Professors sucking

[Sapphire Silk]

I've had a few sucky profs;

My middle school math teacher (whose name blissfully eludes me) also would not give me points on an exam unless I used hermethod of solving problems.

However, I have a learning disability in math; I have trouble keeping the letters and numbers in the right places. I had a tutor who showed me how to solve problems and not lose track of the numbers. In spite of the fact I have a documented disability, she refused to accept my alternative method in spite of the fact I got every answer right. Completely turned me off of math. (Oh, and if you're wondering why I didn't cite ADA, this was pre ADA).

My high school algebra teacher is just as much of a bitch. She was a horrible teacher, not too patient. I was failing her class horribly, and I was getting desperate--if I didn't pass her class, I'd have to take another year of math and I was so done with the subject.

I went to her and asked for extra help, she promised to tutor me during study hall. Later that day, I come into class and sit down in my usual seat, pull out a book and start to read (I always read until class started, then put the book away).

Well, the cover of the book I was reading was the same color as my math text (both hardbacks). I raise my hand and asked a question, and the teacher snaps, "Perhaps you'd know the answer already if you'd open your math book instead of reading during class."

With a stone cold expression, I slammed my math book closed. You could've heard a pin drop. She was all over herself trying to apologize, but I was done. She ended up giving me a D for the course, but it was a stretch . . . I was failing. I think she actually felt bad over the way she treated me.

Yet another math prof story . . . .

I took Statistics in college (pre-req for my nursing program). The prof assigns a 1 page paper on some math issue. Bear in mind, this was pre-home computer (yes I am dating myself). I had a type writer. I wrote the draft on notebook paper, and typed it up. My typerwriter had a 12 point (elite) font. I went one line over one page. So I staple it together, and hand it in.

Next in class, prof hands papers back. My grade: 0. I asked why. His response? You didn't follow instructions. Bastard.

Later that year, a club I was in was doing a fundraiser. Our advisor donated a junker, and we were selling whacks with a sledgehammer for a buck--all the whacks you could muster. We even offered spray paint so you could put the object of your affection on the car for a target. Loved the look on that prof's face when he wandered by and saw me beating the hell out of his name on that car!

[Andara Bledin]

Ah, there are a few doozies out there, that's for certain.

My first lousy teacher wasn't until 5th grade. I suspect mostly because I was pretty clueless before then. This guy had a thing about punishing the entire class any time 1 kid did anything wrong. By the end of the year, I could write out the 50 states, in alphabetical order, without looking. And until recently, I had horrible issues with memorization, so that was quite a lot of repetition.

Then, in middle school (6th through 8th grades), there was one teacher who insisted on nicknaming me Wally Doodles. Yeah, I kinda hated that. Not sure if it was worse that the PE teacher would call me Pretty Polly. With me being the loner weirdo with her nose in a book and not wearing the latest fashions, that got me a lot of teasing. And in 8th grade, I got stuck in pre-algebra. This particularly irritated me due to the fact that I had spent the previous summer teaching myself intermediate collegiate algebra (from a study guide that assumed you already knew algebra) because I had been bored. The teacher sucked, too. There are at least three other kids that would have never passed her class if I hadn't been playing tutor to my classmates.

Note on math: If your teacher doesn't teach it to you in a manner you can easily grasp, math can be hell. My brother never understood how the hell fractions worked until my mother lucked upon the right way to explain it to him. He was 12 by then.

In extracurricular fun, the band instructor for middle school was a narcissistic flake. He wasn't a bad band instructor, but he had a habit of preening in front of the parents after concerts instead of, say, unlocking the band room so the kids could put their instruments away and get their coats s they could get themselves home. Although, to be fair, he did also give rides to kids whose parents didn't have cars to come pick them up. But he was always dropping us off later than he should. Found an article recently about some tart that accused him of sexual misconduct. Turns out she was just miffed over something and made the whole thing up, but it still forced him to resign.

My freshman year of high school was fun. I had 2 incredibly sucky teachers. The first was just completely and utterly incompetent. She taught 9th grade English literature. I already hate literature classes because I don't think like most people, so I'd get inconsistent marks on my written work, plus I just don't like dissecting fiction to begin with. This was the 2nd time I'd gotten bad marks in a literature class (the previous was 8th grade, and that was due to my disillusionment with the whole school process and me not doing, well, any of my homework for nearly the whole year... spent a lot of time getting called Wally Doodles in detention >_< ), but this time was because the teacher wasn't intelligent enough to pass her own class. She couldn't spell simple words like "soccer" or "tomorrow," and lord help her if she needed to conjugate a sentence. I spent nearly the entire year passing notes because I couldn't be bothered to pay any attention to her. She had absolutely no control over her class. My brother had her two years later and made a big point of correcting her mistakes in front of everyone and making her cry. I'd feel sorry for her, except that she had no business being there in the first place.

But she doesn't hold a candle to my 9th grade math teacher. I was finally put in Algebra, which I still didn't actually need to take, and the teacher was this dumpy little man with a foot fetish. I didn't realize it at the time, but I clearly remember reading through classes while he chatted up the stupid girls in the front row who made a point to paint their toenails and wear sandals to school. If I had been less clueless (and less apathetic) I'd have told my mother about him, and she'd have raised holy hell.

Other oddities included the English (grammar this time; I loved those classes) teacher who also coached the baseball team. He had a mad-on about the wrestlers and he'd give them detention if they did that whole spitting in a cup instead of swallowing their saliva during the day to try to reduce their weight. As if that would even work. There was also the jerk I had for ceramics who decided that when the class screw-up threw a wad of damp slip at me, I deserved to go to detention, too, because obviously my being hit with wet clay was somehow my own fault. My brother had him later, too, and ended up transferring out (my mom had to go in and demand it, because the douche was blocking it) because he remembered me and didn't like metal heads so was giving him a hard time for no good reason. Oh, yeah, and my high school band instructor decided that I didn't deserve a letter for band my senior year, despite being the only senior in the band because I didn't take a band class for the second semester because he'd gone and made the second semester zero period band class into a pe class for the rest of the kids and basically blocked me out. I'm not sure why he didn't like me, but I know he hated my brother for being a long-haired metal head and having the audacity to also be the best player in the horn section (which was his favorite section; he hated those of us who played winds... he had issues).

The worst of the worst, however, happened to my brother. The week before graduation, his guidance counselor must have decided that would be a good time to make sure her students had met all of their requirements. Not, say, at the beginning of the school year when she was helping kids to decide what classes to take. My brother ended up with two free periods that year, and it wasn't until the week before graduation that she thought to inform him that he was missing a class requirement, so he wouldn't be graduating. By this point, he was on really good terms with the principal (who was a very cool guy; the district was lucky to have him), so he went to him about her utter failure to do her job, and the principal waived the requirement.

I attended community college for a couple of years, but nothing of note happened to me there.

^-.-^

[Eisa]

Note on math: If your teacher doesn't teach it to you in a manner you can easily grasp, math can be hell. My brother never understood how the hell fractions worked until my mother lucked upon the right way to explain it to him. He was 12 by then.

^-.-^

Agreed. I didn't have a good math teacher until 12th grade, in Calculus. He explained logarithms in 15 minutes...and I finally understood them. My Algebra 2 teacher took a week to go over them and I barely had a clue. How hard would it have been to maybe, I don't know, mention that they're the inverse of exponential equations? That was like this whole lightbulb moment like OH so THAT'S why that happens!

I just remembered my AP Language teacher. Teaching-wise she wasn't a huge fail, although she did like focusing on "symbols" too much. Especially in My Antonia and The Scarlet Letter. I now hate those books with a white-hot passion rivaling the heat of a thousand suns. Anyway. She had a bad habit of losing work. And what really sucked was that she would acknowledge that she KNEW you turned it in...she just still wouldn't give you credit. Even though it was HER fault for losing it.

...guess how much of my work she lost? HALF. I was furious...I had worked pretty darn hard on all of it, done all my work, turned it in ON TIME...and she told me that she knew all that, it was entirely her fault...and I didn't get credit, anyway. If I'd been thinking more clearly, I would have gone to the principal. That shit was seriously not cool.

Thankfully, I ended up getting an A in the class regardless from other stuff [and I think she finally gave in and gave me credit for some of the missing work...]. But...yeah. Not cool.

My friend also, I can't remember if she really DID do this or just wanted to, put "fuck me running" in the middle of her paper and didn't get caught. Way to read all of everyone's assignments there, Teach.

[Marmalady]

There's nothing worse than the feeling of helplessness when you know that a teacher just doesn't like you, for whatever reason, and is determined not to be pleased by anything you do.
My French teacher for my 4th and 5th year (that's the 2 years coming up to the old 'O' level exams - think age 15 / 16 ish) was one of these. I've still no idea why. Boasting apart, I was damn good at French, that and English were my best subjects. I loved languages (still do) and worked hard, didn't mess about in class, but whatever I did was never 'right'.
If she couldn't find anything else, she'd complain that I wrote too much. Unlike some in the class, I never had any trouble filling the page, and even if only 150 words were wanted, would usually end up around the 250 mark. One of the very last comments she wrote on the bottom of an essay of mine just before the 'O' level exams started was 'I still advise you to curb the length of your work or you will most likely lose marks in the exam'.
The O level results came through later that year, I got 8 and the grade for the French one?
It was an A.

I went back to school to do the 6th form and she was one of the first people I saw, whereupon I took great pleasure in telling her how well I had done.

But if I hadn't been very good at French, she would have spoiled my chances I'm sure, because I was more or less teaching myself that subject for those two years.

[Cazzi]

I had about the opposite with my French teacher. We had compulsory French (and Latin but that's another story) up til we could chose subjects for O Level.

MY French teacher came from France, was pretty strict, scowled at me a lot & I felt she picked on my in class to show others how not to speak/write French!

Needless to say I dropped that subject when it cane to O Level choices, I didn't think I was good at it & had no wish to struggle on when there were other things I could be doing.

She came up to me one day in a school corridor saying how disappointed she was I'd dropped the subject, she considered me one of her better pupils and thought I would do extremely well in the subject if I'd carried on.

Well, yes, might have been nice if she'd had made that clearer earlier!

[Eisa]

I got kind of lucky, my French teacher REALLY liked me. But that, in its own way, was kind of hard to bear because I felt like I hugely disappointed her if I did anything wrong. Even if I didn't really, it just FELT that way, you know? She even had me do honors testing and like praised me to the skies in front of every adult/teacher she met. I guess it didn't help that I was better at French than the exchange student who'd taken 4 years already.

But yeah. I loved my French teacher in high school, but I wish that maybe she'd at least calmed down the "OMG YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL" stuff because she did it in front of everyone...including the class! Just luck that everyone liked me, anyway...I wasn't the one bragging after all.

[chainedbarista]

most of my profs/teacher like me, even though i'm a snarky little wench. (or at the very least, they tolerate my irreverence ).

i generally don't interrupt the flow of class with my behavior, though.

[C. Cecil Ivanish]

I have tons.
The worst probably was a total pillock at Uni.
He was teaching fourth year English.
The course was so structured: we had two professors - one of grammar-related matters (advanced grammar, composition, translation, such things), who was (by law) a native speaker of English (ours was an Australian lady) and one of literature (we are not talking "The Owl and the Pussycat" here, more on the lines of Virginia Woolf and W.H. Auden), who didn't need to be a native speaker. His accent was a bit "off" to say the least. Remember that this all takes place in Italy, where I was born and grew up - but a bunch of (albeit last year) students who speak far better English than their professor... no good.
Anyway: at the end of the course we needed to sit four exams to get a mark (out of 30): a very advanced "generic grammar" test, a translation and two face to face interviews, one with each professor.
Now, the main professor (the one who was not a native speaker of English) was quite full of himself. Or of crap. Well, in this case probably it is the same thing.
Anyway.
He had clearly stated that the average mark between the two written tests would have been our minimum mark.
Cool.
So I sit both parts, I got a 28/30 in the "advanced grammar" test and a 26/30 in the translation (some minor mistake). Cool, my lowest mark a 27/30!
I go on to the face-to-face exam. Grammatical theory first. A 30-minute chat with this very nice Austalian professor, some minor uncertainties, still a 28/30. Not bad.
Then I proceed to the Big Boss. Who starts drilling me about XX century English literature. Not a problem, except for the fact that he didn't seem to agree with the fact that I dared disagreeing with him. But after 90 minutes (yes, no typo - one hour and a half) he starts showing signs of disappointment. He calls the other professor over. "Professor Cxxxxx, how is it possible that you gave this man a 28/30? His English is terrible, unacceptable!" The Australian professor replies "Well, his English seemed quite good to me... can I hear something please?" So I oblige and keep blabbering about Virginia Woolf and whatnot. After a bunch of seconds she interrupts me and tells the other professor - in Italian lest he couldn't understand I guess: "Look - this man has a good mymethic ability with accents. While talking to me he had a mild Australian accent. After over one hour, he is picking up yours. He is talking like you".
Of course the pillock went totally ballistic and threatened to "kick me out of the University" - even though I had not done it on purpose and I am sure he knew it (I got the same feedback from other foreign language professors).
25/30 - took it and went to an AC/DC concert that same night. Great way to vent.

[Magpie]

She even had me do honors testing and like praised me to the skies in front of every adult/teacher she met. I guess it didn't help that I was better at French than the exchange student who'd taken 4 years already.

Ok, seriously, she should know better. It's not just unfair to the other kids, it's unfair to you. (In more ways than just putting pressure on you.)

[MoonCat]

Ah, this brings back memories of my fifth grade teacher. He was a screamer. The other classes could hear him from down the hall, even with the doors closed. When he got angry he threw things: Chalk, blackboard erasers, books, rulers….at the walls, the floor, and sometimes at the students. He broke several wooden pointers because he kept banging and smashing them on his desk. Once he threw a pointer at the kid behind me. Luckily he missed us both. In those days the teacher’s word was law. No one dared to complain. Somehow he still managed to teach. My favorite subject was Art, and he actually was a pretty good artist. We learned a lot about perspective and shading while drawing in his class. In the spring, we decorated the classroom with construction-paper birds, flowers and streamers. The best part was the animals: In the back of the class we kept two gerbils, two hamsters, and a 2 ft long boa constrictor. If we got through the day’s work without giving him too much trouble, we were allowed to play with the animals. The snake’s usual meal was a live mouse dropped into the terrarium, and sometimes he would allow other classes to come in and watch the action. It was like “Wild Kingdom”…live. I can just imagine the lawsuits this guy would inspire if he tried any of this stuff today.

Then there was a teacher I had in freshman and sophomore years in high school. He actually taught two subjects: half the year was Church History (basically a religion class) and half was called "Marriage" (gotta love the way the admin avoided calling it Sex Ed). I was very shy and very naive then and didn't realize this guy was a total sexist douchebag. There was one day when I asked him a question after class, while the next class was coming into the room and taking their seats. He answered my question and then, without missing a beat, made a comment about how many attractive girls there were in the school, like "her" (pointing to a girl) and commenting about how he was "just going to rape her if she just doesn't sit down!"

I don't know if he ever tried anything with any of the girls. His wife was a teacher at the same school, so I suppose he had to watch out, but he was only there two years. Makes me wonder if he got in trouble that I never heard about.

[Merriweather]

Oh, I could go on and on about some of the imbeciles, twits and strange teachers I had. Moving around all my childhood, I went to 14 different schools (in several states) before finishing high school (for those not in the US, that's 12 (or 13 if you go to kindergarten first, I didn't) years of school.

But instead of writing a novel (it would have to be deemed fiction, no one would believe it was all true, I'll just cover the worst of the worst, he wins hands down.

10th grade English class. Somehow, the school was short one English teacher (one quit, died, or possibly was locked away in an asylum) and for some reason, instead of getting a temp til they could hire another English teacher, they chose, instead, the German teacher. For the entire year. Who spoke mostly, guess what, German. With an extremely strong accent. Not that he was German - he spent enormous amounts of time explaining this, that he was Belgian, not German. How he spent much of WWII in prison camps. NOT fighting on the German side. I think half the classes were spent with his tales of WWII (this was the 1960's, btw). Never have been quite sure if it was bragging, complaining or making sure he had his cover story completely right.

He loved spelling tests. Only, instead of giving us words to study, then testing us, he would give unannounced spelling tests of random words. In his heavy German accent. Spelling the words wasn't the problem, just figuring out what he was saying was where we failed. After the class, we'd all stand around a few minutes and compare "translations", as we all ended up trying to spell different words. Only example I can recall was once the word was "varied". Closest I had come up with to spell was "bury it"

Grammar was worse. He just flat out did not know a lot of proper English grammar (his grammar when speaking was almost as bad as his accent - after roll call he would look around and say, "Now, did I forgot someone?".
Once, a few students took a homework problem to another English teacher and asked the answer, which was different than what our teacher said. Proving what we all knew, he was teaching it wrong. However, any attempt to tell the principle the problems fell on deaf ears, nothing was ever done.

I was very lucky - I'd gone to a different school the year before, with a wonderful English teacher who chose to teach us not out of the standard 9th grade English book, but from a college textbook he preferred. I learned enough English to get me through high school and beyond in that one year. So in 10th grade, I simply did what the teacher said, knowing it was wrong, got my good grade, then mentally filed everything he taught into the trash and went back to my proper learning from the year before. Others weren't so lucky - they either couldn't mesh the two, and flunked that year, or "learned" what he said and had to attempt to "unlearn" it all the next year.

But he wins hands down for "worst teaching".

Others win in other categories - worst "witch" was a college professor, so strict that she wouldn't let me make up an exam, even though I missed it due to being in a traffic accident on my way to class (her name, funnily enough, was the same as the acctress who had played the wicked witch in Wizard of Oz, so everyone at one time or another spoke of tossing a bucket of water on her).

And the list could go on, including one femaile P.E. teacher who, looking back, had to be a perv with a thing for young girls in the shower room (7th grade, we had no idea back then).


Oh, the joys of attempting to get an education

[TawnyMyst]

A couple come to mind immediately:

10th Grade Math (what is with math?)

Now to understand fully I have to give a description, Ms. D. was a teacher that you only knew was female by virtue of the fact that she wore a skirt every day, otherwise she would be easily mistaken for a Mr. Now math has always been one of my easiest courses, just how my brain works, but I have never come closer to failing a class as I did with her. The first day she had us all introduce ourselves and say a little bit about our lives. She also wanted us to say what extracurricular activities we did, as she was a big believer about being involved in the school. When she got to me I told her about being on the yearbook, which was fine, but then I mentioned that I was on the school rifle team and was ranked in provincial on the range team, also that I was in Cadets and ranked national on their team and hoped to be again that year. I was then treated to an hour long lecture that went into the next period about how it was unladylike to even consider shooting a rifle and that if I ever wanted to get married I would give it up immediately and that I was probably some psychotic little freak that deserved to be expelled. She then went out of her way to try to fail me and see that I was kicked out of school. I think I spent more time in detention thanks to her, then all my other teachers combined in all my years of school.


My second prof that was a problem was in college. Second year, Engineering Knowledge III, the entire class was spent copying notes from the board, complete with spelling mistakes, that were his notes from when he took the course 20 years previously. I think the best was when I walked in to class to him drawing a fly-weight governor on the board for us to copy, he finished his diagram, stepped back from the board and his next comment was, "Oh, So that's how that works." The class walked out enmass and we all vowed that if we got on a ship he was on, we were getting back off.

[Sapphire Silk]

One should not be having aha moments when teaching the subject to someone else. Especially in class. Oy vei.

[Festival_Worker]

This one is not really my own story, but rather my brother's. If you don't like to hear rants, it's still not wise to mention my elementary school principal to him. It probably started when my brother broke his leg at school. Despite my brother being in tears and not able to put any pressure on his leg, the principal decided that there was nothing wrong and that he just had to suck it up. Over the years, there were a couple more incidents, but nothing that I can remember, it's probably not all the principal's fault, my brother isn't exactly easy to handle either. However, the final act in that saga made sure he is ranked among some of the worst persons who had a hand in my education. My brother got to skip a year and so would be going straight from his second-to-last year of elementary school to his secondary school (middle school for the Americans?). However, he of course needed some paperwork from the school to be able to enrol in the secondary school. The principal found no better time to deliver it to my brother than during class. Oh, and he decided that my brother wouldn't get the paperwork unless he apologized for something or other, completely unrelated to that matter. Hurray for abusing your power to humiliate a 10-year old in front of all his friends.