A couple weeks ago I asked for "worst teaching stories" from colleagues and readers of this blog. This professor sent me two:
Story 1: "While getting the room ready for the final exam a few years ago, I heard a commotion out in the hall. I ran up the stairs of the lecture hall and opened the door into the corridor, and EMTs were rushing down the corridor toward one of my students who lay on the floor. I and my other students watched them try to revive him unsuccessfully. It turned out that he had overdosed on stimulants trying to cram for finals."
Story 2: "For a couple of weeks, I had a cohort of students complain to me that one of their cohort had disappeared (he had), and they couldn't contact him (and they had a major assignment due). I finally agreed to step in and contact the student (I usually don't, because part of group work is learning to work with a group). I emailed him and rather tersely requested that he please contact the other students in his cohort. About a week later, I got an email message from an AOL account I didn't know. It was my student's father, who wrote to apologize that he hadn't gotten hold of me earlier to tell me his son had died in a car wreck. I felt really awful about that email message I'd sent."
Comments