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The October Mailbag: Student Teachers, Critiques, and Teaching Without Supplies (Ep. 437)
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In the AOEU Community, we asked for teachers to share some horror stories from their time in the classroom, and the submissions did not disappoint! Some of the most hilarious and awful stories you can imagine are being shared, and Amanda Heyn is here with Tim to react to everything teachers have seen, done, and experienced. Listen as they discuss art rooms full of ghosts and apparitions, weird animal sightings, injuries, and horrific behaviors!
Full episode transcript below.
Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.
Welcome everyone. It is the week of Halloween and we are very excited to share some very spooky stories with you from arts rooms around the country. Joining me for all of these spooky stories is Amanda Heyn. Amanda, how are you?
Amanda:
I literally couldn’t be more excited.
Tim:
Maybe a bit.
Amanda:
Nobody can see this, but I’m wearing a giant headband with a bunch of eyeballs on it just to get myself in a spooky mood.
Tim:
I think it’s perfect. I think it works really well. I have some Halloween decorations in my background, but it’s not nearly as cool as your headband. I wish I had an eyeball headband as well.
Amanda:
I’ll buy you one.
Tim:
Is the eyeball headband, is that your Halloween costume this year? Usually you do more than that, so I’m guessing no.
Amanda:
No, this is not my Halloween costume. My Halloween costume is Medusa.
Tim:
Oh, nice.
Amanda:
Which I’m really excited about. My family usually does a family costume, but my oldest is 11, so I was like, “Hey, do you want to do a family costume?” And he was like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “Okay, be cool.” I was like, “Okay. Yeah, cool,” while I’m jumping up and down inside. So we are going to all be characters from Greek mythology. So my husband has a beard.
Tim:
Oh, cool.
Amanda:
So he’s kind of limited to Zeus or Poseidon. So we’re going Poseidon and then I’ll be Medusa, like I said, and then my eight-year-old is going to be Hades, god of the underworld. He has a fire hat that we’re making and a fire sash, which is turning out really cool. And then my eleven-year-old is going to be Ares. Is that right? God of war? Yes.
Tim:
Okay.
Amanda:
And so he’s already created this incredible helmet shield spear. It’s looking very cool. I don’t know how he thinks he’s going to carry multiple large objects trick or treating, but that’s his problem to figure out.
Tim:
That can be a problem for another time. I like going all out on the costume. That’s good.
Amanda:
I’m excited. What about you? Are you dressing up? Are your kids dressing up?
Tim:
No, my kids are too old for that now. Generally, they will have their friends over and just set up a fire pit in the driveway and pass out candy, which is great for me because then I don’t have to pass out candy, so I appreciate them having their friends over. It works very well for everyone involved.
Amanda:
That’s fun.
Tim:
I like it. So I guess we should probably share some stories. We have some great stories here. We did this a few years back. We did an art teacher horror stories episode and it was so much fun. So I’m very excited to dive into these again. And are you ready to share your own story at the end of the episode too? I shouldn’t just spring that on you. Do you have a good one that you can share?
Amanda:
I do. Yes.
Tim:
Okay, good. We’ll have people stick around. I have a couple ideas. I feel like, I don’t know, most of my good stories have been shared on this podcast before.
Amanda:
I feel like it’s been a while.
Tim:
Well, we’ll see. I’ll decide which one I want to share.
Amanda:
We’ll pull out our own horror stories at the end.
Tim:
Sounds good. So Amanda, can you tell everybody two things? Number one, where we sourced all of these stories from, and secondly, the categories that we are going to run through.
Amanda:
Yes. So we put out an all-call on social media, so we have some Instagram, we have some Facebook, and then we also put out an all-call in our Art of Ed community. And so we just have, as you would say, Tim, a plethora-
Tim:
Excellent word choice. Thank you.
Amanda:
A plethora of stories to share with you today. And as they were coming in, they just naturally fell into the following four categories which we’ll be going through. So we have ghosts and apparitions, animals, gross stuff and bad behavior.
Tim:
Very nice. I had a couple that I didn’t know whether it should fit into gross stuff or bad behavior. They’re really both, but we’ll see how-
Amanda:
We’ll figure it out.
Tim:
That goes when we come to it. And I will say that Amanda and I divided and conquered here, so I don’t know what stories she is coming with and she has no idea what I’m coming with. So we are hearing these for the first time and I think it should be good. So, all right, are we going to do ghosts and apparitions first?
Amanda:
Yeah, we’re going to set the scene with the scariest stories first. Well, you decide if these are the scariest. The most traditionally scary stories.
Tim:
All right. I will say my ghost stories are a little unsettling, but not actively scary. And one’s actually kind of funny, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m sorry if that ruins your plan for really frightening things but we’ll see how that goes. Would you like to go first or do you want me to go first?
Amanda:
I would love to go first.
Tim:
All right, let’s do it.
Amanda:
All right. Ghost story number one is from Sarah on Facebook and she said, “In late May or early June of 2023, about half my kindergarten students, about a dozen out of 24 blurted out that they saw a man coming through the window into the art room and all of them pointed and exclaimed it in unison. Their eyes were glued and watched this, invisible to me, person walk along the edge of the room against the cabinets and out the hallway door. ‘He’s gone now,’ the kids casually remarked and went back to coloring like nothing had happened.” Isn’t this wild?
Tim:
That is crazy.
Amanda:
“I, on the other hand, was totally shaking and really debated whether I even wanted to come back the following day.” It gets weirder. Are you ready?
Tim:
I guess.
Amanda:
“Unbeknownst to me, there had been an elderly neighbor man who had passed away in his house two doors down from the school about the same time that this happened.”
Tim:
Oh, no.
Amanda:
“He lived alone and tragically was discovered about a month later due to a welfare check when the landscaper didn’t get responses after several attempts to contact him.”
Tim:
Oh, my God.
Amanda:
“Not sure if there is a connection between the apparition and the gentleman down the road, but what happened in my room has been the most unsettling thing I’ve experienced in my own room, and I’ve worked in that school since 2007.”
Tim:
Wow. I am unsettled and I was not even there. That’s a-
Amanda:
I didn’t even believe in ghosts, but now I do. What? Twelve kids saw the ghost?
Tim:
That is crazy. I’m very curious about the reaction of the other 12 kids. Did they just keep coloring while this strange ghost man just walked through the room?
Amanda:
I don’t know. Isn’t that amazing?
Tim:
That’s also crazy because you hear so many ghost stories where it’s this long-standing ghost, somebody who’s been there forever, but this is a brand-new ghost. This just happened and there’s, instead of some vague thing from the 1930s, no, it’s that dude from two days ago.
Amanda:
I know.
Tim:
That’s crazy specific and crazy recent.
Amanda:
I think I would’ve been like, “Can you draw him?” And then what if they drew him and then what if it matched the guy?
Tim:
Yes. Oh man.
Amanda:
Oh, my gosh. Do you want to tell me one of your ghost stories?
Tim:
This story is also from Facebook from Rebecca, and Rebecca said, “This is not in the art room, but on the stage painting sets with an art student. We were there on a Saturday evening trying to make up time so she could graduate. I’d brought my dog because we’d be there alone and I thought I’d feel safer with her there. Not. She refused to come into the auditorium and actually laid on the ground and whined when I called her to come in. I’ve never felt comfortable in there by myself since.” That is-
Amanda:
Spooky.
Tim:
Oddly vague. The last one, very specific. This is just this vague threat that her dog doesn’t want any part of. And being a dog owner, I will say that would freak me out as well if my dog… I trust their judgment and that’s bad news if they don’t want to come in somewhere.
Amanda:
Spooky. Are we ready for another ghost/apparition?
Tim:
Yes, let’s do it.
Amanda:
This is from Vicki on Facebook. “I walked into the kiln room and there was an old lady sitting in there keeping warm.”
Tim:
Oh, my.
Amanda:
“Frightened the life out of me. Turns out she was the wife of an elderly art teacher who had mental health issues and didn’t like to be left at home. In the summer she stayed in his car, but in the winter she sat in the kiln room.”
Tim:
Oh, my.
Amanda:
So not a ghost, but a spooky vision. What if you just had somebody sitting in your kiln room all the time? That can’t be good for you.
Tim:
I was going to say, is the apparition, is it just there some of the time? Is it there all the time? I don’t know. I’ve got questions on that one.
Amanda:
Well, no, it’s a real person.
Tim:
Oh, my gosh. Okay. I-
Amanda:
That’s why I said it’s not-
Tim:
Did not understand that.
Amanda:
A real ghost. It’s a real lady. But that’s still scary.
Tim:
Just hanging out in your kiln room, that might scare me more than a ghost, to be honest.
Amanda:
I know, that’s what I’m saying.
Tim:
Oh, yeah, that’s a rough one. Do not like that.
Amanda:
Okay, next ghost story.
Tim:
Our final ghost story here is-
Amanda:
Well, I broke the rules and I have one more after this, but it’s fine.
Tim:
Oh, my gosh. You have all the good ghost stories. “Once when I was teaching Art on a Cart, I experienced paranormal activity in another classroom. The students totally freaked out, but I had to keep my cool.” And she says, “Internally, my knickers were in a knot.” Which is a great phrase. “But when the teacher returned to her room, I pulled her aside and told her what we had witnessed. ‘Oh, that’s just George.’ And she went on to elaborate several incidents of paranormal activity in that room. That was the first I’d heard of it, and I had been in that building for 14 years.”
Amanda:
George. Oh, my-
Tim:
Just George.
Amanda:
I want to know what happened.
Tim:
I know.
Amanda:
Like what?
Tim:
I want more details on that. What was George doing?
Amanda:
Oh, my gosh. We’ll never know. This is going to close out ghost stories. It’s very short. It’s one sentence that makes me have 100 questions. Jean from Facebook says, “The freestanding locker where my actual human skeleton is stored-
Tim:
Oh, okay.
Amanda:
“Makes noises something is moving inside it.” What do you mean your actual human skeleton?
Tim:
But like I said, that leaves me with a lot of questions on that one.
Amanda:
But then I was like, “When I die, do I want to be a human skeleton in an art room?” Kind of.
Tim:
Man. I had a synthetic human skeleton in my classroom. It was six feet tall, but a real human skeleton, I’ve seen those in college classrooms. I don’t know if I would want one in a public school.
Amanda:
Can we have that? I don’t know. I loved it. All right. Shall we move on to animals?
Tim:
Let’s do. We had so many animal stories.
Amanda:
Oh, my gosh.
Tim:
So many bats, so many snakes, so many rats. Just, they’re all over the place. I picked out a couple of favorite ones.
Amanda:
Great. You want to start?
Tim:
I have two quick ones. I will read them together. One is from Jenny. This is via Instagram and one was from Miss Keck, I believe it was, also on Instagram. The first one is a spider giving birth to hundreds of babies-
Amanda:
No, no, no, no.
Tim:
In the middle of class-
Amanda:
No, no.
Tim:
In the middle of the room.
Amanda:
No, no. No, thank you.
Tim:
No, thank you. That’s all we need to say to that one. No, thank you. And then the second one is, “Washing paintbrushes the other day, I thought it was a glob of paint in the sink, but instead I picked up a gecko.”
Amanda:
Do you know, geckos and salamanders live more places than you think they would. I live in Wisconsin and my aunt sent a… I just think of them as tropical and she sent a picture. She lives way up north where it’s very cold and there was a salamander in her wood pile.
Tim:
I was going to say, I live in Nebraska, middle of the country, we have salamanders. I had no idea. The first one I saw ever I was like, “That’s weird, we’re in Nebraska. Why would a salamander be here?” But we’ve had some over the years. It’s very strange.
Amanda:
There are nine kinds of salamanders that live in Wisconsin. I bet you didn’t know you were going to get fun facts this episode also. All right, my first animal story comes from Lisa on Facebook and she says, “I walked into my supply room and there was a taxidermied bear in there. The first-graders were learning the Going on a Bear Hunt song and the teachers hid the bear there and gave the kids clues to find it.”
Tim:
Oh, my.
Amanda:
Imagine, you’re half awake and the morning, you come in, and there’s a full bear.
Tim:
Just a full-size bear in your room.
Amanda:
Oh, my gosh.
Tim:
Oh, my. That’s pretty good. So I had taxidermied turkeys when I first moved into my high school room. I don’t know if they use them for still lives or what, the turkeys, but I knew they were there and they didn’t take up that much space, but a bear showing up out of nowhere.
Amanda:
Also, how much did that weigh and where did it come from and who had it? And why?
Tim:
Again, so many questions. I could see a small black bear.
Amanda:
Sure.
Tim:
Maybe. Maybe. But, no. No.
Amanda:
You would need a moving van or how did it… I don’t know.
Tim:
At least two people. But again, so many questions about so many of the… All right. Another Facebook story. “This was a live bat clinging to the bulletin board, but I didn’t realize it until I touched it with my back to the board as I was explaining The Scream on the board.”
Amanda:
Oh, my gosh.
Tim:
“The class, now graduated a few years ago, still remembers that lesson. The bat does not remember, however. When I touched it, it was startled and flew straight up into the ceiling fan. And then-
Amanda:
Into the ceiling fan, did you say?
Tim:
In quotes, she just said, “Clean up blood in the art room.”
Amanda:
Oh, my gosh. That’s a bat story. Lots of bats in classrooms. One found a possum in their kiln room, but that’s a next level horror story.
Tim:
Literally raining blood from above. That’s bad news.
Amanda:
Our next submission comes from a community member. So, quick plug, if you haven’t joined the Art of Ed community, you can head to community/theartofed.edu, I believe. There’s also a tile. If you sign in to your AOEU account, you can click right in. It’s free to join. We would love to have you. All right. So Jordan from our community says, “In my first year of teaching, I had a student with autism who would arrive to my classroom three to five minutes early. In the chaos of cleanup at the end of class, before he showed up, I was not aware that he had already entered my room. While walking around the room, I noticed a Ziploc bag of mulch sitting on one of the tables.”
Tim:
I’m afraid of where this is going.
Amanda:
“I thought it was bizarre, so I asked what the deal was to no answer. Upon closer investigation, I noticed that there were things inside the bag that were moving. It was a bag full of ants. Eventually my student came around and shared that it was his bag of ants and he was saving it to show his mom after school. I tried to explain to him that it was inhumane to keep them in the bag because they couldn’t breathe. To which he responded, ‘Don’t worry, I poked holes in the bag.’ My eyebrows must have hit my hairline. Thankfully, I was able to convince him to place the bag outside the door where a student aide collected it.”
Tim:
Okay.
Amanda:
A bag of ants.
Tim:
I feel ants.
Amanda:
I have a lot of questions. How did you get so many ants in the bag?
Tim:
How do you collect all those ants? Did they come from home?
Amanda:
I guess if they were in mulch, maybe it was just a shovel. Maybe it was an ant pile that got shoveled into the bag. I don’t know.
Tim:
Yeah, that is something else. So I’ve told this on the podcast before, but just the moving bag thing at me, I did have a student bring a backpack full of rats to school before. I considered telling that-
Amanda:
I found they’re like sewer rats.
Tim:
One as my story. They were rats from under her porch and she thought they were cool. Just her trailer at home had rats under the porch, and she decided to collect them one day and just bring them to school. And I just walked by in the hall and I just see this bag moving. Called the teacher out, and she’s like, “Kayla, what’s in your bag?” And she’s like, “Oh, those are my rats.” And we open up and there are literally three rats just moving around in the bag that’s just hanging in the hallway with the other backpacks.
Amanda:
Oh, my goodness.
Tim:
No, thank you. Are we ready to move on to our gross stuff?
Amanda:
We are ready.
Tim:
Let’s do this. We have a great voicemail. This is a voicemail of gross stuff from Todd. Let’s give that a listen.
Todd Leban:
Hello Art of Ed Community, my name is Todd Leban. I’m an art teacher in the middle school level at District 97 in Oak Park, Illinois. So here’s my spooky story. This took place about 22 years ago during my first or second year of teaching. I was hired as an applied art/design teacher, and the curriculum included woodworking. I had previous experience from a jewelry metal smithing class in college, and many of the skills learned there were similar to working with wood and required the same patience. With the help of an eighth grade student at the time, we decided to make marble mazes that based on my design required the use of several thin wooden strips that I would need to cut on the table saw. Being a new teacher, I did not anticipate the quantity I would need, ran out, and made the poor decision to cut some more strips during class.
I still have all 10 fingers, but can we see where this is going? While I was ripping one of the final quarter-inch strips, I apparently thought I was bulletproof and invincible and sent a board through with just my fingers. Yep, you heard right. I proceeded to make blade contact with my ring finger on my right hand, doing just enough damage to know it wasn’t okay. I stopped the saw, grabbed my finger and walked from the saw room through my classroom to the big art sink. I called the student over and said, “Could you please go to the nurse and bring them up here?” The nurse would later tell me how helpful that was, because she was new too and didn’t know where all the rooms were yet. I kept my finger under cold water, added pressure, wrote sub-notes, and the nurse took me to immediate care. I was bandaged up, learned about push sticks for woodworking and healed enough to learn my lesson.
Tim:
Okay, Amanda, reactions to that? Would you like me to share first?
Amanda:
Well, Todd wrote sub-lessons?
Tim:
That’s what got me too.
Amanda:
It’s just the most relatable thing I’ve ever heard. “I almost cut off my finger, but I wrote sub-lessons before I left.”
Tim:
“Before I left.” If that does not encapsulate teachers, I don’t know what does.
Amanda:
It’s amazing. I’m so sorry that it happened, but I am so thankful that you shared that with us.
Tim:
But every part is understandable. As I keep listening, I was like, “Yep, I would’ve done that. Yep. I could see myself doing that.” Just part by part, I was like, “Yeah, I understand.”
Amanda:
I also really appreciated how he said, “I have all 10 fingers” up front because I was scared, but then I knew I could listen to the rest without feeling too scared.
Tim:
I appreciate that disclaimer at the beginning.
Amanda:
Really, honestly, horrific situation, but handled so well under pressure. The thought to get the student to bring the nurse up, the sub-plans.
Tim:
Todd, we are impressed.
Amanda:
Oh, my God.
Tim:
Way to keep cool under pressure. We admire you.
Amanda:
Todd’s in our community, so if you want to come interact with a cool guy, come join us.
Tim:
And ask him some more questions about almost cutting off his finger. I have two stories here that I wanted to share for gross stuff. They’re both quick. Both came from Instagram. The first one, I didn’t know if this was under bad behavior or gross stuff. I decided it was gross, but kids drinking glue for money.
Amanda:
No. Yeah, that’s both.
Tim:
It is both. But I just decided, if I were to try and drink glue, that’s gross. That’s really gross. If I-
Amanda:
Imagine. Imagine. Imagine. Everybody take a minute. Close your eyes. Imagine trying to drink a bottle of Elmer’s glue. I don’t know that it’s possible.
Tim:
I don’t want to think about it that deeply, to be honest. And then we also had a lot of poop stories, a lot of vomit stories. I did like the one that Erin sent, “I noticed a pile of vomit under one of the classroom tables. No one would claim it.”
Amanda:
Yeah, duh. Whose is this? Null kids raising their hand.
Tim:
But usually kids at least know, “Oh, I need to go out of the classroom.”
Amanda:
True.
Tim:
“I need to go to the nurse.” I can’t imagine just ducking head under the table, throwing up and then going about your day.
Amanda:
Oh, my gosh.
Tim:
But Amanda, your gross stories.
Amanda:
Well, okay, I have a few. Again, I didn’t follow directions because I just have a wide range. So I’m going to start off with a quick one.
Tim:
I’m ready.
Amanda:
Sean from Facebook said, “Kids spilled an entire tin of sardine juice on my carpeted floor.”
Tim:
Oh, no.
Amanda:
I just think that’s so funny. Why…
Tim:
Why sardines?
Amanda:
Again, why do you have a tin of sardines at school? I don’t know. From Instagram we got, “A little girl peed on my Birk.” Now, I do have a follow-up question here because I don’t know if she means Birkenstocks or-
Tim:
Oh, that’s what I-
Amanda:
A Birkin bag. Do you know what a Birkin bag is, Tim?
Tim:
I do, actually. I just assume Birkenstocks because if you’re a little kid, you’re peeing on things, it’s probably going to hit somebody’s shoe before you just go squat over a bag.
Amanda:
Both are expensive and you don’t want to ruin them, but if it was a Hermes Birkin bag, I did look this up for us, those run 20 to $100,000. If you’re living on a teacher’s salary, it’s probably just Birkenstocks.
Tim:
Probably. Also, if you have a Birkin bag, why are you bringing that to school?
Amanda:
Right. I just don’t… Right. So anyway, peed on your shoes. Great. All right. I do have a poop story that, again, is next level. So if you don’t like this, maybe this is where we start adding disclaimers. This comes from Jessica, again, from the community. We had a pop-up art studio recently, which is just our time to come together. It’s just come bring your art, bring what you’re working on. I brought my Halloween costume, people brought all sorts of stuff and she was like, “Oh, is this an open time to share a horror story?” And I was like, “Yeah, funny.”
Tim:
Definite. Feel like you should.
Amanda:
Please. And she said one time there was a kid just running through her room, just not paying attention, not following directions, and he slipped on something on the ground and went flying. And she walked over and she just saw brown everywhere.
Tim:
Oh, no.
Amanda:
There was a phantom pooper. I had a kid who used to do this. He would poop and then shake it out his pants leg.
Tim:
You’ve told me about that before. Oh.
Amanda:
We have a lot of love and understanding for kids who have issues with that. And also, now Jessica had it smeared all over her room and all over this other kiddo.
Tim:
Oh.
Amanda:
I would say that’s horrific. Do you have any other gross stuff, because I have one more?
Tim:
No, you go right ahead.
Amanda:
Again, if you’re not into vomit, you can fast-forward. This is from an anonymous community member. “Last week I had a student who kept laying her head down during class. I asked her to sit up and get to work. I turned away and the next thing I knew the room was being sprayed with vomit Exorcist style all over the room, and I mean everywhere. On the table, under the table, on the floor, on her Chromebook and on the art supplies.”
Tim:
Oh, no.
Amanda:
“My sixth grade student stood in the middle of the room with a shocked look on her face like she didn’t know what hit her. ‘To the nurse,’ I told her, ‘Hurry.’ She laughed when all the kids started turning green. Luckily we were right next to the library and could evacuate there. The next hour included the vomit child returning to class. The nurse said she was fine.” I think this is the most horrific part of the story.
Tim:
Yes, yes.
Amanda:
“So the vomit child returned to the class. The nurse said she was fine. What? I couldn’t believe it. Fine. ‘But you stay in here. The library has carpet.’ So she finished up class next to the crime scene.”
“To top it all off, due to mixed up communication, the janitorial peeps did not clean the room for over an hour, way after class had ended. The cleanup was rushed and poorly done. There were vomit bits still on the table, under the table, and the floor was super sticky. Grateful it was the last class of the day, I ended up donning PPE and cleaned everything with bleach.”
Tim:
You kind of have to at that point, but, oh man. Any story that includes the phrase vomit bits is…
Amanda:
It’s not good.
Tim:
It’s not good for anybody.
Amanda:
That’s really not good.
Tim:
All right, can we move on to our final category now?
Amanda:
We’ve arrived at bad behavior.
Tim:
So I have one quick one and one longer one. The first one is just a sixth grader fainting in the middle of a demonstration.
Amanda:
Oh, that’s scary.
Tim:
Not bad behavior, but not fun to deal with either. So I don’t love that one. And then this one would absolutely haunt me for quite a while. It says, “My classroom is on the first floor and I was working super late. It was pitch black outside and the streetlights were off in the alley. Some students saw me working and knocked on my windows. It was terrifying until I realized it was my kids.” I cannot imagine just working late and then all of a sudden somebody just knocking on your windows out of nowhere when you can’t see what’s going on out there. Oh, man. So I have a friend who has a first-floor classroom, and she will not go in at night because of that reason. Everybody’s just right there and can absolutely see in, everything she’s doing. Do not like that at all.
Amanda:
I do not like that either. All right. My bad behavior comes from… Well, she wasn’t behaving badly, but someone was in this story… Jessica from the community, she said, “When I started at my current school, I inherited a pretty disastrous art room. I spent a lot of time getting the room ready, thoroughly cleaning, organizing over the summer. The head of maintenance saw me working and let me know that he was going to take a look at the sinks in the room since they had been a little slow to drain in the past. He dutifully snaked the drains and found a bundle of 10 paintbrushes held together by nothing but sink junk.”
Tim:
Oh.
Amanda:
“The sinks have drain traps. The paintbrushes would’ve had to be forced down the drain for this to happen. Needless to say, I was left with more questions than answers about how that happened, but at least the sinks drained again.”
Tim:
That’s good. But oh, man. Again, another one of these stories with so many questions. Are we just forcing paintbrushes down the drain? How big is this sink drain that it can fit 10 paintbrushes?
Amanda:
Right? I don’t know. I don’t know.
Tim:
Oh, man.
Amanda:
All right. And last but not least, “My closet was a makeshift dark room.” Oh, sorry. This also comes from the community, anonymous community member. “My closet was a makeshift dark room for wet photography before we sadly went all digital and turned it into a kiln room.”
Tim:
A familiar story.
Amanda:
“There isn’t heat in there, nor do we hear any alarms or PA announcements in the room. One day I was working with my whole photo class in the dark room. We come out when finished and notice the whole school is lined up on the lawns outside. Not only did we miss a fire drill, but apparently no one noticed or reported that a whole class was missing. Thank goodness it was just a drill and not a real emergency.”
Tim:
Oh, man, that is bad news right there.
Amanda:
Bad news.
Tim:
That’s why you do drills to learn these things, right?
Amanda:
Right.
Tim:
That maybe we should not forget about the art class if the building is on fire.
Amanda:
It just feels so on-brand.
Tim:
It really does.
Amanda:
It’s so discouraging. You just forgot about us? No one thought to come look?
Tim:
All right. We do need to close the show with a couple of our own stories. Before I do that, I want to say thank you to everybody who shared their stories. You have no idea how much Amanda and I enjoy reading all of these, and it’s tough to pick our favorites to bring here. But thank you to everybody for sharing. So Amanda, would you like to tell your story first or do you want me to do that?
Amanda:
No, I can tell. Mine actually takes place outside of the classroom. So I’m going to preface this with two caveats. Number one, I purposely didn’t live in the district I taught in because I like to keep those things separate. Number two, I am not a big drinker. It is not part of my nightly, weekly, monthly routine. A couple times a year I will have a couple cocktails, that is… Okay. So I had just become the art teacher, and we had just had, either it was back to school night or parent-teacher conferences or something. I had just met all of the parents.
And there was this one special child who I had already been in contact with the mom and she was great, but this kid, was just a mischievous, lovable kid. So I had had to talk to her. I knew this mom. And I was at my local Target, not the Target in the district I taught in, and we were having a party of some kind. And I was shopping for the party and I ran into this mom and this kid in Target, and the only thing that I had in my cart was the biggest bottle of vodka that you can possibly buy. You see them coming, and I was like, “I’ve already been spotted. What do I do? Do I turn around? Do I pretend to…” I said hello? I just was like, “Oh my God.” And I’m 23, I look like I have a problem. It was-
Tim:
You look like the type of person who buys giant bottles of vodka every week.
Amanda:
It was not my best moment. It was kind of horrific. And then funny enough, that kid is tied to another horror story in my room because he cut his finger open and had to go get stitches. That was my one and only like, “Oh, you have to go to the urgent care immediately.” So that’s mine.
Tim:
All right, that’s a rough one. So I tried to think about a story that I have not told on the podcast before. We have 400 episodes, so I can’t guarantee, but I don’t think I’ve told this one before. This is my first year in the high school. I had taught elementary for two years, just moved to the high school and still getting things set up, still figuring out how everything works. And we had those giant gallons of paint with the big pumps. You press down on the pump, it goes in the pallet. I eventually got rid of those because they get clogged and they make a mess everywhere. Anyway, I had taught my kids, “Hey, if there’s a clog there, just grab the dried acrylic, pull it out of there, and then use the pump.”
And you can see where this is going. But the assistant principal came in to observe and this kid is over there trying to get the red paint out and it’s not working. So rather than unclogging, as we’ve been taught, he just starts pounding on the pump as hard as he can. It, of course, explodes everywhere, splatters all over my assistant principal who-
Amanda:
Oh, my gosh.
Tim:
Is wearing a fairly nice suit at that point. And I’m a month in at this school. I don’t even know if it was October yet. And I was just like, “Oh, my God, am I going to get fired right now?” Because the assistant principal is just covered with red paint. It looks like blood splatter all over his suit coat. And thankfully, thankfully, he had a great sense of humor about it. And he just came up to me. He’s like, “Mr. Bogatz, I assume this is why we wear aprons in the art room huh? I was like, “Yes.” I was like, “I’m so sorry.” And he laughed it off and it was not a big deal. And he actually, whenever we had art shows or any kind of public appearance, he would wear that sport coat with the paint splatter all over it.
Amanda:
Oh, what a happy story in the end.
Tim:
I know. I really appreciated that. And just the fact that… I’m sure that coat cost him hundreds of dollars and it was instantaneously ruined and I was so scared and so freaked out. But he could not have been any better about it, so I really appreciated that.
Amanda:
Oh, I love it.
Tim:
It was a nightmare at the time.
Amanda:
A nightmare turned into a happy ending.
Tim:
Just a little running joke and we appreciated that. So, cool.
Amanda:
Amazing.
Tim:
All right, well Amanda, I feel like that’s a good place to leave it. So thank you for joining me. Thank you for collecting the stories. It’s been a lot of fun.
Amanda:
It has been. Happy Halloween.
Tim:
Thank you to everyone who shared their stories, and thank you to Amanda for joining me for this podcast. I always love doing these kinds of episodes. They are fantastic. If you are looking for even more horror stories from the art room, you can check out The Art of Ed community. We have a post all about that. We’ll link to that in the show notes and you can join and be part of the community if you have not done that already. I will also link to the original episode of Horror Stories that we did a couple of years ago. If you decide to give that a listen, make sure you stick around until the end for one of the wildest teaching stories I have ever heard. It is from a now happily employed art teacher, and the story is all about how, as a student teacher, she was being actively sabotaged by her cooperating teacher. It’s wild. You have to give it a listen.
So look for the original Horror Stories episode in the show notes, and you can give that a listen. It’s wild. But I hope more than anything that these have entertained you and helped you realize that we are all facing a lot of weird things together in the art room. But that’s just what makes our job interesting. And as you hear all these, just hopefully you realize you’re having a better day than these people were at that time.
Art Ed Radio was produced by the Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you, as always, for listening to the show. Please share this episode with your friends if you feel like they would be entertained by it or your colleagues or anybody else who you think might enjoy. And if you are loving the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We appreciate the ratings. We read all of the reviews.
Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.