Bittersweet Moments Spent Teaching — or Trying to

Proof that horror can turn into comedy with the right atttitude.

Paulina Rau
4 min readNov 29, 2024
Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Teachers today aren’t all that respected, are they? Teachers face tough times due to bureaucratic pressures, self-entitled students and a political climate that says formal education is passe.

Remember: “I’d rather be pretty because you can fake clever.”

Teachers have enough to cope with as it is, without feeling under-valued. It’s no wonder that so many are leaving the profession.

For me, teaching was a vocation. It wasn’t something I did to earn a living. Considering the hours I worked, I’ve been seriously underpaid, that was the case.

Looking back, the truly awful experiences have been forgotten. The scenes that come to mind these days make me laugh, but when they occurred, I was keen to crawl under a rock.

I’m about to share some of these cringy moments with you, be prepared….

  • the entire morning spent handcuffed to the boy who never stopped talking. He had brought handcuffs to school and thought it would be hilarious to join his wrist to mine, except when the joke went stale, he remembered he had no key. The handcuffs had to be sawn off. It took a long time, believe me.

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Paulina Rau
Paulina Rau

Written by Paulina Rau

I am a writer, interested in people, ideas and language.

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