the difference between venomous and poisonous, or that not all lizards can drop their tails.
She didn’t appreciate me correcting her in front of the class.”
10.

“For touching a lizard chilling on a wall. I used to be in a religious school where people were pretty supertitious, and everyone present (including a teacher and a supervisor) thought what I did would attract the devil to myself or to the school…”
11.

“I didn’t tie my shoes the way the P.E. instructor wanted me to.
In 11th grade.
Sat in the Dean’s office for an hour before they called my mom who’s response I still remember: ‘You’re calling me during my work day to ask my son to tie his shoes in a way that a P.E. teacher feels suitable? Are you f*****g kidding me?’
I played AAA hockey at the time along with varsity lacrosse. P.E. class was the least of my worries, let alone how my shoes were tied. Safe to say I didn’t have to re-tie my shoe”
12.

“For not looking at the teacher during lesson. I wasn’t fidgeting. Just sitting at my desk, staring into space.
We had a payment system in 3rd grade where you’d get dollars for good behavior (finishing homework, cleaning up after lunch) and lose them for bad behavior. At the end of each quarter we’d get to use the dollars to buy s**t at the book fair. Every kid wanted to stock up.
Now each task would get you between 1 to 2 dollars. Each day you could only get like 3 max.
She charged me TWENTY DOLLARS. It was literally heartbreaking and took me a full month to recover.
Turns out I had focal epilepsy and was having episodes in class. Got treated like a s****y kid for it all through highschool.”
13.

“Someone made a paper airplane out of scrap paper that had been binned.
My name was written on the sheet they used. I got sent out the room and handed a punishment exercise.”
helicotremor:
“I have a similar story.
A teacher accused me of littering and gave me detention.
Apparently she found a piece of paper on the ground with my name on it. I was outraged as I was very anti-littering and would never have dropped rubbish on the ground intentionally. She said she no longer had it to show me but also refused to describe it. For all I know, someone else wrote my name on it.
During detention, I was made to clean school desks with chemicals that made the skin on my hands peel off. I wasn’t provided with gloves. This was in a time where we didn’t kick up a stink about that sort of thing, but I was super annoyed.”
14.

“When I was in the 8th grade we had, for one day, a substitute teacher in our portuguese class. She had the job to make us do a little text about what we thought it would be the best invention ever.
I made it about toilets
We delivered the papers 10 minutes after. As she was reading them she would make comments like ‘too much commas’ or ‘this needs more paragraphs’.
As soon as she got to mine she stopped speaking, demanded one kid to go and get the principal. The principal comes, reads the text, also get furious, picks me up, drags me into his office. In there, he and the substitute called my mom. Made her do 30 kilometers in a traffic filled city. When she arrived, she read the text and started laughing. Like legit crying and grabbing onto her stomach.
They got so mad at my mom for laughing instead of taking it seriously that the principal suspended me for 1 week.
Call of duty and no homework for one week thanks to my mom.”
15.

“At my elementary school, they didn’t really have any stuff to play with outside so we would play with sticks, rocks, pinecones, etc.
But they didn’t like that so they would send us to sit at the wall for all of recess if we got caught. It was weird.”
16.

“Got detention once for not pledging my allegiance to the Amazon rainforest. No Joke
We sang a song and the lyrics were:
‘we’ve got to buy back the amazon. we’ve got to give the earth a chance to carry on. *If it’s money they need, let’s give them all that they want*! We’ve got to buy back the Amazon!’
And as a 9 year old, I thought ‘this seems to be a little much’. I didnt sing, and bam, got detention.”
17.

“I checked out a book on African tribes from the library in the fourth grade.
I told the teacher about how the book had topless women in it thinking I was helping, she confiscated the book and had me suspended from school.”
18.

“Farting so loud and long in second grade that it disturbed my class and the classroom beside us. I was later sent to the principal’s office.”
19.

“For saying my school picture sucked. I had no idea ‘sucked’ was considered a bad word until I was put in detention for it.”
alexkay44:
“Landmine Learning right here. Kind of like a story I heard from my mom. I think it was my grandmother who asked HER mother, ‘What’s French kissing?’ To which she was given the reply, ‘Don’t you ever say that!!!’ And she got grounded.”
20.

“I apparently sighed loudly when a T.A who knew she wasn’t very popular walked in the room.
I was talking to a friend the opposite side of my table.”
21.

“I had a teacher arrange a parent teacher meeting to complain to my mom that I passed all the tests despite not seeming to listen to him when he was teaching.
Actually had a problem with me passing exams. My mom was not pleased.”
22.

“Spelling test in seventh grade. We wrote down the words as the teacher shouted them out.
One of the words was ‘piece’. The kid next to me asks, ‘Which one? There’s two different words.’ (piece/peace)
The teacher said, ‘The one on the list you were supposed to study.’
That’s BS. I whispered, ‘Piece as in piece of pie.’
She made us both rip up our tests for cheating.”
23.

“I threw a a closed pen to my friend who was like 3 feet away from me, and the teacher freaked out.
He made a big deal out of it in front of the whole class for a solid 5 minutes, and then emailed my parents.
Luckily my mom was able to see my side of things and she said, ‘Doesn’t that teacher have better thing to do than email me about my child throwing pens?’
We still laugh about it from time to time.”
24.

“Trying to start a fire, which led to me getting an hour detention and having to stay for the rest of the lesson in isolation. But why did they think I tried to start a fire? Cause in a science lesson I rubbed two sticks together”
25.

First one, I was waving my fingers to try to get a stuck sticky paper off of it.
The principal was passing my class and saw. Me through the door, he thought I was throwing rocks (in a class) at the back of my friend head.
I got suspended for that.
Second one, my math teacher when I was 14 years old had something against me, at the beginning of each class she would ask me to go into the corridor for 15 minutes that was her idea of a punishment. She didn’t even bother to find a reason, I just had to get out.
First one, I was waving my fingers to try to get a stuck sticky paper off of it.
The principal was passing my class and saw. Me through the door, he thought I was throwing rocks (in a class) at the back of my friend head.
I got suspended for that.
Second one, my math teacher when I was 14 years old had something against me, at the beginning of each class she would ask me to go into the corridor for 15 minutes that was her idea of a punishment. She didn’t even bother to find a reason, I just had to get out.”
26.

“In middle school, some kids were stomping on caterpillars during recess. I took a Ziploc bag from my lunch and put as many caterpillars in it as I could to rescue them by taking them somewhere else. I fast-walked to get away fairly quickly without making a scene. A teacher stopped me and accused me of running and shoving (I didn’t touch anyone at all), and when she saw the bag, she gave me a look of utter disgust. I got lunch detention for it. I ultimately switched out of that school because the staff had it in for me for some mental health issues and quirks that I later discovered was Asperger’s syndrome.
Edit: This is my most upvoted comment ever by miles. Thanks! At least something good came of that awful school. I’ll give a bonus: one of the science teachers was caught with child p**n on his computer during class. A kid called the cops. Ultimately the district moved him to a different school.”
27.

“This will get buried, but I do have a story.
When I was in third grade we kept all of our folders in this little denim pocket on the backs of our chairs. About halfway through the year mine ripped, so it was pretty difficult to keep everything inside. I was a relatively quiet kid though and I didn’t say anything to the teacher.
One day we had a substitute. She was a pretty typical old woman who didn’t seem to care much about us at all. We had to take a spelling test that day, so she asked us to put our dividers up.
As well as being a quiet kid, I was also a kid with undiagnosed ADHD. I already knew the material she was teaching us and I instead got myself absorbed into a book. I didn’t notice it was time to take the test until my classmates were putting up their dividers. I shut my book and went to grab mine.
At that exact moment, my denim pocket completely broke. There were papers everywhere. My panicked little seven year old a*s scrambled to grab them all and put them back in, but putting folders in a broken pocket is an arduous task, and the tests were already passed out before I could finish.
So what does the sub do seeing this tiny third grader scrambling to shove 30 crinkled note sheets into a little red folder? She SCREAMED at me. I’d never had a teacher go off on me like this sub did. She ridiculed me for holding up the class and making the other students wait. I couldn’t help myself. I burst out crying, which only made her yell even louder.
I obviously wasn’t some perfect angel during elementary school. I was smart, but I also had a lot of behavioral issues at the time (once again, undiagnosed ADHD). However, I couldn’t always control my actions, and my teachers were usually very understanding of that, seeing that I was otherwise a pretty chill kid. But this substitute yelled at me as though I had spilled my papers on purpose. My little brain could understand being disciplined for something caused by my actions, but I couldn’t comprehend being screamed at for something completely out of my hands.
I had actual NIGHTMARES from this woman. I don’t even know why, because I can deal with those types of people fine nowadays. She ended up telling the principal about me, but luckily he was a pretty cool dude. I never had that substitute again.”
28.

“I was drinking tea and my teacher yelled at me to stay home if I‘m sick (which I wasn‘t).”
29.

“In 1993 the Flaming Lips Song ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’ came out. I was in third grade and I really liked that song.
And started signing it with my friends during a double handed jump roping session. ‘She don’t use jeeeelllly orrrr any of theeeseee… she uses Vaaassssseeline’. Boom. Written up. 3 day Suspension for saying sexually suggestive things.
I had NO idea that was meant sexually. Worse even, no one would explain why that song was sexually suggestive. It was very confusing.”
30.

“For me it was stupidest. Maybe not for my middle school teacher.
I (Japanese) didn’t write the date of some paper in ‘era name’. (wrote in AD)
I was called to teacher’s room, he hit my cheek and bent my glasses. It was in early 80’s. I’m sure it will be huge problem if it happens now. If not,we are all doomed.”