This comment, reprinted here by permission of the author, brought a tear to the eye and reminded me of my great teachers. A great lesson in not prejudging folks:

 

What the “Assh*le” Teacher did when he found a Student Sleeping in Class.

Seeing someone sleep in public always reminds me of a story from High School…

When I was in High School there was a kid that had started falling asleep in class a lot. Teachers would always try to embarrass anyone who fell asleep. One teacher had a little sound effects thing of a bomb falling and exploding. He’d play it in your ear and when you woke, say “that was the sound of your grades bombing.”

So I’m watching this kid get teased by different teachers in a few classes, which all seems harmless. Then he falls asleep in the class of the teacher who was notorious for being the biggest asshole in the school. He was a good teacher, but he didn’t fuck around.

The kid fell asleep in the asshole teacher’s class, and the teacher let him sleep the whole class. He told us not to wake him when the bell rang and we all left him there. I asked the kid what the teacher did to him afterwards. He said he woke him up and asked if anything was wrong because he’d noticed him falling asleep a lot, and it wasn’t normal.

He told the teacher about how his dad had lost his job, so he was working at McDonald’s to help pay his dad’s bills. And despite saying they’d let him off by 10 pm, they were making him work until close—at 1 am, or later.

The asshole teacher didn’t punish him or anything, just told him to get to his next class.

That night, while the kid was working, the asshole teacher showed up at McDonald’s and asked to speak with the manager privately. He chewed out that manager worse than he’d ever yelled at any student about how he was shit and illegally working the kid late and how he’d randomly be popping in late to make sure he was letting the kid go home on time. After that, the kid stopped falling asleep in classes.

You never know what private struggles people may be going through.

…in hindsight he was one of the best teachers I ever had. At the time, though, he had a huge reputation among the students of being a giant asshole due to how strict he was with everything, and would rarely ever joke. The fact that it was the “asshole” teacher that took the time to listen to the kid and then go out of his way to help him out is part of why it stuck with me so much.