Teacher/professor suckiness

[rageaholic]

There's been threads related to this topic before, but they are all months old, and I want to share my own, so I'll start a new one. I have 2 from middle school and one from college.

The first middle school one, let's call him T, taught math. He had some anger problems I think. He HAD to show that he was in charge and would let lose on students for simple misunderstandings. During a little geomotry quiz, I had 3 out of 4 problems right. The one I got wrong was just a careless mistake that if reserved, would have been correct. T demanded I explain myself, and I just said "I messed up" then he lost it and yelled "YOU CAN'T MESS UP!". I mean, I made ONE mistake, just one little mistake and he loses it. He didn't lose it with other students over that quiz so I don't know what it was with me he had a problem with.

Another time, I was a couple of seconds late for class after the bell rang. T made me and a few other students come up to ask if we were late. I said "I came in a couple of seconds after the bell rang", he flipped out and yelled "I asked you if you were late, NOT by how long!" and until I said "Yes I was late", he got angrier and angrier. He ended up giving us a warning, but jeez, if he knew we were late, why bother making us come up? And over a few seconds? Someone's got issues...

S was another one. She taught a special class for students with learning difficulties. She was just as bitchy, if not more so then T. As we were transfering to another room one time, she yelled at me for taking 5 seconds to get a drink from the water fountain. TWICE during transfer time when I wasn't even on my way to class she stopped me to ask me where I was going. Both times it was to the bathroom, both times she questioned why I wouldn't go to the one closer to the classrooms, and both times I explained that that one was occupied. Another one with issues...

Lastly, R taught basic accounting in college. He wasn't a power hungry douche like the others, he just sucked at teaching! He didn't use any tools to help students, no handouts, no power points, no reviews, just lectures. This wouldn't have been so bad, but the kicker is that he barely raised his voice above a whisper. He talked so low that even those in the front row had trouble hearing him! When told to speak up, he'd speak up for 2 seconds, then go back to mumbling.

He was also no help, even though he kept talking about how if anyone had a question they should ask. One students wanted to know why a problem was wrong and his responce was "Because you didn't get the right answer" He would also offer no feedback on homework problems. Hell, I didn't even complete some of the problems, got medicre grades on the tests, and just plain didn't get some of the stuff, yet I still passed with an above average grade. I wonder had I marked all the answers with random numbers and just wrote "purple monkey dishwasher" for the word problems if I'd have gotten the same grade. Also, his idea of reviewing homework problems was putting the answers on one of those overhead things and having us copy with no explaination as to how the answer works. He wouldn't even give us enough time to complete writting the answer so going over was just a waste of time; time he could have spent explaining how to solve those problems.

So all we really had was the textbook, which also sucked, making things even more confusing than they were. This wasn't easy stuff, it was accounting, a subject that didn't need anymore complications as it was. So you can imagine the fun I and the rest of the class had trying to figure this stuff out on our own.

And please don't feel shy posting your own sucky teacher/professor stories. I just posted mine to start this thread off.

[SemperFi]

Sucky TAs

I never had a problem with any professors. However, I have had my share of pretty awful TAs. I attended a large, research university, so most professors gave the lecture, while TAs handled labs, discussion sections and grading. I once had a TA that came in every day and told us that he "didn't care" and he "wouldn't be really tough about grading." And yet, when you received your papers back, he would take off really weird amounts like 1.83 or 0.42. Once, out of curiosity, a group of us tried to discover his mathematical model for grading, and came to the conclusion that it was completely arbitrary.

I also had another TA that gave me a C+ on a paper. In the comments, he wrote "HTF" next to almost every paragraph, which was his lingo for "hard to follow," or a run-on sentence. I've never used a run-on sentence in a scholarly paper in my entire life. When I took the paper to my professor for a second opinion, she read it, apologized and changed my grade to an A. It turned out that this particular TA did not even specialize in the time period or place that the class covered. But that is really the fault of the university and a rant for another day.

Oh! I almost forgot. One of my friends had a TA for German that was kind of a nut. She wore really inappropriate clothes to class and kept this weird blog about her exercise regimen, ex-boyfriend and ferrets. It wouldn't have been so bad, but she was also pretty unpleasant during class and talked about these personal issues on a regular basis. Her idea of teaching a foreign language was to focus on cognates for weeks. It was a mess and my friend cried every day after class until she was able to transfer to a different section.

[Plaidman]

I don't think I ever had a bad teacher. I just never did well due to, well me.

However, during oreltation a few days ago, the head of my department of medtech, used the term

"The difference between you and poor white trash is your trying to get an education"

[bainsidhe]

"The difference between you and poor white trash is your trying to get an education"

~blink blink~ Say wha?

[Cazzi]

Lastly, R taught basic accounting in college.

R sounds like the accounting tutor I had at college. He didn't have a quiet voice, but his method of teaching was to wander in the room carrying a mug of tea, write a couple of problems on the whiteboard, say, any help you need is in the text book & wander out again!

Luckily we had 2 people in the class who had absorbed the basics from parents who worked as accountants if we got really stuck.

The amazing thing was, I passed that subject. I still wonder if it was just due to the fact that our group were the last doing this particular Diploma course as it was being phased out for something else

[ShadowTiger]

I had a teacher back in Elementary school who would:

• Chew gum
• Drink diet snapple (Only one flavor. Always that one flavor.)
• File her nails

... and sometimes all at the same time. Utterly confounding. Of course, no students were allowed to drink in class or chew gum, ... ... uh ... or file their nails in class either. o.o' No, of course not. Her method of teaching, while wasn't too bad, was obviously not the very best, was to put up a clear sheet of plastic with marker on it on the projector, and let us copy her notes, and study from those. I suppose that works well enough as well, because writing it down sort of helps to cement it into our heads, but she didn't even say anything while projecting. The best thing she ever did in that class was give us a sheet explaining why words like "Good," "Nice," etc are awful words to use, because they're so darn generic. I'll admit that I loved that particular exercise, because the words annoy me greatly, but they probably annoyed her even more, which is why she likely presented the project in the first place. > <.


Then in my second year of College, I had a professor who would never, ever, ever look at anyone in the class. He wasn't really sucky by any means, no, ... he definitely knew his stuff. His eyes would just never be anywhere near you. The majority of the time, if he had to face the room, his eyes would be on the ceiling tiles. If you asked him a direct question, he would face out the window or look at his notes. I remember not knowing a THING in the class until the final, when it all suddenly *clicked* ... and I got an A in the class, all from it clicking in the last ten minutes of the final. Went back, changed all my answers, and was grinning in victory. Then had to walk home because the transportation was out. Took me a day and a half to walk home in 5°F weather. Awesome. But I won.

[Moggie]

I had a Latin I professor my first year of college who had a novel method of teaching Latin. You had to be in class every single day and then listen attentively as he talked about his wife, his dog, his collection of travel photos and his politics. If you said anything in class it must be an agreement that these were all wonderful things. At the end of the class he assigned homework from the book and left.

After several weeks we still hadn't so much as mentioned the word "Latin" in the class and I was not doing as well as my GPA needed. I couldn't get a tutor since there wasn't one available, and the professor was never in his office during office hours. I'd been using on-line study aids but I was rapidly losing patience with the entire situation. He refused to even answer questions in the class, turning the answer into another wife/dog/travel story.

After yet another hour long drive to sit in a class where I didn't learn anything I snapped. I raised my hand, stood up when noticed, and said very loudly "So are we actually going to learn any Latin in this class?" I was given a 3 page paper to write.

Instead I went to the Dean of Languages with my notebook, assignment list, and previous tests. I was polite and quiet, but very firm that I wasn't getting my money's worth for this particular class. She wrote down everything I had to say and thanked me profusely. It turns out that the professor had tenure so they couldn't just randomly fire him. If they got enough complaints however they could move him away from first years and put him with the students who had already done enough Latin to be able to just work out of the book. I was withdrawn from the class and it didn't effect my GPA at all.There's a new first year Latin professor now around campus, but I still haven't the nerve to go back and try again.

Just because you have a professor who is crazy (or possibly senile) doesn't mean you have to put up with it.If you've done everything else you can do to get a better grade in the class, go and see the Dean. You just might be the person that makes things better for everyone.

[rageaholic]

Well I did get my payback on a class evaulation for R.

[Andara Bledin]

I've mentioned my two terrible teachers before.

The worst was my 9th grade English lit. teacher who couldn't conjugate a verb to save her life, had attrocious grammar, and couldn't manage to spell such simple words as "soccer." Ove half of her class failed every single year, but the schoold didn't do anything about it. My brother had her two years later, and he made a point of correcting her every time she made a mistake because he's a bully and liked to make her cry. I don't condone what he did, but the woman was an utter waste of a classroom.

Then there's the other one. My 9th grade foot fetishist pervvy algebra teacher. All of the stupid girls would sit near the front, paint their toenails, and wear sandals, because they knew he'd pay more attention to their feet than anything else going on in the class. I once had a disagreement on having to show my work on every single problem because I could do any one in the book in my head and be correct. (I'd spent the summer two years previous teaching myself collegiate algebra because I had been bored) Since he wasn't that good at it himself, he resented the idea that I was. In hindsight, I shouldn't have tried to prove I was smarter than him, regardless of the fact that it was true. It's because of him that I took to using a .7 mechanical pencil and writing full problems in the same amount of space it had prevoiusly taken me to write only the answers.

^-.-^

[PepperElf]

In my first college I had a psychology professor who was a bit odd.

first off we had assigned seats. I guess it was so he didn't have to learn our names. I also wonder if it was his own human experiment to see if people became friends with those who they sat next to.

Second - and this was the big one - he had an odd habit of just popping in a video instead of teaching. Granted the professor on the video was good - even better than he was to be honest. (I think the man on the video might have been Philip Zimbardo, but I'm not sure).

Other teachers from college that i'm reminded of... my sociology professor (same college). Very soft spoken so I had to pick up the habit of cupping my ear in the lecture.

[jnd4rusty]

I have been extremely lucky to have such awesome professors. There are only two that were questionable, out of those two, my Intro to ethics was the worst. He looked and spoke exactly like Jack McCoy from Law and Order. You could not follow his teaching at all because he tended to wander all over, never used the book. I did feel sorry for him as he lost his wife during the semester. I have many favorite teachers...Dr. Stone-he taught Western Civilization, he brought history to life and he joked and chatted with the whole class. He would take attendance every class and always had a comment for each student, he would remember everything you said and would ask you about it next class, he also would try and play matchmaker. At the beginning of the semester he handed out a sign up sheet for treats and someone would bring in treats each class period.
Mr. Swanson-taught Composition, he was very funny, him and I would just throw "insults" at each other.
Mrs. Prosser-Accounting, she is one of the sweetest professors ever!! She always asked how you are doing and compliments the students all the time. If you had a wrong answer she would still compliment you.
Well there are more and I am far from finished with school, so I am sure I will have more.

[Kogarashi]

I've had a few teachers over the years who've been varying levels of irritating or annoying, but only one comes to mind first every time I think about bad teachers.

Coach B, the new girls' varsity soccer coach for my last year at the school (our previous, awesome coach having retired that summer) and also a gym teacher at the school (all the coaches pulled double-duty as teachers, though not all were gym teachers). In gym class she was tolerable, though she tended to mark for skill rather than effort, something that left my two somewhat overweight and un-athletic friends at a disadvantage. Luckily there was a second teacher for the class, who usually balanced out the less-than-fair grading system.

On the soccer field, however.... To Coach B, high school soccer was srs bsns, to the point where she would rather leave a few seniors benched at their last homecoming game than put them in when we were tied with the other team. She preferred to run our starting goalie completely ragged, to the point where said goalie kept looking at our coach hoping for a reprieve. I, the relief goalie, went up to Coach B midway through the second half of the game to point out that there was another senior and myself who hadn't had a chance to play yet (for reference, Coach Awesome from the year before made sure everyone got to play at every game, especially Homecoming). Coach B's response was to point to the scoreboard and say, "Look at the score." We were still tied. That's all she said, repeating it when I mentioned it was Other Girl's and my last game. Other Girl finally got in about five minutes before the end of the second half. We went into overtime, the other team got another two points on us, and only then did Coach B give our starting goalie a break by sending me in. For all of three minutes. We lost the game anyway.

Coach B was an alum of the school (I found her in my mom's senior yearbook), and apparently took sports seriously then too. Despite being a freshman when my mom was a senior, she was on all the varsity teams. Go figure. Her favorites on the soccer teams were the girls who either made the cut for varsity before they were varsity-age (junior and senior), or whose parents had the means to send them to sports camps every summer, and the rest of us were considered "second string" regardless of skill level. We actually had a third goalie at the start of the season who quit because she ranked below me and, with Coach B's style of coaching, would never get to play.

Anyway. ::deep breath::

As for others, there were a few, and are much more concisely described.

There was the English/History teacher I had for one study hall who wouldn't allow any speaking, any bathroom breaks (except for emergency), and you must be working on some form of schoolwork whether or not you actually had any to do.

There was the English teacher notorious for his "off-color" topic tangents in class. I never had him for a full class. He covered one of my study halls once, and I had him for all of three days for Public Speaking. He was only part of the reason I dropped that class (the other being that I hate public speaking, and didn't need it for English credit anyway since I was also in an AP class at the time).

There was the "Writing for Children and Adolescents" professor I had at college, who insisted we write "problem novels" about anorexia and abuse and stuff, and didn't consider fantasy (my preferred genre) a valid genre. She claimed it was "going out of style," completely basing her opinion on pre-1997 research (it was 2003 at the time). She grudgingly let me write fantasy anyway, but always tried to twist my stories to be closer to her problem novels.

There was the English professor who was very opinionated, and whenever a student made a comment in class, even if it was a dissenting view, he either twisted it to agree with him anyway or simply flat-out told the student they were wrong.

And then there was the academic advisor who was never in her office during office hours, and who seemed to think that two hours was enough notice via e-mail to have me come in. I'd send her an e-mail in the afternoon. I'd get no response before leaving for class at 9am the next day, and she'd respond around 9:30 saying that 11:30 that day was open. I wouldn't have a chance to get to my e-mail again until at least 2pm, at which point it was too late, and mentioned this to her. Cue repeat.

I've had some awesome professors, though. In high school, I had an English teacher whose tangents were still relevant as well as entertaining. The Driver's Ed instructor cracked jokes and was very patient with student drivers (they couldn't have gotten a better teacher, I think). Another English teacher let me sit in the back of the class and read whatever I wanted because I finished The Hobbit and Troy (abridged Illiad) while the rest of the class was still only halfway through each book. The AP Calculus teacher let us paint on the wall (technically against the rules in the school) because we were doing a math mural for her room. Yes, she convinced the principal to leave it be, and her room has since been further decorated by subsequent Calculus classes.

In college, I had the Film Lit. professor who picked awesome book/movie combos for us to review, and who let a friend of mine write her class paper on Batman. My Aurthurian Lit. professor was very engaging and often as not showed us clips from documentaries and movies that dealt with Arthurian themes, including The Lord of the Rings. My last German professor was also highly entertaining, and also let us watch film clips to let us hear native speakers. I also got to take writing classes from Brandon Sanderson and Dave Wolverton, who are both great fun to learn from.

In all, I think the good teachers outweigh the bad, for the most part. I still wish I could go back and give Coach B a piece of my mind. Oh well, such is life.

[Merriweather]

First, let me say that my freshman English teacher (high school) was awesome - she taught grammar not from the normal 9th grade textbook, but from a college text. We learned parts of speech I never knew existed, diagrammed sentences, we knew gramar and all other aspects of English inside and out. By the time that class was over we'd probably have been able to manage a higher level college class.

That teacher in 9th grade was the only reason I passed later English classes. I moved after 9th grade, and at the new school had the strangest excuse for an English teacher ever. For some reason a teacher had quit, gotten fired, or just had to leave, and the school decided they had no budget for a replacement, and simply assigned someone else to cover this person's classes. Only, no English teachers were available. So they used a history (I think) teacher. One who was originally from Europe. One who could barely speak English himself.

For starters, he taught us very little (thankfully). He would spend entire classes telling us about how he spent most of WWII (this was in the late 60's, BTW) in a prisoner of war camp (deep hints that he was a spy of some sort). He said he was Belgian, his accent sounded German to me, but at that point, I had no real clue. But whatever the accent was, it was so thick we could only get the gist of the stories, would have been more interesting if we could have understood more of what he said.

I, a straight A student, failed every one of his spelling tests. As did everyone else. Instead of giving us words to study, then a test, he would just give us a verbal list of words to spell, out of the blue. Without using them in a sentence. It wasn't that we couldn't spell them, we simply had no idea what word we were supposed to spell. We used to compare tests with each other just to see what others thought he had been saying (for instance, what some of us interpreted as "bury it" actually turned out to be "varied" ).

What he did teach was mostly wrong, at least 50%. Grammar, what parts of speech were what, what to use when, punctuation, etc. Most students who had him in 10th grade had to struggle to re-learn everything in 11th grade, or even failed that. I was lucky, after my 9th grade teacher at the other school. I simply did things the way he wanted for tests and papers, knowing it was wrong, passed his class, then the next year went back to doing it the right way.

Why it continued all year, why no one put a stop to it, I don't know. I was too shy/mousy/scared sh*tless of athority at that point in my life that it never occurred to me to question or complain. I know some kids took assignments or graded tests to other teachers, and they agreed that things graded incorrect were in fact correct, etc. Why one of them didn't do something, I've no idea.

But it was totally bizarre.

[elsporko]

I had a Latin I professor my first year of college who had a novel method of teaching Latin. You had to be in class every single day and then listen attentively as he talked about his wife, his dog, his collection of travel photos and his politics. If you said anything in class it must be an agreement that these were all wonderful things. At the end of the class he assigned homework from the book and left.

I had a professor who loved to talk about stuff that had nothing to do with the class. At the beginning of each session he would discuss the news, students who had seen something interesting would bring it up and we would discuss it. If he didn't feel like teaching he would just prod people for more news items until class was over. He was actually pretty awesome, and since it was a political science class the news talk was still relevant. He was also the professor in charge of Model U.N. During the Model U.N. event he was seen once over the course of two days, no idea what he was doing that entire time.

For a story of a bad teacher: My minor is writing with a concentration in technical writing. The way it worked out my school only offered two tech writing classes, so I took those and a bunch of irrelevant literature classes. The tech writing professor for those two classes had no idea how to teach, obsessed over font and color, and had an innovative check plus, check, check minus system that she couldn't translate into actual grades so everybody in the class got an A at the end of the semester. The grade was nice but learning would have also been nice.

Not my story, but my brother's Spanish class once got a demerit for talking during a movie. The entire class (except one person who sat next to the teacher) The goofy thing is nobody in the class knew they were getting one until the end of the class. It would seem that there wasn't really much talking, no more then you would expect from a room full of high schoolers, and she never once told anybody to be quiet. She just announced they all got demerits at the end of the class.

[Magpie]

How about the student who wrote an introduction, a conclusion and then formatted "you're clearly not reading this" for the rest of his essay? He took it to the senate when it came back with a good grade.

My worst was the prof who allowed himself to be physically intimidated by the student that he was telling to stop disrupting the class or else leave. Either shut up and ignore the student, or carry out your threats. Don't make empty threats, and especially don't back down when he's physically threatening you. There are 100 other students in the class. Even if he's stupid enough to try to actually hit you (and this guy might have been), do you really think that no one would stop him?