Who was your least favorite teacher?

Why?

He had a "letter to the editor" published in Newsweek...brought the magazine to class, read the letter aloud, basked in the glow of his own "wit"...

One time he told me, in front of the entire class, that if I couldn't "handle" the responsibilities of his advanced placement English class I should consider a step down, back into the unwashed masses. He taught a creative writing class and I wrote something similar to the kind of things I write here...reasonably extreme...and he just gave me a tutorial in Condescension 101.

He later wrote this book:



God, I hated the motherf**ker.

All I did was stand up and walk over to get sheet music and she hollered at me, "Sit down or I'll knock you down!"

I was devastated as I certainly didn't expect this under the circumstances or any circumstance actually. No adult has the right to engage in verbal abuse to any child.

I didn't stay in chorus much longer thereafter.

I didn't think teachers were allowed to say things like that. At least not for a long time.

No, I didn't turn her in although I could've. My mom was on the Board of Education. The humiliation still makes me cringe.

as you could have easily made things very bad for her

Very Buddhist I suppose.

weekend. I would have to take home EVERY book on Friday. I hated that. x(

She was just a mean person.

There might be a slight spelling error in her name.

and yes, that was her name, which truly suited her.

Everyone FEARED her. She was one mean and mean-spirited person.

How she stayed in the educational system is beyond me.

Doubt she'd be able to teach nowadays.

probably helped

they were sweet, smart and funny women. Not all of em were abusive, fortunately.

turnabout fair play :)

She was just a bad teacher and a mean person. I got the worse grades of my life in that year.

a lot is expected from the students and therefore the teachers.

She had been an art teacher until they cut the program and moved her to Social Studies. She'd outline the chapter of the textbook and put it on a transparency. Every day we'd copy the transperancy, then read it together. Her tests were multiple choice and she graded them right there with a stencil. It didn't take long to figure out that if you didn't know the answer, you could darken in all the bubbles and she'd mark it correct.

I don't think anybody cracked open the book all year, and I certainly didn't know much about US History until college.

Actually, I like her a lot when I had her in 4th grade, but when I was in high school, she was one of the teachers involved w/ the musical production. Every year the underclassmen were told they had to take a back seat to the Seniors when it came to parts, and I waited my turn.

Then when I was the senior, she told me I couldn't have the part that I wanted (and was completely capable of playing) because I was too fat. She gave the part to an underclassman.

She is lucky your parents didn't make it an issue.

I had a shitty art teacher in jr. high and never took another art class after that until just recently.

Witch

:P

I figured out how to back up the plumbing so that it would flood the Administrators cabin. }( I would also organize the girls to create a hellish racket by rolling empty soda cans down the hall late at night.Various instructors had to stand guard outside my room for the duration of camp to keep an eye on me. Silly adults, I would organize at meals or around the pool.}( The band instructor knew I was the instigator but couldn't prove it, }( }( so she made me a target of her ridicule. Eventually it came to the old either quit or be thrown out.

I'll just call her Ms. Tight Ass.

p.s. the reason for my behavior, she had the previous instructor (whom we all loved) dismissed on moral grounds. (He was gay. We're talking Florida in the '70's here. Much like Florida today. :-( )

I was in a bussing program, so I was one of very few black kids in a mostly white class in a neighborhood different from mine. This was Queens, New York, when All in the Family was on tv, and Archie Bunker's Queens was an extremely realistic, accurate portrayal of white Queens at the time, where I was sent to school.

Mr. Green was, frankly, a racist. Almost none of the other teachers were, though many of the parents and students were. He also was an incompetent teacher who could not control the classroom, even though it was a class for gifted students. He was a recently laid off engineer (from NASA projects?) during the big scaling down of the early 70s.

If anything bad happened while his back was turned, he blamed me. He downgraded my exams arbitrarily. It was surreal.

The assistant principal for science (one of the few black teachers) interviewed me and my mom about this, and fired Mr. Green.

We then got a really wonderful young hippie science teacher, brand new to the profession, who was one of the best teachers I ever had.

the era it took place in. I you were on the leading edge of the positive change.

my 5th grade substitute teacher. The school hired her on very-short notice after our regular teacher, whose name was Dave and wanted to be called Dave, not Mr. *(I have no idea what his last name was...I think I used it twice.), was fired for marijuana possession. (Not on school grounds...more a moral turpitude thing.)

It wasn't that she was a bad teacher persay, it was that she wasn't a teacher at all...she was a certified substitute pursuing her teaching certificate. Her job was to babysit us for the 2 1/2 months until the school year ended. She had no idea how to teach and even less idea how to control a group of unruly 11 year olds who were upset because their favorite teacher was just fired. So...she picked favorites. Mind you, I wasn't a favorite because I was always getting into fights...ones where I was not the instigator or the bully...but I was the winner. I had to be keeping the town dentist in business. There were a lot of fights, that's what happens when you get 11 year old boys upset...they get aggressive with each other. She moved my desk and that of the smelly kid to the back of the room and referred to it as the problem area.

A few years later a classmate ran into her...she had given up on a career in teaching and was managing a fast food restaurant. Good move, Mrs. L. Wise choice.

With a last name that starts with Ba, I usually got front row if the teacher seated students alphabetically. I was in the front row for Haddock's class. The guy never stopped picking his nose. And flinging little booger shards across the front row. The dryest most unimpassioned man I have ever seen. Until I took his class, I was a big science guy (the space program and all that), but he took the interest right out of that for me.

Another least favorite is my old PE Coach Larry Fletcher. (Jr yr). I was no jock but an athlete. In PE there were certain games and activities I enjoyed and others that I detested. One of the sports I detested was socccer. I hated it because I ALWAYS got hurt playing it (Pre pads days). We started soccer in P.E. and I told coach Fletcher that I did not like to play soccer and would rather do somehting else in the class. I told him how I always hurt myself and hated the game. Of course, his little jock brain could not wrap its little pea brain around the concept, so he ordered me to play. And do 50 push ups (coaches are such dicks). Within five minutes, I had to be carried off the "pitch "(some soccer knowledge dropping there, eh?)to the nurses ofice. I had really really really sprained my ankle. Doctor, cast, 6 weeks on a walker etc.

My best friend, Steve Schiavone, was brought in about five minutes later, he had broken his leg. He too did not want to play soccer.

The one good thing was I was no longer forced to play soccer. The doctor told me then that it was as bad of sprain as he had seen and that I would have been better off breaking it. He was right.

Since that day, that ankle, my left, has continuously given me problems. I turn it about once a year and now it lays me up for weeks when it happens. Everytime it gets worse. I turned it a week ago and it is still very painful.

I see Coach Fletcher around too. He doesn't remember me at all. So that gives me an opportunity to tell him how he really fucked me over. He still doesn't get it. he is all keeled over and walks like the hunchback, the sign of a high School jock. Oblivious to what he did to probably 50 kids like myself. Some of us don't like to play any sports that have any or little contact. that is me. Flag football I'll play, but not tackle. I wont play hoops if there is an overly agressive player on the court. I like to golf, swim and play volleyball. baseball too. But have some guy kicking at your feet? No thanks.

was this the intense form of soccer where the players would do the slide tackles and the like?

PE type of soccer. And while not a contact sport perse, I never ever played the game without getting hurt. having people licking at you, around you, near you, is just not something I like to do.

and worse, told my parents that.

She really helped my cynicism along, though.

sounds like she was in the wrong line of work.

:wtf:

so she shall remain unnamed.

My small town sixth-grade class was her first teaching job after getting a midlife degree, and every year she was promoted to a higher level. So we traveled the six years until graduation with her as our English, speech, and foreign language teacher, and what an adventure it was!

Every other year, her attitude toward me shifted 180 degrees. I was a teacher's pet in sixth grade, then in seventh grade the class pariah. I never figured out why.

She was aggressively right-wing, proudly uninformed, and utterly convinced of her own superiority in all things. She considered herself an expert in the Spanish language because she had been to Mexico. She insisted her foreign language students pronounce the name "Juan" as "Jew-un."

"Cleopatra" was pronounced "Cleo-pay-tree-a" and nothing else would do.

She had a raging teacher-crush on a freckled delinquent named Alvin, and her attempts to seduce him with melting looks would have been disgusting had her frog-like face and Weeble-like body not rendered them more comical than squicky.

High school geometry. He was a nice enough person but he just sucked at teaching. I loved math - did well in it - algebra was great but Mr. Shaugnessy's geometry class was awful. Not sure I recovered. Did ok with advanced alg/trig, then a one semester alg/trig accelerated college class I tested into, but hit a wall at calculus. The heavy accents of the three instructors I tried there didn't help.

from the math you learn before it.

frustrating! I tried three times - and even developed test anxiety because of it - something I had never experienced before.

when you go from the High School maths you go from practical real world relateable to the abstract. It was a struggle for me as well.

My fifth grade teacher. She had a reputation for being old, mean, nasty, and just a downright bitch long before I got her as my teacher. I remember my heart pounding when I found out that she was going to be my teacher that year! LOL!!!

She was just nasty but I think the worse thing she did was not let me look at her so I could read her lips..She was always telling me to not to look at her when she was talking.

like the fat hearing impaired boy with a body aid strapped to his torso and wires everywhere. She was a goon....

The woman, for no particular reason, did not like me, and made me sit at a separate table in the back of the room apart from the class. To this day I have no idea why, because I wasn't anyone who could even remotely be classified as a disruptive student. The woman was just nuts, I guess.

Thankfully, my 8th grade English teacher was the total opposite and was one of the most encouraging and supportive teachers I had, and because of her I think I gained a true sense of enjoyment when it came to writing. So it all balanced out in the end, I guess.

These are my 5 least favorites:

Mrs. Scheible (sp?) - 2nd grade teacher. Just mean to little kids. I was shy, and she didn't like that.

Mr. Cullen (9th grade math teacher) - smug teacher and hard. Not a good teacher to start high school with.

Professor Wait (college Math professor) - could not teach, yet took points off for everything and didn't show up when I wanted help. Got one of only two Ds in college from her.

Ms. Naughton (9th grade Spanish teacher) - I did fine in her class, but she was downright nasty and made kids cry. I forgot my homework once, and it was like a mortal sin the way she reacted.

Professor Bowers (college Economics professor) - too lazy to teach, yet would not give me a B until my final class with him. One time he spent class drawing his flight plan. And this was my major! He liked me, but I can't say I liked him. I chose him over O'Neill because at least she knew her stuff and cared about my major - I just had trouble understanding her and she had very hard tests. She passed me with Cs at least despite only getting above a 70 on a test once.

Early grade school. She wasn't even our teacher. But with a name like Crabb, we figured she must have been mean. Actually, she wasn't. We were just dumb kids.

I wonder if she got of kick out of the fear she saw in her student's eyes their first class (before they found out her real nature).

I've related this here before, but I don't remember who it was exactly, almost certainly our superintendent, Dr. Michael, (my high school was so big ,we had four principals and a district superintendent; our school was its own district), who sent a memo home to show to our parents, during my senior year, saying very explicitly that any student arrested in an ANTI-WAR ( Vietnam) demonstration , would be summarily suspended from school. Didn't matter if it was wrongful arrest for legal protesting, and nothing about pro-war etc.... I was already a young radical, and politically aware from a very young age, but that moment, at 16 years old, crystallized everything I suspected about the power structure, from nationally to my home town, and about who ran the "system" and for what purpose and whose benefit ( i.e. , that the school system was another cog in the war machine). When I graduated a few months later, at our rehearsal for the ceremony , we were told that we were to give Dr. Michael a standing ovation when he was introduced. I remember thinking, who the fuck do they think they are to ORDER a standing ovation. I resolved to stay in my seat and whatever any consequences were, tough shit; I'd already been accepted at my first choice college anyway...I remember also, that the girl next to me, who I'd known since seventh grade, and had never known to be political or rebellious in that way, also stayed seated. We were both surprised and gave each other a look of "all right, you too!"( I think we did a 60's version of a fist-bump too) Anyway, whatever respect for "authority" for no other reason than they were "authority" that I may have still had, went out the window forever the day they handed out that memo.

He had a daughter, about a year older than me. He was convinced that I had "defiled" (his choice of words) his daughter. The ultimate resolution was that the 12th grade calculus teacher graded all my t/ag work that year.

He was right about that. Which I never denied. He was wrong about the sequence; as in, I wasn't there first.

I didn't want to cause his daughter any more difficulty. And, unlike now, I was a reasonably polite kid.

The Home Economics teacher. Since I was a feminist at birth, she and I did not see eye to eye. Mean ole bitch, if you ask me! Totally played favorites with her students, too. Taught me early on that life wasn't fair.

But I also had some really good teachers who taught me that there were better views of the world than the ones espoused by Aunt Fran!

that does have the making for a disaster. was the class mandatory?

Groan!!!!!

Small school. Small town. Small minds!

You could take Home Ec, or you could take "Shop". Actually two girls from my class DID take shop. But the Shop Teacher wasn't really any better than Aunt Fran. I considered taking Shop, but I needed another science class and the Home Ec class fit the schedule.

Interestingly enough, Aunt Fran put on a BIG display when her only daughter married well. Big wedding...lots of money spent...big announcements...all white, etc.

The divorce was handled much more quietly!!!!

the bookcases with a book on our heads, for better posture! Truly bizarre. I can still hear her squeaky little voice and it makes me cringe.



I much preferred the feminist teachers who had us read really cool 70s lit and the guidance counselor who told me what my IQ was! :rofl:

senior year...and why, because he was an overbearing angry jerk. I swear, he wanted to fight everyone, and tried to intimidate everyone. He was roughly my own size so he didn't intimidate me, so I would just smile right in his smug face and deny everything he "accused" me of doing.

She was a mean old lady, with no patience for children, especially ones like me who were shy and a little awkward. She humiliated the little kids. My sister, who was 2 years behind me, had the same opinion of her. I had some stern teachers after that, but none who were as downright mean and nasty as she was. She should not have been teaching Kindergarten.

We were researching and writing a paper on careers. I wanted to write about being a Sociologist. She refused to let me saying that would require at least a Masters degree, and I obviously was not going to college. She made me write about being an Auto Mechanic. I later earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from U of Wisconsin. So there, Mrs Hammermesh you nasty old b****!

it did motiate me to learn how to change sparkplugs though.

...when I lifeguarded one summer. This nasty woman actually told me I wasn't good enough to get a scholarship to law school. After I quit, and then promptly earned a scholarship, I actually mailed her a copy of my scholarship letter just to rub it in her ugly face.

it was the fourth and final required semester for my language. Up until that point I was doing alright in Latin and escaping with B's and C's. But then we got her, I forget her name, let's call her Ceaser. Her idea of teaching latin was having us translate the Aenid. She would assign a chapter to translate and then the entire class was spent reading the Aenid in English. That's it, no lessons, I didn't learn shit and was in danger of failing her idiotic quizzes. We even went to the head of the classic department to complain and he couldn't do anything about her, but he did want to look at our grades. I ended up getting out with like a C- or something.

His breath smelled like he'd spent all day eating shit, and he refused to help any student that wasn't in the top 10% of the class. It's like he thought we didn't deserve it.

Because she'd had my brother in her "Core" class,(a combination of English and Social Studies/Geography), she decided she didn't like me either.
I'm not sure whether the Cs I got in her class were the result of her dislike for me, or the result of my reluctance to care.

She sucked.

Gave out worksheets with TWO HUNDRED multiplication or division problems as collective punishment when a few kids acted up. Evil, evil, woman, Thank God she retired the summer before my niece entered 3rd Grade.

And ironically I was in his class when we got the announcement about Three Mile Island so we were stuck in there for awhile waiting to get the call to go back to homeroom and home for the day.

I too went to Hogwarts - and I tell you he was a mean guy. Writing lines in detention every other day in my own blood was never fun. I swear I could have killed him.

But that was Umbridge, not Snape. If I had Umbridge I'd have gone mad and escaped with the Weasley twins!

Umbridge wasn't at the school when I went.

Sister Judeen in the sixth grade. However, years later we found out she had left the convent and married, maybe she mellowed out.

we were soldiers. We had him his first year at our school, we were in 8th grade. We went on to HS and so did he. If someone spoke out of turn, WHAM, down went the paddle full force on the mostly metal desks, either his own or the offending student's desk. He eventually shattered a glass cover on a wooden desk in study hall with that thing and that was the end of the paddle. He taught History and American Government.

He got stranger in HS. We had several girls in our class get pregnant. He began to talk a lot about sex and he'd get pretty graphic at times during class with suggesting ways to please partners that would not result in pregnancy. I remember being shocked walking into his classroom and seeing his favorite suggestion written in large letters on the blackboard.

Early in our senior year, 1972, a couple girls had flown to NY for abortions. Small school, small town, everyone pretty much knew about it. That asshole brought it up in front of the entire Government class. He didn't bring up laws or rights or Roe V Wade, he wanted details of their experience.

We graduated and he left teaching, either that year or the next. I'd heard he went into insurance sales.

Those types of things would never be tolerated now...


Infuckingcredible! :wow:

As I look back, maybe it was because he'd intimidated us with that damn paddle when we were in 8th grade. Makes me angry at myself for never speaking up.

cool otherwise. I was frightfully well-behaved, I suppose that was part of it too.


I think it was just the way things were. I think most of us realized how unnecessary, damaging, punishing and idiotic that kind of thinking was later on, and chose not to use any physical punishment with our kids.

Both sucked when it came to teaching their subject. One drank vodka during class. The other choked me from behind. They're now retired or dead. I'm not sure.

I only remember the drinker: Mrs. Babbs.

in English Lit. One of them was so great that I still can picture her standing in the hot jr high classroom, so funny and witty, wearing a pastel twinset (it was the 70s) and holding people entranced with her stories and love of literature. Mrs. Roberts, if you are still on the planet, I have never forgotten you!




I am so sorry you had such as bad experience in English classes - doesn't seem right.

Especially my 6th grade teacher. He was AWESOME!

I wanted a poli-sci course, not some hack masturbating to his own opinion for two hours.

I'd like to drain the gas out of his bike just one more time:)

Fucking drafting teacher from hell. I knew I was in trouble the first time I walked in his classroom. He had signs hanging on the wall explaining that children are idiots.

Not quite sure what his trip was, but he would regularly sit in the parking lot trying to get that fucking Kawasaki started :evilgrin:

Spent a year telling me I wasn't as smart as my older sisters. Gave me a D in handwriting (I could read it just fine.) Made me stay after school for 45 minutes because the tree I drew wasn't good enough.

I would like to see if that detention made any difference.:P

doctors chew me out because they could not read my progress notes.

he knew little about the subject, wore those scary white see-through clothes and shiny 70s shirts, fawned all over the cheer-leaders, had girls with short skirts sit in the front row, and belittled intelligent people. I couldn't believe that they let someone like that teach.


He was a freaky piece of work. :puke: oh, and I forgot the cheap and pungent cologne! Ugh!

She'd hit us on the tops of our heads with books if we acted up. What a bitch.

Needless to say I failed the class (which was a big surprise to me).

Did you stand out from your class in any way?

to spit bile every time he asked me a question. I had no idea what was going on. I just minded my own business and when I came back in the fall I realized I had been failed in that class. I thought to myself what a perfect cap to a perfectly awful experience of him. Then I went to night school to do two math classes in that last year of high school. I was depressed at the time so that may have come into play.

5th grade. Physically and verbally abuse.

My faith in humanity has never been the same. x(

my 5th grade teacher
I can still see her sinking dozens of consecutive three pointers in her nun shoes.
She was in her 60's by then and to this day I have never seen a more reliable shooter from three point land.

and I loved her.
its complicated.

once gave me a C on a paper for using British spellings.

Would also like to nominate Mr. Anderson (high school) for phoning in three years worth of my math education and Mr. Anderson (middle school) for blatantly favoring another clarinetist even after I beat her twice in blind chair challenges. She was pretty so she got all the solos anyway.

Oh, and my seventh grade drama teacher was such a prick I refuse to spend even a second trying to remember his name. He went out of his way to read everyone's grades in class (I was the only C in a class of all As) and then made a point of saying he only gave another student a B out of fairness to how awful I was. Rot in hell what's-your-name!

Taught Fear and Loathing in second year high-school. Iz there some rule that nuns have to take names diametrically opposed to their personalities?

Mind you, in between all the denunciation and detention she did one good thing, she made me write poetry. Till then, 1964, I had no idea anyone but adults wrote poetry.

Who, in 1968, our final year, lent some of us young ladies her copy of Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique", seminal feminist tract. No fear in her.

She was someone who had it in for people who were weak/ timid/ 'crybabies' etc. I had slight, not yet diagnosed physical co-ordination disabilities, and some of the other kids used to assist me on difficult narrow staircases and the like (the school was not purpose-built); and if she saw them she would order them not to 'baby' me. She also used to shout at me for poor needlework, having difficulty in controlling a fountain pen, etc. At the end of the year I came top in the exams, and she gave the whole class a lecture on how 'LB has done very well in the exams but she hasn't learned to live with us; she is very babyish and it is partly your fault because you help her too much; etc.' I wasn't the only one; I had a friend who was even more timid and cried more easily than me, and Miss - was so consistently nasty to her that she was literally sick every morning before school that year. Miss - was also quite a bully towards at least one of the school's domestic staff.

To give her credit, she was probably one of the people who helped to make me into a left-winger. She represented the sort of attitude to other people that I find personified by the right-wing and, while I would never have been a Tory, I think she helped to show me the real nastiness of RW attitudes, before I knew anything about party politics. (I have no idea how she voted in elections, but her attitude to people who were not 'tough' or needed help was pure Thatcherism on a smaller scale!)

Fortunately, I had a really lovely teacher the following year. Thanks Miss McIntosh, wherever you are now.

Calling you at as a baby to the whole class. As if childhood and disabilities are not bad enough on their own...

Third Grade. A big woman with a bad temper. She used to beat the living daylights out of a kid called Willy. He was poor and pretty hyper. (probably A.D.D. by today's standards). They were allowed to do that back then. I swear she went through a yardstick on him once a week. Evil woman. That was 52 years ago. I remember her and her rants like it was yesterday.

When the question "What do you think the author means when (s)he says X" was asked I was always told I was wrong. No trying to lead me in the direction of what the "right" answer was. I was just wrong. Because of her it was almost 20 years after high school until I read a piece of fiction again (I did read, just not fiction). At 35 I finally realized that I could read and enjoy fiction without anyone telling me I'm wrong.

someone could get hurt!

but he was an Earth Sciences professor at Moberly Area Community College. He was very knowledgable about the topic, but he was very tough to listen to in class. The man had a monotone that rivaled Ben Stein's.

bitter woman in her 30s who was about 5'6" and I'd guess over 250 lbs.

The story was that she had been stunning, but her fiance had run off with someone else and she'd ended up gaining tons of weight. Don't know if she started off so very angry and controlling, or if that was a result of being jilted as well.

She required that during a quiz (which we had at least once a week, as I recall), everyone had to have their answers covered by a second, blank piece of paper, and had to wrap their arms around their papers with their heads down. Anyone looking up, not sufficiently covering, etc. would get a zero. Total control freak.

Didn't help that she also was badly misinformed on some issues. She actually talked a bit about GLBT stuff - just to mention, probably was a requirement, considering how little time she gave it - but she was just dead wrong on some of it - like that female-to-male transsexualism doesn't happen, that there is no surgery for it. This was in the late 80s, so if she had actually known anything, would have known that it does exist and surgery does happen. Also was very misinformed about the realities of male to female transsexualism.

I wonder how many kids she screwed up as a result.

He was my first Republican. He was like an older, more grandfatherly Bill O'Reilly.

I should probably be grateful to Mr. Baird, because he did a awful lot to form my politics--in the opposite direction of his. :)

third grade primary in Scotland. Loved to give you six of the best on your hands with a leather strap. And if you pulled your hands back, the count went back to zero.

Miss Dunn, 5th grade primary, Scotland. We were given a section of a poem to read (I believe it was "Hiawatha") for homework. But I read the whole thing. Nothing wrong in that, you say. Next day, we had to read the section collectively. Which we did. At the end of the section, everybody stopped but I went on for about three words before I realised we didn't have to do that bit. She tore me a new one going on about what a smartie I was and how I thought I was better than the rest of the kids.