sucky teachers et...

[blas]

Let me admit that I was considered special needs in kindergarten. I didn't go to the "special school", but I had to stay all day ("normal" kids got to go home at noon, and the kids from the "special school" came at noon and stayed the rest of they day).

We had a teaching assistant who I believe was Satan herself.. Oh this woman was just a cunt. She had no business interacting with ANY children, but especially not special needs kids. There were children in that class who were actually mentally retarded (not just ADD or with behavioral issues or whatever they wanted to slump us together as) and one child had Downs Syndrome....and I still remember to this day that that bitch would yell at the poor kids when they colored outside the lines!

I can't believe no one's parents sued, or that any of the kids didn't say anything. I believe I was wrongfully put into special needs classes, but it was due to my own refusal to behave and take direction and cooperate at kindergarten screening. And hey, back in the early 90s, it was still ok to slap the "retarded" label on any child for any reason they thought fit.

I don't even want to talk about middle or high school. BOTH high schools I went to, the majority of the teachers only liked the jocks and preps (that included rich kids and kids who were in the most extra curricular activities) and were just downright cruel to outcasts and noname kids.

[JoitheArtist]

He had long hair up until six months ago. Some of the wonderful pranks his teachers pulled were:

*giving him dolls for presents-- as in barbie dolls or stuffed ones with frills.
*upon having the class do a tye die shirt event, they made sure he got one that was pink and purple.
* call him a fag.
* put bows in his hair.
* laugh at him at his expense.
* ask him if he wore make up at home or liked to wear dresses.

And to this day, if you ask him if he wants to have long, beautiful hair, he'll yell at the top of his lungs "LONG HAIR IS FOR GIRLS!", then run off crying.

Ok, this seriously pisses me off.

Like long hair on guys isn't sexy as hell.

Exhibit A: http://iconsoffright.com/news/JasonCarter.jpg

Exhibit B: http://www.idreamofhollywood.com/images/eomer.jpg

[Toujin]

I don't remember much from my teachers as to be quite frank, I got some tough ones that made me cry but I love them to death ... and the others were really sweet.

My BIL, however, is 7 and is suffering something awfull.

He had long hair up until six months ago. Some of the wonderful pranks his teachers pulled were:

*giving him dolls for presents-- as in barbie dolls or stuffed ones with frills.
*upon having the class do a tye die shirt event, they made sure he got one that was pink and purple.
* call him a fag.
* put bows in his hair.
* laugh at him at his expense.
* ask him if he wore make up at home or liked to wear dresses.
* when it came to boy-girl activities, they'd pair him up with another boy (i.e. square dancing)
* They made him play 'house' with the girls when all he wanted was to push trucks around with the boys.


And to this day, if you ask him if he wants to have long, beautiful hair, he'll yell at the top of his lungs "LONG HAIR IS FOR GIRLS!", then run off crying.

This really pissed me off. Have the parents sued or reported any of this? Because they should.

I was bullied alot in elementary school because I was special-ed kid. In the eyes of the bullies, special ed = retarded, even though I was in a gifted program. Fortunately, the teachers and staff were nice enough to let me spend my lunch and recess inside, which was fine with me because I loved reading.

I spent my middle and highschool years in a K-12 special-needs school. I wouldn't say many of the teachers were bullies, it was more of the fact that the curriculum emphasized *way* too much on teamwork, and my disability (Asperger's) wasn't well understood at the time. Unfortunately, I encountered some really bad bullying from my fellow students in my highschool years, some of who displayed psychopathic behavior. However, it wasn't all bad, since we had some interesting field trips, and the lessons weren't sugar-coated.

However, the school secretary was a real pitbull who had no business working with the disabled, or even children. If you cried, she'd yell at you and call you a baby. She once even threatened to wring my neck!

After high-school, I attended a 'transition to work' program at community college, which was meant for disabled college students in general. Most of the instructors there were pretty nice. But once again, I encountered a teacher who had no business working with the disabled. This woman seemed to have been cursed with permanent PMS, she would frequently yell and snap at the class, and snapped at me a few times just because I mentioned I was nervous!

Oddly enough, my favorite teachers at college were the ones in the exercise program. One of them not only made a gym routine for me, but encouraged not to move so fast when exercising. And my aquatic exercise teacher was a really nice lady who had all kinds of stories from her various travels.

[Sliceanddice]

1- are the bullys ever punished when they dont send you to the hospital?
Hell 3 almost dislocaed my left knee, in sight of a teacher, and they didnt get punished.
2- And now when i have children im rigging up nanny cams in their backpacks and clothes....

[MannersMakethMan]

1- are the bullys ever punished when they dont send you to the hospital?

No. Well, mine never were. Apparently, I just needed to try harder to get along with them, despite the fact that I've been tied to a tree and whipped with a skipping rope and handcuffed to a fence by them. How do you reason with the unreasonable?

[Chromatix]

I had the same issues that have recurred in this thread when it came to teachers. Go to the teacher to complain, either get told to shut up and sit down, punished for being a tattle-tale, or told that I was acting like a child. That has a powerful impact on someone when you can't fight back, you can't get help, and therefore there is nothing to stop the bullying. Years of that will take its toll. Thus why I still refer to my time in school as my time in hell.

Which is precisely what happened to me. It was only late on in secondary school that I was able to stand up for myself in any meaningful fashion, and even then I ran the risk of being punished for it as hard or harder than the bullies. I learned a few of the more useful pressure points through bitter experience - one or two of the bullies were taking martial arts lessons.

My main defence at the time was being able to run, fast, indoors, through doors and up stairs. I knew the (boarding) school layout like the back of my hand, and knew which areas were dead-ends so I could avoid them. I could take small flights of steps in a single leap, and run up three flights in a row, two stairs at a time.

And when I finally got to my room, I could hold the door shut against almost any number of assailants (who were usually younger but bigger than me), but there would almost never be any help forthcoming from the staff. There might sometimes have been a lock on the door, but it was useless because it was easy to break. Heck, the door itself was easier to break than I was.

Before I was allowed to have my own room, I was frequently punished for not allowing my room-mate(s) in, yet if I did, they would frequently let the bullies in too.

To this day, I will normally climb stairs faster than I walk on the level - that's the level of physical conditioning I got from the experience. I also know how to hold someone against the wall so that he can't hurt me very much - a combination of pressure points and leverage lets me handle someone slightly bigger than I am that way. This is the kind of thing you normally learn from martial arts classes, which I've never attended.

The school tells me that discipline improved greatly when the class containing the main bullies left them, and has remained better. But that still doesn't excuse the arbitrary nature of the "justice" practiced there when I was in a position to observe it.

This, in my firm opinion, is what happens when you have the wrong standards for discipline. Yes, it's more work to patrol the corridors, listen to vulnerable children's concerns, and verify that any claims made are genuine - but that's part of your job! Especially when the pupils in this particular school were there precisely because they showed "difficulties" in the first place. (Mine turned out to be benign.)

[Imogene]

Forgot to post about this teacher:
Took Life Drawing in college. The teacher I got for this was like unto Napoleon (which is really unfair to Napoleon)
This ART teacher, liked to tell me that: 1) Life isn't a pattern of shadows, and neither should your work be! and 2) That's not art! It's too linear.
Um, jackass, EVERYTHING is shadows! It is by definition the way to delineate between the lit parts of our poor model.
Also: I'm sure Mondrian would be amused to hear you say that Art can't be linear.
He also regularly pushed me away from my easel and started drawing right over my work. "Now, this is how I see it." Yeah? So, let me see if I get this straight... *lean on his head and lose a good foot or more* You're four foot nothin', and here I am, 6'5", and you're telling me MY view is wrong? You get up here to my level and say that!

He absolutely hated it once I found my style of drawing/arming up, by doing continuous sketch to get an outline, and then went back to delineate curves and such on the interior of the model.
"At this point, you shouldn't be doing that kind of line work."
We're also not supposed to be working in color, yet, I see you ignore the other student who ONLY uses color.

I did a drawing (which I have secreted away in my closet currently) of a model leaning on a ladder, with her back toward me, that I only got her upper torso on the first sheet, and still had time to do more work, so I started a new sheet and did her lower torso. Once I dropped that piece, I noticed the two sheets lined up perfectly together, and it was an accident, so I told some of my classmates about my discovery, and the teacher came by to look, and said, "Now, if only you'd worked on the longer pad, you'd have had it as a single sheet."

I wasn't aiming for it to line up, it was a happy accident, munchkin.

[draftermatt]

When I 1st started reading this thread I couldn't think of any bad teachers, and granted most of my "bad" ones were mundane to some of the one's you all have had. Reading this did make me think of a few.

2nd Grade - One experience stands out. I went to spit in the urinal (I was sick and coughing up phlegm), and hit my head, hard. I went out in the hall where my teacher grabbed me and ran me to the nurse. A butterfly bandage and a trip to the Dr. later I was back in school. The next day she walks us the bathroom after lunch and says "No accidents today please" looking at me, which made the whole class laugh. Like I wasn't embarrassed enough. 7 years later I saw a girl I hadn't seen since the 2nd grade who's only memory of me was cracking my head on that toilet.

5th Grade - For the 1st time in my life I was placed in the highest level math class, and I was challenged for the 1st time in my life (my mother had been begging teachers to challenge me since kindergarten, so by now I was accustomed to coasting and getting my A's) The teacher wasn't bad, but our student teacher was. One day we got a test back from him and he says "No one did really bad on this test..." at this point I look up at him almost in tears since I had failed "well except you"

I told my mother about that crack, and she said she was going to have a talk with that teacher. No idea if she did or not.

7th Grade/8th Grade - Again I was in the highest level math class (after not being in it in 6th grade) Though this time I was excelling. At the end of the year we all found out if we were being recommended for the advanced classes next year (Spanish instead of Reading, English 1 instead of Language Arts, Algebra 1 instead of math) and I got all but Algebra.

About 1/2 way through 8th grade math (and with a 106% in the class) I asked the teacher why I wasn't offered Algebra. So she looked it up (as she didn't understand it either) and the only reason was because my 7th grade teacher didn't recommend me for it. I still don't understand this. The only thing I ever did wrong was a mix-up in a poster order for her (I was a library aide in 7th grade). When I did take Algebra I in 9th grade I flew through it, did the same with Algebra II...

The only complaint about my 8th grade math teacher was once she had me putting up decorations during class (since I had finished so early) and I managed to get a staple in my thumb. So I went up to her where she said "Oh I thought you were the one kid I could trust" and pulled the staple out. That hurt.

10th Grade - Geometry This bitch - Mrs. Harris, I should have known... My best friend had her for a different class where she told him "If you were my kid you wouldn't have a job" and his reply was "lady if I were your kid I would have killed myself by now". She gave me the same speech once, I just ignored her.

She also failed my wife in geometry, though the next year she took it again and passed fine.

She hated me because I was a sophomore. The class was designed for the accelerated 9th graders. So I explained to her the 7th-8th grade story, my grade in Algebra, that I haven't had a problem since 5th grade, and my guidance counselor pushed me into taking her class. But I digress.

I couldn't understand half of what she taught. And no one around me was willing to help me out. So I stayed after school a few times for help. The 1st time she was only giving review of x which I understood by then, I needed help with y.

Another time she couldn't do it, so I made arrangements for a different day. Of course my mother made this worse when at the parent/teacher conference she told the teacher that she had told me she refused to stay one day. I told my mother "No, I said she was busy that day so we did it later" So the teacher thought I was a liar the rest of the semester.

Mrs Harris also told my parents "there is no way he'll pass my class" and reiterated that I shouldn't be there since I was a sophomore, plus a lot of other stuff. She was also upset that they had brought me.

My mother was pissed when we left (partially at me because she had misunderstood the after school thing, which she blamed me for, which is another story) "That woman is such a lying bitch, she couldn't even look me in the eye"

I ended up with a C in her class. When I got my report card I said outloud to my homeroom teacher "Yes I got a C, that fucking bitch can kiss my ass" He was a little annoyed till I told him the above story.

To this day I sometimes want to go back to the school and tell her that not only did I pass every other math class in HS with an A or B, that I also managed to get an Engineering degree (taking calculus up to 3) and only ever having problems with Calc 3.

I even lost a friend because of this woman. I was complaining about her to the woman who would become my wife, and this other girl overheard. She got pissed because "she's the best teacher ever" and refused to talk to me.

College - Calculus 3. This teacher was British, and very much so. It was hard for me to pick up what he was saying at times. (I have a terrible ear for discerning accents, even thick southern accents give me trouble).

Plus he was an engineer, and therefore he used what he was teaching everyday. So he would skip steps, get frustrated because we didn't know the next step right away, etc.

Going into the final exam I had the 2nd highest grade in the class with a 74%. I walked out of the final with a 67%. The final was worth 200 points and only had 6 questions. 1 I had to leave blank (it was 40 points). It was the one thing I never understood how to do at all.

The sad thing? The freaking final, and all the tests were open book. I convinced him of this after the 1st exam where we all did poorly. "Just make it open note and a little harder". At times I regret that, but I know if I hadn't done it we all would have failed.

[Riesie]

Most of my teachers were really good, or at worst a little incompetent, but there are a couple that stick out as being bad teachers.

We had a teacher at middle school (age 8-12) that everyone thought was crazy. She was a French teacher, and she was called Ms Smith. And you had to call her Ms Smith - if you called her Miss or Mrs, she would yell at you that that wasn't her name. She was an older lady with black hair, and she used to dress all in black, so we all used to think she was a witch. She was known as one of the two worst teachers in the school, and everyone was scared of her, but nothing too terrible happened while I was there.

My sisters class had her for a form teacher the year after I moved up to high school. They were a year 6 class, and as such they spent the whole day (unless they had a science class or a music class) in the same classroom. One of the boys in her class called Ms Smith a bitch, and he overheard her. She locked him in her store cupboard for the rest of the day, and then when she let him out at the end of the day, he called her a bitch again and ran home (which was only a few streets away). She chased him, and when she got there banged on his door and asked his mum for him when she answered the door. When he came to the door she slapped him and then turned and left. His mum complained to the school, and she was fired.

One of the other teachers at that school had been there since it opened, and he taught my mum, me and my sister geography. Luckily, I'm not too bad at geography (and was so scared by mum's stories that I made an extra effort) but mum and little sis weren't so lucky. He was so horrible to his class that he always had the lowest attendance. Mum used to hide in the toilets for the whole hour she should have been in geography, and little sis would go to the nurses office, and be so worried she might have to actually go to his class that she would be sick. He's still teaching there, and its been more than 10 years since I left now.

My Religious Studies teacher at high school started his first ever (compulsory) lesson with us with the words 'The crucifixion was a hoax, and now I'm going to prove it to you...'. I'm not particularly religious myself (and obviously that's not the point of this post), but B, who I was sitting next to, is. She was incredibly offended, and did everything she could to avoid his lessons after that. While he is as entitled to his opinion as anyone else in the room, it just seems to me that maybe he should have got to know his students a little better before making a statement like that.

I did a joint honours degree, and one half of it was Greek Civilisation which was half of what a Classics student would have taken (they did half Greek Civ, and half Roman Civ). There were a few compulsory modules that everybody had to take in the school, regardless of their particular program. One of those was about the ways you can study the ancient world. We had to write an essay half way through the semester on the usefulness of one of the methods we'd been learning about. I wrote mine about studying coins. Because of my degree choice, my essay focused mainly on Greek discoveries (since I was more familiar with it, and the title was just how useful they were in the study of ancient civilisations), but I made sure that about 1/3 of my essay referred to Roman stuff. The professor marking my essay was one of the Roman Civ ones. He gave me low marks because there wasn't enough about the Romans in my essay... I was not happy.

[Victory Sabre]

I was very lucky to, mostly, have good teachers. However I do have 2 bad ones that come to mind.

10th grade.
This teacher was totally awful, she had her "favorites". One time she was begging for students to help her, on a Saturday, to help her with a garage sale. The few who did got good grades. Guess which group I was in. If you guessed not in the brown-nosers you get a pumpkin pie. It does get worse, though.

This class was a writing class, and at the end of the course you got the chance to read a paper, on who influenced you the most in front of the class. Since this was 1988, and I was, then, a Republican, I chose Ronald Reagan. All the students loved my paper. The teacher didn't. Even though it was very well written, and the class liked it, I got a BLEEPING D on it. I was totally pissed. My parents weren't too happy either, but not much could be done.

It may be mean, but a year later I was happy to hear that she got fired.

College - Freshman year, Spring Quarter.

I made the mistake to take a Philosophy class with the wort professor at the University. He may have been a good person, but he shouldn't have been teaching anymore, because he was completely senile. You couldn't ask him for help, because he was in no position to help you. He was barely able to even teach the class. I skipped most of the classes, to play softball with my friends (as did pretty much everyone else). One time when I made the mistake of showing up, I fell asleep in the class, the first and only time that ever happened in a class. I got like a 30% in the class, but because he was such a bad teacher, that got me a C for the course. You only needed a 20% to pass .

He was forced to retire the next year, thank goodness.

[draftermatt]

Thought of some more. Again, not terrible, but meh.

College - History 105 History of the US to 1876. The teacher was a nice guy, but he spent the whole class talking about his family, or other stories. Then when it came time for the test he'd hand us notes and say "Here's what the test next week will be on".

So I spent the whole class reading the text book (I love history). Then he decided to have us watch movies relevant to the time period we were studying. So I got to skip quite a few classes since I own Gettysburg.

College - Physics 101 This guy was terrible. I can't even really describe it other than to say nothing ever made sense, and he couldn't explain much of anything, then he showed up an hour late to the final.

I was amazed at how much I understood physics when I took Calculus based Physics at different college.

Highschool Vice PrincipalI can't remember the guys name, but when I got my schedule for Sophomore year it had a lot of holes, so I had to go in over the summer to get it fixed.

They had me in the wrong Geometry (which I should have left alone - see above) and no English. So I tried to sign up for the advanced English (Survey of American Literature) I was supposed to get, but it wasn't available. So I signed up for the next step down (World Literature). But asked if the VP in charge of scheduling could take a look at it. He did, and called to say he couldn't do anything.

(I was hoping there might be a list in case someone canceled the class).

So I took World Lit (the only sophomore in the history of the class, everyone else was a senior or junior). Next year I took Survey of American Lit, which was about 2/3 Sophomores and 1/3 Juniors. Class went fine but I remember once the teacher said "you should remember that from English II last year" and was amazed that they didn't get me into her class the year before when I told her the above.

Senior year I took British Literature and had the 2nd best teacher I ever had. I really only missed out on AP Lit, but since I went to work Senior year, I would have ended up in World Lit anyway, so it really all worked out I guess. Plus I got to read Cyrano and Gilgamesh which I really enjoyed. I just hated being the odd sophomore out.

[ralerin]

Quick rant about what Blas said upthread about it being ok to slap the retarded label on kids in the early 90's. My brother got slapped with that label in the mid 80's. His doctor told my parents that "this kid will never be college material."

Long story short? He graduated college, somehwere in the middle of the class, but still.

On to my stories.

2nd Grade: I went to Catholic school and my teacher was an old, French Canadian nun. She hated me because I would read during class and I kept my desk messy. I had to deal with the dumped out desks/being humiliated in front of the class/being slapped. I still remember to this day the way she turned to any kid in the class, asked them a question with a gigantic beaming smile, and if they didn't answer, the smile would fall in one second flat and then slapping would start.

Also, we had a computer teacher who threatened to make all of us stay behind if our typing skills weren't some ridiculous number of 100 words a minute. In second grade. So on the day she told us to stay behind, I told my mother that I would be staying behind, but I couldn't tell her how long. Cue the principal, my mother and the teacher yanking me out of class to question me. After I told the principal that yes the teacher was supposed to be keeping all of us back that day, she got reamed out for that.

5th Grade: Mutual hate for this teacher, she was a bitch. She hated me because once again, I read during class. She once humiliated me in front of the class because I checked out a book out of the mutual class bookshelf and didn't write my name down in the blue book.

"YOU STOLE THE BOOK."
"N....n-o....."
"DON'T YOU LIE TO ME. WHERE IS YOUR NAME IN THE BLUE BOOK?"
"I...I...."
"YOU STOLE IT."

*shrug* That was the last time I ever took a book from that bookshelf. And it also cued me pulling many smartass tricks on her, such as ending a sentence with the word, "sheesh!" on a final paper, correcting her grammatical mistakes, etc. I also once pulled the very smartass move of opening my mouth after she threw a PMS-y fit of "IF ANYONE OPENS THEIR MOUTH I WILL TAKE AWAY YOUR RECESS!!!" after the entire class had been rowdy all day. (Yes I got my recess taken away for that day).

College: My intro to Socio. teacher last year had a very thick Indian accent, I mean so thick that you could barely understand him and that you had to pay attention to him. I basically read the textbook the entire time he talked and still earned a pretty decent grade. He also forced us to do these chapter review things at the start of every chapter. Of course I was the only one who did them and the only one who got a decent grade.

My Microeconomics teacher this year, though...he gave us notes for the entire class and lectured us through them. So many people skipped class because he basically read directly from them. He's a nice guy and all but, honestly, he had us buy the textbook on top of it and it was over $100. Waste of money.

[Kogarashi]

I lucked out in that most of my teachers have been great, or at least middle-of-the-road. It probably helped that I was one of the "smart kids," and generally quiet while still doing well. My biggest problems were with some of the coaches/gym teachers, which is amusing because I was fairly good at sports and on the soccer team for five years (three levels of soccer: Middle School, Junior Varsity, and Varsity).

Varsity Soccer Coach, Senior Year - this one rankles to this day. I was one of two goalies on the team. Between my junior and senior years, the regular varsity soccer coach retired, and was replaced by a newcomer. This new coach played heavy favorites on the team and was never satisfied with how we played. It didn't help that we'd been doing so well in our previous seasons that they'd upgraded us from one athletic league to another, more difficult one. So we were playing tougher teams that we hadn't gotten used to yet. For many games, we second-string players got, at most, a quarter of the whole game to play in, and that was on a good day. She never swapped me in for the starting goalie unless we were already three or more points behind, I guess because by that point, she figured it didn't matter anymore.

The worst was our Homecoming game. It was the last Homecoming game for the seniors on the varsity team, a few of whom (myself included) were second-string. We were two points behind in the second half. Our starting goalie was visibly getting tired, looking over at our coach whenever she had a free moment, but New Coach kept her in. At one point, I went up to New Coach on behalf of the other senior still on the bench and myself and explained that we hadn't had a chance to play yet, and this would be our last Homecoming game. New Coach's only reply was for me to look at the scoreboard (where we were still losing by two points).

The other senior on the bench got to go in for about five minutes at the end of the game. Thanks to our team managing to even the score to a tie, we went into overtime, where I got to play for a grand total of three minutes of the entire game. When I met up with my parents after the game, they both grumbled about how they came to watch me play, not sit on the bench the whole time.

Track Coaches, Sophomore Year - The younger coach had just started at the school that year. She told us that it was only acceptable to miss a track meet for reasons relating to school, family, or church. Now, I was also taking piano lessons at the same time, and would be playing for the choir's Spring Concert that year, and unfortunately, all the track meets for the season conflicted with my piano lessons. I missed one lesson to go to the meet, but then explained to Younger Coach that I had to miss the next one because I needed to go to my lesson to prepare for the choir concert. Younger Coach said okay, and I skipped the meet and went to my lesson. The very next day at practice, Younger Coach reamed me out for skipping the track meet, and when I reminded her about the lesson, she said that was no excuse.

The very next day, right before practice, I went to the office of the two coaches to tell them I could no longer be on the track team. I didn't want to deal with Younger Coach, so I went to Older Coach instead. I explained that I'd been having terrible shin splints (true; no one had told me how to run properly for the long and triple jumps, and I'd been using the heels of my feet like I do when I run for soccer or longer distances which had caused massive pain in my shins), and that the track meets also conflicted with important lessons related to school. She immediately asked if I was actually quitting because my best friend was also quitting the team. I had only found out that my friend was quitting that afternoon as we walked to the office together. So I had to explain that no, that wasn't the reason, and what I'd said was true. Ugh.

Gym Coach, Senior Year - This one is fairly minor. At the end of my senior year, we had to turn in the locks from our gym lockers. Two days before, the previous day I'd had gym class, I took out all my stuff from my gym locker to take home, but I distinctly remembered locking the door back up with my lock. When I went in the day we were to turn in the locks, however, my lock was gone. I spent the first half of the period sitting at a box of loose locks trying to find the serial number from mine to prove I hadn't stolen it, since one of the coaches admitted they might have taken all the locks off the empty lockers. No dice, and my parents had to pay the school $5 for a lock I didn't lose. My dad grumbled about it, since it wasn't my fault, but we paid up because we didn't want to risk the gym teachers witholding my final grade because of it, and since gym class is required in my high school up through senior year, it could've jeapordized my chances at actually graduating.

College was even easier, since I usually dropped classes where I didn't get a good vibe off the teacher.

Academic Advisor, Year 4/6 - I seemed to play Musical Advisors a lot. I had this same woman for two years in a row, which was a surprise. Her biggest fault was in scheduling meetings with her. She never answered her phone and didn't have posted student hours on her office door, so I had to communicate with her via e-mail. I would send her an e-mail asking when I could come talk with her, and she would reply at 11am the next morning letting me know she was available from 1-2pm that same day. Problem: I left for campus at about 9am and had no computer access for checking e-mail until 3 or 4pm. I even explained this to her, and she still did it.

Beyond that, I mostly remember the Physical Science prof who lectured straight from his powerpoint slides, which he also printed online, so I basically stopped going to his lectures and used the time to sleep in. It helped that you could do all the labs, plus all four exams, plus a few homework assignments, or you could just get a minimum B on the final only and get full credit. Guess which option I chose.

And as far as being bullied in school goes, I was a favorite target up until high school. I'm also one of those people for whom "just ignore it" actually worked. I essentially learned to turn invisible (socially, at least), and the bullies stopped picking on me when they realized that not only was I not going to whine or complain or fight back, I wasn't even going to acknowledge their presence. That, or they graduated, which accomplished the same thing. Now, I admit, I was never really hit, so it doesn't work for everyone. The one time I went to a teacher, it was because a former friend who'd decided she hated me had stabbed me in the hand with a ballpoint pen in addition to nasty name-calling and general harassment. We ended up in mediation with the principal (this friend had been attacking two other friends as well), and she left us alone from then on. And then there was one middle school bully who approached me in high school and complimented me on my writing skills in the literary magazine.

Woah, that turned out longer than I thought it would.

[Arucard]

I forgot to mention one of my Uni teachers. Electronics II. Name was Derek. Now, he's a brilliant man, and the University wants to keep him around, because he brings them $$$$ in grants for his research. He has no business teaching, however.

I was a pretty good student, and finished Uni with Honours, but this guy's course I ended up getting 7% in.

Basically, he sucked at lecturing, and removed all tutorials from the course, so he could shorten it by three weeks so he could go on a holiday to the Bahamas. One lecture only he went through example problems.

I made the mistake of trying to understand what he taught us, instead of memorising the problems. Big mistake, as that lecture essentially told us how to do the exam. I walked out of that 3 hour exam after less than an hour.

You also didn't want him as a supervisor for your Honours project, since all he did was tell you what he needed on the first day, and then left everything to one of his grad students to take care of, and you never saw him again. It was the grad students that saw your oral presentations and everything, all Derek would do was mark your final written report. We assume he based the mark on how much grant money he thought your work could net him.

There was another, Peter Cook, who supervised electronics labs, taught the summer semester Electronics II course I had to take, and also supervised some honours projects. He is the kind of person where everything must be done exactly his way. For each piece of work he marks you have 2 options. 100%, or 0% and re-do it until it was exactly how he wanted it. Essentially, if someone managed to get it right, they were in high demand for copying.

If you got him as an honours supervisor, instead of being able to figure out your own solution to a problem, he would give you a step by step list of things to be done, and exactly how to do them, to achieve the final result HE wanted. If you didn't get it exactly the way he wanted, FAIL.

My really bad experience with him was in an electronics prac. Now, I was teamed with the smartest guy there was in my year when it came to electronics. We finished the prac with time to spare, could proved it all worked, but we had to have each part of the report exactly right, with the exact graphs marked exactly... you get the picture. So we spent the first half of the semester building the thing, and the second half trying to get it marked. Each time he would pick one tiny thing wrong for you to change, you'd do that, then have to wait two hours for him to look at it again.

In the middle of all this, someone stole our circuit, so we could no longer keep testing and re-testing to get the exact outputs he wanted, so we barely passed, despite the fact we'd shown him it worked. I came very close to hitting that guy once, and when I bumped into him on the street after I graduated, I told him exactly what I thought of him.

[K'Z'K]

In 11th grade, I was placed in AP English (the advanced course that could lead to getting college credits). The teacher hated me. As far as I can tell, it's because I didn't play along with her silly interpretations of books. I always hated English class because of the insane over-analysis of books, but most teachers, including the one I had for both eighth and tenth grades, realized that I understood the interpretations, I just thought they were wrong. This one, however, apparently decided that I needed to get out of her class.

She graded me overly harshly on essays, but even so I had a low-B average due to objective stuff like spelling tests. Nevertheless, she and the asshole head of the English department claimed I was on the verge of failing and needed to move to the regular honors class. They let me switch with only two weeks left in the term--and I never got a grade for the term. The spot on my report card was simply blank. Why? If they gave me the D they claimed I was earning, they'd ruin my GPA, and if they gave me what I really earned, it would be proof they were lying.

I wasn't the only student this teacher hated. She hated anyone who thought for themselves. Also, all hispanics and all foreigners. She taught English as a Second Language. More than one ESL student stayed in her class just long enough to learn how to ask the guidance office to get them out of there (there was a second ESL teacher who did not hate her students).

The honors teacher loved me.

Now, why were these two so afraid to actually ruin my GPA or get caught lying? Probably because my family would have gone after them.

When my brother was in 10th grade two years earlier, he had "published" his own little student newsletter--just one issue. It contained a Monty Python joke originally about Richard Nixon rewritten to be about the principal; I don't rememeber the exact wording, but it was basically "Nixon had an asshole transplant. The asshole rejected him."

The principal suspended my brother for 3 days (or so, I don't remember exactly) and assigned him a paper on "the rights and responsibilities of student publications." In his research, he confirmed that the First Amendment right to free speech and free press does in fact apply to students.

So he called the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). Long story somewhat less long: the ACLU lawyer, after meetings with the principal, superintendent, and our parents, told him to apologize and erase it from my brother's record or we'd sue. And win. The first time I ever heard my father swear was in regards to this guy--a "lying sack of shit."

The principal ended up teaching in another town a few years later. My brother then lived in this town and considered running for school board just to mess with him.

High school sucked, but at least the principal was afraid to even think about giving me any shit.

Another sucky teacher--sixth grade English. Yelled at me in front of the class because I wasn't looking at her while she was talking. I can't focus if I'm looking at the speaker. I must be taking notes or playing with my hair or something to have even a slight chance of paying attention. Also, she made us memorize poetry. I hate poetry. Hated it before this class, hated it far more afterward.

On a not-so-sucky note, there was my ninth-grade chemistry teacher. My first name starts with an H, my last name with an O. So he called me "ho." At the time, the term "ho" was known to the students but had not yet filtered to the adults in our area. So he had no idea why the whole class--me included--giggled when he called on me. I was never mad about this--I was well aware he had no idea that "ho" was anything other than one-third of Santa Claus' catchphrase. He turned a very interesting shade of red when he realized that he had been calling a star student a whore for months.

And thus ends a long post in a long thread. Who knew there were so many evil teachers out there?

-K'Z'K