Tell me about the worst teacher you ever had

[skygazer]

And for any teachers out there, I've had more good than bad teachers but right now I've got one who sucks rotten eggs sunny side up and I need to know I'm not alone. :P

[redqueen]

1. Sixth grade... Mr. Cox

Had an assignment to write a poem for a competition, and he accused me of plagiarism for using imagery he thought I couldn't have imagined myself (eating peaches and cream on a swing (shut up! I was in 6th grade!))

Anyway the jerk wouldn't even give it back to me so I could keep it for my own. And he didn't enter it into the competition of course.

I was heartbroken, insulted, and looked at teachers in a whole new light after that.

[skygazer]

5. Wow, that's me in ninth grade

It was a creative writing course, I think. We were told to read the examples in the book of a descriptive paragraph and then write our own. Our first assignment.

I wrote a description of a horse and handed it in. He made me stay after class the next day and demanded to know where I copied it from. Didn't give me the benefit of the doubt at all - just immediately assumed it was plagiarized.

For the rest of the class, I just did a variation on the drivel in the book and didn't learn a damn thing. And that was the beginning of my disillusionment with high school.

Fucker.

[China_cat]

2. Mr. Besnecker the younger.

9th grade history. Fucking lech. Thought the girls in the class were good for nothing but looking up their skirts or down their blouses.

[AllegroRondo]

3. In college, computer science course on operating systems

the guy would just read the book to us. With a very flat, droning voice. And say "um" every third word. Lots of people would fall asleep, some even snored, and he would just keep going.
Questions? "Read the book"
Problems with your term paper? "its in the book / syllabus. Just read it."

[skygazer]

4. That's what this wingnut I have now does

Stands up there and reads the book. The course is Intellectual Property Law, a pretty vital course for a paralegal hopeful in Silicon Valley.

It's a 4 hour night class, too which doesn't help.

Many "um's".

Oh, and she has NO control over the class. A lot of the people in there are older and already working in IP Law. She lectures directly to the front row, a group of very loud women. Anyone who sits further back is shit outta luck. There's one woman who sits near me who tries to ask a question now and then and she usually gets the reply, "Well, what do YOU think?" delivered sarcastically. :wow:

When she DOES bother to explain something, she cannot seem to give a clear and simple answer, going off on tangents lasting anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, with diagrams and a lot of fuzzy examples - generally it leaves us more confused than when we started.

Oh, and I have a woman behind me who I swear has Tourette's Syndrome - I can hear her throughout the entire class talking and cursing to herself. :wtf:

It's wild.

Luckily, the material makes sense to me and I've done well on all her little pop quizzes that she gives almost daily (which is why I have to be there).

[underpants]

26. My very first computer class was taught by a non-English speaker with bad penmanship

Asian fella-probably a great programmer or something but he had the Saturday 5week introduction to computers class. I had no idea I had signed up for a Saturday class until the night before when I sat back from moving in to realize I HAD CLASS TOMORROW. This guy couldn't write on the board very well either. I basically spent the time teaching myself-I had had NO time on a computer ever before that(this was 1994).

[skygazer]

28. This idiot I have can't write on the board

We have whiteboards in the classroom and she can't figure out why the markers stop working - she's holding them tilted downward away from the tip. :wtf:

I want to scream from the back of the room every time I see her switching markers because they stop working - how stupid do you have to be not to realize why? :banghead:

[underpants]

30. LOL

Too funny

[redqueen]

31. Geezaloo...

:rofl:

Maybe leave her an anonymous note, explaining how those things work? Sad (but more funny, really) to think of her embarassing herself that way...

[La Lioness Priyanka]

6. my bengali teacher kept throwing me outside class because she didnt think i respected the language

truth is, i just didnt respect her.

we got into some interesting tiffs.

once she lowered my grade (she didnt realize it was me, so when she handed out the tests and realized i had the highest grade, she deliberately lowered it)

[redqueen]

33. Hah..

that's nice, deliberately lowering the grade.

I wonder what kind of stories other students who've had her class could tell... that's so blatantly nasty.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

43. in my class she only picked on me. which was weird because almost nobody bullied me

i dont know why she thought she would get away with it. she didnt.

i ended up getting the highest score in bengali literature in my school, in a standardized test that was not graded by here.

[Joe Fields]

7. In the seventh grade, a substitute teacher grabbed me by the throat,

lifted me off the ground about a foot, and slammed my head against a locker.
Just because I was clowning around.

[redqueen]

36. Jesus...

Makes me wonder why some of these people become teachers in the first place.

[dropkickpa]

8. 6th and 7th grade pre-algebra and algebra

Mrs. Armstead. She hated me the day I walked into the classroom. At one point, when she was screaming at me and threatening me, I told her she was acting crazy and she grabbed me by the arm (and she had horrible inch long fake talons) and wouldn't let me go until I complained about the blood pouring down my arm and dripping on the floor. Somehow, me reading a book after I finished and handed in the test was a bad enough example of behavior that the administration didn't think it warranted any further action.

I still have the fucking scars (hard to see because they are cobvered by a tattoo now). My mom, for some reason, wasn't the bulldog she was for my brothers when it came to school issues and the incident was never pursued (my dad was out of the country on business). Dropkid is in the feeder area for that school, but I got her into a magnet program so she'd never have to face what i did there. That school was a fucking cesspit.

Oh yeah, she also made me re-take every single test because she was convinced I was cheating on all of them.

[skygazer]

9. What is it with Algebra teachers?

Another of my worst teachers was my Algebra teacher in 9th grade (I'm old - we didn't get Algebra until then).

She was horrible, cranky and bitchy. She didn't explain anything - when you had a question, she'd snap, "It's in the book!"

She dragged me out of my seat by my hair one day because I passed a note to a classmate (thank dog she didn't grab the note - it was about what a bitch she was) and hurled me out of the room with instructions to go to the office.

I never went back to that class. She was out of her mind.

She's the same teacher who belted my older brother on the head with an encyclopedia.

[underpants]

27. I had one in college who hated and I mean HATED white people

and me being Mr.Whiteguy personified felt her wrath the whole semester. No partial credit for those page long equations-I found out later that she gave partial credit based, it appears, on your blackness and femaleness. The further you were away from that the less credit you got. I think I somehow escaped with a C.

[Karenina]

57. I had one in 8th grade who was OUTRAGED

and I do mean OUTRAGED that this dark spot was taking up desk space in her accelerated class...

HERE SHE IS:

http://www.missnc.org/history/index.html

[dropkickpa]

46. This one did many of the same things

She was a horror and I was stuck with her for 2 years. I went from a kid who loved school and was an over-acheiver to a moody withdrawn wreck when in school because of her and that place. Though me and my brothers fought constantly and often viciously when we weren't getting into trouble in other ways, I'd never before had an adult treat me with such violence (my parents did not practice corporeal punishment) and it scared the living hell out of me.

The only spot of brightness was getting pulled out once a week for the gifted program. I cried on the days when it was cancelled. It took me 5 more years before I'd enter an algebra classroom. In high school I took geometry and trig, but cut class for algebra 2 every single day for two years. Just couldn't deal with it.

[GRLMGC]

56. Crazy!

I had a pre-algebra teacher w/ a very similar name (two additional letters) who was insane. The witch even made me cry one time.

[Initech]

10. High school algebra teacher

Oh my god this guy was insane. He had a VERY strict method of the heading he required on his paper, and if even the slightest thing wrong with it - for example if you put "1/20/07" instead of "1.20.07", or if you put your last name, first name but forgot the comma (yeah, :wtf: ), he'd mark the entire paper wrong without checking any of the problems. Another thing is - he liked the kids that sucked up to him, that was nauseating. Boy I got into some fights with that guy.

[mvd]

11. I had a few bad ones

- Mrs. Scheible in 2nd grade, who didn't like kids

- Mrs. Naughton in high school. I did well in the class, but she'd make kids cry for just forgetting homework once.

- Mr. Cullen (algebra teacher) in 9th grade. He seemed to be more concerned with tricking students than making them learn.

- Professor Bowers (economics professor) in college. Wouldn't teach the material, and then expected us to do well on the exams. Once, he spent a class on his flight plan. The whole class cheated for the 1 credit accessory test.

- Professor Jessup (computer science professor) in college. Was behind on programming methods even for the time, and was very unhelpful. I barely passed.

- Professor Wait (math for ECBA professor) in college. Took off points for seemingly everything, like we EcBA majors were math majors. I barely passed.

- Professor O'Neill (economics professor) in college. Could not understand her at all, even though she knew her stuff. You could get a C if you worked with the group on labs.

I almost listed Mr. Probert (English teacher) in high school just for those impossible short story tests that only a couple people per class passed. It's a good thing there were other parts of the semester grade.

I think the winner (or loser) is Professor Bowers.

[skygazer]

12. Professor Bowers sounds like another one in the program here

I haven't had him yet but apparently he teaches without a book - straight lecture - and he wanders off the subject all the time so he doesn't cover half the material that turns up on exams.

Oh, and he puts questions on his exams about the tangents he's gone off on in class. So you might end up with a question about what he served at a dinner party last March. :wtf:

[mvd]

38. Bowers used a book (just so he could appear to be..

teaching.) I wish Bowers put his tangents on his exams! They were much more memorable than his "teaching." He no longer teaches at the college, but they did have another Bowers (I know of no relation.)

[distantearlywarning]

13. 3rd Grade, Old Bat Mrs. Burress

Yes, I still remember her name 25 years later. That's how much of an impression she made on me. I wondered for a brief moment if she was dead yet, but then figured she was too pickled and sour to die. She's probably still tormenting innocent 3rd graders out there somewhere.

She was the kind of teacher that was primarily interested in order and discipline - love of learning can come second just so long as everything is in its proper place and every student is following the (many) classroom rules. My constant questioning of everything, creativity, and anti-authority streak even at that young age made me her least-favorite student that year. I think I must have been sent to the office at least 25 times that year, mostly for offenses ranging from asking "why" when told to do something to having an untidy desk (the horror!).

The worst thing, though, was that I attended a gifted school one day a week. On that day I had to be in her classroom for one hour in the morning, and then was allowed to leave to take a bus to the other school where the gifted program was held. She was extremely resentful that I of all her students was the one going to the gifted school (because in her world, tidy, meek, rule-following students were the "gifted" ones). So to punish me, she regularly made fun of me in front of the other kids when I had to leave in the morning. Example: "DistantEarlyWarning gets to LEAVE again. She probably thinks she's SPECIAL! Isn't that right, DistantEarlyWarning? You think you're better than everyone else?" And other things like that.

It was great. I LOVED being singled out like that. :sarcasm:

To this day it still pisses me off royally when people talk shit like that about gifted and talented kids. That's actually probably my number one button in the entire world - assholes making fun of and trying to squash talented people (smart, athletic, or whatever) just because they happen to have something some other mean little person doesn't. I liked my special school, but I didn't ask to be put there, and I didn't think I was better than anyone else in my class. I just wanted my teacher not to make fun of me in front of all the other students. Sadly, that's been a recurring theme throughout my life - don't dare show how smart you are, don't act "special", pretend you're dumb or risk the wrath of resentful, angry people.

But I guess we've already had the flame wars from hell here on DU about the whole gifted and talented / anti-intellectual thing.

Mrs. Burress, wherever you are, you suck. And I'm a very successful adult, no thanks to you trying to crush the spirit of the 9 year old me every day.

[Javaman]

14. 4th Grade. The alchoholic Mr. Skoopinsky...

Reemed me out infront of the class because I didn't understand some math problem. Called me stupid. I could smell the booze on his breath.

That wasn't the worst of it. A kid in my class, Timothy, was hung by his belt loop from a hook, the teacher installed in the ceiling.

He was always four sheets to the wind.

Or Mr. Goldstien who would lock kids in a "special" locker in the back of the room for the entire day if they weren't behaving.

then there were the other teachers in junior high. the pervs. hated the boys in the class but would put the moves on the girls. really sick. mr. dizzino and mr. ownes. two colossal pricks of the highest order.

then there was the demonic gym teacher mr. quattrini. who used to hit kids upside the head if they weren't fast enough or take a yard stick to the back of their thighs to make them run faster. fucking turd.

I could go on, but what's the point? they are old and miserable people now who have to live with their crimes against humanity. Dumb bastards.

[KitchenWitch]

15. First grade - Sharon Rhodes

Evil evil bitch. Should have never taught in elementary school.

It is seriously too emotionally painful to detail the pain she put me through.

:cry:

[skygazer]

17. Yikes!

I'm sorry. :hug:

[KitchenWitch]

19. ...

:hug:

Suffice to say, some of my emotional baggage is parked firmly at her classroom door.

[Breeze54]

21. I'm sorry to hear that.

:(

I went through, I suspect, similar abuse.

It ruined my opinion of all authority figures and made my outlook of school bleak.

:hug:

[KitchenWitch]

22. Funny how that stuff colors my life even today!

:hug:

Tenure truly is a double edged sword.

[skygazer]

25. Well, that's such a tender and impressionable age!

First grade is intimidating and new enough without having some maniac wielding control over you. :shudder:

I'm fortunate that I didn't get a truly scary teacher until 4th grade - by then, I'd had a series of good ones so I knew they existed. :hug:

[underpants]

29. I had a first grade teacher who played WWI songs on an organ and didn't let me go to the bathroom

Can't remember her name Mrs. Russell that was it. She would NOT let me go to the bathroom so when the bell finally rang I just sat there and pissed all over her classroom.

:bounce:

I will never forget the time she came into our FIRST GRADE class to tell us about this horrible horrible movie that she saw that weekend. Oh it was just horrible why would they make such a horrible movie about such a terrible place with such terrible people.....the movie was "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" swear to god. Once she mentioned the name I knew I HAD to see this thing.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

16. Graduate School...

Had a professor who clearly had a political opinion (he was a committed communist) and he basically allowed only socialist/communist interpretations in his British Lit seminar. When another student and I called him on it by writing research papers that clearly disagreed with his cherished position, we received a grade of, and I kid you not, "D - -" on our projects. That a D double-minus, a grade which I didn't think existed, and certainly not something given out in a graduate seminar.

We complained to the Department Chair, who promptly pissed his pants and said there was nothing he could do.

[Breeze54]

18. I went to parochial school.

'nuff said. :(

It would be easier to say who the good teachers were throughout the nine years!

Starting in first grade; I was hit, slapped, locked in a closet, thrown across a room,
made fun of/teased, accused of a crime (that I had nothing to do with), and generally,
treated like shit by absolutely certiied crazy fucking nuns! :grr:

Later on in my life, my father apologized to me for making me go to those schools (2).
He said he should have listened to me and not my mother.

Ya think??? :shrug:

[redqueen]

35. Eh, not so much different really.

I was thrown violently into a bathroom in the second grade, slammed me into the sink.

Public school.

The nuns in my CCD class were much nicer, by contrast.

[malta blue]

20. Sophomore english - accused me of plagiarism

on a creative writing assignment. I had to sit through an ad-hoc committee meeting and face expulsion. After hours of denying it and pleading with them I finally stood up and demanded that he present the work that I was copying. He could not - I had actually written the poem myself.

I have never written anything creative again though. He killed it.

[skygazer]

23. That seems to be a common story

What a horrible thing to do to a kid. My situation was similar - the teacher didn't have any particular work in mind that he thought I'd plagiarized - essentially, what he was saying was that the work was too good to have been done by me.

Nice compliment, asshole.

[malta blue]

24. Nice compliment is right....

He only taught at the school for a year. He was such an asshole to me after that too. He gave me crappy grades even though I knew I deserved better, and I would challenge him on my exams all the time. Thankfully, my parents always believed in me and did nto give me a hard time over the grades.

[Seashell Eyes]

32. Every assistant principal I've ever had

was an asshole. I guess it comes with the job. They love punishing children and feeling superior to them.

[KiraBS]

34. I have a short list...

Mr Baldwin - Ruined Roman History for me, by being a nasty bully and picking on me and ignoring the bullying of others.
Mr S-M - Scary and weird maths teacher, that got convicted for sexual abuse at the local boy's school (hence the initals. Had an unpredictable mood swing, could be very nasty.
Miss Shepard - Physical Education. Sadistic bitch who made us play hockey in tiny skirts, outdoors in winter and shouted at us because we were freezing, whilst she was all cozy in a nice fleecy top of the rang tracksuits.
Miss Peterson - Music teacher and friend of Miss Shepard, sarcastic, rude we loathed them both.
Miss Madison - Actually a fine science teacher but she openly admitted she hated the kids in the lower years and would be in a fierce mood if she had to teach anyone under the age of 10. She had a voice like fog horn and a very, very nasty temper. One of my best friend was in her "home room", she was being sent to boarding school and Miss Madison relentless bullied my friend, threatened her with bad reports if she step out of line to her new school, once pushed her into the stairs and got so bad that my friend was physically sick at the prospect of going to school and missed the whole last term at that school. I understand that it some people dislike private education but taking it out of an 11 year old, who had no choice in the matter, is cruel and makes someone unsuitable for teaching.
She also used get angry if people giggled during sex education videos, which at that age is natural.
I daydreamed through her lessons, her temper tantrums ruined science for many people.
Mr Hitchen - Mad art teacher, with a terrifying out of control temper, once throw a plate at a pupil and was suspended for it. Had a stalkerish obsession with my naturally curly hair and couldn't teach a class without mentioning it, making me a bigger target for bullying.
Mr Whittlesea - Had two rows of teeth top and bottom and very Professor Snape in temper and looks, taught IT before it was interesting, put people in detention for the slightest thing, would shout at us, didn't like kids.

Four of those are from middle school and the rest from high school

[Akoto]

37. I have a couple of good ones ...

In middle school, the vice principal approached my table at lunch and asked what I'd been reading. I was a nerd, and it was a D&D comic book. Nothing illegal in it. Nevertheless, she ripped it out of my backpack and skimmed through it. She asks, "Your mother lets you read this trash?" All eyes were on me, of course. One of my more humiliating memories. Ironically, however, that comic book would fetch me a nice chunk of change years later. :)

In high school, I had developed an anxiety disorder as a result of constant bullying. Most of my teachers were very caring and understanding, but my algebra teacher was not. I had to go to the nurse a lot because I was often sick (or my mind was telling me so). One day, I asked, and she basically said, "Fine, get the hell out of my classroom. Tired of you." So, I did, and I never came back. I left school to deal with my personal issues, and then got my diploma on my own. Best decision I've ever made.

[begin_within]

39. One teacher in my college flunked the entire class except for one student.

That student was a 4.0 GPA student and he told me he got an A in the class, but it was the hardest A he had ever gotten in his life. Everyone else did so badly, including me, that they re-ran the class the following trimester, with a different teacher. I believe the teacher's name was Merle Parmer. He was a real jerk personally as well.

[Heidi]

40. We had a physics teacher who constantly humiliated a dyslexic boy in our class.

Steve could perform every bit as well as the rest of us when the problem was presented verbally, but if it were written on the blackboard and he was chosen to solve it, he was left to twist in the wind in humiliating silence until she dismissed him to his seat with a superior roll of the eyes.

Hate is almost unknown to me, but I truly _hated_ this teacher for choosing Steve, time and time again, to solve problems written on the blackboard, when she could just as easily have recited the problem to him verbally and allowed him even a single moment to demonstrate his grasp of physics. She had the power to allow him to succeed, yet she chose, over and over again, to make him the object of derision, and it broke my heart for two freakin' years in a row. :grr:

The reason I knew my classmate could easily outpace 90 percent of us in physics is that he was in my advanced math classes, where we had a teacher who allowed us solve problems either verbally and in writing.

[skygazer]

41. You wonder why people like that become teachers

Maybe they're people with power trips who can't make it in other areas where power is given. So they take it out on kids who have no choice but to be there.

That's a really sad story. :(

[Dragonbreathp9d]

42. I had a history teacher

Whom I constantly had to correct in 8th grade. This made her really pissed off at me and would single me out (though she would tell my parents and such that I was her best student). She also referred to herself in the third person all the time. And she wore blue-jean skirts clear up to her boobs. And she threatened everyone with detentions constantly.

[mopinko]

44. sister mary alberta

i had a big sister, 3 years older than me. she got pregnant and dropped out of school as a junior. i went to the same school the following year. sis and i look a lot alike. so, this one nun sort of took her disappointment and disgust out on me. she called me my sister's name all the time. she taught art, and all the home ec electives.
my sister had a great artistic talent, as far as accuracy in drawing. this was the end all and be all talent that was rewarded. this is not really my strongest suit, so everything i did in this class was given c's. everything. whether these issues came to play or not. 2 years of that, and i gave up the idea that i had any talent.
i also took some of the home ec classes. i finished all the sewing projects for the year by the end of decemeber. that should have impressed her, but instead it bugged her because i had nothing to do then.
she cleaned my clock in the cooking class, because i didn't have hoity toity table manners. did things like wipe my hands on my apron, and taste the food i was cooking in an unapproved manner.
although i think i still have a some scar tissue from this, the good thing is- they hired a different art teacher my junior year. all my friends that were still in the class told me to come back. so senior year i did. this teacher was great. she saw art as more than decorations for the vatican.
afaik, i am the only one from those art classes still making art today.

[ZombieNixon]

45. Well, let's see...there was Mr. Jackson, 7th grade life science.

His lessons consisted of copying the chapter out of the book. He spent the rest of the time hitting on all the girls and class and always reeked of stale Doritos. He was fired after he came to school drunk one day.

Then there was Mr. Jacobs, 9th grade physics. Imagine a Christian fundie science teacher. He took the class to a Christian retreat camp (where we had to pray every day...though I didn't go, for that reason) with the excuse of conducting physics experiments. The experiments consisted of standing on a hill and seeing how much your weight differed from when you were standing on the ground. :eyes: As far as I know, he's still there.

[MilesColtrane]

47. #3

Was a football coach in high school who also taught algebra. If you asked a question that wasn't in the book, or asked him to elaborate on an answer, you were SOL.

#2
Was a college prof. who had the habit of arbitrarily deciding who was going to get good and bad grades.
A person I know cheated by copying a project that had received an A four years earlier, changing key parts to avoid detection. Otherwise it was exactly the same work.
He got a D on it. (The teacher never knew it wasn't his own. He had written a note while grading wondering why the student's work was slipping.)

#1
A High School social studies teacher that had been teaching for about 45 years. Her entire class consisted of us hand-copying notes.
No lecture, no elaboration, just copying what was written into a notebook for an hour every day.
The only break from the routine was when we were given a test.

She had her notes written on transparency rolls that were displayed on an overhead projector. We called them the Dead Sea Scrolls.

That class made me beg for the sweet release of death. I learned nothing.
I can still hear the squeak as she turned the crank on the roll bringing up the next page. ::shudder::

[gr8dane_daddy]

48. I would get into arguments with my HR professor...

when I was working on my MBA. Here are two cases:

Case 1: The prof was advocating racial profiling (he's an old guy of german descent, me a hispanic who grew up in Texas) at airports. He stated that during a recent trip (after 9/11), he was held up at the airport because of all the additional security monitoring. He argued that since the 9/11 terrorists were all middle eastern men, his pale, white ass should just waltz right through security while people like me should be scrutinized. I disagreed. I stated that terror organizations are not bound by color; take the IRA for example. You can't profile a terrorist based only on their appearance. A month later, the first of female suicide bombers attacked in the middle east. Never happened before...hmmmmm


Case 2: Prof posed the following situation for discussion. If you were an exempt employee who got the layoff list of employees on a Monday yet the layoff wasn't until Friday, would you tell the employees who were going to be laid off on Monday? Me...no. Him, why not? You hired them...what? You don't trust them? Me, two words: WORKPLACE VIOLENCE. I reminded him where the term GOING POSTAL came from....old geezer's been out of the workplace for 20+ years, simply out of touch.

We argued on several hypothetical situations. Never saw eye-to-eye. Managed a B out of that class, but easily one of the worst profs I have ever had.

[Mutley]

49. Ugh. In college. She was one of the most tenured professors in the English Dept.

I had to take three classes with her. She was just nasty.

Her syllabus had four pages devoted to just the rules of her classroom, which included -- no going to the bathroom during class (even the three hour night class I took with her), no drinks, no gum, no hats, no looking out the window, no laptops for note-taking (and no exceptions for those who couldn't hand-write notes for whatever reason), etc. She would lock the door exactly 15 seconds after start time so no one could come in even a few minutes late. If you answered a question in a way she considered wrong (and these were literature classes where individual interpretation will always vary), she would yell at you. She even called a few people names.

I could go on and on like this.

I busted my ass in all three classes I had with her, and the best she ever gave me was a B-. Nasty, miserable woman!

[HughBeaumont]

50. I think it'd be easier to tell you about the BEST teacher I've ever had . . .

. . . since there were so many horrible ones, many who obviously stayed WAY beyond their shelf life.

[TOhioLiberal]

51. I only had one that stands out...

...it was English 2, Mr Blinn.

Basically it was weekly lists of spelling words and definitions. My family was poor, I didn't have a dictionary. He had one huge dictionary near the front of the room. There was always a crowd of people waiting to use his dictionary. I was too shy to go up and it never occurred to me to look elsewhere for the definitions. So the tests on Friday went like this: I would spell the words perfectly but I would not have the correct definition for the words. Every week, a 50%. I would guess at what the word meant by using it in a sentence, but since I didn't have the exact full definition I got no credit for it.

I was put in the slower class next year, but I had an awesome teacher. She straight up asked me what I was doing in her class. :) I think she got Blinn in trouble, because I heard he changed how he taught the class.

[cloudbase]

52. Freshman year of college,

Prof. Keyes for calculus I. Wrote with his right hand, and erased with his left right behind it. I survived that one. Then, the year after, Prof. Kim for materials science. His English language skills were, to be kind, missing, and that made the course self-taught. Have to admit, though, that his English was better than my Korean, but that's faint praise indeed.

[Downtown Hound]

53. I had a creationist wacko for philosophy at my JC

Basically used to class as a platform to indoctrinate people into his religion. Wasn't much fun.

[Strawman]

54. 10th grade Geometry...pray to the Baby Jesus to pass

This teacher told one kid who was failing if he got on his hands and knees and prayed to the Baby Jesus that he might get a passing grade. He did, right in front of her, and got a C+. Absolute flake job.

And yeah, this was a public school.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

55. I remember the Joe Lieberman look-alike that I had for a university professor

This was back in 2000 around the time that Gore picked Sore Loserman as his running mate. As I was 19 and residing in a different country, I only heard of Sore Loserman when Gore picked him. But I remember even then thinking that my professor had an uncanny resemblance to the Senator from Connecticut and I told him so.. At that time, since Lieberman was on the Democratic ticket and everybody hated *, it would have probably have been a compliment more than anything else

But I had him for two subjects -one was a first year course and one for a second year course. In the first year course, he was absolutely awful. He showed no interest in the course and discouraged students from coming to see him -one of my friends who was interested in doing the course said that this lecturer was downright rude to him when he came to inquire about the course and effectively told him to shove off -he gave him a booklet about the course and then told him not to tell anyone else that he'd given him a booklet or else he would have even more students disturbing him and he didn't want that. He left all the extra-curricular work to the tutors and dissuaded us very strongly from coming to see him on any topic we may have needed to discuss with him. He used to sit through the lecture reading entirely from the notes and mumbling and playing with his watch at times -a few of my friends actually made it a point to count the number of times he was fiddling with his watch and showing a general disinterest in the course. It got to the point where I skipped his lectures and went to the Students Union and you'd always find fellow students who couldn't be bothered to attend his lectures and instead decided to have lunch as well as well because of the way he behaved. We'd just go to the tutorials a lot of the time and avoid the contact with him.

Interestingly enough I had him for the other second year course and he was totally different. He was kind, interested in the students, passionate about his lecture materials, always willing to engage students in debates and -instead of dissuading students from coming to see him in his office -actually told us that he expected to see each member of the class in his office to negotiate their choice of essay topic with him. I loved him in that class and you could hardly believe it was the same person!

[Bombero1956]

59. Gym teacher in Junior High

I forget his name but he made fun of me in front of the class because I wore used sneakers from Goodwill. My mother and father had divorced and we weren't exactly rolling in money so my mother bought sneakers from the Goodwill store for 50 cents. The day I wore them in gym class he made it a point to accuse me of stealing another students sneakers because the ones I wore had some kids name written on the back (I never saw it). When I pointed out that I wouldn't steal a ratty pair of sneaks he made me wrestle the class bully who gave me a bloody nose. My mom once wrote a note to excuse me from gym class and he sent me to the office accusing me of forging the note. He would snap me in the back of the head with his thumb and middle finger. Oh yeah I have fond memories of that asshole.

[Adsos Letter]

58. well...the creepiest teacher I ever had...

was an 8th grade homeroom teacher who always sat the cutest girls in the front row (mini-skirts were "IN") and proceeded to drop his pencil at least 5 or 6 times during class...if you get my drift...

He did it for years...it became a generational thing...yet he was never removed, though parents complained...

:puke: