50 Terrible School Presentations People Have Had The Displeasure Of Witnessing

I was in 4th grade and a girl in my class did an oral report on Martin Luther King and how he was a hero for freeing the slaves ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Presentation on WWII. Student had just discovered all the neat transitions you can use between slides and decided to use a different one each slide.

They used the flashing heart transition between a photo slide of a mass grave and a photo slide of [the German dictator].

One year in a violent political upheaval class a kid gave a presentation and the whole time he said ***pheasant*** revolution instead of ***peasant*** revolution. I had to stifle a giggle for his entire 15 minute presentation.

In Speech 101 in college we had to pick a children's book and voice act each character. That was it. That was the entire assignment.

Well... One student decided to take it to the next level. He chose a Berenstain Bear book and decided to not only do voice acting for every single one of the characters, but also act it out.

It was physically uncomfortable to watch this guy scramble around the room and pretend to be bears and other animals. It was not well done. It was awful.

For 8th grade talent show, 2 girls sang the "Mr. Bledel" song (Mr. Bledel was a good looking, recently college graduated teacher) that basically was about how cute they thought he was. Even then, it was incredibly uncomfortable and I remember looking at the teachers face and he didn't seem very amused.

My elementary/primary school was a religious school. So one day when we had an assembly by the religious members of our school, they were explaining the importance of praying and all the discipline issues. While one of the members were saying stuff about faith or whatnot one of the other members interrupted him and started to say to never lose focus while praying she then went on to say that even though there is a house fire to not stop praying, the most “yikes” thing was when she said that even if your parents are dying and asking for help to not stop your prayer. I was completely shocked by this and couldn’t believe what she said to the whole school of children ranging from (4th grade- 8th grade). I looked around to see the reaction of everyone but everyone seemed normal.

Coming out of the whole presentation. I told one of my friends how messed up that particular message was. Basically someone heard me saying that and like a little snitch went to tell that lady what I had said. I was called to meet her and she confronted me about saying bad stuff about her speech. I told her that yes, I did because one of things she said didn’t stick to me well and told her which one I disagreed on. She said well that’s how we are suppose to be when praying. I was lucky she didn’t take my words too seriously and let me off the hook.

I thought it might’ve been a slip of the tongue kind of thing she must’ve said in the presentation, But by the end of the confrontation I was proved otherwise.

During our practice rounds for senior presentations, a girl got up with her PowerPoint that had paragraphs of text on each slide and then proceeded to read the paragraphs word for word from her notecards. The teacher stopped her and asked if this is how her whole presentation was and when she responded yes, the teacher stopped her and asked her to change her presentation. She wasn't understanding what was wrong, so we kindly gave her some feedback. She redid the presentation a few days later but the original was ROUGH.

This was a Spanish class in college, and I think the assignment was something like "talk about your best friend" or some such, just kind of a softball assignment so you could practice using the vocabulary. And one classmate's friend was evidently a friend with benefits.

Compared to some other stories in here this is minor, but it was a group project for one of my literature classes. There were five people in this group. According to the rubric for this assignment, everyone was supposed to have equal speaking parts.

One of the members in this group would just *not stop talking.* Half of their presentation was just her talking (and she went on about each of her slides for like 5 minutes). The rest of her group members had like 1 or 2 slides each, and she had IIRC 5 or 6. She would also interject into the other group member's parts to add her opinions.

The look on my professors face screamed "Just shut up already!" everytime she talked.

During nursing school a guy decided to use my little pony figures as props to a seminar room of about 100 people. He told the class that he would refer to himself as his pony name for the duration.. Don't remember what it was.

Also, not that this is relevant but he wore a black leather trench coat and it was pretty hot in the room yet he never took it off... cringe.

Edit: He wasn't a student he came in to do a talk about epilepsy and his experience with healthcare. We got to review them at the end and I gave him a good score because he actually had a lot of interesting things to say about his condition even if it was cringey.

In 1984, when I was in 6th grade, each class did a winter concert. The 8th grade football team sang "I'm dreaming of a black Christmas" in. blackface. Green Bay Wisconsin, Bay View Middle School

B-school ethics class - we had a group give a presentation on how society benefited from the tobacco industry. They were ripped to shreds by the professor and rest of the class.

When i was a ninth grade student, we had to present the poems we made in english class.
most people wrote about embracing their culture, loving their friends, etc.
and then there was that one kid who recited a “lifestyle poem” which compared fat people to beached whales and said that people who don’t work out will die before they’re 20.

We had this senior talent show that a few male students could sign up for (No idea why it was only guys, or how the few people even got nominated for it) and they all had to do their own act. Some sang, some danced, some put on a funny skit (possibilities were endless)


Well, each year someone who never got told they weren't good at singing would end up on stage. One time this guy did the evolution of boy band songs and it was just below average singing for (no joke) 15 minutes straight.


Bonus skit that I'm glad didn't stop because it was hilarious, one guy did a wrestling skit with different movie characters and my friend was the announcer. When Indiana Jones got into the ring my friend announced "Its the BDSM bad boy himself" and somehow that slipped by all the school staff members and made it into the DVD's the school sold. Another friend of mine sang Disney princess songs while wearing a sonic hat and got second place and at least 3 girls gave him their number.

In history class, we all had to do a presentation about some sort of injustice in the world. One kid chose a prison camp for his topic.

All his powerpoint slides were photos of men being stripped, chained, whipped, sodomized. We were 13.
Edit: Yes, his project was about Abu Ghraib.

We were supposed to have Arnold Schwarzenegger come to our school sometime around 1999 or 2000, principal was hyping it up for weeks, then about 4 days before his arrival it was announced on Friday that he wasn't coming. Fast forward to Monday during morning announcements it's announced he's changed his mind and is coming to our school tomorrow as planned.

Come Tuesday morning everyone is excited, were all amped to meet The Terminator, a handful of parents even came with VHS copies of his movies, posters, ect.
Were all going to our gym/auditorium, taking our seats.

Principal takes the stage takes the moment to make some announcements, award honor roll, perfect attendance, ect. Finally she starts hyping up Around Schwarzenegger, everyone is excited and on edge, when she basically says "heres Arnie" and.

It's the vice principal in a leather jacket holding a shotgun (not a toy one either) and spends 30-40 minutes trying to hype us up for FCAT all the while doing the absolute worst impression of Arnold Schwarzeneg I've ever heard.

Once we realized Arnold wasn't there people start shouting, screaming at the principal's for lying to us, along with some of the parents who came to this.

I do hope someone has footage of this meltdown of a bunch of K-5 kids shouting and screaming at the principals because Arnold Schwarzenegger didn't come to our school. Because I clearly remember 2-3 people having camcorders.


Edit: Thanks for the gold, honestly thought this would get buried, and can anyone explain the office reference? I genuinely hate the show so I'm not sure why people kept bringing it up.

As for some of the questions, Arnold was scheduled but canceled last minute on not only my school but my cousins who he was supposed to go to on Wednesday. Instead he only went to one school in my city (which I don't remember which one atm, but I'll add it if I remember it)

Yes the principals apologized the next day, and the vice principal changed schools the following school year.

I have absolutely no idea why he thought bringing a shotgun was a good idea, but I think he was attempting to look the part, which considering his massive gut, really didn't help.

I had my college freshman English students present 10 minutes on their favorite hobbies, with PowerPoints and handouts.

This one stoner kid decided to do his on Magic: The Gathering, which I was pretty excited about, since I'm an avid player.

He started his presentation by announcing to the class, in a booming voice, "I AM A PLANESWALKER!" The next 15 minutes (5 over the limit) he explained the lore and backstory. He never once said it was a game or fantasy series; he literally presented it as if it were fact. He sounded completely insane, describing how he loved raising the dead and waging war against Elves and Angels.

Awkward aside: he failed my class, and we later had to play in a major tournament. I beat him and knocked him out of the prize bracket. He was only in my area because his family had been evicted and he was living with a friend.

A kid in my middle school class (late 80's) decided to run for class president...he was one of those kids who was squarely in the middle of the student hierarchy - people knew him, but knew he was a bit off.

His last name was O'Brien. Some people called him OB for short.

He gets up in front of the school to give his speech, and finished with his campaign slogan.

To quote, from a very famous US ad at the time "OB! It's the way you should be!"

Yes, his campaign slogan was the one for tampons. The round of ironic applause only fueled his fervor and he became more and more hyped up with the crowd, encouraging people to start chanting the slogan. Ugh.

Not a literal presentation really, but we had an assembly in high school where the students that helped plan homecoming would announce the nominations for homecoming court. It always had a cute little theme and like a short skit involved.
Well at one point the audio they were using as the cue for the skit failed. They just kind of paused for technical difficulties, but this one girl from the planning committee started singing a random Disney song a capella while improvising a dance to go along with it, I guess as a distraction from them trying to fix the audio?

She kept trying to get people to join in with her, but nobody did, and she eventually just kind of trailed off mid song and started pouting that nobody would sing with her. Then once they got the audio fixed for the skit she pouted and snapped the way through the rest of her lines, which made everything even more uncomfortable.

The other famous one was when a girl in our class running for student government referenced a hashtag that she was trying to make popular during her campaign speech to the whole school. The hashtag was something catchy about her having a big a*s. There was a genuine collective "yikes" from the crowd when she said it. I don't think she got elected.

When I was in eighth grade, we were assigned to each make a 10-minute presentation about a controversial topic. One girl made her presentation about how she believes women shouldn’t be allowed to become President.

(Edit to clarify: to make matters worse, this was in 2014 or 2015, so it wasn’t that long ago).