Who was the worst teacher you ever had?

[MiniMandaRuth]

Since i'm on the teacher roll tonight, who was it? Math? Language arts? PE?

Why?

[Horse with no Name]

1. Mr. Lazar---4th grade

The man would beat the living daylights out of you.
He had a paddle that had holes drilled in it.
Depending on how bad you were--he would stuff kleenex in the holes.
He would spank you until the kleenex fell out.
Talking in class was 1 Kleenex, chewing gum 2 kleenex....cheating 6 kleenex, etc...
Ahhh remember the golden age of school...

[MiniMandaRuth]

3. I'm so glad I missed that.

Thank you democrats!

[Beausoir]

27. Lyle Frank...8th grade science. He liked to tickle.

The guy was a flaming pedophile. He used to take the boys into his office and show them Penthouse pictures...Then he'd watch them look at the picture and he would turn all flushed and sweaty. He liked to tickle the 8th grade boys too. Sneak up behind them and tickle them. Ewwww!

He hated my guts because my brother who came before me wouldn't allow Mr. Frank to touch him. So, the first day of class I got seperated out and had to spend the eniter term sitting alone, far away from the class.

He always kept two things on his desk: A bruised banana and a belt. He always had his hands down the front of his pants.

He died under very suspicious circumstances. The rumor was he was diddling a young man and the young man took revenge.

[Lucy - Claire]

33. I had a Pedo teacher like that...

In High School he taught Maths and was always odd and I mean seriously unhinged. He was so sarcastic and he honestly scared people for all the wrong reasons. He got sacked but he returned as a supply teacher, which meant he worked at the boy's schools. He was convicted of molestation of boy's at a local boy's school and it made the national press too.

We also had a lesbian PE teacher, who used to watch us teenage girls change and I mean she would stare. All the girls, throughout the school complained about it. At a time when your body is changing, it was mortifing. In the end she got caught in a clinch with a Sixth Former (16)that she was sleeping with, it the common room. I don't care what a teachers sexuality is they all have boundries and this women crossed all of them.

In Middle School my Headmaster was a gay man, the parents all knew but was being too young didn't, however he was a great teacher. He was tough, kind, funny and scary if you crossed him. He was a Freddie Mercury look alike and wore too much aftershave, so we could smell him before we saw him and he was the best example of a gay man you could wish for.

[grannylib]

2. Mrs. Winger - second grade. Sadistic witch who used to take kids out

in the hall and spank them with yardsticks, even breaking them on some kids.

She LOVED to send nastygrams home to your parents for the most minor things...she just loved being a bitch.

[MiniMandaRuth]

4. My science teacher from last year....

He showed us a paddle. A little while later, he yelled at some girl across the room, and we thought he was going to beat her with it!

He didn't, by the way.

[barb162]

5. Ist grade as I recall

[Dangerously Amused]

6. Worst? Linda Schlueter, Legal Writing.

Couldn't teach to save her soul.


Meanest? Chuck Vansen, Color and Design.

Picture Charles Manson's evil twin. On a bad day.

[mykpart]

7. Sister Fenton - 3rd grade.

An Irish nun - need I say more?

[murielm99]

8. The worst teacher I ever had was actually

the principal of my elementary school. She scared the crap not only out of me, but also my parents. She scared the crap out of most parents, as I remember.

She looked just like Miss Gulch in the Wizard of Oz. When I go to high school reunions, and peoples" spouses don't believe it, we drag out our sixth grade yearbook. The resemblance is uncanny.

Miss Seitz did not like boys. Any boy who was sent to the office was smacked on the hand with her ruler until they got little cuts that bled. Girls just had to sit on a chair or stand in the corner. Few girls were sent to her. I was not always well-behaved in school, but I never got sent to her office, thank God.

My husband's mother was a teacher in our school district for forty years. She said that Miss Seitz was a teacher for a long time. Her teaching methods were about fifty years behind the times, even in the 1950's. The school board gave her the job of principal just to get her out of the classroom.

[Haole Girl]

9. Her name was Mrs. Roach

I kid you not! She made me stand in the corner, usually with gum on the end of my nose, for talking too much (for the majority of 3rd grade).

[Syrinx]

10. 11th Grade History Teacher

I can't remember her name right now, but she was mean, and she looked mean.

She sent me to the assistant principal for not standing up for the pledge of allegiance. I wasn't protesting. I had simply fallen asleep at my desk and missed it.

The AP told me "I don't know why she sent you to my office. We can't force you to say the pledge."

[deadparrot]

11. My perv of an eighth-grade English teacher.

Don't really know where to begin...just a really creepy guy, made comments to all the girls ("pull that skirt down or I'll pull it down for you," etc.). One time my friend looked at the ground during a lecture by our principal...he grabbed her arm, dragged her outside and slammed her up against a row of lockers. He ended up marrying aforementioned principal, who had a young daughter from a previous marriage (she's in high school now). I feel so incredibly sorry for her.

Besides all that stuff, he was just a shitty teacher. I'd hand in papers and get them back with "A+, nice job," written at the top and nothing else. My brother and his friends handed in the same book report each time one was due, and he never noticed.

[Kellanved]

12. 7th grade physics

She simply wasn't qualified for the job. We learned that submarines can drive underwater because the diesel exhausts will rise to the surface.

My 11th grade German teacher comes in as a close second. She gave me an 'F' on an essay on satire in literature with the explanation "I don't understand that". (I had to cause a lot of noise to get it re-graded by another teacher).

[KitchenWitch]

13. My first grade teacher

She lacked the patience and compassion necessary to work with children. One of her favorite punishments was to send kids she felt were stupid to the kindergarten room.

[Art_from_Ark]

14. Eighth grade band director

Demoted me all the way down to last chair (a fall of more than 20 chairs) just because I missed one freakin' after-school (7 p.m.) practice for some shitty football game, and telling the truth about why I missed it (I was the only one ever demoted like that). Then he convinced the principal to force me to stay in that crappy band for the next 3 tortuous quarters, including a tortuous stint at selling the previous year's leftover band candy (candy corn and circus peanuts :puke: ).

Runner-up: 9th grade study hall teacher/coach who wanted to prove to the freshmen that he was a badass so badly on the first day of school that he paddled me hard just because the guy sitting next to me asked me what he had just said.

[last_texas_dem]

15. Sophomore year, world history teacher

Coach who spent about 75% of class lecturing about his "libertarian" political beliefs (libertarian in the ultra-right wing sense- like most of the Libertarian Party- not in the classical liberal sense) and doing his best to indoctrinate the kids to believe that their views were right in line with his fringe beliefs. (He bought all kinds of conspiracy theories, started calling me a socialist when he found out I was a liberal, passed around the "Clinton death list" and went on in great depth about Clinton killing Vince Foster, etc. To top it all off, this happened during the semester of the Clinton impeachment...) The one thing I'll say in praise of him was that he was the first teacher I ever had who pissed me off enough that I started arguing politics with him in class (albeit not nearly as much as I wish I had) and I became very interested in politics; discovering that I was not only a Democrat (which I had pretty much always known) but a far-left liberal. However, he was an altogether shitty World History teacher and I had significant gaps in my knowledge of World History whenever it came to taking my World Civ classes (I was a history major) in college.

[Indy_Dem_Defender]

16. Not a teacher but a high school counselor

takes the award for me, My high school counselor was probably the biggest waste in the education system I've ever met. He was straight up racist, a black male who wouldn't give the time of day to any student who wasn't black or in one of the High school's sports. I knew going into high school what an ass this guy was from when my sister transfered to this high school her senior year and he said in simple words to my mother and sister, "I don't see the point in you enrolling here, you should go back to where you came from." My experience with him was signing up for classes each year and finding out he changed them to whatever he wanted. So every semester I had go down to his office and get my schedule fixed. The time for me it was confirmed he was racist was when I waited 2 hours once to meet with him and I was sitting in front of his office, a black student would come up after me to see him and I would be passed up in favor of them, happened 3 times that day. I complained to the school, I was told that doesn't happen and they turned a blind eye. I spoke to people through out the years that had this idiot as a counselor and they had the same treatment. I've just came to the conclusion that the school system feared a lawsuit from him because he was the only black counselor at the high school.

[tjwmason]

17. Biology.

She just had no notion of how to control a class of 20+ 14 year-old boys.

On at least occasion somebody was locked in the conservatory attached to her lab. The day we disected hearts in her lesson was great fun - can you imagine what a blood-clot fight is like. During experiments she'd be standing in the middle of the lab helping somebody, things would be thrown around, flying over her head, and she wouldn't notice.

Then when I was taking my G.C.S.E.s I was walking through the school in the middle of a lesson, because I had to go for my French of German oral exam - the head of Biology was standing outside her lab, listening in - obviously spying on her lesson. She wasn't there next term.

I actually felt sorry for her, she clearly liked the subject and liked working with boys of that age - but she was totally useless at her job.


There was also one teacher when I was in prep school - so I'd be aged about 9-10. He was just a tad bit barking mad. He did have near perfect aim at throwing chalk and dusters - he would be writing on the board, a boy in the 3rd row (say) would be talking, and in a single move he could turn round and throw the chalk to hit said boy, in one sense pretty damn impressive.

[Skittles]

18. I won art contests as a child

then I got an art teacher who was mean and cruel and I never did art again

[NewWaveChick1981]

19. Mrs. Deese, my 10th-grade geometry teacher

She had a terrible monotone voice and read everything straight from the book. I had a difficult time grasping theorems and some of the other principles, and I went to her after class to ask for help. I explained that I did not understand theorems and needed an example of how someone derived one. She said in her monotone (and I quote): "Everyone has his or her own way of doing them. You just have to practice." Me: "I don't even know where to begin. Could you show me how you come up with yours?" Her: "You just have to practice. Everyone has his or her own way of doing them." WTF??? :wtf: She would not show me how she worked hers out, and I went home and told my mother about what had happened. Mom helped me figure things out that night, and the next day, she paid a visit to Mrs. Deese. She got absolutely nowhere, just like I did. She went to the principal, who told her it was too late to transfer me to another teacher. Mom, bless her, was (and still is!) a math whiz, so she taught me what Mrs. Deese didn't, which was just about everything about geometry. We both suspected that she didn't know anything about geometry and was just using the textbook as her only teaching tool. :mad:

Runner-up is a college instructor (not a full professor) who taught business law. She had overhead slides (this is before PowerPoint! LOL) that she had scribbled in multicolored ink and used them each year for that class without updating any information. She read straight from the slides and allowed no questions to be asked in class. When several of us went to her for help after class one day, we found her in her office during office hours, but she couldn't answer our questions. We banded together and got through that semester, helping each other out, but not before lodging a complaint with the department head. We found out later that her contract was not renewed for the following year because she had so many complaints lodged against her. If only I'd waited until later to take that stupid class... :grr:

[NewJeffCT]

20. Had a teacher that referred to herself in the 3rd person

"Ms Behm doesn't want any talking"

"Ms Behm says..."

nobody really terrible comes to mind, however.

[realisticphish]

21. State and Local History teacher

in high school. Fucking douchebag; he was the track coach, and constantly bitched about band and cheerleaders getting varsity letters. After all, we "didn't do anything." (not to mention he CONSTANTLY talked about cheerleaders being stupid, etc.) He was also a lazy shit, and made us watch movies all the time.

I would never think that cheerleaders and band geeks could be allies, but in this guy's class, we were.

[Scruffbunny]

22. Mrs. Goodwin-Jones- 8th grade. English.

I may still be young and will have many more techers, but she has been the worst so far.

First of all, she taught English, but spoke EBONICS. Badly. It was horrible to hear her talk like that. It made me frown at her like the blazes. Then, she was a spaz. She gave me a bad grade on an essay I had like one day to do because I had been very sick before, so I wasn't really expecting a great grade in the first place. So I asked if I could re-try because I had been sick the five days the kids had to work on this--and she got crazy. She yelled at me and practically dragged me out into the hall and told me not to tell her how to teach. Obviously, she needed it. *headdesk*

And for plain idiocy- Mr. Kadima-Kalombo. A man from the Congo. He taught french. But he was incredibly stupid. He didn't understand the one day that the entire class fell out of thier chairs laughin when we all told him we didn't have our homework because we hadn't been there the previous day. Oh, that man sure looked funny when he was confused.

[Random_Australian]

23. My school was so bad that the very fact I turned up to class made me way

popular with the teachers. I had a lot of bad experiences, but not from teachers at least.

Read: When I quit SDD my teacher cried. Still said whe missed me at the end of Yr12.

[HughBeaumont]

24. Shit, so many would make that list . . .

If anyone wonders why I HATE school with an unbridled passion, one needs only to look at the teachers I've had the unfortunate misery of dealing with over the years. From ones who almost took pleasure in humiliating me in front of people, yellers, short-fused bastards, brick-hard serious bores, droning monotone-voiced nothings to teachers who would suck all of the life out of what should be an interesting subject, I've had them all and I'm SICK of it.

By far the worst was an asshole named Hobart Johnson. I guess those who can't teach become principal, right? This guy made government dull as hell; I would regularly fall asleep in his class or read metal magazines. Might as well, even when I attempted to learn I'd get absolutely nothing out of it, since his viewpoint on everything was Republican-slanted or so dull you couldn't stay awake even for a minute. One day he came in the back of the room, in front of the whole class (many of whom couldn't stand me to begin with, but that's another thread), took my magazine away and said "THIS is why you're not passing". Now, today's me would have grabbed the magazine back and told him to "fuck off, I'm not passing because you can't make a goddamned thing interesting to save your life" right quick. But that was the weak and passive version of me, and I had to sit humiliated while everyone stared at me for ten seconds.

This was high school for me. And everyone wonders why I refuse to go to reunions.

Why can't somebody come up with a better, faster and more interesting way of learning things? Why does learning have to be such a painful and arduous process that's loaded with years upon years of needless busywork? WHY can't they screen people in the education field to make sure our schools aren't loaded with the dickheads described above? Why does school have to be THIS BAD?

And spare me the "Life's what you make it" bullshit. Like I ASKED for boring teachers, shitty classmates and bad bosses? NO. I just GOT them. Sometimes, for whatever reason, it just doesn't happen for you.

[skyblue]

25. My Gym Teacher, My English Teacher.

My Gym Teacher because she made fun of my Name.
My English Teacher because he claimed loudly that I wasn't the English student that my bro' was. My grammer is not perfect here, either. oh well. He was very fat. He was a fat bastard. I think he had greasy hair, too.

[Rabrrrrrr]

26. College econ. prof.: his tests were sentence fragments.

Seriously: he'd ask a question on a test like this: "The opportunity cost of a situation is based. True or false?" or "Supply-Side economics has a variety of forms; in the stock exchange? Describe." Sentences might be lacking a noun or a verb; or just be fragments chained together with semi-colons or commas. Shit like that. They were really hard.

He also talked to himself while lecturing, in a different voice than the lecture voice. And he loved, when charting and showing things on a graph, to keep going until he had 10 or 15 lines drawn on it, each of which he would draw with wild, flowing gestures as though he were Picasso putting the last line on a masterpiece.

It was awful.

[riona]

28. Bizarre 5th grade public school teacher

Everyday he would make us stand by our desks, march in place and sing Marine Corp songs.

[LibertyLover]

29. Geometry in 10th grade - Mr. Gabriel

He was a psycho. Childhood polio had left him with a walk that was rather effeminate. And he had a very high pitched voice. Not things which went over well in a classroom of young teenagers. The first 3 days of class we spent reviewing his rules for the classroom. Like - if the bell rang as you were entering the room you had to stop so he could measure where your feet were in relation to the door sill - more than 50% inside it and you were not late. Less than 50% - detention. One of his rules was that if he was handing out a pop quiz you had to stare straight ahead at the front blackboard with your hands on the desk. One day he was passing out a quiz and I had a nose bleed. I had recently had my tonsils and adenoids out and would occasionally have nasty bleeds. No warning - just a massive gush of blood. That's what happened. Trying to maintain the straight ahead stare, I started fishing for my purse - naturally I could not find it. So finally I took my glasses off so that I couldn't see anything and ducked down to locate the purse and tissue. Naturally he turned around, saw me not looking forward and let out a high-pitched yelp. I lifted my head so he could see the blood pouring from my nose and that made him yelp more. He ran to his closet and literally threw a box of tissue at me. Calm was restored and I took the quiz. Afterwards we had a few minutes of class time left before the bell. He spent it admonishing me about my behavior - wtf? He finally allowed as how my turning around to try and look for my purse was an emergency, but I was not to think I could do it again, nor should anyone else think they could get away with it. He graciously decided not to give me a school detention, but a class room detention. That evening I told my mom what had happened and she told me not to go for his detention because she would be calling the principal. It was but one of many calls the administration had about Gabriel's behavior, which included 2 cases of sexual harassment, one involving a girl in my class. Even though he had tenure, at the end of that school year he was terminated for cause. We later heard he had gotten a job as a bus dispatcher and had gotten fired because of his handling of passengers. He also married a girl from my high school. She was ahead of me in school. A friend of mine's father had stopped in at the local tavern after work with some friends and saw her father sitting at the bar doing some very atypical heavy drinking. Knowing the guy because his daughter was in his son's class, Mr. Elwell asked him what was wrong and was told that his daughter had just announced to them that she and Mr. Gabriel had gotten married. My friend's father joined him in a drink.

[Lucy - Claire]

30. Mr Wittlesea!!!!! and more teacher.

He was Vile and a psycho too. He was nasty to every child. He has grease bobbed hair and teeth that made him look like
he had a sharks mouth. He taught Computer Studies in the 80's and I learnt nothing. Everyone loathed him,
He once had a go at my friend because she was second in a relay race in our Inter-House sports day. (Houses in British Schools are away to make pupils compete for a team in all kinds of events. Sports, drama, music, house points for good work etc.) He was totally out of line, he was down right nasty. And he once told my group of friend off because he thought we were breaking school rules, when we were not.
I was once told to take a message to another teacher by the Headmaster, Mr Wittlesea saw me and gave me the third degree, why was I here, who was the message for and from it was strange. He was not suitable to be around children.

Miss Madison - Actually a good Science teacher but she has a horrible temper. She openly stated she loathes first years (9-10) and wasn't thrilled to teacher us when we were 2nd years and only just writing in pen!!!
She tried to have a cool factor, and lots of parents sing her praises but she was an utter bully when she disliked a kid. My friend Gina was being sent to boarding school, she had to take exams at school. Miss Madison then picked and picked on Gina, I can understand someone not likely private schools but no profession teacher should use it to bully, threaten and hurt an 11 year old. And Gina was very insecure child, for whom boarding school was a very bad idea. Miss Madison her form teacher would have known Gina lived with her grandmother. She once pushed Gina on the stairs, for being slow,continualy told her she would get a bad report for her news school. After the push on the stairs, Gina never returned to the school she was physically sick at the thought.

Mr Baldwin - Taught History and Geography. He was the teacher that bullied me, relentlessly in front of a class that already bullied me. My work was never good enough and he needed to make that public knowledge, he always made me sit next to a boy that had bullied me since primary school. Thanks to this teacher I learnt nothing about The Roman Empire, though I became very good at History later. I was also diagnosed as Dyslexic so the problems with my work were not my fault!!!!!!

I have named these teachers as the school they all taught at is closed down!!!!!!!

[Malikshah]

31. Fourth Grade. Mrs. Cole. "Tough Knuckles teacher"

After my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Anzolatus who was a saint...it was hard. And a still remember it 31 yrs later....

[miss_american_pie]

32. Chemistry, junior year, I think

I've blocked lots of it.

Anyhow, she had notes on the board every day when class started, and she'd read them to us and that was her idea of teaching. So for the first twenty minutes or so, this girl in the back would chat with the football player next to her. Then when she hadn't heard a thing, she'd ask the teacher to explain something or the other, usually the last thing the teacher said.

I swear to dog, the teacher's explanation would be the exact opposite of everything she told us up until that point. Felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.

[progmom]

34. Mr. Blaho

He was an old-school disciplinarian who had no patience for his 5th grade students.

He had two rulers taped together that he used to use to scare us by slamming them down on our desks when we misbehaved. But there was one poor kid who Mr. Blaho actually hit. Billy Martin was very small, very poor, but had a big attitude, and Mr. Blaho couldn't stand him. Billy would get hit by the ruler, or lifted up by his shirt collar and pushed up against the wall. Mr. Blaho seemed to take sadistic pleasure in finding new ways of punishing Billy.

The way he treated me was cruel in a different way. 1982 was the first year our school district implemented their "gifted and talented" program, and I was the only student entering Mr. Blaho's class that year who had been selected for the program. He was extraordinarily annoyed that I was pulled out of his class a couple of afternoons a week, and would mock me mercilessly. And when the teacher mocks a student at that age, the rest of the class is always more than happy to join in. 5th grade was hell for me. :(

[noonwitch]

35. Miss Krook, my 3rd grade teacher

I had mostly good teachers, but she was just a plain old bitch. For some reason, she had a personal dislike of me.

Mr. Skar, my 8th grade science teacher was pretty awful, too. He used to make girls come up and rub his neck during class. Not me, I told him no when he asked me the first time. The second time, I told him he must really want to get to know my dad's lawyer.
He picked on poor girls, usually, or the girls who were sexually active and the boys gossiped about.

[Misunderestimator]

36. Oh, I've stricken her name from my memory.

She was my senior Chemistry teacher. She hated me because she was always wrong, and I corrected her from the textbook in Chemistry class. She was also the teacher sponsor for our National Honor Society, of which I was a member. We had early morning pre-class meetings once a month, and I had missed a couple of them, for reasons I couldn't control at home. On the third one I missed, they took a vote, led by her suggestion, to implement a new rule that you would be kicked out of the NHS if you missed three meetings.

I found out about the new "policy" when I got to school that morning, when she demanded my NHS pin back. The next day, I presented her with it at the teachers' table in the lunchroom in front of everyone.

This was right before graduation, so I also had to forfeit the NHS stole I was supposed to wear during the ceremony. So, there I was, graduating salutatorian, the only one of the top ranked students without a stole. What a tool she was. Just thinking about it now pisses me off.

[raccoon]

37. My sixth grade teacher was a pedophile.

When girls came to his desk to ask for help, he had them stand beside him and put his arm around their boobs, or where their boobs would be once they developed them. I went to his desk for help one time. No more.

My mother and some other parents, to their eternal credit, were instrumental in getting his ass fired. This was in the 1960’s. I bet he went on to do the same thing at other schools.

SC history teacher was a complete asshole. He flirted with the popular girls. He read in class the poem “The Owl and the Pussycat,” quoting archly, “What a beautiful pussy you are.” Students who were shy and quiet, he loved to terrify them. I was one of them. He loved to give pop tests, ten short answer questions, ten points apiece.

Another was an asshole geography teacher I had in college who liked to mess up your GPA if you had a good one, by giving you bad grades. Wish I’d known that about him before taking the course.

A substitute teacher we had in fifth grade was another rotten teacher. She probably didn’t sub there for more than a few days, and I still remember her as a total bitch. She was just the classic, consummate bitch. She decided she didn’t like me and lost no chance to make shaming remarks at me.

[Left_Winger]

38. My 12th grade homeroom teacher

who was also the head football coach. The entire class consisted of the team and me, the lone long-haired hippie. Every day the bastard would belittle me. My only response was that I had a higher GPA than the cumulative total of his precious football team (and he knew it). When he found out that I had enlisted in the Marines prior to graduation he made a big speech in front of the class about how I would not make it; that I was a looser. If this happened today and not in the 70s, I could have sued the crap out of him and the school.

To make a long story short... The day I returned from Parris Island my best friend insisted that we go visit this ass. I reluctantly agreed just to make my friend shut up. "Coach" saw me and stood there amazed that he, the know-it-all football coach (and gift from God) was wrong. He punched me in the chest. Since the Drill Instructors had been treating me like that for eleven weeks, he did not even phase me. I then looked at him and said, "My turn." The chicken shit backed away from me. That was all I needed for satisfaction.

[gollygee]

39. Mine was a university professor

he knew my dad and apparently didn't like him. The first day of class, he handed out the synopsis, took roll, and then called me out to the hall and told me to drop his class. It was hard getting into the class and I needed it for my major so I didn't drop it. He made my life hell.

[slide to the left]

40. Aerobics in college

She kept me from graduating on time since i have asthma and got sick!

[ThomCat]

41. A guidance councelor

I had a guidance councelor my freshman year who never looked at my grades. He was convinced, for some unknown reason, that I would never graduate high school and he said so often.

He prohibited me from taking math my Freshman year because he said I'd never need to be good at math. So I ended up a year behind in math until I went to college.

He kept trying to push me into vocational programs.

I ended up graduating with a bunch of honors. I still don't know what his problem was.

[Arugula Latte]

42. In college, an ancient professor droning on about ancient history.

I had been excited to take the class ... but, my gawd. That guy should have retired 20 years prior.

"Aaaaaaaaand then in such and such a date Cyrus led troops into such and such battle. Aaaaaaaaand then in such and such a date So-and-So did something or other at some place. Aaaaaaaaaaand then ... "

[JohnKleeb]

43. 11th Grade Chemistry teacher

Ironically enough my best teacher was my 12th grade Chemistry teacher.
I'll explain more. I think part of the problem was that I flat out wasn't ready for chemistry and I didn't know anyone in the class but also the fact it was early in the morning. The problem with Dr. Waters though was she couldn't relate to us since I believe she had been a college professor before teaching. She couldn't make the subject fun either. She really wasn't mean though just very out of touch with her students. Now my 12th grade chem teacher was awesome for so many reasons than one.
My 8th grade Math teacher was bad too because she would lose her cool and would always be taking people out of that class, and I got picked on in that class too.

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

44. It's a tie between my Public Law and History of Kansas professors at WSU

Both men should have their heads bashed together, be strung up and forced to review videos of their teaching methods 24 hours a day for 5 years.

[Downtown Hound]

45. I had a fundie whack job philosophy teacher

at my junior college named Peterson. He spent all of the class time trying to prove creationism was real, that secular humanists are morally bankrupt, abortion is murder and yadda yadda ya you get the point. He got complained about to the Dean several times and then would just stand up in front of the class and whine about how his free speech rights were being trampled on. If I hadn't been transferring to another school after that semester and needed the class to do it, I would have dropped it and taken it from a different professor. The guy was such an obnoxious loser.

[Reverend_Smitty]

46. After reading this list...I don't think I have much to complain about...

I've had some teachers who didn't really teach well but none ever treated me like crap. In fact I had one spanish teacher where I learned nothing in her class but she absolutely loved me...my senior year I had her for study hall and I was the only person in her section (it was in the cafeteria and there were three different sections) that was allowed to talk essentially. Every day my friend would come over to my side of the cafeteria and we would "study". One day she walked over yelled at two freshmen for talking and when they pointed out that my friend and I (who were sitting directly behind them) have been doing the exact same thing ALL year, she smiled at me and said, "I don't know what you guys are talking about...She (me) is helping her friend study spanish" A class my friend wasn't even taking nor did we even have a book out. At that point my friend responded "you can do no wrong in this school...you are the ultimate teacher's pet...I envy you"(and it was true, I could have gotten away with anything that year because I was one of the "smart kids"). The look we got from those freshmen was not to be believed. So I can see where preferential treatment happens in school thankfully I was always on the receiving side of it.

Another example on the last day of school senior year, it was a half day and basically everybody spent it half going to class saying goodbyes and half milling about getting their yearbook signed. Well my friends and I spent it with walkie-talkies and water pistols sneaking around the school playing a huge game of tag. The worst chastising we got was "hey guys don't let the VP catch you...cause she would be mad"...I know other people that if caught by those same teachers would have probably prohibited from attending their graduation.

[SOteric]

47. I had a professor as an undergrad

who informed us on the first day of class that our "opinions were crap, the opinions of others that we'd read and learned were crap, and (his) were the only that were correct or even mattered."

The course was the Early Works of Shakespeare and I would have very much enjoyed it being more of a discussion process rather than a test of our abilities to remember his lectures verbatim.

[frogmarch]

48. 8th grade history teacher

For chewing gum in class, students had to remove their shoes and stick their wads of gum onto the blackboard right above eye level and, standing on tiptoe, touch the gum with their noses. The teacher would put thumb tacks, points up, under their heels, and make the gum chewers stand there on tiptoe till the teacher decided to remove the tacks.

[devilgrrl]

49. Quite a few actually.

:mad:

[mvd]

50. Mr. Bowers in college

Accounting was my major, and he treated class like a middle school class where he let us out very early after watching a program. Actually discussed his flight plan for a whole class. Exams were impossible because he didn't teach the material. I finally got a B in one of his courses after giving him a good evaluation after the previous course (just as an experiment for sure.)

[SeattleGirl]

51. Mr. Guppy, a college prof I had.

And yes, that was really his name (and for you Seattle folk, his daughter, Nancy, was a regular on "Almost Live!")

Anyway, I'm no dummy, and neither were the other folks in my class -- we were all honors students. And yet every single one of us FLUNKED our mid-term exam! It was multiple choice. We believed that Mr. Guppy must have used the answer key from another test to grade these tests. We filed a formal complaint with the school after he would not back down and check to see what had happened.

[AccessGranted]

52. Mrs. Weiner in the 2nd Grade and Mr. Williams for Art - Grade 7

Weiner was was snooty and racist and she obviously did NOT like children. All she did was complain all day about everything and make racial comments. I guess she thought we wouldn't notice because we were little kids. People started telling their parents about her and the parents started coming in complaining to the principal and she disappeared. We had a substitute for the rest of year and we were all glad. She was just WRONG!

Mr. Williams was anal. He wanted everything drawn precisely and we had to measure everything we drew with a ruler and if it was not the exact measurement he requested he'd make you do it over or fail you. He was also freaky. He would try to touch girls between their legs with a yardstick. No lie! On the last day of school a bunch of us went to his room after school when there was hardly anyone in the building. We covered him in tempra paints and locked him in the art closet and left. We told him if he said one word to anyone we'd report him for child molestation. I hope they never found him. He was a pervert and a nutball and should not have been allowed near children.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

53. The worst teacher I ever had was as an adult

when I took college algebra for the second time after a ten-year gap.

I needn't have bothered. After having had a superb--really superb--TA for trigonometry the previous quarter, I was faced with an utter incompetent for college algebra.

He was completely unprepared, had to ask the students what the day's class was supposed to be about, coulen't work some of the homework problems that people asked about, and never did the "comprehension checks" that every good teacher should do, i.e. try to ascertain in some way that the students are actually following what you're saying.

I did okay, because the course was review for me, but some of the other students were completely lost. Some of them shouldn't even have been in the class, because they appeared not to have had elementary algebra. (I guess they thought that college algebra was the same as elementary algebra, only taught in college.)

When I took college algebra before, the first order of business was a placement test. If you didn't have the basics of high school algebra II, they sent you to an algebra II class that met at the same time. Here, it didn't seem to bother the TA when a student leaned over to me (an obviously older student) and asked bewilderedly (and audibly), "What does he mean, 'factor the equation'?"

[Starbucks Anarchist]

54. "Dr." Bareiss.

Alleged film professor -- this dumbass showed up a half hour late to his own class on the first day because he thought it started later.

He also didn't know about simple things like DVD region codes. I corrected him in front of everyone, which was probably one reason he didn't like me.

The music videos we made as a project were VERY harshly graded, beyond any possible method of fairness. In fact, the absolute worst video inexplicably got the best grade.

One time, I went into his office to talk to him about a grade I was not satisfied with. He made some stupid comments defending himself, to which I replied, "That's childish," causing him to shout me out of his office. Good thing for him -- I probably would have slammed his head through the desk.

I do remember our collective glee as we filled out end-of-year evaluations on him. We all hated him and just went all out on the guy. That was his first year of teaching, and I later found out he only lasted two more years there.

He was funny-looking, too -- he looked like Groucho Marx and sounded like Steven Wright. :rofl:

[solinvictus]

55. Mrs. Zinnerman..

Algebra 1, the only problems she could complete were the examples in her teacher's manual. We stole it one day and she was completely befuddled. She is an example of what's wrong with some teacher's unions: they seem to protect the incompetent.

[XemaSab]

56. I've had some really awful teachers

From elementary school through middle school, high school, and college, but the absolute worst was Mrs Rickmond in 5th grade.

She was mixed-race, about 400 pounds, and warty. Whenever I read the description of Umbridge in Harry Potter she comes to mind.... she looked like a giant toad.

She was totally crazy and totally terrifying. This was at a private school in Oakland, and up until that year our teachers had been pretty good and pretty mellow. She decided our class was BAD and needed to be PUNISHED.

She was totally insane. She would give the whole class detention for minor infractions, and not let kids up to use the bathroom. In one incident this girl was crying she had to pee so bad. She liked to grab us HARD and one time she broke this kid's wrist. She decided I had a learning disability (all my teachers before and since have thought, for the most part, that I was one of the brightest kids they had ever taught), and she called me "Poor Pitiful Pearl." BTW, my name's not Pearl.

The school didn't want to fire her because she was some big pooh-bah on the Oakland Public School board, making 2/2 school board members I have met who are complete assholes.

I thankfully have very few memories of the time I spent in her classroom, and I transferred to a public school at Thanksgiving break. Which was in some ways a bad idea 'cause that spawned a wave of shitty teachers, but what can ya do? :shrug:

[u4ic]

57. Mrs King in grade 1

She spent most of her time yelling at us.

Lovely, isn't it, that someone goes into early childhood education when they plainly hate kids? :eyes:

[idgiehkt]

58. Wow. Free therapy. Sarah Bertok

6th or 7th grade...can't remember.

This lady was a witch. She hated all the kids who didn't have good handwriting. Mine was lousy so she hated me. My brother had her the next year and she hated him too. His handwriting was even worse than mine, so naturally she hated him even more than she hated me.

Witch had a handwriting fetish, I think, now that I look back at it. When my brother had her she sent samples of all her students' handwriting off to be analyzed. She then picked some out and read them to the class. When my brother went up to her and asked her 'what does mine say', the witch just sneered at him and said 'you don't want to know'. God, I'd love to cold-cock her for that one. Makes me crazy thinking about her talking to him like that. He was a little fellow, smart as a whip but small and not athletically talented, had a hard enough time as it was. If I ever run across her grave I'll definitely spit on it.

[vixengrl]

59. Probably Miss Chase, my 3rd grade teacher.

She was a short woman with either the most unfortunate curly hair or a truly bad perm, and she even seemed small and squatty to eight year olds. She made my mom come in to the school because I couldn't do the dumb idiotic multiplication drill. Here's how this thing went--You had a piece of paper numbered 1-10. You'd have a number-everyone started out with the same number, but if you did the drill right, you'd go on to the next, so you did the first times table, the second, the third and so on. And if you didn't get it, you'd do your number over. She'd mix it to see how well it was memorized-- "Eight times your number, four times your number, two times your number, one times your number." It was spit out rather fast, so it was more of a speed drill as to how fast your little eight year old fingers could take down the result, and I think that was why it locked me up. And then the result was public because she had a chart and gave stars to kids as they got through each number. So everyone could see if a kid wasn't passing on the four times table, and how many times they had to do it, or whatever. I loathed it. If you asked me to stand there and tell you the times table, I could. If you gave me time to write it, I could. If you didn't broadcast my failure and shame to the rest of the eight year olds, I'd've got over it.

I drilled every day with my mom afterschool, hoping I'd finally get it through what I was convinced was my thick head. And one day Miss Chase must've had it with me, because she took me to the principal's office and made me call my mom in front of the principal. And I had to explain that I failed, again. And I was crying, because I didn't know what I did wrong. I tried.

My mom marched right over to the school and sat in the principal's office. I sat outside, so I didn't really know what she said. But do know she did not appreciate having to put my brother in a stroller and schlepping down to school. I believe there may have been some belief that she had a daughter, not a parrot or an adding machine and that Miss Chase was a teacher and could possibly figure out a way to, uh, teach. She most likely asserted that she went over the tables with me and I knew them when I left in the morning, so there must have been *something else* going on. I certainly did not listen into a grown-up conversation.

Because I made it through two semesters of calculus in college (albiet with a math-major boyfriend), and now work in accounting to some extent, I believe Miss Chase did no permanent damage.

[ScreamingMeemie]

60. Herr Weeks...German 1,2,3 and 4. I can't believe I went back for more.

Why? Because he hated me on the basis of my brother. Yep. that's it. One time he made me stand outside for having a Mylar balloon that someone gave me for my birthday. Another? Because I didn't have my German book. Once, he ripped up my paper because I "looked at him 'wrong'"....Ick.

[WannaBeGrumpy]

65. awww.....

my poor little mommy! Im glad Im the oldest. And I take French with a teacher who loves me!
Au Revoir

[WannaBePassingFair]

66. So Sorry.....

for your bad german teacher experience. YAY NIKI for your lovely french Teacher. My spanish teacher is just CRAZY.

[LibDemAlways]

61. 7th Grade English/Social Studies

Boring as hell. Chip on his shoulder a mile wide. At the end of the year he assigned a research paper. I had just returned from the NY World's Fair (my parents took me out of school for a week), and chose that as my topic. Did a damn good job, too. Included lots of pictures, brochures from various attractions, and a detailed write-up. I was so proud of that paper. He gave me a C- for no other reason than he was jealous a mere kid like me had the opportunity to go and he didn't. Couldn't find a damn thing wrong with it. Just determined to punish me.

Second worst - 9th grade Phys Ed. - I am the least athletic person I know, and thought it was stupid to get a letter grade based on how fast I could run around the track. I couldn't run any faster than a "D," anyway, so, I figured, why bother? I'll walk. Oh man, did that teacher ever rag on me. If looks could kill, I'd have dropped dead in front of some piece of gymnastic equipment I could not hoist myself over. She was merciless.

My husband though probably had the worst teacher of all time - a college statistics prof whose idea of teaching was to turn his back to the students, write math problems on the board and mumble to himself for an hour. I went along one time just to see for myself, and yep, it was that bad.

[Fox Mulder]

62. Most of my teachers were decent from K-12...

it was my college professors I really hated...especially this one geology professor. God do I ever hate him! He was the one that I hated so much that I dropped out of college! :grr: :grr: :grr:

[Chomskyite]

63. Robert Hesse, Band Director, Hope High School, Hope Ark

I'm a teacher now and when I have to make a decision in the classroom or out, I ask myself what Hesse would do, then DO THE EXACT OPPOSITE.

His two only educational tools were humiliation and thuggery. The first, he'd use if you got a note wrong in rehearsals (if you weren't one of his many pets). There you were, an awkward, insecure 9th grader in a band of 70 trying to play baritone horn, an instrument that outweighed you and which the cheaper, but much less impressive-looking trombone had made redundant even before the baritone horn would be invented. You're in your third year learning to play it, and suddenly you're expected to sight-read doofus band arrangements of John Williams or Richard Strauss or Huey Lewis and the News. If you fluffed, Hesse'd bring the whole band to a halt and scream at you, kick things, throw things, ask just how stupid you really were and generally bring the planet down around your head. All in front of the majorettes!

During marching season, he'd give to select bullies from each instrumental section the power to browbeat the rest of the section like Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket. My particular section leader was Sandra White, a disgustingly foulmouthed and violent senior black girl. I was the only white guy in the "squad." You can only imagine what I went through.

He'd gotten ball cancer at some point before I joined The Superband. The seniors all said he was soooo much mellower afterward.

But hell, we won the state band contest that year, the Governor's Cup. And we played at one of Clinton's gubernatorial inaugruations. And I made it through the five-mile sesquicentennial parade held in Little Rock in mid-July conscious, but barely.

I hear he's still a band director, at Ouachita Baptist University. I graduated there. I know damn well they won't let him get away with his strutting martinet routine up there.

[Hardrada]

64. Jane Genrich,, Sixth Grade

This woman singlehandedly wrecked my pleasant time in elementary school and actually precipated emotional and physical illness. She did not like me because I innocently asked her questions about history etc. to which she did not have answers and I was therefore singled out for ridicule and painful insults (four-eyes for instance since I had to begin wearing glasses the year I had her). The worst was that my class ever after thought of me as a ridiculous person when before that I had been held in fairly high esteem. My happiest days in her school year were when I sprained my ankle and managed to stay out of her classroom the entire last MONTH of the school year. I think my folks had something to do with that. The next year when I did not have her I took several opportunities to openly jeer her.

[Xipe Totec]

67. So bad, I can't remember his name

I've never been prouder of flunking a course than with this unmitigated asshole.

A civics course in High School, in Mexico. The textbook, he chose was "World Defeat" by Salvador Borrego, a pile of dung that claimed the world was dominated by a Judeo-Masonic cabal, and praised Hitler for his noble attempt to eradicate this scourge.

:grr:

I cannot believe they let this shit-head teach.

[WannaBePassingFair]

68. I have mine right now.

My civics teacher. He is a total freeper. On the very first day he asked us if we agreed with the Iraq war, and then replied to those (including me) who disagreed, that we were wrong and unpatriotic for not supporting our country. He also makes cracks at the french and brags about how he was a Marine, but hes quite a hypocrite since hes only 27 and not over there.

[NJ Democrats]

69. My Computers teacher

He comes up with all these really stupid projects that we have to do. Tzhere are really annoying.

[Nikia]

70. 7th grade art teacher

She got her engineering degree in the 1950's and found that as a woman she couldn't get a job. She became an art teacher instead. We actually had red pen marks on our art assignments where the lines should have been. I am so glad that they abolished letter grades for junior high art the year before I took it because I would have gotten a C instead of a S, ruining being on the honor roll. She also hung up our art with our grades marked on it so everyone else could see how we did. I was glad that I never failed an art project, unlike about 25% of our class.

[NNadir]

71. An organic chem professor who didn't understand I-Br addition to a double

bond.

Here's what happened:

I took Organic Chem in summer school, since I was trying not to waste time on vacations. I was at a large state university with a fair amount of prestige, but they sent some guy down from a smaller university to teach the summer course as a guest instructor.

He tried to come across as a really cool guy, but it was apparent in a short amount of time that he had a bug up his ass, maybe because his regular university was more or less considered the provinces.

A lot of people who were taking the course were, in fact, not regular students there. There were some kids from prestigious Ivy League schools who were trying to knock the course out while spending their parents. (A lot of them were pre-meds.) There were about 200 students in the class.

Anyway, he announced a straight 90%, A, 80% B, 70% C, and 60% D, lower F policy.

When he gave his first test, it was clear that he intended to grade brutally. There was essentially no partial credit. But I was holding my own, and it really didn't bug me all that much, until, he gave an exam on which 20% of the grade depended on the mechanism of the addition of iodine-bromide across a double bond. I reasoned, by analogy to the addition of bromine, that the addition would occur via a bridged iodinium cation which could open in two ways. This had implications to subsequent questions on the exam. His answer key said was that there was localized addition, no bridged ion. Because his answer was different than mine he graded me 0 points for that part of the exam, which left my grade at 80%, low B.

I thought that his answer was wrong, so I went to the library and looked the actual reaction up to see what the literature said. A professor had been using that very same question as an exam question, which was apparently in a text book somewhere, not the one we were using for the course. Since he reasoned exactly as I had, that the iodine would give a bridged cation, much as bromine does under certain circumstances, in the absence of oxygen or radical inducing ions, he wondered if the textbook was correct. Since he thought the text could be wrong he experimentally did the reaction and confirmed his (and my analysis). He actually wrote his paper citing the textbook example therin. (That was cool.)

I brought the research paper to my "professor," and explained the situation.

Here's what I would have done if I was teaching the course. I would have brought the student to the front of the class and had him explain the result, offering it as a teaching exercise. I would have then offered everyone who had thus reasoned all of their points back on the exam.

He, on the other hand, fought me tooth and nail, acknowledging that I was right about that part of the exam, but offering me only 5 of the twenty points. I had to explain to him that the other 15 points followed from that 5 point part of the test. He gave me all the points but behaved like a petulant child about it, throwing a tantrum.

Fuck him.

It turned out that among 200 students, I had the third highest grade in the class, which he said was a B+. There was a near riot, because he gave more than 2/3 of the class D or F grades. There were no A's, a few B's, and the rest were C's. Mind you, we had some Princeton and Harvard type pre-meds in the class.

The Chemistry Department office was pretty literally stormed. The grades were over-ruled, and about 10% of the class were upgraded to A's, including me.

What a piece of shit that guy was. My impression, looking back on it, was that he was a shit-for-brains chemist as well. No wonder he was in the provinces. It's surprising he didn't lose his job there. He apparently didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.

[xmas74]

72. Either the teacher who started nasty rumors about girls

and then would hit on them once they turned 21

or

The three teachers who were sleeping w/ their students (one of them sleeping w/ special needs kids that came from abusive homes)

or

the one who killed his only child.

You pick.

[Not_Giving_Up]

73. Algebra I, 9th grade

I don't remember her name anymore, but she was horrid. I was new to the school district because I'd moved in with my grandparents over the summer to escape an abusive home. I was shy back then, not a problem anymore, and had difficulty making friends. I had no friends, I really felt invisible to the other kids. I always hated math, and she gave me no reason to like it. I would sleep through her class, and she would let me, but she woke the others who tried to sleep up. It got to a point where I would just bust out whatever book I was reading and not even try to hide it. I failed every grading period, and she never sent a failing notice home to be signed. She gave up on me without even trying. the next semester, I had a different teacher who worked her ass off to get me up to speed, and I made A's and B's. I went to summer school for the first semester of Algebra I, easily flying through.

[doc03]

74. 9th Grade General Science teacher Miss Crispen

She rushed through the text book the first couple semesters until she got to the chapter on sound maybe about 1/2 way through the book. The weird thing was once we got to that chapter we spent the rest of the year on it. She was a big opera fan and she would bring opera records out each day and play them. From the outset she said the only requirement to pass was to write a report on an opera at the end of the year. I looked up Madam Butterfly in the encyclopedia and made my report from that. She was probably in her seventies at the time, I remember one time when she tried to light the Bunsen burner and had trouble lighting a match she must have gone through a half dozen matches and finally she made a spark and the gas ignited, there must have been a 8 foot ball of flame around her.

[baldguy]

75. I had a prof in college for my Statistics class.

She couldn't add a column of numbers three times and get the same answer twice. Worse still, she had four sections of calculus too. God help those kids. (I didn't have her for that. My calc teacher only spoke Chinese, but at least she knew her stuff.)

[treestar]

76. College calculus professor

German, he barely spoke English, and explained nothing.

[teach1st]

77. So far, so good....

..I mean, nobody has mentioned me. Yet.

[fortyfeetunder]

78. 4th grade teacher

very traumatic year. Changed teachers mid-year (the first one left the country) and the replacement was the worst. Just glad to get that year over with.

[GRLMGC]

79. A drama teacher

I have so many stories. Basically, he never taught anything and told stupid stories the whole period. He was violently temperamental and he knocked a podium on some poor sod one time.