"I watched his dad kick my student right before my eyes"

I handed back a test to one seventh grader. He looked at his grade—an A—then gently pinched my cheek, like an older relative might do to a little kid, whispered "Good girl," and sat back down. I was so stunned, I couldn’t even react.

One morning, we noticed smoke billowing from the teacher’s lounge. The school’s best student—a quiet, well-behaved 12-year-old girl—had set fire to the class register because she got a B the day before and wanted to "erase" it.

On the last day of school, a little boy seriously handed me a piece of paper. I unfolded it and saw a Mortal Kombat-style drawing of a head being pulled out with its spine attached. It wasn’t my head, and I don’t know whose it was. To this day, I still don’t understand what he was trying to say.

I noticed the kids were staring at something and whispering in amazement, so I went over to see what had caught their attention. A proud 12-year-old sixth grader was showing off her tattoo—a butterfly on her hip. I told her it was beautiful and lucky it was washable. She said it was real. And it truly was.

I was taking a boy to the principal for misbehaving in class. On the way, he asked to use the bathroom. I waited outside for a while, then called out to him but got no answer. I went inside—he was nowhere to be found. Looking out the window, I saw him rushing across the street. My legs went weak. The shocking part wasn’t that he ran off—it was that we were on the third floor! To this day, I have no idea how he got down so fast.

Kid: starts licking my hand. Mom, when I called her: "Yes, let him, he does it to us too." This girl once even licked my elbow when I wasn’t paying attention. I only noticed because she was giggling. She said she wanted to prove to the others that you can’t feel it when someone licks your elbow. (Turns out she was right—there are very few nerve endings there, which I learned that day.)

A former elementary school student (a girl) added me as a friend on Facebook. I was 42, she was about 18. She asked how I was, we chatted a bit, then suddenly asked me to send photos of my penis. I blocked her immediately.

There was a group of boys everyone called the "Kiver Crew." From what I learned from colleagues, it meant they occasionally "helped each other out" in the bathroom. Interestingly, no one saw this as homosexual—just a bit odd. Plus, these guys were the biggest charmers in high school and adored by the girls.

Ricsike climbed into a back cabinet during class, declared it his fortress, and refused to come out. Not at the end of class, not when the homeroom teacher asked, not even when the principal ordered him out. He stayed inside through lunch break too. Before the end of the day, we called his mom, who begged him for an hour, but he still wouldn’t come out. Finally, his dad arrived in the evening, pulled him out in a second, kicked him out the door, and sent him home.

Photos: istockphoto.com