From getting arrested for teaching while drunk to taping a student’s mouth shut for making too much noise, we take a look at the 10 worst teachers of all time.
1. James Gianopolous
James Gianopolous Veteran middle school teacher, James Gianopolous, was pulled out of his Arizona classroom for allegedly exchanging sex messages with a former student. The investigators’ suspicions were confirmed when they found hundreds of racy text messages that the 61-year-old exchanged with the female student, who authorities say was under the age of 15. Many of the messages were focused on offering or soliciting sex with the girl.
2. Teresa Gilmete Badger
Teresa Gilmete Badger, a first-grade teacher at Matthew Turner Elementary School in Benecia, California, was arrested in 2014 on poisoning charges after she allegedly fed her colleagues cakes laced with cannabis.
Detectives swooped after a six-week investigation following suspicion surrounding a number of staff falling ill or being under the influence. Tests found that there was a massive amount of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, in her blood stream. Badger has declined to speak to officers about the drug-laced food but allegedly confessed to her colleagues.
2. Tonya Neff
California teacher, Tonya Neff, was arrested for allegedly teaching her class while drunk. Neff was arrested after school administrators contacted police to tell them that Neff was showing signs of being intoxicated on campus at Toro Canyon middle school in Thermal, California. When police arrived, Neff was being treated by the school nurse. Police believed she had taken prescription pills in combination with alcohol.
4. Jennifer King
Forshe Florida elementary school teacher, Jennifer King Forshe, doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with exposing a child to a little urine. Authorities got pissed off when she allegedly ordered one of the ten-year-old students to unclog the drain of a urinal using his bare hands. The only problem, another boy’s pee was in there, and the soap dispenser was empty.
5. Michael Luecke
Police say a substitute teacher at Westhill High School in Stamford, Connecticut, was caught masturbating in a school hallway as he watched students in the courtyard. Michael Luecke, 72, was arrested for public indecency, breach of the peace and risk of injury to a minor.
A faculty worker told police she spotted Luecke lying on the ground and thought he was injured. But on closer inspection, she saw him “manipulating his little Johnny.” Video surveillance footage also shows him in a second suspiciously lewd act.
6. Elizabeth Davies
Elizabeth Davies, a 20-year veteran teacher at Swansea Hafod Primary School, was fired from her teaching job for spraying air freshener on Asian and Indian children for smelling curry and onions in the mornings.
She was accused of humiliating children, aged between three and six, by using the aerosol on them in her nursery class. Davies denied the charges, but her classroom assistant, Jan Islam, said that “Mrs. Davies would wash the children’s hands in a bowl that contained pine disinfectant.
She would spray air freshener almost daily. Children would sit on the carpet. If they had broken wind, she would stand above them and spray air freshener at them.”
7. Andrea Cardosa
Andrea Cardosa admitted to molesting a former student on YouTube. It took Jaime Carrillo 16 years to confront the teacher who molested her, starting at the age of 12.
But when she did, it was worth her many years of heartache. Carrillo confronted her former teacher and posted the increment exchange on YouTube. Carillo’s bravery resulted in 16 felony sexual abuse charges against Cardosa for sexually assaulting two female students between 1997 and 2010.
8. Dru Dehart
Dru Dehart was fired for putting a hit out on a seventh grader. A Florida veteran teacher, Dru Dehart, allegedly instructed a group of eighth-grade boys to beat up seventh grader, Rod Reyes Williams, to teach him a lesson.
The boys, ranging in age from 11 to 15, took Williams out in the hallway and tortured him. As he was being pummeled, Dehart reportedly said, “I got my eighth-grade boys on you. You’re not so tough now.”
9. Danielle Conner-Willowglade
An upstate New York music teacher has been arrested and charged with stealing instruments from her classroom, pawning them and using the money to feed her heroin addiction.
Danielle Conner-Willowglade was arrested after a traffic stop when a trooper saw a tuba in the backseat of her car. According to New York State Police, Conner-Willowglade admitted to taking up to 50 instruments from the school and selling them in pawn shops for cash in order to buy heroin.
She was charged with one count of grand larceny, one count of possession of the stolen property, and one count of possession of a controlled substance. Her 32-year-old boyfriend, Nicholas Bump, is charged with one count of possession of the stolen property and one count of possession of a controlled substance.
10. Nesa Johnson
A federal lawsuit filed on behalf of Rosa Smith, a 27-year-old woman with cerebral palsy, alleges that Nesa Johnson, a teacher at High Point School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, used duct tape to shut Smith’s mouth because she was making too much noise in her special education classroom.
The suit also said that staffers overmedicated Rosa Smith, left her in a bathroom, and slapped her. It alleges that Nesa Johnson duct-taped Smith’s mouth shut and texted her mother a photo of it with the caption, “Help, she won’t be quiet!!!!” Which teacher do you think should have been number 1? What’s your worse experience with a teacher? Let us know in the comments below.
