Ever had a teacher who seemed to be out to get you?

[Joyius]

I know everyone has had one, don't try to deny it.

Growing up in a military family I got to move around and experience different schools and teachers. I once lived in Germany for kindergarten and I had this teacher who just decided for no reason to target me. My brother was also a major jerk back then, from the time he could walk and talk he had it out for me. My teacher assigned us homework, meh homework in kindergarten easy...there was a storm that night and my brother decided to get his hands on whatever of mine he could and flung it out the back door into the rain and wind, and this included my homework. So the next day I go to school with a note from my mom explaining that my homework was destroyed in the storm last night. My teacher looks at the note, looks at me, looks at the note before finally addressing me. "Oh whatever Corrissa, take out your homework and turn it in, don't have your mother lie for you to cover your mistake of not completing your homework." When I did not produce my homework for that class she gave me a 0 and I went hold and told my mother. She called the teacher, and I guess my mother did not like what the teacher told me and pulled me from the class.

And here's a story from the first grade, now I had just changed schools and we had moved, and I have a fuzzy spot of memory between that time and this story, well apparently I had gotten a field trip slip and had taken it home to have my mom sign it, I guess? Even though I had no memory of that or ever receiving the slip or even anything to do with most of the first grade, but on that day, that field trip day...my mother had decided to be so nice and courteous and let us sleep in. We get to school and my mother is informed...the classes had left for their field trips, so me and my brother are left alone in the library for the whole day. Class returns and my teacher goes "Corrissa, why didn't you wake up in time for the field trip?" And all through out the rest of that fall period of that grade she was having everyone do repost or assignments on what they saw during the field trip, so of course I ended up with low grades, but it wasn't just that, she would let the other kids make comments to me about not going, encouraging them to do that, and then not letting them help me with assignments and not even helping me herself.

Those are my stories, what about you?

[fireheart]

Some stories I've had from my own primary days, my sisters and friends stories and also some stuff I've encountered on my field placements (student teacher!)

My own:

-My Grade 4 teacher was happy to give me a reduced workload for when I had piano lessons, but otherwise was a complete bitch. So many lessons on getting the cursive "s" right*. Then we had the issue of our desks. We were expected to have all of our books OUT for use, as well as have our pencil case there too. The desks however, we too narrow for that and this predated the current trend of having trays beneath the desks.
One afternoon I come BACK from a piano lesson and I found all my books and gear in the bin. Several of us would keep our stuff on the floor while we were writing so we would have space to write. I didn't complain to my mum, but apparently somebody did because lo and behold, she didn't have an issue with that afterwards and didn't enforce the "needing our books out" rule as hard. (apparently she then became the PE teacher and then retired-personally I thought she should've become the PE teacher EARLIER)

Grade 8 and 9: at my first high school, I had mixed reactions from my class teachers. My maths teacher in Year 9 hit on my mother at a parent-teacher conference**, my Year 8 English, Maths and Science teachers thought I had Aspergers or a behavioural disorder, this extended through to the deputy principal believing that I had it and sending me off to get tested (came back negative).

None of the teachers were willing to address the bullying in my class at any time across the school and as a result I had vicious rumours spread around and my clothes were stolen during PE. In fact, on a few of those occasions, I was blamed for it.

I was pulled out of that school and sent to the local school in Year 10. Luckily it was also experiencing a surge in enrolments at the time due to parent requests and we just hit the zone cutoff at the time***.

Year 10: My English teacher was a lecherous pervert. A few rumours surfaced about inappropriate contact with students, but nothing came of it because he was actually a GREAT teacher and would keep us engaged. The lecherous pervert part came mostly due to some perverse jokes and the occasional comment (taken in good humour) to the "sluts" of my year who would frequently roll up their skirt hems to have short-short skirts.

Year 11: I had a rotating cohort of English teachers, but the first half of the year I happened to have the deputy coordinator for the middle school! He decided that apparently failing me was the most effective (I hadn't handed in an assignment and I was struggling with the topic in question) option to motivate me, resulting in my mum screaming at him during a parent-teacher conference. He also had issues with me and my boyfriend at the time (not my current SO) holding hands near his office-the most we did during the day was maybe sit very closely to each other and hold hands (not always at the same time). He had no issue with the couples that chose to suck face however...

For Years 10 and 11 I had a history/geography teacher who taught the subjects well, had good assignments and whatnot, but her formative assignments were a joke. And I don't mean the content was a joke, it was the fact that she would eventually call out the answers to us, resulting in most of us not writing in anything until she called out answers. She didn't mark us down for it and the result was that we got full marks on the formative assignments. Given that the role of formative assessment is to check student progress....
That said, her biggest passion was geography and she'd written 2 books on the subject. She took my Year 10 History/Geography/Social Studies class and my Year 11 social studies class.

As for stories on placement/from placement:

-I've already written about my mentor teacher from my first prac, but I'll sum it up as best as I can: not a lot of support for me, left me alone with the students on more than one occasion (to chase up an upset student-that should've been MY job not hers), did not provide me with strategies for differentiation etc. I had to redo my prac and had a much better mentor teacher as a result.

-Mentor Teacher #1 taught at a Waldorf School, where the students are usually in the same class from age 7 and up, and also have the same teacher. when I was with that class, they had 2 "new" students who'd come in later. One student was a slight misfit (in the sense of "bringing marijuana to school" misfit ), the other student was pretty much ostracised by her classmates. The teachers way of dealing with it? Put all the blame on HER and then end up sitting her with students who pretty much bullied her for the entire four weeks I was there. Did she change the seating plan? Nope. Said student ended up developing a really bad attitude and struggled with the learning. Did the teacher attempt to give her a workable strategy? Nope.
At last notice, the Marijuana Misfit left the school, the other child is still there.

-On my second prac, this was minor compared to the drama of the first one, but I had 2 children in my class with literacy difficulties. One had been diagnosed, the other had not. The undiagnosed child was supported as best as possible, but I had a feeling that most of the support the class teacher gave leaned more towards the diagnosed child than the undiagnosed one. To his credit, the undiagnosed child was brilliant at actually reading, but had issues with comprehending what was read. (ie he'd read a story, but couldn't answer questions)

-On my very short 3rd prac, the principal basically tossed me in and left me to fend for myself. I pulled out after a week due to constant panic attacks from being in that class and having little-no support.

I'm now due to go on my final prac next year at another school, but the uni has since identified the best way for my program to run as follows:

-My load will be divided into 1/3rds: 1/3rd will be in a mainstream classroom (that is, teaching your average class of children), 1/3rd will be doing small group stuff with another teacher or a teachers aide and the other 1/3rd will be spent working with the special ed teacher on a 1:1 basis.
The current breakup is likely to be say half a day in classrooms and half a day elsewhere.
-I'll be going to a school with a specialised ESL unit, which helps students who've just arrived in Australia and who have limited English skills.
-I will NOT be on my own this time around, they tend to send multiple students to the same school (mainstream and spec ed.) so you are supported by your own colleagues as well as the school.


*-Most schools in Aussieland use a form of cursive simply labelled "link script", where the S basically has a tail connecting it to the next letter, as opposed to the "rounded" s used in traditional script. Handwriting lessons tends to stop around Year 4.

**-most schools will have ALL the parents in for parent-teacher conferences at some point during the school year. Students aren't in trouble, it's more of a "this is how your child is going" type thing. Some primary schools have the students leading the interviews. When I changed schools in Year 5, I stopped attending those and my parents sent me to after-school care. Once I hit Year 8, I stopped going.

***-in South Australia (YMMV in other states), schools can set an enrolment zone-that is, if you want to enrol your kid here and they live in the area set by the zone boundaries, they're in. If you enrol your kid after that time and he/she has an older sibling at the school, they're also in. After that, you either need to audition/try out for a specialist program to get in, or have another reason for attending there. A zoned school does not necessarily mean a good school, it may just be popular due to convenience. Parents don't have to pay extra if their kid is not outside the zone and parents are not required to send their kids to a school that is in their area.

[Ophbalance]

I've got a few...

My third grade teacher had it out for me and anyone else that had to pee standing up. Ya see, she was going through a nasty divorce and all us nasty little boys with our nasty little dangly bits were the source of ALL the worlds problems. It wasn't awful, exactly, but it was obvious to everyone in class that boys were satan spawned and should be locked away.

It wasn't until 9th grade that I started having problems. Firstly, I played soccer. My school was renowned for its football and wrestling programs. Striiiiiiike 1. My father was a substitute science teacher. Not only that, but he was the Bill Nye "cool" science teacher type. And friends, there's not a fucking thing more that an established teacher HATES than someone that actually LIKES to teach a class and doesn't follow "the rules" of institutional conformity. Once it became known that this was my father? Striiiiiiiiiike 2. I was an all around "weird" kid. My cloths weren't in fashion (I have a sensory thing... I really don't like the feel of certain fabrics). And the jocks and "cool" kids (most of whom DID play football or wrestle) made it there God Appointed Task (TM) to make sure I knew just how very not popular I was. Daily. Hourly, if they could swing it. Striiiiiiiiiiiiike 3!

This lead to incidents wherein I was stabbed with a pencil, and still retain a funky darkened scar, on my left wrist. In front of the teacher... as in not more than 10 feet away as I was in the front row. My sin for that day? Having the nerve to place my hand on the desk behind me. That fucking teacher just gave me a "so?" and moved on with letting the class do what it wanted.

Or how about the earth science teacher bitching to the library staff because I had the nerve to use the library computer to dial into the local college for internet access (the school didn't provide access at this point). This same teacher, when my sister had him a few years later, was extoling the wonders of the internet far and sundry! Yet because it was me doing it first it was just plain wrong.

Or there was our chem teacher in 11th grade, who was an assistant football coach, would try and delay soccer players from leaving class for away games because he hated the sport. I, however, got the last laugh on that one. Ya see... my father is a chem major and teaches science. My mother works for a chemical standards company and is also a chem major. My sister works for Merc as a research scientist. I... am the black sheep computer person . I breezed through Mr Chem teachers year with a B average. But when it came to the final, it just "clicked". I was the one that blew the curve for the final and boy howdy was the look of shock a grand site to see that day .

[sstabeler]

teachers that were out to get me? do you want a list, or a sample?

lets see: I have had a teacher who ( and this has been verified, but I can't do much about it) deliberately marked down my IT coursework ( he gave it a U. (unclassified- basically so rubbish it isn't worth a grade) My mother showed it to someone else who marks it, who said they would have given it a B.) and generally deliberately left me without help. Not to mention he didn't bother turning up half the time.

Or how about the teacher that, despite me being excellent at IT, put me in for the foundation tier at GSCE? (means it's impossible to get higher than a C. Amazingly, I got a high C, and would probably have got higher had I been put in for the correct tier)

Or how about the teacher (at a different school) that regularly tried to keep me back until 8:30 at night, (and threatened to keep me later, but that was almost certainly an empty threat) despite having been informed I had things to do after school by my parents. Who once called my parents to send me back to the school, just to try to keep me there until 8:30? I usually could only go home because the secretary would come around letting everybody know when the teacher in question had left so we could all go home.

Or how about the fact that my DT coursework kept getting damaged overnight, forcing me to spend all lesson repairing the damage, when it was supposed to be in a locked cupboard to prevent exactly this from occurring? And I was marked down a) because it was damaged and b) because I had no time to make it any better than a simple box due to repairing the damage

I could go on, but to be frank, I'd rather not. My school years were... difficult.

[Kanalah]

When my parents were divorcing the local public school decided to put me in special ed. (Basically I was getting bullied and both parents were blaming me for the divorce, so I ended up spending the entire school day with the counselor. I still did all my schoolwork, but the school didn't like me "wasting the counselor's time".)

I ended up with the "teacher from hell". She told my mom that she would "push me to do better" and that I might come home and tell lies about how mean the teacher was. Pfft.

She was a huuuge control freak. If I finished my day's work too early, she'd make me re-do all of it. If I didn't act exactly like she wanted me too, she'd refuse to let me eat lunch. She locked me in the "time out" room until I wet myself to show me she was in charge. This was in grades 7-8, so you can imagine how it made me feel. Did wonders for my depression, let me tell you.

She comes to Really Big Craft Show and tells my mom that the only reason I can quilt and be creative is because of all the help she gave me. Delusional much? She spent most of the school day either eating or catalogue shopping.

[Moirae]

Yes but it turned out it wasn't just me.

We started grade 11 with 38 students in the class. By the end of the semester, there were 8 left. He'd drone on in this voice that was so monotone it would put you to sleep. Then he assumed that you just automatically understood everything he said and if you didn't have an answer or dared to ask a question he'd call you names like "stupid" and "useless".

I knew in the first week I'd hate him and fail the class. I stayed only to annoy him and catch up on my sleep.

My sister, who is three years younger than me, had the following happen by him while she was in his classes....

1. He put his fist through a wall because he was pissed at a student asking a question.
2. He threw a desk at a student that was late to class.
3. He finally got his ass fired after starting a fist fight with some parents when he was confronted on the behavior.

I only wonder why he managed to keep the job so long. He should have been fired before I took the class because apparently the behavior was not all that unusual.

[cindybubbles]

Oh, the stories my friends and former friends could tell you. I, on the other hand, got off easy despite my autism, because I scored high marks.

There was the story of my art teacher, though. I struggled in the advanced course, so he put me down a level and made me do the general course.

But then came the art final, which included a section on art history. Which I aced!

Poor teacher then said to my mom: "I should have left her in the advanced course!"

[JambaBamba]

3rd grade - Mrs. Johnson. She didn't like that I enjoyed reading and that I had a single mom. Rude comments about how kids with mommy and daddy in the same house were the only people that would do well in the world. I was the only child not allowed to go to the bathroom during class - apparently that was disruptive to others for me to raise my hand but other kids could yell and interrupt her and run out to the bathroom? I told my mom I hated Mrs. Johnson and my mom told me "Never hate people like that. When you hate someone you also fear them a little and that gives them power over you. You intensely dislike her but never hate her".

In 9th grade I found out at parent teacher night that my English teacher had dated my step-father several years back (like 10 years, seriously). From what I gathered it didn't end well. Somehow even though I'd been in advanced English classes in 7th and 8th grades I was now a "C" student and my mother told that I didn't seem to grasp themes or know how to write an essay. Thank god I only had that woman for a semester. (According to my step-father she was like a cold slab of marble in bed, hardly moved and no passion.)

[Gerrinson]

Not me, but my stepsister.

In high school, she had an English teacher that absolutely had it out for her. I was easily swinging solid A's in English, so she would have me proof read her work and she'd still bring home only D's and F's. Fortunately, my stepmother didn't believe the grades were fair either and fought it.

Finally, she took one of my papers, rewrote it, and turned it in (with the principal of the school in on the plan). What had been an A+ paper for me, was a D- for her. Needless to say, by the time my stepmother and principal were through with him, that teacher never gave my sis a hard time again.

I did have one professor in college who seemed to abhor students, though. I had him for basic statistics.

He had a special 'lab' next to his office with coins, dice, etc. for doing series and recording the results. He was up front about it, of course, day 1 of class he said "As far as I am concerned, this is the most important class you will ever take and the only class you are taking. There are requirements for a set number of hours of lab work for each weekly assignment. The lab next to my office is open 9-5, Monday through Friday." That's sort of fair, the lab is open 40 hours per week and class time for us was at 11:00 AM M-W-F, so we had to be on campus when it was open anyway.

The first assignment required 2 hours of lab time. Okay, no big deal. 2nd assignment was 4 hours of lab time. Not great, but doable. 8th assignment required 24 hours of lab time. And then the kicker: 9th assignment required 40 hours of lab work. So we had to somehow get in 40 hours of time during the 40 hours the lab was open, which would have meant skipping not only all our other classes, but even his class.

At that point I dropped the course. And joined the student government. And led the committee that lodged a formal complaint. That launched an investigation. That caused said professor to resign in "outrage that students should have a say in the way classes are run."

Victory is mine.

[freeatlast]

My freshman year of high school, my algebra teacher was a guy who had played college football on the same team as my uncle. This teacher was a little guy and my uncle was about 6' 5" and weighed about 300 lbs. During practice, this guy had tried to tackle my uncle and knocked himself unconcious. When he discovered who I was, he began to take a great amount of time during each class period to tell "Uncle Jerry" stories. Now, I am really bad at math and really needed all of the class time to be spent teaching, well you know - Algebra. I ended up flunking the first semester entirely and barely passing the second semester. Next year I had to retake the first semester, which I only passed because my parents hired a tutor. Guess who my teacher was again

[MoonCat]

I never felt that my teachers were out to get me....just that they must have been blind and deaf to not notice the kid sitting behind me kicking my chair for an entire class, or any of the other things the class bullies did right in front of the teachers.

One teacher did seem to have it in for one of my sisters, although the teacher can perhaps be excused because it turned out she had a brain tumor. We went to a small elementary school that had only one teacher for kindergarten. My siblings and I all had this same teacher. The woman claimed that my sister would walk out of class and wander around the halls, which she never did.

One of her teachers also tried to tell her that she was wrong about what day her birthday was. Now, have you ever seen a kid, at least a middle-class kid, of age four or older, who didn't know their own birthday? This teacher insisted on changing my sister's record to show a different date for her birthday. Never did find out why.

[Victory Sabre]

She comes to Really Big Craft Show and tells my mom that the only reason I can quilt and be creative is because of all the help she gave me. Delusional much? She spent most of the school day either eating or catalogue shopping.

I hope the next time she pulls that shit you tell her where to shove it.

[MoonCat]

I'll put the really crazy teacher in a separate post:

My fifth grade teacher, Mr. J., was a....character. Nutcase? When he got angry, he would scream at the class. Call us idiots, morons, you name it. He could be heard from down the hall. He used to have a wooden pointer that he would smash on his desk. Went through 3 or 4 that year. He'd throw chalk at kids, throw blackboard erasers, even throw his books on the floor or into the wastebasket. He kicked the wastebasket so hard he left a dent in it. Once he threw a yardstick at the kid sitting behind me. I ducked but the ruler hit the chair of the kid who sat in front of me (that kid was out that day and his chair was still upside down on top of his desk. The ruler got caught in the legs of the chair). He once did imitations of every kid in the class, intentionally picking on us.

Good points: We did a lot of drawing in his class, and I learned a good bit about things like perspective and shading. The class was decorated with handmade paper birds, flowers and garlands. And we had pets! One small boa constrictor, two gerbils and two hamsters. If we had behaved during the day, we'd get to spend the last hour or so playing the with critters. Every so often he'd bring in a mouse for the snake and let the younger classes come in and watch a live episode of "Wild Kingdom".

[Kanalah]

I hope the next time she pulls that shit you tell her where to shove it.

She came last year and luckily I was out of the booth for her visit. I ran into her in the bathroom and she didn't even recognize me.

Mom said. "Aren't you sad you didn't get to talk to her?"
I replied. "I don't think I could say anything polite to her."

[Victory Sabre]

I know I've posted about this before, but here goes. It's minor compared to everyone eles.

Had a teacher in 10th grade who played favorites. if you helped her with her garage sale, you were. I was not.later in the quarter she gave a paper on who influenced you most. I got a D on the paper. Everyone else in the class who read it thought bullshit on the issue.

At least I had the last laugh when she got fired the next year.