A wide, cinematic digital painting symbolizing rebellion against coercive schooling. Foreground: a group of diverse high-school students—silhouetted rather than detailed—walking down a dimly lit institutional hallway lined with flickering fluorescent lights and peeling cinderblock walls. One student casually knocks over a stack of paperwork, another scrawls a rune-like symbol of freedom on a locker, and a third walks confidently with hands in pockets while an authoritarian shadow of a teacher looms at the far end of the corridor. Midground: rows of closed classroom doors with faint, ghostly chalkboard equations floating above them, representing rigid conformity. Background: at the end of the hall, the walls crack open into a vibrant, magical landscape—a vast open sky, freedom-colored light beams, and the silhouette of a floating academy resembling Arcane Elemental Academy.

7 times we exerted revenge on public school teachers

ByTC Marti

Public school teachers love exerting authority, some more than others. But there were times when the student knocked ’em down a keg or two.

Here’s the score: Public school teachers already take part in coercive tactics whether or not they want to admit it. They earn money through theft (involuntary taxation), get their benefits through theft, and then believe imprisoning your kid for six to eight hours a day is, somehow, “for the greater good.”

And if it couldn’t get any worse, do you want to know what else they do? They’ll tell your kid to shut up, face the front, and memorize everything in a lecture. And if that kid refuses any of the above, they’re punished, usually in front of the entire class.

Still, some students take matters into their own hands, and rightfully so. Hey, coercion begets rebellion. When adults claim unlimited authority, kids start testing where that authority cracks. So here are seven instances when kids from back when I was in school exerted sweet revenge on their teachers.

1 – The Shop Room Incident

This shop teacher probably never told a student they couldn’t go to the bathroom again. It was May of my sophomore year, and a friend of mine asked to go down the hall and use the restroom, only for the shop teacher, who was an absolute dick, mind you, to tell them ‘no.’

My friend took matters into their own hands and went in the back of the room. But since the principal liked them, they only got a two-day suspension.

2 – The Brick

Nothing made this teacher flip out more than a friendly reminder. So, every time they acted out of line and decided to be an asshat, someone in the class would write the word ‘BRICK’ across the board, reminding that teacher of some additional theft they committed once upon a time. Hey, if you’re gonna let your past affect you that much, people will keep reminding you of it.

3 – The Breakdown

I swear, this math teacher was ill-equipped to handle a class. I’d never heard so many stories about one teacher in my life, and I never believed it until the day their class got to them so much that they broke down in tears and left school for the day. I’m sure that class was in trouble, but most of us saw them as heroes.

4 – The Legendary Senior Prank of 2007

Cups of water in the top floor? Man, did they flip out over that one. It supposedly happened on the weekend, when the seniors broke in and filled every inch of the hallway with those small Dixie cups of water. That must’ve been fun for someone to clean up. But hey, it wasn’t any of the seniors’ problem; they no longer needed to attend that prison.

5 – The Cuss-Out

Probably the most legendary one on this list. It happened during my freshman year when one of the science teachers lost complete control of the class and ended up swearing like a sailor. They were on leave for the rest of the year and when they returned, they took a demotion to “permanent substitute.”

6 – The Runaway

This actually happened to a bus driver, but drivers still loved using coercive tactics. Anyway, when a high schooler insisted on getting dropped off at a friend’s house, a heated argument ensued when they stepped off the bus and refused to get back on. It ended with them running off in the other direction, driving home the fact that free will trumps coercion if you want to prove it badly enough.

7 – The Threat

The Arcane Prophecy by TC MartiOh, the Super Bowl of them all. It happened in the tenth grade when the most annoying teacher ever flunked this one kid, who stood up and said he’d “ruin their life” if they received another bad grade.

They ended up missing school for about three months because the teacher supposedly had a panic attack, or whatever. Still, the fact someone had the audacity to stand up to arguably the strictest (and sometimes most unfair) teacher in the school took a lot.

And do you know what else takes a lot? Discussing topics that most of the American population won’t dare to discuss, and public school’s shortcomings are one of them. You often hear people openly and wildly praise public school, even if their personal opinion differs, and frankly, it sucks that there are so many cowards out there.

I don’t just rant about this

In fact, I’ll take it a step further and use fiction as a means to hand you a blueprint of how a market-based education system would work. One that doesn’t need coercion or teachers who deserve to be put in their place when they step out of line.

That’s why I wrote The Arcane Prophecy, a YA fantasy where our protagonist, Yote Diamondback, attends a magical institution that holds 32 competing schools and counting. Check out the first three chapters and find out how Yote ends up at the Arcane Elemental Academy to begin with, and what might be in store for her as the story progresses.

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