Look, my mom’s a teacher, so I’m certainly not one to bash them. They play a crucial role in shaping young minds, often with very little thanks (or pay!). But I have to admit that I also experienced my fair share of teachers who made learning look less like fun and a whole lot more like punishment. You know the type —the ones with absolutely zero chill, taking every rule, detail, and minor infraction to such an extreme that you can’t help but think, “You can’t actually be serious.”

But it appears the teachers featured in these posts sure were—though “serious,” it turns out, isn’t necessarily the same as “correct.” Either way, we’ve done our homework to bring you some of the most infuriating teacher moments students have shared online.

Nobody’s arguing that classrooms don’t need structure. Teachers and students both need clear rules and expectations to get the job of learning done, and, honestly, a little firmness isn’t exactly the enemy here. But there’s a pretty big difference between a teacher enforcing the rules and a teacher becoming so rigid about them that the rules start to feel like the whole point of the exercise—and it turns out, there’s research to back up that distinction.

A 2024 review of teacher strictness found that while clear rules and discipline can support learning and classroom order, excessive strictness can have the opposite effect, potentially reducing students’ motivation and participation. So being strict isn’t necessarily the problem; it seems to be what happens when strictness becomes excessive.

That might be because, as another study explained, there’s a difference between guiding students and trying to control them. The researchers distinguish between autonomy-supportive teaching, where teachers create an environment that supports students’ need for autonomy and provide explanations for why they’re being asked to do something, and controlling teaching, where teachers pressure students to “think, feel, or behave in a specific way prescribed by the teacher.”

And that control can take different forms. It can be relatively obvious, such as punishments, rewards, deadlines, and commands, or more subtle, including tactics that make students feel “guilt, shame, and anxiety.” The researchers note that these controlling approaches can undermine students’ engagement, while autonomy-supportive teaching can have “positive effects on students’ needs satisfaction, high-quality motivation, and engagement.”

Importantly, the researchers point out that these two approaches aren’t necessarily opposites: “the absence of one does not necessarily imply the presence of the other.” In other words, a teacher can give students structure without automatically trying to control their every move.

And perhaps that’s the real takeaway: sometimes it’s not even the rule that’s the problem—it’s how the teacher delivers it. After all, we all know there’s a big difference between a curt “see me” scrawled in red pen on an assignment and a teacher who takes you aside, privately and calmly, to carefully explain what needs to change. And, perhaps not surprisingly, this goes for their tone of voice too.