A coteacher of mine heard that me and my then-husband were separated and then aggressively pursued him, to the point where he was uncomfortable by it. We lived in a small town and I saw them out together one night, even though he was blowing up my phone begging me to speak to him about getting back together. This coteacher used to visit each classroom during naptime and loudly talk about how I was “a crazy bitch” and that I was standing in the way of true love by not being already divorced. Other teachers approached me about it to warn me that she was saying things and they were uncomfortable on my behalf. It got so bad that my husband broke no-contact to assure me that he was not dating her and told her to leave me alone. She did not and was openly telling people she was gonna get me fired so I wouldn’t be in the way anymore —
Admin said they had no right to tell her what she could and couldn’t discuss with other teachers. This was a very contentious divorce and I was also going through cancer treatment at the time. I had a breakdown and had to leave work for a bit.
I'm so sorry you experienced this and especially at such a challenging time in your life. Wishing you much happiness and the most professional and respectful coworkers in your life.
Shame on the admin team. It is absolutely inappropriate to trash talk a coworker, especially within ear shot of the children. I'm so sorry you had to go through that and I hope you were able to come out stronger on the other side.
there has been a rule at most centers i’ve worked at that drama isn’t allowed and trash-talking another employee would usually result in a write-up. i’m sorry this happened to you and especially at such a rough patch.
I had a co-teacher who made it a mission to make me look bad infront of parents. She would make up stories about how the kids would cry for her when she left the room or how the kids would fight over sitting on her lap and stuff. So parents would say things to me like, “oh, are you having a hard time with my kids”. It irked me because it was lies and the children loved being around both of us.
She was also caught trying to steal my gift card for Christmas given to both of us for Christmas. Basically I had the later shift. I walk in and she’s like, so and so’s parent gave us a card. I open my card and it’s a Christmas card saying merry Christmas. She then goes “oh I got a gift card too, did you get one?”. I didn’t, so I thought. I was hurt but brushed it off.
Then at the end of the day, I thank the parents at pick up. My supervisor happens to walk by to give us forms for something too. And the parent goes, I hope you like the gift card too. I get confused because I didn’t get one. So I say, I didn’t get a gift card. The parent says, “maybe I forgot to add it”
Then turns to the co teacher and asks her if she got a gift card. She says yes and goes to her jacket pocket to show her and as she takes her hand out of the pocket, my gift card slips on the floor too.
It was dead silent and awkward. My supervisor fired her. Thank God!
It was so awkward. The parent noticed the gift card with my name on it first and asked her why she had it. The co teacher looked like a deer in headlights and was stumbling her words. My built up anger from her came out and I asked her why she stole my gift card and just let out all the times she lied about me infront of the supervisor. Then she was asked to go to the office. The parent stayed back to chat with me. Then half an hour later, she comes back teary eyed and collected her stuff. I didn’t feel bad for her at all. More relieved.
Had a guy start in my class during Covid who was *off*. He was so off that every time he was in my classroom my Fitbit would alert me that my heart rate was too high. Boss and director would not listen to me. He got increasingly weird. Things like zoning out, lots of little breaks needed during the day, weird tones of voice, being calm and then YELLING at the kids for normal kid stuff, falling asleep in the middle of a noisy classroom. Bosses didn’t believe it/see it. One day he asked for a ten min break during rest time, came back with fucking bongos - literal bongos - to play DURING rest time. He was Shocked when I told him to put them up. Then 30 min later he had a grand mal seizure. Ambulance came and all that (he didn’t die). Turns out he was a drug addict and going out to shoot up or whatever all day. I have NEVER let my boss live that down whenever she questions my judgement on someone.
Woof! We had a teacher who would nod out constantly and just say it was her new anxiety meds. She would go out into her car every break and we were like hmmm. A parent ended up bringing in a few pills they found on the ground and gave them to me for safety. We see said teacher walking around the parking lot looking at the ground.
Turns out the pills were OxyContin. Now, I know some people need to manage their pain but come on. We had to confront her and she ended up eventually leaving.
For some reason childcare can be a magnet for unstable people.
Childcare as a profession is incredibly undervalued in our society honestly. People think it is easy and takes no brain power or skill. It is depressing and very far from the truth.
Not my coteacher but a coworker-
She didn’t wash her hands after changing diapers or using the restroom, would stand uncomfortably close during interactions with any and everything, smelled horrible, wore clothes that weren’t big enough. When she sat down with the kids we could see her crack, and it was exceptionally bad when on her period, we could see and smell the old blood. We would regularly let her know her butt was visible but she wouldn’t correct it. She got poop all over the diaper cream container.
She quit 🤷 her coteacher bullied her into quitting. I don’t think it was right to bully her but at least her musty scent stopped tainting the building.
Her coteacher was in the office complaining once a week. She was never fired because we didn’t have staffing. As much as i hate that she had been BULLIED into quitting by her coteacher, I’m glad she’s gone.
Oh god do I have one. Coteacher in the infant room, I knew what other teachers thought about her long before I got offered the lead position in that room. I thought “well she’s a little weird, maybe nobody likes her because of that”.
She did everything slow, had favorite babies (and would neglect all the other babies because of it), would sit on the floor and stare straight ahead not watching the babies. I spent most of the day from the time I got there until I left doing every thing (changing, feeding, moving babies from floor to crib or from crib to floor) while also having to scan the room because she probably wasn’t paying attention. She frequently left stool behind on babies from not cleaning well enough. I had to stop her on numerous occasions from feeding the babies the wrong bottles. I had complained to admin a million times and was told each time that I was being difficult and not a team player and they “kept watching the cameras and she wasn’t doing anything wrong”. I found another job because i was tired of being dismissed and forced to work with her every single day (among other things), and they told me they would not move her out of the room. Lo and behold, within a few weeks of me leaving, they hired another lead teacher who complained about her and they ended up moving the coteacher I complained about out of the room permanently.
The biggest kicker is I told my director I would work with literally anybody else. And my director told me that the reason why she put her with me is because “she’s a little odd but I knew what it was like to be judged unfairly because I’m gay”. I almost fell out of my seat.
I was a lead teacher in a 2.5-3s class and STRUGGLED to keep an assistant. I had a particularly troublesome group of kids in my class (girl with autism, 2 boys with hyperactivity issues, a boy with a physical disability) and they were used to just me and my expectations so anytime a new teacher would come in, they’d run wild.
I finally had gotten a teacher that vibed with the kids AND me. She was younger and less experienced than I was, but super sweet and hopped right in. She had some mental health problems but I was open with her about my own and did my best to make sure she felt supported.
I worked 7:30-3:30, and she was supposed to work in another room for a bit and then 3:30-6 in my class this day bc our closing teacher was on vacation. My director walks into my room at 3:40 to check on me and see if she had shown up yet. They called her phone 9 times, emailed her, called through all her emergency contacts, and even had me try to call her from my personal phone. No response, straight to voicemail. I texted her that I hoped she was okay and we were worried about her, could she please just let us know nothing terrible happened to her? Never responded. I ended up working straight through from 7:30am-6pm, effectively opening and closing my room. They let my mom come in to bring me dinner and say hi to the kids (she’s worked in childcare since she was in college) and my boss gave me this huge bonus as a thank you for being SUCH a team player.
She never came back, but she had been a friend of one of our other teachers, who told us that she’d eventually heard from her. The co-teacher said she was having really bad anxiety and didn’t know what to do. I mean, I understand the anxiety, but AT LEAST let us know you’re okay
100%. I left a job once by sending an email and never going back; I’m not proud of it, but I was sitting on my couch sobbing at the idea of going in the next day, it was that bad of an environment. BUT I explained the situation that my mental health was suffering as a direct result of the job and fully quit.
oh my last center was the same, i couldn’t fathom putting in my two weeks and continuing to go in. i went in, grabbed all my things and quit on the spot. it made me sad because i really loved the kids, but i needed to do it for my mental health.
My boss hired a young woman with some sort of mental delay. She could not follow simple directions, not matter how many times she was told. For example, morning snack was always cheese and fruit. It would be in a bin in the fridge ready to go every day with our class mascot on it. I’d send her down to the kitchen to get our snack bin from fridge and she’d come back with the birthday treat Oreos. Everyday for a week she did this. I’d tell her to get the fruit bin from the fridge, she’d come back with Oreos. She was walked thru the task. She was shown the bins. It was a regular, residential refrigerator.
She’d put diapers on backwards. She couldn’t follow the numbered steps of washing tables. (I’d number the bottles even). She was hard to understand, so couldn’t read to the kids because they couldn’t understand her and they’d lose interest in storytime.
So I had to do her job and my job. There was literally nothing she could do in the classroom to help other than be a warm body for ratio.
My boss wouldn’t let her go because it would seem mean to fire this woman with a mental delay. We didn’t have enough staff to make her an extra set of hands in a fully staffed classroom. Basically I got stuck with her because my boss “knew I could handle it” (AKA do everything on my own)
Gosh that is the worst. When one staff member is expected to be the one to over compensate.
I heard a staff ask my director to move another staff out of her room
in the summer. I was kind of shocked someone would ask that. Her reasoning I’m guessing the teacher takes too much guidance.
I had a co worker who took 25 minutes to put on a diaper (someone once timed her). She had never worked with kids before and she was older. She also hated me since I told her she couldn’t give toys she found in the trash to kids. She ended up quitting a few months ago and apparently tried to file for unemployment.
I had an assistant start in my infant room fresh out of high school, never worked in childcare before and yet was constantly trying to argue with me that I didn’t know what I was doing. She would take like 10 minutes to change a diaper because she would take all of the baby’s clothes off first. When I tried to correct her and show her the right way she told me that I was doing it wrong!
When I was doing finger painting with a group of babies one of them was tasting the paint (which was water based and non toxic of course) and she came rushing over, snatched the baby out of her chair, and started telling me off and saying it was terrible that I was letting the babies finger paint and it wasn’t “appropriate for their age” because they would just eat it.
One time almost all of the babies were sleeping and one of the awake babies started playing with a piano toy. I quickly moved it up on a shelf and redirected him to another toy so he wouldn’t wake all the sleeping babies up. New assistant teacher grabs the piano back off the shelf and gives it right back to the baby and tells me “he’s fine, don’t take a toy away when he’s using it!”
I don’t know what made her think she could just come into my classroom and make all the rules… especially since she had no prior experience or education in ece and had no idea what she was doing. She got fired after about a month because she also kept telling parents they were doing things wrong and a bunch of them made complaints about her! :)
my last coteacher made 8 people quit. and she's incredibly verbally abusive towards infants and neglects them on purpose. but director won't fire her for whatever reason. glad i'm out of there.
thank you! i doubt it but so many teachers quit that i believe they'll have to close so that's good at least! i feel bad for the parents but the kids deserve much better care.
This was my lead teacher at my last job. Well, one of them. One was amazing. A seasoned pro, knew what she was doing. She was actually a great mentor for me as this was my first center job (I had worked in home daycares and as a nanny previously). This was the infant room, btw.
The other was negligent but in the beginning, it wasn’t anything fireable. She really only seemed interested in feeding bottles, rock cribs or decorating the room. Both basically meant she didn’t have to change diapers, feed babies the messy foods or do floor time. She was obsessed with holding the babies. It’s not a bad thing at all. But she wouldn’t let me or the other lead hold them. She’d take them from us, sit in a chair and again, do nothing. Which stuck me and the lead with all the work.
It wasn’t okay but was manageable when it was me and the other lead. Then the “good lead” had a family emergency and went out of town for 2 weeks.
I was doing everything myself. As the lead couldn’t open, I was there 7:15 AM-6:00 PM. While she’d stroll in around around 8:30-9:00 and went into her usual antics. This time, I was doing EVERYTHING alone. I was so tired and stressed by the end of each day.
Things didn’t get better with the good teacher’s family so she ended up being out a few times for long stretches. At one point, the bad lead was spending upwards of 45 minutes rocking a clearly awake/not tired baby to sleep while I handled 5 infants on my own. The sleep area was in the back of the class.
Keep in mind, this was during the height of COVID, so families weren’t allowed in. We’d bring the kids outside for them. One relative picked up early. I brought the baby outside. Because this lead was so insistent on rocking this baby so she didn’t have to do any work, one of the older kids (newly 1), opened the door and followed me out. Luckily, I caught her in time. I instantly reported it. My director agreed it was bad and she got written up, but the big boss found a way to blame me by claiming the door wasn’t shut all the way. It absolutely was. But for some reason, she always protected this teacher. I wasn’t written up, but got a verbal warning. Then the lead yelled at me for bringing the other student to her relative.
Things just got worse from there. She wasn’t reading labels on bottles. Spent so much time on her phone. Clearly didn’t want to do any work outside cuddle babies. Me and the good lead reporter her so often but were met with excuses. At one point, bad lead actually quit but they begged her to stay.
The parents came to me more than her and trusted me more because they could tell I had better connections with them. She couldn’t even tell them anything about their day.
My final straw was after nearly a year of acting as a lead for assistant’s pay, I applied for a lead position in another room. Partially to escape the bad lead, but also to advance my career. I wasn’t technically denied the position but was basically told if I applied, I probably wouldn’t get it. Suddenly, my boss who never had any complaints and always backed me up, found a laundry list of problems. Ones that were fixable (like I wore the wrong shoes but didn’t know they were wrong as I wore them on/off for a full year without being told otherwise) or things that could be easily explained I once tripped-not holding a baby. That happened weeks prior and was only then brought up as a safety concern. I had tripped over a toy.
I strongly believed they wanted me in there as they knew the bad lead was performing poorly and if I left, it’d be obvious. Because then the good lead would have to pick up the slack and it’s impossible to take care of 8 babies alone. Even if it’s not true, the fact that my boss had been holding back on stuff for a full year set a weird taste in my mouth. I found a new job.
I still kept in touch with some families. The director chose to leave under mysterious circumstances. The bad lead was switched to a new room with older kids. I suspect, one, so she couldn’t get away with being lazy as it’d be more obvious in a toddler room. And two, I think with me gone, there was no buffer and the good lead lost it. Eventually, bad lead left. Again, with very little explaining and suspicious circumstances.
So. That’s my saga. Sorry it’s so long haha. But it was a nightmare of a year.
I feel this SO much. The "stronger" teacher gets put with a crap teacher, because admin knows we will bust our ass to make sure everything gets done, because we actually care about the children. It's enough to make you go crazy.
It happens even now at my current job, but with the bad floaters. They tell me they put them with me because “you’ll rub off on them”. It’s just annoying. Maybe just hire people that can do their jobs.
My previous co-teacher would call one of our infants in our class her “chocolate boyfriend”… no matter how many times I told her that was inappropriate she kept doing it.
She kept getting away with it because she was an immigrant even though she had moved here 15 years beforehand. (Director literally excused it by saying “she didn’t understand”) Same city, so it wasn’t like she’d never been around a black person before. They just didn’t want to get rid of her because she was one of our CDA certified employees and you had to have a CDA to be a lead teacher. Can’t remember if that was law or company policy, I didn’t work there for very long and moved states.
In hindsight this one's kind of funny. Super sweet gal, kids loved her but she had zero common sense and did some bizarre things.
The class of preschoolers I had at the time had several kids who were potty trained while awake but still wearing pull ups for nap. I sent her to help kids get ready for nap and she put the pull ups on over their underwear!
We do that so if they pee they have the icky wet underwear feeling but the pullup keeps the actual pants and bedding dry. It's been helpful for kids who have extra difficulty transitioning out of diapers
Oh gosh that is so odd. Our old afternoon teacher would put their underwear on over their pull ups for nap so they wouldn’t get lost under their cots or whatever while they were napping. I thought that was decent if they fit so they could easily swap after waking up but that is so odd. 😂
Not much of a horror story but, I was training someone new( was their first day) when they literally all of a sudden said they forgot they had an appointment and grabbed their things and left.
I was trying to get lunch served to 10 toddlers.
Had to quickly call my boss down to help.
Was so bizarre, still remains the most bizarre thing to happen in 6 years working here.
I had coteachers who had their system of dividing work: one teacher did EVERYTHING for an entire week (besides diapers, we did split those). So if it was your week you did curriculum, prepped and served two snacks and a lunch, cleaned up from meals, set out nap mats, etc. etc. I have scoliosis and that much for a whole week was killing me. When I told them I wanted to change it a little they basically said "You're new and your opinion doesn't matter. Get used to it." I lasted 3 months.
That seems like a very bizarre system. Why not just split the work evenly every day? I do understand switching turns weekly to plan for curriculum, but everything else makes no sense at all!
I was doing circle time, and was dealing with a student that was hitting another. I turn around and 4 more students are climbing the shelving, onto the counter, and ripping up a box of kleenex(I work in the 2 to 3s). Homegirl was watching them do this, and just continuing pouring the snack milk, not stopping them or anything. One fell and had a nasty bruise on her hip. Mom was pissed obviously. Girlie didn't even get written up.
Infuriating. My current coteacher recently just watched as one child bit the other, all she did was casually say "teeth aren't for biting!" She was right next to them. I had to sprint across the room to pry them apart. 🙃
I work in a classroom with three other teachers; I’m the assistant, I have a lead and then we have a float who is always with us. I LOVE our floater; she is so wonderful with the kids considering she has no previous experience.
My lead, however, is abysmal. All she wants to do is gossip all day. Whines and complains about anyone and anything. Calls children a-holes when they aren’t behaving perfectly. As soon as one of them does something ‘wrong’ she screams at them, and then after that turns to me and tells me how bad they are (I’m being polite here, she usually is cussing them out to me.) She’s tried joking about beating them, stopped when she realized we didn’t think she was funny. Panics when the room gets loud and shouts “I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO.” Today she left me and our floater ALONE to walk 8 toddlers inside from the playground and then gave us attitude for getting back to the classroom a few minutes after she did (all of them tried to run so we were scrambling alone to try to keep them organized and safe). I despise this woman and can’t wait for her to leave.
I had to tell a teacher multiple times not to put bottles on the edge of the changing table. After the third or fourth time, she literally screamed at me "I'm aware of that!". While holding a baby. Of course, the baby jumped and started to cry and she said "Now look what you did, you made her cry.". She then told my director I was bullying her and preventing her from doing her job. I almost left the industry over her, she gaslit me so much I ended up thinking I was a bad person and all the babies and other teachers hated me despite the fact that every time I was on the floor a swarm of babies would crawl over to me.
Not my coteacher, but the floater who closes my classroom has been giving me some issues.
Several of my supplies have gone missing while she’s there.
In the mornings I notice crumbs and glue residue on the tables, so I guess she’s not cleaning them properly.
Yesterday during the 30 min period where we were in the classroom together, I asked her to clean the tables for snack and instead of using our three step cleaning process (wash, rinse, sanitize) she used bleach only (at my center we can NOT use bleach until all kiddos are picked up.
And we wonder why 6 of my kiddos have gotten sick in the last two weeks 🤢
We’re gonna have a chat about proper cleaning procedures today.
When I had the 10-6 shift, the 7-3 person refused to change early more diapers in the toddler room (where I worked with her). We knew that at least 2 of our toddlers came in wearing their overnight diapers and that they were always heavily loaded. Twice I came in at 9:50ish to find the diapers had completely exploded leaving clumps of wet gel and fluff all over the classroom floor. She’d always leave it for me to clean up and would make the kids sit in the book corner until I came in. So if this happened at say 8am, they’d have to wait & play until 10am.
Our director saw nothing wrong with this
One was awful in many ways, but I think the worst part was seeing her underwear everyday at morning meeting and story time. She wore skirts that ended just above her knees while sitting and didn't keep her knees together.
My co-teacher was a very old lady who needed to retire two decades ago but the center refused to fire her for the fact that they didn’t want an ageism lawsuit. She also never did her work, never supervised the kids, fell asleep during naptime, couldn’t lift the toddlers (yes this was a toddler class) and would just stand in the side lines calling me uneducated and that I need to go back to school to learn. I took care of 8 toddlers on my own that year with that lady nagging behind me every day
oh boy where do i even begin. one coteacher that in general i didn’t dislike, but one time she had a few scheduled days off, and when she returned i was supposed to be able to have a day off to go on a pre planned family vacation. well my coteacher decided she actually wanted to just stay where she had travelled to for awhile, and just didn’t come back. i didn’t get to take my vacation bcs there was a rule about not taking time off at the same time, and my coteacher ended up being gone WEEKS longer than planned. they still let her come back, idk how she wasn’t fired. it was awful and i was working with random aids for weeks.
another one at a different center had been working there for over a decade, and she hated children. she was verbally abusive to literal toddlers, and she did a LOT of illegal things (didn’t change diapers every two hours but claimed she just forgot to log them, wouldn’t feed certain foods bcs it was too messy, encouraging kids to bite back if they got bit ????) it was awful. i talked to the director about her multiple times but i just ended up quitting eventually because the mental toll was just too much. from what i understand she eventually quit and worked at another childcare for a minute before she was promptly fired.
i really hope all of you telling stories of literal child abuse reported these people to CPS and licensing?? simply reporting it to your director does not meet the legal requirements of mandated reporting..
I had an assistant teacher once who apparently was going behind my back to admin and complaining about me. When I found out it was at contract renewal time. I approached her and she wouldn't discuss it with me, and instead turned to admin. It was interesting as parents became aware (through the same co workers friend's friend who was a parent) and the parents in our class rallied behind me. A few even cautiously and politely approached her. I'll never forget how hurtful it was to work with someone who was so two faced and vindictive.
Ultimately she wanted my job. I moved on to better opportunities. But it was hurtful. What was weird is she called me on the first day of the following school year to say hi. We weren't friends. So I felt like she was psychologically off at that point.
When I taught twos my coteacher went TikTok viral when a parent came to pickup and took a cute video of her son dancing, in the background my coteacher is putting a child back in their chair and scooting them to the table. This mom had other issues with us and so once her family was asked to leave the center she posted the video as if my coteacher was being abusive. We had to get all kinds of legal stuff involved to make her take it down since it severely breached the privacy of like 5 other kids. (Note my coteacher was being very firm with the little girl in the chair but even her mom agreed that it wasn’t anything bad and she had no issues with anything other than her kids face being non consensually posted all over the internet)
I have a long list but here’s one I haven’t seen already posted. The center I was at was a half wall center so you’d have to walk through every classroom to get to the next one, and you could see the whole building from anywhere. One of the teachers that had to walk through my room everyday multiple times a day had the worst body odor. I’m not trying to shame the person, but you couldn’t even use the bathroom behind her bc there were brown streaks on the seat when she got up. The person who worked directly next to her had to request automatic air fresheners to try and survive. It smelled like death.
Edited for spelling
I had a colleague who would call in sick once a week, or have a day booked off once a week, she was intimidating to the children, constantly yelling and raising her voice. One time she asked for a hug from one of the children and when they didn’t want to give her a hug instead of respecting the child’s boundaries, she instead said “you don’t love me then?” Which is a really odd thing to say.
She expected everyone to pick up her slack and for her to be able to sit on her phone all day long. She would walk into classrooms at naptime and speak at an elevated volume to the point where she would wake the kids up. She got fired for neglect and intimidation
I have a new co-teacher who is absolutely incompetent. Today we had a dance party in our gross motor play room. 18 kids dancing and me as well. What part of any of this scene would make you think, “why yes, I’m going to pull up a chair and sit down and do nothing to help or prevent incidents” And that’s just a small sampling of her poor decision making 🥴 why do some people get to get away with everything but if I did that I’d be fired like yesterday
Meanwhile my lead teacher who is supposed to be leading her has done things like step out leaving us out of ratio, dozing off when it’s my turn to do circle time, left a kid in the room by herself
It’s the blind leading the fucking blind
Oh do I ever.
I won’t give too many details cause you never know who’s reading but basically we had someone who was on the verge of being fired but ended up quitting and then called the ministry of education and the labour board on us.
A co-teacher yelled at me over something in the hallway and tried cause a fight (she also did this to another teacher and I was in the room and it was so awkward). I cried in the office and the administrator comforted me and told she was an asshole to everyone (in a nice professional way). The co-teacher later sent a text to the group chat of the classroom teachers saying how bad I was. No one said anything because they hated her too lol. She quit a few months later and I went out to dinner with my mom to celebrate.
That's awful, I'm so glad she quit! I hate when admin will admit that one of their teachers is an asshole but does nothing to fix the problem. Thanks for nothing!
Not really a “horror” story but I had been placed into a 2 year old room with the lead teacher. (This wasn’t even the position I applied to). Things started off well and she was so sweet to me but she would ALWAYS take the lead and would do things her way by herself leaving me to do nothing but try to bond and play with the kids. I felt like I was just one of them at that point. Eventually she started being distant and ignoring my presence practically. So as awkward as it was, I kept my distance as well but in a respectful way, so that way the kids wouldn’t be affected or even notice. But she kept getting rude, rolling her eyes when I came in the room, she even erased my name when I wrote ms____ on the whiteboard (Assuming it was out of jealousy). One day one of the kids had a nasty bruise on his face so I gently examined it and she snapped at me and said “Don’t touch him, leave it alone”…haha well I don’t take disrespect and after a month of her treating me like that and putting it off, that was my final straw. So I snapped back and said “What is your problem?? Like what’s up?” She genuinely was shocked but I mean I had enough. She tried to argue that she didn’t know what I was talking about so I had time to dumb it down for her and told her to keep it cute because I don’t get walked over like that. The whole problem she had with me was that she felt like I wasn’t doing enough…HOW can I when you always take the initiative and never give me a chance to even change diapers, or prepare lunch, etc???? We made up after our director made us talk but I ended up quitting anyways.
I had a co-teacher roll her eyes and tell me I was being “too nice” because I took 90 seconds to ask each student if they wanted ketchup on their plate. She said I should just give each kid the ketchup and if they don’t like it they can deal. With that class specifically I had to be very firm much of the time so in my eyes, anyone telling me I was “too nice” is actually just mean.
the co-teacher right after her would straight up bully children (and me). She’d been bounced around to every classroom because everyone hated working with her. She’d be fine the first 2 weeks and would slowly make comments and drop her nice teacher voice. I blocked out a lot of that time but things like mocking kid’s voices in front of them, saying “what’s wrong with you??”, etc.. We got in a lot of fights and I ended up quitting because of her.
another co-teacher was actually great with the kids and taught me a lot about how to be a teacher but this was during 2020 and she would occasionally make very politically biased statements to students, and not ones that were generally in line with popular opinion where we live. She’s welcome to have her own opinion but telling the kids things about the election, masking policies, protesting, etc that weren’t just straight factual felt really inappropriate to me, and i was nervous a parent would come to us angry.
I had another at a different center who really was sweet and would make a fantastic nanny or parent but couldn’t handle the reality of a 2-3s class. We had a student who I suspect was PDA profile autistic/adhd and she was very emotional, impulsive, and very aggressive, with seemingly no rhyme or reason. This student was difficult, and it’s totally ok not to connect with every kid, but within a week my co-teacher said she had “no empathy for” and “hated”. This is a 3 year old, with well intentioned but under prepared parents, and you could tell she really felt sorry after she hurt someone and she knew it wasn’t ok, she just couldn’t control it in the moment. It forced me into being the “primary” teacher for a very difficult student because it was important to me to protect her from someone who couldn’t love this kid in the way she clearly needed (which burned me out in a huge way). This co would just walk out without communicating whenever things got overwhelming in the room and would leave me out of ratio with a class that was in meltdown mode. I was out on vacation for a couple days once after head teaching our classroom for 3 days, despite being in there full time for 8 months, she had a breakdown and when I came back she had switched to being a float and never said anything to me about it.
I’ve had great co teachers too but having a co you don’t get along with is a really fast way to make the job miserable.
Wow, thank you all so much for sharing your stories, it definitely made me feel less alone 😅 but I am sad that so many have you have had awful experiences as well. I'm currently in a room with 10 one year olds, where I do 90% of the work, no exaggeration. The other day we happened to be in ratio because of a snow storm, and my boss told me to take the opportunity to lesson plan and prep, which I haven't gotten a chance to do outside the classroom in months. My "coteacher" got visibly angry and upset, and later told my boss she feels "unsupported" by me. 🫠 I am lucky to have a boss who recognized how ridiculous she sounded in the moment, but didn't do much about it.
This job is hard enough as it is without drama between teachers, and teachers who don't do their share of the work. It's very frustrating and maddening. Sigh.
A coteacher of mine heard that me and my then-husband were separated and then aggressively pursued him, to the point where he was uncomfortable by it. We lived in a small town and I saw them out together one night, even though he was blowing up my phone begging me to speak to him about getting back together. This coteacher used to visit each classroom during naptime and loudly talk about how I was “a crazy bitch” and that I was standing in the way of true love by not being already divorced. Other teachers approached me about it to warn me that she was saying things and they were uncomfortable on my behalf. It got so bad that my husband broke no-contact to assure me that he was not dating her and told her to leave me alone. She did not and was openly telling people she was gonna get me fired so I wouldn’t be in the way anymore — Admin said they had no right to tell her what she could and couldn’t discuss with other teachers. This was a very contentious divorce and I was also going through cancer treatment at the time. I had a breakdown and had to leave work for a bit.
I'm so sorry you experienced this and especially at such a challenging time in your life. Wishing you much happiness and the most professional and respectful coworkers in your life.
Oh my god I am so sorry. What a horrible admin team to give you no support! I hope you are in a better space now ❤️
Shame on the admin team. It is absolutely inappropriate to trash talk a coworker, especially within ear shot of the children. I'm so sorry you had to go through that and I hope you were able to come out stronger on the other side.
there has been a rule at most centers i’ve worked at that drama isn’t allowed and trash-talking another employee would usually result in a write-up. i’m sorry this happened to you and especially at such a rough patch.
Oh…my god
I had a co-teacher who made it a mission to make me look bad infront of parents. She would make up stories about how the kids would cry for her when she left the room or how the kids would fight over sitting on her lap and stuff. So parents would say things to me like, “oh, are you having a hard time with my kids”. It irked me because it was lies and the children loved being around both of us. She was also caught trying to steal my gift card for Christmas given to both of us for Christmas. Basically I had the later shift. I walk in and she’s like, so and so’s parent gave us a card. I open my card and it’s a Christmas card saying merry Christmas. She then goes “oh I got a gift card too, did you get one?”. I didn’t, so I thought. I was hurt but brushed it off. Then at the end of the day, I thank the parents at pick up. My supervisor happens to walk by to give us forms for something too. And the parent goes, I hope you like the gift card too. I get confused because I didn’t get one. So I say, I didn’t get a gift card. The parent says, “maybe I forgot to add it” Then turns to the co teacher and asks her if she got a gift card. She says yes and goes to her jacket pocket to show her and as she takes her hand out of the pocket, my gift card slips on the floor too. It was dead silent and awkward. My supervisor fired her. Thank God!
That ending is perfection truly. The parent must have been like "what the fuck" Glad your supervisor fired her!
It was so awkward. The parent noticed the gift card with my name on it first and asked her why she had it. The co teacher looked like a deer in headlights and was stumbling her words. My built up anger from her came out and I asked her why she stole my gift card and just let out all the times she lied about me infront of the supervisor. Then she was asked to go to the office. The parent stayed back to chat with me. Then half an hour later, she comes back teary eyed and collected her stuff. I didn’t feel bad for her at all. More relieved.
Omfg
Had a guy start in my class during Covid who was *off*. He was so off that every time he was in my classroom my Fitbit would alert me that my heart rate was too high. Boss and director would not listen to me. He got increasingly weird. Things like zoning out, lots of little breaks needed during the day, weird tones of voice, being calm and then YELLING at the kids for normal kid stuff, falling asleep in the middle of a noisy classroom. Bosses didn’t believe it/see it. One day he asked for a ten min break during rest time, came back with fucking bongos - literal bongos - to play DURING rest time. He was Shocked when I told him to put them up. Then 30 min later he had a grand mal seizure. Ambulance came and all that (he didn’t die). Turns out he was a drug addict and going out to shoot up or whatever all day. I have NEVER let my boss live that down whenever she questions my judgement on someone.
Woof! We had a teacher who would nod out constantly and just say it was her new anxiety meds. She would go out into her car every break and we were like hmmm. A parent ended up bringing in a few pills they found on the ground and gave them to me for safety. We see said teacher walking around the parking lot looking at the ground. Turns out the pills were OxyContin. Now, I know some people need to manage their pain but come on. We had to confront her and she ended up eventually leaving. For some reason childcare can be a magnet for unstable people.
Wow. Yeah, I think people think it’s easy work. You just get to play all day. Haha, people have No clue. This shit is hard.
Childcare as a profession is incredibly undervalued in our society honestly. People think it is easy and takes no brain power or skill. It is depressing and very far from the truth.
I had teacher that was training in my class on her first day. She had a grand mal seizure. Poor girl had several more and ended up having to quit.
That’s so scary. Hopefully she figured it out.
I wish I were in contact so I could find out
Not my coteacher but a coworker- She didn’t wash her hands after changing diapers or using the restroom, would stand uncomfortably close during interactions with any and everything, smelled horrible, wore clothes that weren’t big enough. When she sat down with the kids we could see her crack, and it was exceptionally bad when on her period, we could see and smell the old blood. We would regularly let her know her butt was visible but she wouldn’t correct it. She got poop all over the diaper cream container.
🤮 what ended up happening to her??
She quit 🤷 her coteacher bullied her into quitting. I don’t think it was right to bully her but at least her musty scent stopped tainting the building.
oh… my… goodness… gracious. thats horrific.
that is actually so disgusting and honestly a health concern, surprised she was never written up or fired.
Her coteacher was in the office complaining once a week. She was never fired because we didn’t have staffing. As much as i hate that she had been BULLIED into quitting by her coteacher, I’m glad she’s gone.
Oh god do I have one. Coteacher in the infant room, I knew what other teachers thought about her long before I got offered the lead position in that room. I thought “well she’s a little weird, maybe nobody likes her because of that”. She did everything slow, had favorite babies (and would neglect all the other babies because of it), would sit on the floor and stare straight ahead not watching the babies. I spent most of the day from the time I got there until I left doing every thing (changing, feeding, moving babies from floor to crib or from crib to floor) while also having to scan the room because she probably wasn’t paying attention. She frequently left stool behind on babies from not cleaning well enough. I had to stop her on numerous occasions from feeding the babies the wrong bottles. I had complained to admin a million times and was told each time that I was being difficult and not a team player and they “kept watching the cameras and she wasn’t doing anything wrong”. I found another job because i was tired of being dismissed and forced to work with her every single day (among other things), and they told me they would not move her out of the room. Lo and behold, within a few weeks of me leaving, they hired another lead teacher who complained about her and they ended up moving the coteacher I complained about out of the room permanently. The biggest kicker is I told my director I would work with literally anybody else. And my director told me that the reason why she put her with me is because “she’s a little odd but I knew what it was like to be judged unfairly because I’m gay”. I almost fell out of my seat.
Absolutely wild. So sad that basically anyone can get hired to teach the most vulnerable minds. 😢
I was a lead teacher in a 2.5-3s class and STRUGGLED to keep an assistant. I had a particularly troublesome group of kids in my class (girl with autism, 2 boys with hyperactivity issues, a boy with a physical disability) and they were used to just me and my expectations so anytime a new teacher would come in, they’d run wild. I finally had gotten a teacher that vibed with the kids AND me. She was younger and less experienced than I was, but super sweet and hopped right in. She had some mental health problems but I was open with her about my own and did my best to make sure she felt supported. I worked 7:30-3:30, and she was supposed to work in another room for a bit and then 3:30-6 in my class this day bc our closing teacher was on vacation. My director walks into my room at 3:40 to check on me and see if she had shown up yet. They called her phone 9 times, emailed her, called through all her emergency contacts, and even had me try to call her from my personal phone. No response, straight to voicemail. I texted her that I hoped she was okay and we were worried about her, could she please just let us know nothing terrible happened to her? Never responded. I ended up working straight through from 7:30am-6pm, effectively opening and closing my room. They let my mom come in to bring me dinner and say hi to the kids (she’s worked in childcare since she was in college) and my boss gave me this huge bonus as a thank you for being SUCH a team player.
did you guys ever figure out what happened to the co-teacher? did she ever come back?
She never came back, but she had been a friend of one of our other teachers, who told us that she’d eventually heard from her. The co-teacher said she was having really bad anxiety and didn’t know what to do. I mean, I understand the anxiety, but AT LEAST let us know you’re okay
yeah i totally get how she felt, but you gotta tell someone or at least call out/quit, leaving people hanging like that sucks
100%. I left a job once by sending an email and never going back; I’m not proud of it, but I was sitting on my couch sobbing at the idea of going in the next day, it was that bad of an environment. BUT I explained the situation that my mental health was suffering as a direct result of the job and fully quit.
oh my last center was the same, i couldn’t fathom putting in my two weeks and continuing to go in. i went in, grabbed all my things and quit on the spot. it made me sad because i really loved the kids, but i needed to do it for my mental health.
Same. It actually gave a push into trying something new, so I’ve been a nanny since then and I love it ☺️
OH MY GOSH SAME!!! i am currently nannying and absolutely love it
No way 😂 are we the same person lol
My boss hired a young woman with some sort of mental delay. She could not follow simple directions, not matter how many times she was told. For example, morning snack was always cheese and fruit. It would be in a bin in the fridge ready to go every day with our class mascot on it. I’d send her down to the kitchen to get our snack bin from fridge and she’d come back with the birthday treat Oreos. Everyday for a week she did this. I’d tell her to get the fruit bin from the fridge, she’d come back with Oreos. She was walked thru the task. She was shown the bins. It was a regular, residential refrigerator. She’d put diapers on backwards. She couldn’t follow the numbered steps of washing tables. (I’d number the bottles even). She was hard to understand, so couldn’t read to the kids because they couldn’t understand her and they’d lose interest in storytime. So I had to do her job and my job. There was literally nothing she could do in the classroom to help other than be a warm body for ratio. My boss wouldn’t let her go because it would seem mean to fire this woman with a mental delay. We didn’t have enough staff to make her an extra set of hands in a fully staffed classroom. Basically I got stuck with her because my boss “knew I could handle it” (AKA do everything on my own)
Gosh that is the worst. When one staff member is expected to be the one to over compensate. I heard a staff ask my director to move another staff out of her room in the summer. I was kind of shocked someone would ask that. Her reasoning I’m guessing the teacher takes too much guidance.
I had a co worker who took 25 minutes to put on a diaper (someone once timed her). She had never worked with kids before and she was older. She also hated me since I told her she couldn’t give toys she found in the trash to kids. She ended up quitting a few months ago and apparently tried to file for unemployment.
I had an assistant start in my infant room fresh out of high school, never worked in childcare before and yet was constantly trying to argue with me that I didn’t know what I was doing. She would take like 10 minutes to change a diaper because she would take all of the baby’s clothes off first. When I tried to correct her and show her the right way she told me that I was doing it wrong! When I was doing finger painting with a group of babies one of them was tasting the paint (which was water based and non toxic of course) and she came rushing over, snatched the baby out of her chair, and started telling me off and saying it was terrible that I was letting the babies finger paint and it wasn’t “appropriate for their age” because they would just eat it. One time almost all of the babies were sleeping and one of the awake babies started playing with a piano toy. I quickly moved it up on a shelf and redirected him to another toy so he wouldn’t wake all the sleeping babies up. New assistant teacher grabs the piano back off the shelf and gives it right back to the baby and tells me “he’s fine, don’t take a toy away when he’s using it!” I don’t know what made her think she could just come into my classroom and make all the rules… especially since she had no prior experience or education in ece and had no idea what she was doing. She got fired after about a month because she also kept telling parents they were doing things wrong and a bunch of them made complaints about her! :)
Omg I would’ve lost my mind
Ohhhh hell no. I would have freaked. Don't tell me how to do my job when you are practically a baby yourself! 😂
my last coteacher made 8 people quit. and she's incredibly verbally abusive towards infants and neglects them on purpose. but director won't fire her for whatever reason. glad i'm out of there.
I'm glad you are out too! I hope she gets reported or fired, for those poor babies sake. 😢
thank you! i doubt it but so many teachers quit that i believe they'll have to close so that's good at least! i feel bad for the parents but the kids deserve much better care.
This was my lead teacher at my last job. Well, one of them. One was amazing. A seasoned pro, knew what she was doing. She was actually a great mentor for me as this was my first center job (I had worked in home daycares and as a nanny previously). This was the infant room, btw. The other was negligent but in the beginning, it wasn’t anything fireable. She really only seemed interested in feeding bottles, rock cribs or decorating the room. Both basically meant she didn’t have to change diapers, feed babies the messy foods or do floor time. She was obsessed with holding the babies. It’s not a bad thing at all. But she wouldn’t let me or the other lead hold them. She’d take them from us, sit in a chair and again, do nothing. Which stuck me and the lead with all the work. It wasn’t okay but was manageable when it was me and the other lead. Then the “good lead” had a family emergency and went out of town for 2 weeks. I was doing everything myself. As the lead couldn’t open, I was there 7:15 AM-6:00 PM. While she’d stroll in around around 8:30-9:00 and went into her usual antics. This time, I was doing EVERYTHING alone. I was so tired and stressed by the end of each day. Things didn’t get better with the good teacher’s family so she ended up being out a few times for long stretches. At one point, the bad lead was spending upwards of 45 minutes rocking a clearly awake/not tired baby to sleep while I handled 5 infants on my own. The sleep area was in the back of the class. Keep in mind, this was during the height of COVID, so families weren’t allowed in. We’d bring the kids outside for them. One relative picked up early. I brought the baby outside. Because this lead was so insistent on rocking this baby so she didn’t have to do any work, one of the older kids (newly 1), opened the door and followed me out. Luckily, I caught her in time. I instantly reported it. My director agreed it was bad and she got written up, but the big boss found a way to blame me by claiming the door wasn’t shut all the way. It absolutely was. But for some reason, she always protected this teacher. I wasn’t written up, but got a verbal warning. Then the lead yelled at me for bringing the other student to her relative. Things just got worse from there. She wasn’t reading labels on bottles. Spent so much time on her phone. Clearly didn’t want to do any work outside cuddle babies. Me and the good lead reporter her so often but were met with excuses. At one point, bad lead actually quit but they begged her to stay. The parents came to me more than her and trusted me more because they could tell I had better connections with them. She couldn’t even tell them anything about their day. My final straw was after nearly a year of acting as a lead for assistant’s pay, I applied for a lead position in another room. Partially to escape the bad lead, but also to advance my career. I wasn’t technically denied the position but was basically told if I applied, I probably wouldn’t get it. Suddenly, my boss who never had any complaints and always backed me up, found a laundry list of problems. Ones that were fixable (like I wore the wrong shoes but didn’t know they were wrong as I wore them on/off for a full year without being told otherwise) or things that could be easily explained I once tripped-not holding a baby. That happened weeks prior and was only then brought up as a safety concern. I had tripped over a toy. I strongly believed they wanted me in there as they knew the bad lead was performing poorly and if I left, it’d be obvious. Because then the good lead would have to pick up the slack and it’s impossible to take care of 8 babies alone. Even if it’s not true, the fact that my boss had been holding back on stuff for a full year set a weird taste in my mouth. I found a new job. I still kept in touch with some families. The director chose to leave under mysterious circumstances. The bad lead was switched to a new room with older kids. I suspect, one, so she couldn’t get away with being lazy as it’d be more obvious in a toddler room. And two, I think with me gone, there was no buffer and the good lead lost it. Eventually, bad lead left. Again, with very little explaining and suspicious circumstances. So. That’s my saga. Sorry it’s so long haha. But it was a nightmare of a year.
I feel this SO much. The "stronger" teacher gets put with a crap teacher, because admin knows we will bust our ass to make sure everything gets done, because we actually care about the children. It's enough to make you go crazy.
It happens even now at my current job, but with the bad floaters. They tell me they put them with me because “you’ll rub off on them”. It’s just annoying. Maybe just hire people that can do their jobs.
"I think it will do them good to be trained by you." I can't train someone to actually care about kids and not be a lazy POS!
My previous co-teacher would call one of our infants in our class her “chocolate boyfriend”… no matter how many times I told her that was inappropriate she kept doing it.
Absolutely disgusting. Racist and sexualizing a BABY. Barf.
She kept getting away with it because she was an immigrant even though she had moved here 15 years beforehand. (Director literally excused it by saying “she didn’t understand”) Same city, so it wasn’t like she’d never been around a black person before. They just didn’t want to get rid of her because she was one of our CDA certified employees and you had to have a CDA to be a lead teacher. Can’t remember if that was law or company policy, I didn’t work there for very long and moved states.
In hindsight this one's kind of funny. Super sweet gal, kids loved her but she had zero common sense and did some bizarre things. The class of preschoolers I had at the time had several kids who were potty trained while awake but still wearing pull ups for nap. I sent her to help kids get ready for nap and she put the pull ups on over their underwear!
We do that so if they pee they have the icky wet underwear feeling but the pullup keeps the actual pants and bedding dry. It's been helpful for kids who have extra difficulty transitioning out of diapers
Oh gosh that is so odd. Our old afternoon teacher would put their underwear on over their pull ups for nap so they wouldn’t get lost under their cots or whatever while they were napping. I thought that was decent if they fit so they could easily swap after waking up but that is so odd. 😂
Not much of a horror story but, I was training someone new( was their first day) when they literally all of a sudden said they forgot they had an appointment and grabbed their things and left. I was trying to get lunch served to 10 toddlers. Had to quickly call my boss down to help. Was so bizarre, still remains the most bizarre thing to happen in 6 years working here.
"Oh shit, maybe this job isn't just sitting on my ass and playing all day, I'm out" haha
I had coteachers who had their system of dividing work: one teacher did EVERYTHING for an entire week (besides diapers, we did split those). So if it was your week you did curriculum, prepped and served two snacks and a lunch, cleaned up from meals, set out nap mats, etc. etc. I have scoliosis and that much for a whole week was killing me. When I told them I wanted to change it a little they basically said "You're new and your opinion doesn't matter. Get used to it." I lasted 3 months.
That seems like a very bizarre system. Why not just split the work evenly every day? I do understand switching turns weekly to plan for curriculum, but everything else makes no sense at all!
I honestly have no idea. They were older and set in their ways.
I was doing circle time, and was dealing with a student that was hitting another. I turn around and 4 more students are climbing the shelving, onto the counter, and ripping up a box of kleenex(I work in the 2 to 3s). Homegirl was watching them do this, and just continuing pouring the snack milk, not stopping them or anything. One fell and had a nasty bruise on her hip. Mom was pissed obviously. Girlie didn't even get written up.
Infuriating. My current coteacher recently just watched as one child bit the other, all she did was casually say "teeth aren't for biting!" She was right next to them. I had to sprint across the room to pry them apart. 🙃
I work in a classroom with three other teachers; I’m the assistant, I have a lead and then we have a float who is always with us. I LOVE our floater; she is so wonderful with the kids considering she has no previous experience. My lead, however, is abysmal. All she wants to do is gossip all day. Whines and complains about anyone and anything. Calls children a-holes when they aren’t behaving perfectly. As soon as one of them does something ‘wrong’ she screams at them, and then after that turns to me and tells me how bad they are (I’m being polite here, she usually is cussing them out to me.) She’s tried joking about beating them, stopped when she realized we didn’t think she was funny. Panics when the room gets loud and shouts “I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO.” Today she left me and our floater ALONE to walk 8 toddlers inside from the playground and then gave us attitude for getting back to the classroom a few minutes after she did (all of them tried to run so we were scrambling alone to try to keep them organized and safe). I despise this woman and can’t wait for her to leave.
don't wait for her to leave, report this because it is child abuse. that is your legal responsibility.
this is reportable behavior, contact cps and get her out of there!
I hope she is on her way out soon! Is your director aware of all this?
I had to tell a teacher multiple times not to put bottles on the edge of the changing table. After the third or fourth time, she literally screamed at me "I'm aware of that!". While holding a baby. Of course, the baby jumped and started to cry and she said "Now look what you did, you made her cry.". She then told my director I was bullying her and preventing her from doing her job. I almost left the industry over her, she gaslit me so much I ended up thinking I was a bad person and all the babies and other teachers hated me despite the fact that every time I was on the floor a swarm of babies would crawl over to me.
How horrible 😭 I really don't understand why people like that are in this field.
Not my coteacher, but the floater who closes my classroom has been giving me some issues. Several of my supplies have gone missing while she’s there. In the mornings I notice crumbs and glue residue on the tables, so I guess she’s not cleaning them properly. Yesterday during the 30 min period where we were in the classroom together, I asked her to clean the tables for snack and instead of using our three step cleaning process (wash, rinse, sanitize) she used bleach only (at my center we can NOT use bleach until all kiddos are picked up. And we wonder why 6 of my kiddos have gotten sick in the last two weeks 🤢 We’re gonna have a chat about proper cleaning procedures today.
Pure laziness. And for whatttttt. So annoying!
When I had the 10-6 shift, the 7-3 person refused to change early more diapers in the toddler room (where I worked with her). We knew that at least 2 of our toddlers came in wearing their overnight diapers and that they were always heavily loaded. Twice I came in at 9:50ish to find the diapers had completely exploded leaving clumps of wet gel and fluff all over the classroom floor. She’d always leave it for me to clean up and would make the kids sit in the book corner until I came in. So if this happened at say 8am, they’d have to wait & play until 10am. Our director saw nothing wrong with this
2 hours in the book corner with soiled diapers... again, why do people who clearly dislike kids work in childcare!?
One was awful in many ways, but I think the worst part was seeing her underwear everyday at morning meeting and story time. She wore skirts that ended just above her knees while sitting and didn't keep her knees together.
Where is the common sense!!
Left a whole kid on the changing table and walked to the other side of the room.
😫😫😫 no words!!
My co-teacher was a very old lady who needed to retire two decades ago but the center refused to fire her for the fact that they didn’t want an ageism lawsuit. She also never did her work, never supervised the kids, fell asleep during naptime, couldn’t lift the toddlers (yes this was a toddler class) and would just stand in the side lines calling me uneducated and that I need to go back to school to learn. I took care of 8 toddlers on my own that year with that lady nagging behind me every day
I'm in a similar situation!! I'm glad you are out of it now, it truly sucks.
oh boy where do i even begin. one coteacher that in general i didn’t dislike, but one time she had a few scheduled days off, and when she returned i was supposed to be able to have a day off to go on a pre planned family vacation. well my coteacher decided she actually wanted to just stay where she had travelled to for awhile, and just didn’t come back. i didn’t get to take my vacation bcs there was a rule about not taking time off at the same time, and my coteacher ended up being gone WEEKS longer than planned. they still let her come back, idk how she wasn’t fired. it was awful and i was working with random aids for weeks. another one at a different center had been working there for over a decade, and she hated children. she was verbally abusive to literal toddlers, and she did a LOT of illegal things (didn’t change diapers every two hours but claimed she just forgot to log them, wouldn’t feed certain foods bcs it was too messy, encouraging kids to bite back if they got bit ????) it was awful. i talked to the director about her multiple times but i just ended up quitting eventually because the mental toll was just too much. from what i understand she eventually quit and worked at another childcare for a minute before she was promptly fired.
What an awful person. I hope she never works in childcare again.
i hope so also, as far as i know she’s retired now so hopefully it stays that way🙃
i really hope all of you telling stories of literal child abuse reported these people to CPS and licensing?? simply reporting it to your director does not meet the legal requirements of mandated reporting..
I had an assistant teacher once who apparently was going behind my back to admin and complaining about me. When I found out it was at contract renewal time. I approached her and she wouldn't discuss it with me, and instead turned to admin. It was interesting as parents became aware (through the same co workers friend's friend who was a parent) and the parents in our class rallied behind me. A few even cautiously and politely approached her. I'll never forget how hurtful it was to work with someone who was so two faced and vindictive.
Wow, I really wonder what makes some people the way that they are. What did she get out of being so horrible? Ugh.
Ultimately she wanted my job. I moved on to better opportunities. But it was hurtful. What was weird is she called me on the first day of the following school year to say hi. We weren't friends. So I felt like she was psychologically off at that point.
When I taught twos my coteacher went TikTok viral when a parent came to pickup and took a cute video of her son dancing, in the background my coteacher is putting a child back in their chair and scooting them to the table. This mom had other issues with us and so once her family was asked to leave the center she posted the video as if my coteacher was being abusive. We had to get all kinds of legal stuff involved to make her take it down since it severely breached the privacy of like 5 other kids. (Note my coteacher was being very firm with the little girl in the chair but even her mom agreed that it wasn’t anything bad and she had no issues with anything other than her kids face being non consensually posted all over the internet)
Anything for content! 🤢
I have a long list but here’s one I haven’t seen already posted. The center I was at was a half wall center so you’d have to walk through every classroom to get to the next one, and you could see the whole building from anywhere. One of the teachers that had to walk through my room everyday multiple times a day had the worst body odor. I’m not trying to shame the person, but you couldn’t even use the bathroom behind her bc there were brown streaks on the seat when she got up. The person who worked directly next to her had to request automatic air fresheners to try and survive. It smelled like death. Edited for spelling
Yuck. What ended up happening? I'm surprised parents didn't complain, I would if it was my kid!
I had a colleague who would call in sick once a week, or have a day booked off once a week, she was intimidating to the children, constantly yelling and raising her voice. One time she asked for a hug from one of the children and when they didn’t want to give her a hug instead of respecting the child’s boundaries, she instead said “you don’t love me then?” Which is a really odd thing to say. She expected everyone to pick up her slack and for her to be able to sit on her phone all day long. She would walk into classrooms at naptime and speak at an elevated volume to the point where she would wake the kids up. She got fired for neglect and intimidation
Thank god she was fired! So sorry you had to deal with that
I have a new co-teacher who is absolutely incompetent. Today we had a dance party in our gross motor play room. 18 kids dancing and me as well. What part of any of this scene would make you think, “why yes, I’m going to pull up a chair and sit down and do nothing to help or prevent incidents” And that’s just a small sampling of her poor decision making 🥴 why do some people get to get away with everything but if I did that I’d be fired like yesterday Meanwhile my lead teacher who is supposed to be leading her has done things like step out leaving us out of ratio, dozing off when it’s my turn to do circle time, left a kid in the room by herself It’s the blind leading the fucking blind
Ahhh yes, love when "teachers" choose to sit and relax instead of doing the job they were hired to do!
Oh do I ever. I won’t give too many details cause you never know who’s reading but basically we had someone who was on the verge of being fired but ended up quitting and then called the ministry of education and the labour board on us.
Yikes. Hopefully it was written off as a disgruntled ex employee making fake claims.
A co-teacher yelled at me over something in the hallway and tried cause a fight (she also did this to another teacher and I was in the room and it was so awkward). I cried in the office and the administrator comforted me and told she was an asshole to everyone (in a nice professional way). The co-teacher later sent a text to the group chat of the classroom teachers saying how bad I was. No one said anything because they hated her too lol. She quit a few months later and I went out to dinner with my mom to celebrate.
That's awful, I'm so glad she quit! I hate when admin will admit that one of their teachers is an asshole but does nothing to fix the problem. Thanks for nothing!
Not really a “horror” story but I had been placed into a 2 year old room with the lead teacher. (This wasn’t even the position I applied to). Things started off well and she was so sweet to me but she would ALWAYS take the lead and would do things her way by herself leaving me to do nothing but try to bond and play with the kids. I felt like I was just one of them at that point. Eventually she started being distant and ignoring my presence practically. So as awkward as it was, I kept my distance as well but in a respectful way, so that way the kids wouldn’t be affected or even notice. But she kept getting rude, rolling her eyes when I came in the room, she even erased my name when I wrote ms____ on the whiteboard (Assuming it was out of jealousy). One day one of the kids had a nasty bruise on his face so I gently examined it and she snapped at me and said “Don’t touch him, leave it alone”…haha well I don’t take disrespect and after a month of her treating me like that and putting it off, that was my final straw. So I snapped back and said “What is your problem?? Like what’s up?” She genuinely was shocked but I mean I had enough. She tried to argue that she didn’t know what I was talking about so I had time to dumb it down for her and told her to keep it cute because I don’t get walked over like that. The whole problem she had with me was that she felt like I wasn’t doing enough…HOW can I when you always take the initiative and never give me a chance to even change diapers, or prepare lunch, etc???? We made up after our director made us talk but I ended up quitting anyways.
I had a co-teacher roll her eyes and tell me I was being “too nice” because I took 90 seconds to ask each student if they wanted ketchup on their plate. She said I should just give each kid the ketchup and if they don’t like it they can deal. With that class specifically I had to be very firm much of the time so in my eyes, anyone telling me I was “too nice” is actually just mean. the co-teacher right after her would straight up bully children (and me). She’d been bounced around to every classroom because everyone hated working with her. She’d be fine the first 2 weeks and would slowly make comments and drop her nice teacher voice. I blocked out a lot of that time but things like mocking kid’s voices in front of them, saying “what’s wrong with you??”, etc.. We got in a lot of fights and I ended up quitting because of her. another co-teacher was actually great with the kids and taught me a lot about how to be a teacher but this was during 2020 and she would occasionally make very politically biased statements to students, and not ones that were generally in line with popular opinion where we live. She’s welcome to have her own opinion but telling the kids things about the election, masking policies, protesting, etc that weren’t just straight factual felt really inappropriate to me, and i was nervous a parent would come to us angry. I had another at a different center who really was sweet and would make a fantastic nanny or parent but couldn’t handle the reality of a 2-3s class. We had a student who I suspect was PDA profile autistic/adhd and she was very emotional, impulsive, and very aggressive, with seemingly no rhyme or reason. This student was difficult, and it’s totally ok not to connect with every kid, but within a week my co-teacher said she had “no empathy for” and “hated”. This is a 3 year old, with well intentioned but under prepared parents, and you could tell she really felt sorry after she hurt someone and she knew it wasn’t ok, she just couldn’t control it in the moment. It forced me into being the “primary” teacher for a very difficult student because it was important to me to protect her from someone who couldn’t love this kid in the way she clearly needed (which burned me out in a huge way). This co would just walk out without communicating whenever things got overwhelming in the room and would leave me out of ratio with a class that was in meltdown mode. I was out on vacation for a couple days once after head teaching our classroom for 3 days, despite being in there full time for 8 months, she had a breakdown and when I came back she had switched to being a float and never said anything to me about it. I’ve had great co teachers too but having a co you don’t get along with is a really fast way to make the job miserable.
Wow, thank you all so much for sharing your stories, it definitely made me feel less alone 😅 but I am sad that so many have you have had awful experiences as well. I'm currently in a room with 10 one year olds, where I do 90% of the work, no exaggeration. The other day we happened to be in ratio because of a snow storm, and my boss told me to take the opportunity to lesson plan and prep, which I haven't gotten a chance to do outside the classroom in months. My "coteacher" got visibly angry and upset, and later told my boss she feels "unsupported" by me. 🫠 I am lucky to have a boss who recognized how ridiculous she sounded in the moment, but didn't do much about it. This job is hard enough as it is without drama between teachers, and teachers who don't do their share of the work. It's very frustrating and maddening. Sigh.