Teacher/professor suckiness

[protege]

One of the worst profs I had in college...was probably the guy I had for Quantitative Business Analysis, or "business math." Nice guy, but because of his extremely thick Indian accent, I couldn't understand him. Most of us had difficulty with his class, and some of us even complained to the department head about him. He simply couldn't understand why we were having trouble After that, surprisingly...our grades went up one entire letter! He didn't last long after that--he got demoted, and unfortunately, later died of a heart attack.

Business Law II prof was just an asshole. He seemed to think, that because he was a lawyer, the rest of the town was supposed to kiss his ass. Needless to say, most of the class--myself included--couldn't stand him. Of course, things got interesting when he attempted to run for judge later that year. But, because of his reputation (plus that of his father, who was at one time a county commissioner), he got pwned. That is, he lost by a landslide--about 90% of the county voted for his opponent

[mariamousie1]

I think I had all those teachers, except for the accounting teacher. My accounting teacher was nice, and a good teacher, but he had a bad habit of, when I made a mistake, asking me something like "what were you trying to do HERE?" or "why on earth would you put down that number?" and expect an answer. Not in a mean way, just like he genuinely didn't understand how a student can make a mistake. I'd just say "um, I guess I got confused?"

The worst teacher I ever had was grade 5. I've bitched about her on here before. Meanest teacher ever. I really think she actually detested children. I ran into her last year and she greeted me like an old friend and asked me what I was up to, like she didn't make my life a living hell 15 years ago. Totally weird.

Stupidest teacher was grade 10 typing. She once told us that alligators were herbivores. Not to mention she couldn't get my name right when calling roll even though she was looking right at it on the attendance sheet. I got tired of correcting her and just stopped responding to the name. She marked me absent and I got hauled into the office for skipping class. She was nice, but a total dim bulb.

[Sliceanddice]

i think ill share my brothers story

Just before school started last semester me and my brother where in Accident # 2.
He broke his hand, His right hand, so he couldn't write.
He contacted and talked to all of his teachers and informed them on of the injury and that to take notes using his computer.
Now my brother extremely brite but is so brite he has a hard time getting into classed.
He is in communtie college because he deside he was too imature to handle 4 year right away.
He types very fast one handed and when he already knew what he was doing he might web surf or do the assignment ahead of time.
one time he had to email his professer and intro did in class, and the teacher though it was funny that while he was explaining the subject he was getting it in his mail box.
another time he fell asleep in a class and still answer the question the teacher woke him to ask right. That teacher would every now and then as a joke say "you still wake there Didi"

about a month in to classes one of his teachers went off on him, accusing him of slacking off in class and told him he wasnt alloud to use his laptop anymore.
My brother never did any slacking off in this class. he actually paid attention.
He said to her, in class, I cant write because i have a cast on my hand and a shattered bone. I will use my laptop.
She was never nice to him again (though he passed the class with an A, probable should have been an A+) and he would have gone to the department head but he counldn't.
She was married to him.
So she got away with yelling at students.


oh and the english teacher who though fantasy was going out of style, she must love Twilight lol

[Red_Dazes]

I have been lucky enough to have very few teachers I really disliked... but I did have two....

I had a teacher in 6th-7th grade... I hated her. I'll call her M.
M dogged me, from day one. Criticized everything I did (mostly because she didn't like how i dressed) she actually told me once I could only wear 3 rings to class (I used to wear one on every finger... not nice rings just fun ones) or I would get a zero in participation. I once received a C on a paper I wrote because I misspelled 2 words and miss placed 3 commas ((by the by, I once showed that same paper to my COLLEGE English prof. And she said even from a college student that paper would deserve NO less than a B... and considering I was in 6th grade when I wrote it she said I should have gotten an A))
Another time, we had a spelling test... I have never been a strong speller, I spell Phonetically...so I often misspell things with out a computer. I got a D. when M was handing back the tests she made a point to stop by my desk and tell me, loudly and in front of the whole class, that I didn't assert myself... that I deserved the grades I got because I was lazy and unmotivated, and that I was never going to amount to anything in my life. I went to the bathroom and cried.
Add to that...she had the nerve to tell my 8th grade teacher (who was new to our little private school) "Watch out for Red Dazes! She is a terrible slacker." ((my mom found out from my 8th grade teacher about this during conferences. ((bless his heart though he told her 'Thanks, but I will make judgments on my students on my own.' And know what, he was awesome and the lowest grade I got in his class was a c ((in spelling!)))

Then in College I had a math teacher I will call J. First day of class he told us, as all profs do. "Come to me with any questions you have! If You don't understand something we will work though it." Second week of school I got really sick. I e-mailed him and told him I would not be in, please e-mail me the homework assignments. He did. And I tried to do them... but math is another failing I have... especially college math ((after 2 years of math free bliss)) so I did my best, got the wrong answers and came to class slightly sick, and severely confused two days later. I got to class early and he was there so I went up and said, "Mr. J. I e-mailed you about being sick. I tried to do the assignments you sent me, but I just don't understand what we are doing. Do you think I could come to your office later and you could explain this... or could you maybe touch on it in your lecture today?" He looked at his attendance sheet... looked at me and said "If you actually showed up to class you would know what we were talking about."
I was so floored. I ended up failing that class because I just couldn't understand what we were doing, and he was NO help what so ever. Whenever anyone would ask a question about a certain problem... he would write it out and tell us all to find the answer. When we couldn't he would harp on us about not paying attention, write the answer on the board with out explaining how to find the answer, and move on.

[LadyAndreca]

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.

Reminds me of my freshman volleyball coach. I benchwarmed all year because I was a freshman, despite the fact that I could play better than the seniors and spike better than girls half a foot taller than me. (Okay, I admit I strugged with setting and spent most of the season working on it, but the way our team played, two girls did 90% of the setting anyways.)

The one game I DID get to play was a JV game. My coach, who bitched CONSTANTLY because my most accurate way to serve was underhand, watch me singlehandedly serve six untouched points in a row because no one in our league served underhand so it took them that long to figure out what to do about it. (I switched to an overhand serve as soon as they figured it out.) But noooo, that didn't mean I had any idea what I was doing, it was just a JV game...

That was the only year I ever played volleyball, too. My sophomore year we didn't have enough players to make a team (and I twisted my ankle in practice, making that problem worse). My junior and senior years, they never bothered to get us a new coach - the sucky one went to another school because she needed a job.

[greek_jester]

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

*blinks* If that was supposed to be a compliment, someone needs to brush up on their social skills.

[wynjara]

In the 18+ years of school, the horrid teachers fortunately only slightly outnumbered the awesome ones; most were incredibly mediocre.

My pre-school teacher once forgot me when taking the class to the library. The principal found me wandering around our empty classroom and I had to sit with the baby class instead of going to that glorious repository of books.


First grade teacher actually let me help teach sometimes, in the subjects I was bored in. If anyone was jealous or didn't like me because of it, I never noticed, so wow I missed her when we moved and I had DemonSpawn McBitchy for second grade. That woman mocked me in front of the class for mis-pronouncing corps and colonel, neither of which I'd ever seen in print.

Had some awesome high school teachers, mostly in senior year: AP English, world history, chem II and physics. Mr. L sat and debated with us all day over which Disney movies were based somewhat on Shakespeare plays, and was perfectly content to be proved wrong the one time that our book editions messed up a test. My history prof. just made things incredibly interesting, and played bits of relevant movies to keep us awake. Physics and chem made certain to do things interestingly: Newton's laws involved an incident with roller blades and raw eggs, we imploded an oil drum, tests were taken with Mozart playing and the teacher hitting whiffle golf balls around the room, and one day after school when I had to make up a test two of the teachers had a sword fight with meter sticks. Oh, and physics teacher had chem teacher break a cinder block on his chest while he lay on a bed of nails.

That physics teacher helped me survive the next lousy one: college physics prof didn't give us the formulas we needed, didn't answer questions, and got mad when my lab partner and I were still discussing the problem (I had the formulas from HS and was explaining them to her) so he couldn't leave. Never mind that class didn't end for another hour. He just passed the entire class, because everyone failed. And we were all science and math majors.

Eeek, this is too long. So, quickly: when all 120 students fail the first test, you fail at teaching; knowledge of your craft does not make you a good teacher; when you ask what I thought of a story and I say I didn't like it, your answer is not (and I quote) "You're wrong"; and when a student hands you a note saying they were in the hospital and couldn't make it to class, the correct response is not "Tough".

...sorry so long. Can you tell school was a love/hate relationship?

[BarbieGirl]

Oh my goodness!! I have had soooooo many horrible teachers I think thats why I've always wanted to be a teacher so that other kids wouldn't have to go through that crap.

3rd grade. She thought I asked way to many questions, and I have to say I was a fairly bright kid. At the time I tested with a 9th grade reading level. I enjoyed the math and wanted to learn more so I asked questions above and beyond what we were doing. She got pissed so she put me in the little group of remedial math students who were still working on their addition tables. We had to do those worksheets in the hall every day and if you finished in a certain amount of time you won a prize (I got one every single day, til the aide finally said I didn't need to be there).

8th grade english- She came to work drunk most days that is until she wrecked her car going to work and got a DUI.
Then the sub. I was in Drama and one of our assignments was to read the school announcements in the morning. I had a written note informing the sub that I would be gone for the first 15 mins (which was technically a quite/study time not class time) She yelled and told me if I wasn't there when the bell rang I would be locked out and get a detention.

She would yell at us and tell us we were stupid and worthless and then throw all of our homework in a large arc across the room at us.

Someone was apparently cheating off one of my tests I hadn't really noticed since I was keeping my eyes on my own paper... She yelled at me, failed my test and gave the other person an A.....

So my mom complained a lot and this lady actually got escorted out of class after they found out she was throwing stuff at the students, never to be seen again.

9th grade health teacher.... He spent his time in the back of class looking at porn. A few students caught him but he is still teaching there and I just had my 10 year reunion.
We had to write some huge reports and present them to the class. He was in the back really engrossed in the flavor of the day. I had a page report on anorexia/bulemia and got bored presenting it and asked the class if they would just clap for me then I would put us all out of our misery's and stop halfway through... they did and I got an A.

9th grade PE, he was also the football coach. Said that when you were doing squats your butt had to touch your heels so that if a marble was placed on your knee it would roll to your lap. I stretched a nerve in my back that still bothers me... 14 years later... what sucks even more is that I got muscle relaxers but my mom said they weren't good for me and it would give me other problems and wouldn't let me use them. Plus at this time my asthma was getting worse but I still hadn't be diagnosed and he kept making fun of me telling me I needed to stop smoking.

Algebra 9th grade I think might have been 10th. She couldn't teach. She was the swim coach and they just need a place to put her. She hated men and took it out on the guys in class. We were doing an assignment my neighbor had a question and I was answering it since the teacher was busy, was opening my binder to find my notes from class to show neighbor she came over slammed my notebook shut and then elbowed it and cracked it in half. Her facial expression was funny because just a minute or two later got a call over the intercom for me to go to the counselors office (had to reschedule an appointment) deer in the headlights.

I was going because I was trying to get switched into another class so I wouldn't get behind the next year. Came back to class and she asked to talk to me out in the hall and then apologized for her behavior and asked why I went. I told her to get into another class where I could learn more. She said 'but your getting an A what else do you need' Luckily that was my last day.

also 9th grade (bad year I think) Had a sub for my biology class. We were rewatching a movie that we saw the previous week on mitosis or something. Teacher told us the day before what the instructions said that she left. Said we could work on other stuff as long as we were quiet because it was just filler stuff.
Sub had serious control issues. people papers got snatched off their desks, even if it was for the class. According to her there was to be NO WRITING OF ANYTHING even notes on the movie apparently. We had some trouble makers that decided to push it, whispering to each other, telling her off a bit. She kept threatening to call the cops on them but then backed down and went in the office for a few minutes and came back out. She finally did get security to take them out. then hid in the back for a while. One of the other students then staged a walk out and we all left, She tried to block the door, but there were two so we went down to the office to bail out the other students. Principal was a little surprised to see the whole class there complaining about the sub, so they let the other kids go with a warning.

11 grade trig. His nickname was mr fattagoni. He only knew the chesty girls first and last names....... mostly just a sleaze ball spent his time talking about his son getting in trouble and scubadiving or going across the hall to help the computer lab.

10th or 11th took a typing class for beginners. first day was spent on how to cut and paste and trying to get 10 words per minute. I was at 35 wpm wouldn't let me skip a level because you just didn't do that! So I picked some other elective to take.

10th grade geometry.... whackaloon. she would spend her time on the computer just laughing like a crazy person. put the work on the board and look at it and say 'oops I got it wrong' you guys try and fix it' and then would go read her silly emails.

Had a couple more in college a few that you couldn't understand through their accent and not great teaching skills.

One that I took for 2 different classes one online other in class, they were english, different topics but had some cross over. Gave the SAME midterm in both..... So I essentially wrote the same answer because it was a what do you interpret this as blah blah blah.... in class I got an A online I got a C-it wasn't really what she was looking for............ yeah.

[Amina516]

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).

I remember those videos for sure.. Lol. Theyre interesting to a point, but we watched one almost every class.... That psych teacher was great though..sadly he died near the end of the semester. He was already wheelchair bound and needed some kidney surgery he never quite popped back from. But he was awesome and really funny.

I had a teacher in nursing school tell us a body part was on the opposite side of where it actually is. it took someone leaving the class and finding an Anatomy book to show her she was wrong before she would believe it.

[Gawdzillers]

My current Anatomy teacher is terrible. She can't pronounce anything (subcutaneous, acoustic, coccyx, etc.), can't control the class, and gossips with people during free time. She has said, a number of times, that she's only working hard enough to survive the rest of the year without getting fired.

My Band teacher is fucking up, too. We spent all last semester practicing for concerts, then a day before the mid-term exam, he decides we should learn the material that would be on the exam. Luckily, I've had his class for two years prior to this, and I know all his material.

There was also one incident with an otherwise-cool teacher in 10th grade. I started busting out laughing during work time because I thought of something funny, and she threatened me with detention if I didn't be quiet.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I think I might as well mention my high school German teacher here.

She was from Austria, a native speaker of the language, so that was a bit of a plus. However, she was a rather odd lady. Very refreshingly open about her sex life (she was a lesbian, not that there's anything wrong with that). One time in class she showed us slides of her buck naked at some German health spa. Granted, the attitudes about sex and sexuality may be different in Europe, but is that something you need to be showing your students?

Want to know about her teaching style? We spent lots of time reading from German textbooks disguised as great works of literature or storybooks. One was called Geheime Mission (Secret Mission), an espionage thriller that featured a couple industrial spies, a top-secret formula for cosmetics, car chases, and somebody getting imprisoned in a fruit cellar. And we would spend close to a week on each individual chapter--reading it, answering the questions at the end, breaking up into groups to re-read it, and maybe putting on a skit about the chapter we had just read.

There was another one, I forget the name of it, but it was some small town, and a shopkeeper in this small town, and his jilted lover, who has since become rich as shit returns to the small town and promises the citizens a fortune if they'll kill the shopkeeper, and at first they refuse but then slowly begin turning on the shopkeeper, and then they finally off the poor bastard, take the lover's money, and find they're no happier with her money than they were before she even showed up. Again, we'd read a chapter, review it, and do other things with it at the rate of about a week a chapter.

In between, we'd watch a bunch of corny videos. The music video for the song "Ding Dong" still gives me nightmares.

You will notice I have said nothing yet about things like verb tenses, conversational usage, grammar, and noun genders. Things you need to know to speak and understand the language. That's because we didn't spend a whole hell of a lot of time on that, compared to everything else we were doing.

Finally, we came to the end of my senior year, and time for AP tests. I was planning to take two of them, the AP history test and the AP English test. I chose those two because I was paying for those tests and I felt I could pass them. My German teacher was all over me to take the AP German test because I was one of her best students. So were my parents and my Upward Bound adviser. My fellow students were advising against it because the word for past students who had taken the test was that it was insanely difficult, and they weren't going to even attempt it. Finally my parents offered to pay for that test, so I really had no choice.

There alone the classroom to take the AP German test, I found out just how good at German I really was. The test basically involved a recording of people saying things in German, and I had to pick the response that made the most sense. The speakers were talking at conversation speed. In class we tended to recite things slowly and deliberately. Everything sounded like a couple people clearing their sinuses, and I had to translate it into words and determine the correct response, and do it fast before the next sinus clearings came over the tape recorder.

Weeks later, the results came back. I failed that test spectacularly. My teacher's teaching methods did almost nothing to help you understand the language as it would be spoken by native speakers in Germany.

I still see her from time to time at the swamp. Every time I talk to her, I come away feeling like I need a drink and a shower.

[Greenday]

My calc teachers were horrible. My Calc I teacher was bad. My Calc II teacher was even worse if possible. Probably because he was the oldest person I know and should have retired about 15-20 years ago when he became a senior citizen and people may have been able to read his hand writing, which everything was done in. Then again, my university is known to have the worst math department in the state of Pennsylvania so I shouldn't be too surprised.

Some of my bio teachers were pretty bad too. No explanations of anything. But I understand it's tough when you have to teach to a class over 175+.

My physics teacher was amazing. He was literally always available to help or to just shoot the breeze. That was two years ago and I still visit him weekly between my classes. He made physics so much freaking fun!

[Dasota]

I've had a few amazing teachers and a few really horrible teachers.

The Good:

Had an English teacher my senior year that was awesome. I had also hung around and talked with him all during my high school years before I had him for a teacher. He was very involved in the school community, like with the drama kids, and was the tech director for the musical, and for my senior year was the teacher for the newspaper/broadcasting class that I took, as well as the Speech and Theater teacher. All around he was an awesome guy that was a geek like the rest of us and would tie in a lot of refrences to things that we would know about. Weird DnD things and TONS of Monty Python refrences.

The Bad:

Math teacher in 10th grade was definately not one that was best suited for teaching. He just "got" math. And that didn't bode well with those of us that didn't just "get" math. I got sick really bad during the week that we were switching over to a new unit and were learning sin cos and tan. Which I still to this day don't know. I tried staying after school and learning it, but he would never be there, and if I tried to go in during study hall he would chew me out for not staying after school!

Overall not a bad guy, just one of those who didn't understand when kids weren't a math whiz like him

The Ugly:

Government teacher my senior year. I learned nothing except to never disagree with a Marine. Oh and Chuck Norris jokes. So worth my time.

The one time he gave out this hand out and was ranting on what bullshit it was (something about what it takes to be president, and it had a ton of superficial stuff on it. #7 was luck). I had other assignments I could have gone and done, and since we weren't learning anything anyways I raised my hand, agreed that this sheet was bull, and asked if we would be doing this for the entire class (80 minute classes) and if so if I could be excused to the library to go learn something. He didn't take to kindly to that. So I pulled out a book and read and tuned him out because I didn't feel like listening to how much a piece of paper was crap.

Also, he said that he didn't take a participation grade at the beginning, this was something that while true, wasn't at the same time since the only way he could justify the weird way he gave out grades was whether they participated or not. The first have of the class I did well, all my papers came back with an A or B on them, and I got the lowest a C on a test. So I was in for a surprise when the second half of the class I was doing about the same, yet I failed that quater! And I apparently failed the class! I was very confused as to how this happened

[BeeMused]

There was another one, I forget the name of it, but it was some small town, and a shopkeeper in this small town, and his jilted lover, who has since become rich as shit returns to the small town and promises the citizens a fortune if they'll kill the shopkeeper, and at first they refuse but then slowly begin turning on the shopkeeper, and then they finally off the poor bastard, take the lover's money, and find they're no happier with her money than they were before she even showed up.

Friedrich Dürrenmatt - Der Besuch der alten Dame?
It's a classic play, very popular in schools.

[MaggieTheCat]

I've posted some of my sucky teacher stories in older posts, but here are a few more.

I can't remember what grade this was in, but probably sometime during elementary school. When we had spelling tests, there was always a part of the test where the teacher would read sentences using the spelling words and we'd have to write out the whole sentence. And of course, everything had to be spelled correctly, not just the spelling words. She used a sentence once that contained the name "John." I didn't really know how to spell that name, I'd never spelled it before, so I spelled it as "Jon" and she marked me down for it. She also used the name "Charlie" once and I spelled it as "Charley" and she marked it wrong because there was a boy in our class named "Charlie" so that's how everyone should have known to spell it.

Once when I was a sophomore in HS (10th grade) I was part of the pit band that was playing for the current drama production. We were about a week away from opening night so everyone was expected to stay at school till 10-11pm for practices, every night. I got really sick with a migraine during the last class of the day. I managed to make it to the nurse's office and tried calling my mom to pick me up, but she didn't answer. I couldn't even walk to the auditorium to talk to the band director (who I was not on good terms with anyway.) I was kneeling over the toilet in the office bathroom, throwing up, and then dry heaving. So the nurse went and talked to the band director for me and told him how sick I was. Eventually we got a hold of my mom and she came to pick me up. The next day when I went back to school, the band director screamed at me for not showing up to practice, and to have the NERVE not to come and face him myself. I asked him if he would have rather I came and thrown up on him instead, since that's why I couldn't come talk to him myself. He told me I was out of the pit band and he wouldn't let me perform for the production, which was fine with me because I never wanted to do it in the first place (he strongarmed me into it by saying he'd fail me in band if I didn't "volunteer" to play in the pit band.) Then a day or two before opening night, he came running back to me telling me I'd have to play in the performance. He couldn't find anyone else to cover my part in time.