In my senior year of high school, a classmate and I started driving to school together to save gas. The two days she drove, we were late, which resulted in two detentions for tardiness.

On the third day, [Classmate] was telling me a story, and I got the feeling we were going more slowly than usual. I looked over at the speedometer.

Me: “Everything okay?”

Classmate: “Yeah. Why?”

Me: “You’re going forty miles per hour.”

Classmate: “I’m talking. I don’t want to speed.”

Me: “We’re going to be late again. Would you like me to drive so you can talk?”

Classmate: “No! This is my car!”

Me: “Okay, but doing forty in a fifty-five is pretty slow. What if someone was driving behind us?”

Classmate: “If you don’t like it, you can drive yourself from now on.”

Me: “Sounds good to me.”

She slowed down some more, now doing thirty-five in a fifty-five zone. Thankfully, there were no other cars on the road at the time, but I was incredibly annoyed by the time we got to school. We got to class later than ever, got written up, and had detention again.

I got a ride home with someone else after detention that day and started driving myself the next morning.

I teach high school in a district where cheating is rampant. Thanks to a year of hybrid learning, where half of the students were in the class at a time, we have built up a large collection of online worksheets. These are Google Docs where students copy the templates and then fill them in with their own answers. The students share their online versions with the teacher and submit them via our web-based Learning Management System (LMS). 

As I’ve gotten older, I find it easier to read documents online rather than in student’s handwriting on paper. This method is also great for students who constantly lose homework papers. However, the downside is that students find it easier than ever to copy online homework. 

The typical shortcut is to ask a friend to share their worksheet. Clever students will view it, write their own answers in their own words on their own worksheets, and then have their friends un-share the original. (These students are not as clever as they think, though, because the worksheets do not count for much and their lack of preparation shows on their tests.)

One time, [Student #1] asked [Student #2] to share his work. [Student #2], of course, shared with his friend, but [Student #1] did not fulfill his part of the social contract. He simply copied and pasted the answers in the same exact words. Our school gives all participants the same penalties for academic integrity violations. The look of consternation and surprise on [Student #2]’s face when he realized that his friend’s laziness had gotten them both zeroes on the work he did was priceless. 

An even less careful student turned in a complete copy of her friend’s worksheet — which I had already graded. I’m sure she meant to remove the grade marks… and her friend’s name from the top of the page. 

The most memorable effort from last year involved a trio of students who were assigned a group worksheet in class. They spent class socializing, and then one student went home and did the work, slapped everyone’s name on it, and turned it in. This might have worked… had he remembered to share it with his partners. The students claimed they had done the work together over FaceTime. Google Docs records the times that documents are edited. Two out of three sets of parents found it easier to believe their kids cheated than to believe they were FaceTiming physics with each other at 11:00 pm on a Wednesday night.

Related:
If You’re Gonna Cheat, You Gotta Cheat Smart

At the time of this story, I’m a very shy and very petite high school freshman. My locker is right next to my homeroom. A middle school friend’s locker is right next to mine, which we’re both excited about… until she gets a boyfriend a couple of months into the school year. Every time I go to my locker, they’re making out and grabbing each other against it. I try going between different classes, during lunch, and at the end of the day, and they’re always there. It takes me several tries to get their attention, and then they only move over enough for me to barely get my books out. This goes on for about a week.

One morning, I am running late and have about ninety seconds to grab my books before the homeroom bell. I sprint to my locker and, of course, they’re making out right in front of it.

Me: “Um… excuse me!”

They ignore me. I tap my friend on the shoulder.

Me: “[Friend], can you please move over? I need my books.”

She waves me off.

Me: “Come on! I don’t want a detention!”

I try to squeeze around them but get shoved out of the way. My fuse is officially lit. In the loudest voice my 4’11”, super shy, freshman self can muster, I yell:

Me: “WILL Y’ALL GET A ROOM ALREADY?!”

They stop and stare at me.

Friend’s Boyfriend: “What did you just say?!”

Me: “You block my locker all day, every day! There’s a freaking hotel down the street; go there! Now move!”

They jump apart. I get my locker open in record time, grab my books, and dart into homeroom as the bell is ringing.

Me: “Am I late?”

Homeroom Teacher: “Not at all.”

Classmate: “I didn’t know you could yell that loud.”

Me: “Did y’all hear all of that?”

Most Of The Class: “Yes!”

My face turns red. My homeroom teacher chuckles.

Homeroom Teacher: “Don’t worry about it. They won’t be doing that again against your locker anymore!”

He was right; they didn’t. My friend didn’t talk to me again until we were sophomores.

CONTENT WARNING: Sexual Harassment/Assault By Teacher

This is a story from when I was just starting high school. Like a lot of teenagers, there were teachers I liked and teachers I disliked, but there was one teacher that pretty much every girl in my school disliked. We shall call him Mr. Creep.

As the name may make apparent, he was a creep. He would very visibly “check out” any girl who came close to him, get uncomfortably close, breathe on your neck if you were presenting in his class, and mutter suggestive comments under his breath that only you could hear.

However, when we went to complain, we were stonewalled.

Principal: “I’m very disappointed in you girls. You shouldn’t let prejudice make you judge someone like that.”

You see, Mr. Creep was Black, and some of the girls complaining were white — not all of them, not by a long shot, but enough for our “wonderful” principal to conclude that our dislike of him must be because we were uncomfortable with his skin color, and that his behavior couldn’t have anything to do with it.

The problem was that those he targeted tended to be the quieter girls, so when we got told off for complaining, most of us just ducked our heads and tried our best to avoid him, hoping to just endure it.

However, it all came to a head when one of my classmates was doing a reading in class. She had a bit of an accent, and Mr. Creep ended up saying out loud the sort of thing he normally whispered under his breath.

Mr. Creep: “Mmm… You’ve got a pretty mouth… Got some things I’d like to see it do…”

Voice: “WHAT?!”

The entire class whipped around to see one of our other teachers standing in the doorway. We’ll call her Miss Ellen. She was an older lady. Before and since, I’ve never heard her speak in anything more than a low lilting tone. But that day, I would swear I heard the window next to me shake from her shout.

She stood there, fuming for a moment, before turning to look at the class.

Miss Ellen: “Everyone, go down to the library. Tell [Librarian] I sent you down.”

We sort of looked at each other, but then we all gathered our things and filed out. Miss Ellen just kept glaring daggers at Mr. Creep, and he just stood there with a smug smirk on his face, obviously unconcerned.

Once we all got to the library, we milled about, messing around like teenagers do, until one of the guys called out by the window.

Classmate: “Hey, it’s the cops!”

We all crowded around the window to see and, sure enough, there were three cop cars all pulled into the parking lot, and we had a decent view of Mr. Creep being dragged along by a trio of officers, fighting the entire way until he got shoved into one of the cars. Miss Ellen was there, too, talking to a cop while holding a towel to her head.

It wasn’t until senior year that I was able to get the story of what happened before that from one of my other teachers. Apparently, after we left, Miss Ellen tried to get Mr. Creep to go with her to the principal, but he just ignored her. She then called the principal to come down to the room and confronted Mr. Creep when he tried to just walk out. He ended up slapping her for “being mouthy”, and had her backed into a corner. She elbowed him in the stomach to get him to back off, and the other teachers who had arrived at that point managed to hold him back.

Apparently, he calmed down a bit, still acting smug, until the cops showed up and he realized that this wasn’t just going to blow over or be swept under the rug, so he started flipping out and had to be pulled down by the cops.

We never saw Mr. Creep again, but I expect that none of our class ever forgot the image of Miss Ellen standing up for us in a fury. She certainly became one of my favorite teachers during my time in high school.

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I am not directly involved in the circumstances of this story. I was later told about what happened by the store manager I was friends with.

A smaller chain discount store company that began in my hometown and had grown to over 100 regional stores looked to our hometown store as the anchor.

A psychology teacher in a nearby town high school wanted to let his class go through the emotional trauma of being caught shoplifting and arrested. The store manager and police were in on the event.

The manager and teacher stood in the parking lot near the school bus. The kids were told to steal small items like earrings or small toys that could be put in a pocket. They went into the store, and then they all came out to the bus and unpocketed themselves. No one had been caught. So, back in they were sent to take larger, more noticeable items. Out they all came to unload their goods. Still, no one was caught.

Finally, the teacher and manager shut the event down on the last attempt to get caught. One of the students came out of the store carrying a sixteen-foot extension ladder… and the assistant manager was holding the door for him.

Manager: “How did you not only get that out but get my assistant to hold the door?”

Student: “As I was heading for the door with the ladder, the assistant asked me where I was going with the store’s ladder and why. I told him I was servicing the air units on the roof and I’d forgotten to bring my own ladder. If I went back to the shop, I would get written up. I promised I would be very careful with the ladder.”

I was told that the company had very extensive training in every store after that fiasco.