Worst highschool teacher you ever had

[zomgwtf]

Just wondering what some of you guys experienced going through high school... I think it should be a pretty funny thread.

My worst high school teacher had to have been my Kinesiology teacher.

For our first 'big' assignment we had to make a joint of our choice. So me and my buddy picked the radial-ulnar joint in your forearm. For the assignment we had to include any ligaments, tendons, muscles, cartiledge and of course the bones that were involved in the movement of the joint.

On the assignment sheet it said that you needed to fully label the muscles, tendons and ligaments. We had to use full scientific names etc. this was PRETTY difficult considering the sheer amount of muscles and ligaments that go through your forearm and it took a pretty long time for us to find a diagram which labelled everything we needed.

We decided to use pure white clay for the bones, cristco for the cartiledge, felt for the muscles, and piple cleaners for the ligaments/tendons. We molded the bones by hand and baked them so they were solid and we drilled a few holes in various areas and put metal wire through it to hold the ends of the bones in place. (I had broke one of the bones TWICE but we patched it up pretty nicely... the cool thing is that it actually looked like real bones.)

To make a long completed the assignment and handed it in. I must say we were expecting no lower than 95% on it... it was BEAUTIFUL. You could have seen it on display in a museum or a display on anatomy etc.

We got back the marking scheme and were quite disappointed by our mark... we got like a 60%... So we went through the marks.
Under the 'movement' mark category we got perfect. The teacher left a comment for us... so we read it. It said something along the lines of:
EXCELLENT MOVEMENT GUYS REALLY WELL DONE! FANTASTIC BONES! REALLY LIFELIKE!
We were pretty happy with that comment but couldn't see where we went wrong... until we got to the 'bones' category.
We got 0 out of 10 on the bones category... This was the second heaviest mark category in the assignment next to movement.

Apparently we were supposed to label the bones as well, and even though we protested to here that the assignment only specifically asked for labels on the ligaments, tendons and muscles she wouldn't change the mark on account that she would have to change other peoples marks or it wouldn't be fair.

This TOTALLY made me lose interest in that class, I stopped attending and when I did go I just sat and made fun of the dumb things she was saying and talking to the pretty girls that sat in front of me .

It wasn't just because of this mark that she was my worst teacher... she actually wasn't that bright (she was actually a gym teacher)... she understood a lot about working out though but that was no use in this class.

As well I actually helped people out in the class to improve their own marks but couldn't be bothered to waste my time on my work to get a grade. So I think I understood the material perfectly. She just really killed it for it me. lol.

 

[Proton Soup]

i'd say my american history teacher. 5 days a week, we'd show up. she'd read her notes to us, and we'd write down what she said for nearly an hour. this went on for 9 months. i hated that class.

i didn't have a decent american history course until i filled my core curriculum requirement at university. i did this on a miniterm, which meant that for about 3 weeks, all i did was go spend 3+ hours in class, then go home and read for the rest of the day. it was hell, but the focus was on politics and why things happen, and not on memorizing dates.

 

[zomgwtf]

i'd say my american history teacher. 5 days a week, we'd show up. she'd read her notes to us, and we'd write down what she said for nearly an hour. this went on for 9 months. i hated that class.

Wow. I wonder how some teachers complain about their jobs...

 

[rootX]

I forgot everything about high school the moment I graduated from there; there are good teachers and bad teachers. After some time, all teachers turn out to be good because one who were bad give you *more valuable* life experiences that good teacher did not give.

We had a teacher in the first year who would give the hardest quizzes and went out of curriculum to do that. Most people hate him during the class but after about a year most started to appreciate him.

 

[S_Happens]

I had a couple of winners, but I'll pick one based on the fact that the teacher was able to make classtime completely worthless. I had a handful that were mean, disrespectful people, but at least their class wasn't a total waste of time.

It was an American history class. The teacher was a coach at the school (I don't even remember what he coached, maybe track). The entire year was a two day repetitive cycle. The first day he'd sit in front of the class and read directly from the textbook. The second day he'd finish reading and then we'd take a small quiz over that material.

He added nothing outside of the textbook to the class. He had no interaction with the class for the entire year. The only thing he actually did was make students stand up if they were caught sleeping, and believe me, everyone was sleeping. I learned to sleep with my head propped up on my hand, perfectly balanced.

The only interesting thing that happened all year was when I was sleeping one time. The teacher was deep off into his reading and the entire class was on autopilot for the next 30 minutes. I had my feet on the basket of the desk in front of me. I must have had one of those dreams where you get something thrown at you or something surprises you, because it caused me to react. My body flexed, and my desk must have slid back almost a foot. The heavy desk on tile floor made for a very loud screech, and scared crap out of everyone in the room. I saw the looks on their faces and when my buddy told me I had almost given him a heart attack I started laughing and couldn't stop. The teacher, in his blatant ignorance of the situation, started laughing and asked if I was ok. I guess he didn't realize I was sleeping because I didn't have to stand up.

That was all I can remember about that class.

I had another teacher that despised me for some reason (there were certainly more disruptive/disrespectful students that myself in there), until he found out that I played soccer outside of school. He was the school's soccer coach, and in one simple moment I went from being almost hated to adored.

 

[Cyrus]

Chi Meson. God I hated his class.

But, I've been out of HS for almost 8 years now. Holy cow, time flies!

 

[Leptos]

We had a teacher in the first year who would give the hardest quizzes and went out of curriculum to do that. Most people hate him during the class but after about a year most started to appreciate him.

I had a math teacher that did that. He failed 27 out of 30 students(in a magnet school) and was constantly on probation for failing too many kids. He ended up getting fired, but that didn't help the fact that being in his class destroyed my confidence, and contributed to my depression. I still don't understand how he was hired in the first place...

 

[Phyisab****]

I had a class in flash animation one year, which I didn't want to take in the first place but due to some weird policy we had to pick a half credit class to fill our schedule and this was the only one that seemed moderately interesting to me. It was intended to be a time waster basically to keep everyone in the school from having a study hall or something.

So the class was broken down into 3 projects. The first one i did a mediocre job, got like an 85% or something but I wanted a better grade. The second one was we had to make an educational game. I started getting really into my game, which was like a math blaster type game, because I wanted a better grade in this super easy class than I got for the first project. As it went on, I got super involved in this project, learned tons about flash that went miles above anything we were expected to learn in this class. There was not a single ounce of scripting taught in this class, but I went completely out of my way to figure out how to do tons of scripting, just did hours and hours of reading about flash on the internet. I got hung up tons of times and my teacher was no help because he couldn't even understand what I was trying to do in the slightest.

Long story short, I finally got my all my code working the way I want and was so proud of the way I made all of it work, completely on the merit of my own research, and perseverance. I was on top of the world. It hands down went miles and miles above anything anyone else in the class could possibly, ever have attempted to do. I get my grade back and it's a 70%. I just about exploded. Turns out the grading scheme was 50% aesthetics (can't remember exactly what he called it), and 50% gameplay, originality, and how educational it was. I lost 30% because on one of the main levels of my game I used like a yellow text on green background or something stupid like that.

I was just completely in shock. Everyone else turned in a game which took 5 hours to make, I turned in a game that took 100 hours to make. And he had the balls to give me a 70%! I could have changed the color with 2 clicks! And since the guy knew nothing about programming besides the most basic of basic flash techniques, he flat out didn't believe me about the work I had put in. He thought I was being a jerk because I was mad about my grade!

Next project, I was completely and utterly apathetic about. I did the absolute minimum possible work that could possibly satisfy the assignment. Got something like a 90%.

 

[Pyrrhus]

My physics teacher didn't know crap. He will just regurgitate formulas and apply them to problems. I remember when I started college, I had the idea that physics was just a bunch of variables put together in formulas without any fundamental logic behind them. Similar to the equations you get from a dimensional analysis perspective. It is sound dimensionally, but where is the science?.

In college, I had the best physics professors. A funny serbian guy with a real passion for physics. I thank the guy a lot! for his inspiration and his book recommendations. I learned a lot from this fellow. I still keep contact with this professor. I have him in Facebook.

 

[DanP]

I had a class in flash animation one year, which I didn't want to take in the first place but due to some weird policy we had to pick a half credit class to fill our schedule and this was the only one that seemed moderately interesting to me. It was intended to be a time waster basically to keep everyone in the school from having a study hall or something.

So the class was broken down into 3 projects. The first one i did a mediocre job, got like an 85% or something but I wanted a better grade. The second one was we had to make an educational game. I started getting really into my game, which was like a math blaster type game, because I wanted a better grade in this super easy class than I got for the first project. As it went on, I got super involved in this project, learned tons about flash that went miles above anything we were expected to learn in this class. There was not a single ounce of scripting taught in this class, but I went completely out of my way to figure out how to do tons of scripting, just did hours and hours of reading about flash on the internet. I got hung up tons of times and my teacher was no help because he couldn't even understand what I was trying to do in the slightest.

Long story short, I finally got my all my code working the way I want and was so proud of the way I made all of it work, completely on the merit of my own research, and perseverance. I was on top of the world. It hands down went miles and miles above anything anyone else in the class could possibly, ever have attempted to do. I get my grade back and it's a 70%. I just about exploded. Turns out the grading scheme was 50% aesthetics (can't remember exactly what he called it), and 50% gameplay, originality, and how educational it was. I lost 30% because on one of the main levels of my game I used like a yellow text on green background or something stupid like that.

I was just completely in shock. Everyone else turned in a game which took 5 hours to make, I turned in a game that took 100 hours to make. And he had the balls to give me a 70%! I could have changed the color with 2 clicks! And since the guy knew nothing about programming besides the most basic of basic flash techniques, he flat out didn't believe me about the work I had put in. He thought I was being a jerk because I was mad about my grade!

Next project, I was completely and utterly apathetic about. I did the absolute minimum possible work that could possibly satisfy the assignment. Got something like a 90%.

Your teacher is a lowlife moron.

 

[Chi Meson]

I remember my first Spanish teacher.

She was one of those "us vs. them" people. Everything seemed to be a "gotcha!" moment. If a word on a quiz was missing an accent, it was wrong, 10 points off. IF a sentence contained any error at all, masculine vs feminine, tense, mood, conjugation, whatever, the whole thing was wrong, no matter how much in it was correct.

As was said, she turned out to be a good life lesson, because I think of her a lot when I consider how NOT to be a teacher. My grading scheme is not to start at 100 and subtract points; rather, I start at zero and add points for everything that is done properly.

 

[Brian_C]

Pretty much every English class was a nightmare for me.

 

[Ben Niehoff]

Hmm...all my worst teachers were from my senior year (I attended a different school my senior year, in a different state, and practically every teacher there was horrible).

My AP Spanish teacher was from Columbia and she was crazy. She treated us like children, and never taught anything I didn't already know.

My AP Computer Science teacher was ok at programming, but didn't teach the correct material because he was too proud to "teach to the test". But there is a difference between "teaching to the test", and "teaching material that relates to actual computer science and might be relevant to the test", which he didn't do either. He did have us write programs, and at least he was impressed when mine ran super-fast (I had one that could factor numbers up to ~4 billion into prime factors nearly instantaneously on Pentium III's; he said his previous record was 6 seconds).

My AP Physics teacher was probably the worst. He didn't care whether we learned anything or not; he just assigned projects to keep us busy. The projects themselves were fun, but I had to teach myself physics. The few times he lectured, he sometimes told us outright lies. For example, he claimed that the Parallel Axis Theorem only applied when the mass points were discrete, and didn't work for extended objects. I drew up a proof to the contrary using calculus; he didn't care.

Most teachers at my senior year high school had serious authority issues--meaning that, they felt very threatened by any student that might outdo them. It seemed the most important thing about the classroom to them was keeping absolute control over the students for an hour, and any education that happened was incidental to that. This high school also had a rule banning facial hair on male students, and I think the primary reason was so that these teachers would not be threatened by the idea that they were teaching young adults, not children.

By contrast, I had several awesome teachers at my first high school, before senior year. My AP Calculus teacher was a riot. As was my AP Chemistry teacher...think Bill Nye, only older and grey.

I had a teacher for two history classes (modern European, and Medieval) who gave the hardest exams I have ever taken. One of our exams literally consisted of the words "Otto von Bismarck" at the top of the page, followed by 2-3 blank sheets of paper. We then had to write everything there was to know about Otto von Bismarck, and if we missed any event, date, or fact about Otto von Bismarck that he had ever told us, he would deduct points. Also, he would lecture from memory without notes. He was also a really great guy, though, and his class is one of my favorites.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I had a few different teachers that were bad. None of there were absolutely terrible though. One loved to harass students for any reason she could find. She would make fun of your clothes if she couldn't find anything actually related to school work. Supposedly (from what other students said) she aimed each semester to send at least one student crying from her class room. In my class she took shots at me for everything from my clothing to not having my homework until she realized that I was acing all of her tests and none of her belittling bothered me in the slightest.

 

[zomgwtf]

Wow lots of great stories ... Even Chi had something to say about one of his high school teachers . I figured he'd be in here defending them! haha.

I can see American History teachers seem to not be the greatest... maybe it's because the course is boring anyways? I don't know I'm from Canada and my school didn't offer this course.

One teacher who I had that I loved was a humanities teacher. He was that teacher of the school who everyone said was the smartest and most tough teacher and to avoid his courses at any cost. So naturally I signed up first to take his courses .

First had him in Grade 11 for an ancient history course. He had a PhD in history, was an 'ex-professor' and archaeologist so this was his 'calling' so to speak. I learned a lot during this class. One of the greatest things I remember about this class was an 'assignment' he gave to us as a class. Our independant culminating unit was an essay on a topic of our choosing relating to ancient history. (mine was on the Crusades specifically the first crusade) We were given the entire semester to do our research and work on this essay, it was set up in stages that you were required to submit so that the teacher could make sure you were on the right track. This process alone taught me a lot about researching and writing an essay.

Anyways one day we were in a computer lab and he told us to go onto wikipedia and to look up our topics on wikipedia. He then told us to change everything on wikipedia and make sure we gave it sources and stuff but the information wasn't factual. So we did this... the information wasn't corrected for quite a while for some of the topics... our school got banned from being able to edit things on wikipedia, I'm sure this ban is still in effect (this happened like 4 years ago haha). He made us do this to show why wikipedia isn't a useful source for researching a topic and wasn't being accept as a source. (we could only use primary/secondary sources preferably primary).

Next I had him twice in Philosophy. This was BY FAR the most difficult course I had ever taken. The readings were bizarre to me at the time as I had no background in philosophical readings. The class was fun though... the tests were brutal and the assignments were few.

The tests consisted of an essay question where you had to defend/alter/reject a statement which he gave... sounds easy but it's not when you only have just under 2 hours. The first time the essay question was simple: Why? He then gave you exactly 6 sheets of blank paper and you proceeded to write an essay answering the question. I wrote 'Why not.' followed by two pages showing why not was acceptable and I handed it in first. I got a 90% on the essay since I made a few spelling and grammar mistakes.
A reason why this course was so different was because the amount of assignments was so low. We got I believe 3 assignments 4 unit tests a culminating unit and the exam which was 2 parts. He told us that he constructed the course this way to better prepare us for university since the individual assignments carried more weight. However if you did HORRIBLY bad on an assignment but were able to prove to him that you were better (in subsequent assignments/test) then he would drop your bad mark.

A lot of his method was all about preparing you for university which the other teachers paid no attention at all to. One time on an Economics course he used a 'correctional factor' so people wouldn't guess answers... the highest mark on the test was 30%. Many people had -%... I'm really thankful for having taken his class though... it was tough and required lots of work but I feel like it's truly prepared me for university. As well he was always there for you no matter what was up. He one time proof read an English essay for me... and one time let me borrow books from his personal library at his home lol...

 

[story645]

I had a Russian teacher I was stuck with for 3 years who made me want to jump off the deep end. Most of the class were native Russian speakers (who she loved because they had good pronunciation) and kids with Russian parents (who she disliked 'cause she thought we were taking it for an easy grade). She showed tons of favoritism towards the non-Russian kids, and gave them high grades even though they didn't know anything. But besides the personality, she spent maybe two weeks actually teaching: one week on letters and another week on verb conjugation,tenses, and subject verb agreement. Mind, Russian grammar is crazy difficult, but she then started giving random grammer quizzes the following week.

The rest of the three years were mostly spent on her telling us about her family, random movies and projects, and assorted reading assignments where she'd mark down if the student disagreed with her interpretation of the book. I wanted to throw something at her when I got marked down for an art project cause she didn't like my style, but she gave lots of points to the kids who basically cut and pasted a bunch of things onto an oaktag. I think the only reason I even managed to pass the regents was 'cause I already somewhat knew the language.

I can see American History teachers seem to not be the greatest... maybe it's because the course is boring anyways?

Mine rocked. Was a little pretentious about having a phD, but otherwise quite awesome. He was one of the few teachers I've ever had that encouraged us to write really short, clean essays. He had a 17 sentence rule to keeping filler down (3 sentence intro, 4/5 each body paragraph, conclusion) so that we'd be able to knock 'em out on the AP exam.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Easy. My freshman Math teacher. I struggled so hard to understand what he was teaching and got nowhere. It seemed like the ramblings of a drunken bum. I complained to my family about it and my older brother said he had the same teacher with the same problem. He asked me if he went to the supply closet more than the other teachers. Yes. Well it turns out he was drinking on the job. My brother taught me algebra and I had no trouble with algebra II in my junior year and calculus in my senior year.

 

[Borek]

My grading scheme is not to start at 100 and subtract points; rather, I start at zero and add points for everything that is done properly.

Wow, no upper limit to the grade?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The worst teacher? When I thought about this, I realized this is a somewhat funny question. I ended up in an LA public high school that was full of gangbangers and drug dealers. Most carried weapons. I remember one guy that actually carried a brief case full of pcp on campus. Every day, the walk to school was terrifying. If one happened upon the wrong gang, anything was possible; assault, theft, or even murder. Some gangs required that new members kill as a part of the initiation. Two of my best friends had already been attacked by gangs while on their way to school, so I figured it was just a matter of time.

So, I pretty much stopped going to school and started drinking a half pint of 151 for lunch, every day. After missing over 40 days in one semester, only one teacher noticed - my geometry teacher. He took the time to call my mother at work and ask if she knew how many days I had missed. Soon after that we left the Los Angeles area.

I passed all of my classes.

 

[Huckleberry]

The worst teacher? When I thought about this, I realized this is a somewhat funny question. I ended up in an LA public high school that was full of gangbangers and drug dealers. Most carried weapons. I remember one guy that actually carried a brief case full of pcp on campus. Every day, the walk to school was terrifying. If one happened upon the wrong gang, anything was possible; assault, theft, or even murder. Some gangs required that new members kill as a part of the initiation. Two of my best friends had already been attacked by gangs while on their way to school, so I figured it was just a matter of time.

So, I pretty much stopped going to school and started drinking a half pint of 151 for lunch, every day. After missing over 40 days in one semester, only one teacher noticed - my geometry teacher. He took the time to call my mother at work and ask if she knew how many days I had missed. Soon after that we left the Los Angeles area.

I passed all of my classes.

I didn't realize that schools could be this dangerous until my brother started high school. He was failing all his classes because he wasn't going to school. My parents flipped out. He told them about the gangs and all the violence he saw every day that was unavoidable. The next semester he went to the school my sister and I went to, and started doing well. He made friends, participated in extracurricular activities, and enjoyed at least some of his classes, and he didn't have to bring a knife with him. He was too busy trying not to get jumped in the old school to do any of those things. How some kids come through these schools with any education is a wonder to me.

 

[JaWiB]

I got straight A's in high school until the very last semester. I had to take a class called "Current World Problems" or something like that, and the teacher was in his last year before retiring. One of the biggest parts of our grade was a project that consisted of coloring and labeling maps and flags. No one learned anything from it, and most people copied each other (which was considered cheating). I spent more time on the assignment than most of the class, and got a lower grade on it.

On the take-home final, my friends more or less copied an essay that a previous student had passed on. My friend even sent me a copy, which I still have in my gmail...Here's a quote from it: "This is the plus that I believe is the plussiest plus of them all." The original student got an A on his final!

Long story short, I got one A- in high school, but since I waited until my final semester to take the class it had no bearing on my class standing and I was one of 4 valedictorians (and I got a scholarship at my current school for it)

 

[Moonbear]

I had many excellent teachers in high school, and a couple of real doozies!

The two worst were my freshman biology teacher (had I not liked the subject in spite of the teacher, and then been "rescued" by one of the BEST teachers who taught AP bio senior year, I may have been on a completely different career path now). His style of teaching and grading was very punitive.

I just remember things like him deducting points from a lab assignment for most of the class, because they ate the peanuts he gave us permission to eat at the end of the lab. It wasn't much of a lab assignment at all, just one of those where you learn to do a chi-squared test counting how many of your peanuts had 1 or 2 nuts in them or something like that. At the end of the lab, someone in the class asked if we were allowed to eat the peanuts when we were done...we had expected him to say "no" because that's how he was. His answer was something like "sure, if you want to." We thought he was actually being nice, so we ate the peanuts. Then he informed everyone who ate their peanuts that we'd have points deducted for violating lab safety rules and eating in the lab. When we said he gave us permission to eat them, his answer was that we should have known better and he didn't tell us to eat them, he told us we could if we wanted to.

He was also one of those teachers who grades notebooks, which in an of itself is usually not a problem, and actually a good idea to keep tabs on whether students are taking notes and catch potential learning issues. But, unlike the other teachers who just mostly took a cursory look to make sure you took notes and then gave some small amount of points if your notebook was reasonably organized, he would literally check that every single assignment that had ever been returned, every paper handed out, etc., were in the notebook, and in date order! And, yep, he'd deduct points for everything missing. I remember crying the night before the notebook was due to be turned in as I ransacked my backpack and bedroom because I couldn't find all of the assignments on the checklist. I was a great note-taker in school, always did my homework on time or early, but once assignments were returned, I just stuffed them all into a pocket folder and then into my backpack. When the folder got too full, they landed in a pile in my bedroom at home. When the pile got too tall, they were at the mercy of fate and gravity. To this day I think it's silly to deduct points for not having an assignment in a specific place in a notebook (yes, even if I had the assignment, if it wasn't in the right place, we still lost points...and of course this meant using a 3-ring binder for your notes, and we all know how well papers stay put in those over time), especially when the assignment has already been turned in, graded, and returned.

In the middle of the year, that teacher had to take an extended leave of absence for some surgery and recovery. So we got a new teacher to sub for us (not your standard busy work sub since it was an extended time). That teacher still had to follow the other teacher's lesson plans, but taught and graded his own way. We actually started to learn biology instead of use all our energy organizing notebooks. NONE of us wanted our original teacher back and were very disappointed when he returned to work and our sub left us.

The other bad teacher, but not QUITE as bad, was our junior year physics teacher. There were two physics teachers in the school, and I got stuck with the one who was ex-military and more hell-bent on enforcing rules than teaching (not to mention he seemed entirely unaware that we had not had calculus yet...that was a senior course in our high school...and was teaching calc based physics, so we had no idea what he was doing most of the time as he was deriving equations). Instead of him teaching many days, he'd be sitting at the window with his camera determined to get photos of the students cutting classes to smoke by the back gate of the school so he'd have proof to show the principal. He was the chair of the science department in our high school, so I imagine that at some time he must have been a good teacher to get promoted to that level, but he had clearly "lost it" by the time he was teaching us.

Most of us got through that class by asking our friends who had the other teacher to explain what we were supposed to be learning. (Though, actually, when I went back through my old notes once I was in college, he apparently did teach a lot of useful physics in between his photography adventures, so the main problem was that we didn't have the math background to understand it...after I had calculus and looked at my notes again, they were very useful to supplement my college level course.)

 

[Monique]

I really haven't had any bad high school teachers.
As a bachelor I did have an annoying biochemistry teacher that always had it out for me, I don't know what his reasons were for the harassments. Before every single lab he would ask me (stupid) questions like "So, Monique, which micropipettes are we supposed to be using today". Like it would be important to memorize the fluid volumes in a protocol. Or he would be handing out the reports from the previous lab, silently, and when he would come up to me he would say loudly "Monique, you did really poorly: a 6", while in fact it would be a 9. It also happened that while walking in a hallway he would greet a student, but when I would greet him, he would say nothing back. I always thought he was trying to aggravate me for a reason, but I never figured out his reasons. I learned not to let people get to you and realize your own worth

 

[BobG]

I can only think of one of my teachers that were actually bad. And he was a first year teacher, so it was a little understandable. He was one of my algebra teachers. He used the Pierre LaPlace method of explaining things. Take an equation that takes up half the blackboard ... which clearly simplifies to a^2. Uh... it does? Actually, it always did once you checked everything, but a lot of the students just had problems seeing it when he skipped about 8 steps along the way. But they were steps the students should have already known, so skipping them was okay. All true, and he didn't even have to explain what he did - just stop for a second so everyone can see those parts for themselves and catch up!

While just about all were at least competent teachers, a few were really strange.

The deaf algebra teacher. He wanted all homework done in ink, which meant we had to copy it over once we'd completed it in pencil, since it's impossible to learn algebra without having to erase your mistakes once in a while. We'd get revenge near the end of class by having the entire class start to talk quieter and quieter until we were all silently mouthing everything we said. He'd start out adjusting the volume on his hearing aid and wind up completely replacing his battery.

My biology teacher ... was ... definitely ... man, I mean ... definitely ... a stoner, dude! He wasn't shy about it, at all. He'd even ask students how much they were paying for pot. He was at least smart enough not to share or sell any of his to any students, but, geez ... I was always shocked he didn't get fired. And he always tried these stupid ideas - like the grading period where we automatically got the same grade we got last grading period - just so we could see if we learned better or worse when we didn't have to worry about what our grade would be. It was a good biology class, though. It was also the first class I ever managed to get an A, a B, a C, and a D in the same class in the same year - that was start of my inconsistent phase as I found that whole "not having to worry about your grade" thing to be a little liberating.

My English teacher was dead. I had her two years in a row, believe it or not. In fact, my ex-wife had her about 3 years after I did. And she was dead that entire time. She both looked like it and smelled like it, so I'm sure she was. She liked my writing, though. She had some crazy 13 point scale where A+ was 13 points and you could go all the way down to 0 for not turning in a paper at all. I used to get A+++++'s, which was good. It only took a couple of those to turn a 0 into a passing grade.

One of those years, she was even more dead than usual and we had a substitute for over a month. The subsitute was pretty much clueless. On one of our tests, I had to write an essay about one of the short stories we should have read... except that story sounded like a chick story, so I didn't read it. I had to write my entire essay from true/false questions and multiple choice questions. I got a C on it... plus some of the strangest comments I ever read on one of my papers. Our substitute was positive I had read and understood the story, but who the heck was xxxxxxx? Geez, didn't she even read her own true/false questions? Probably a good thing she didn't. If she had realized I hadn't even read the story, she probably would have flunked me just on general principle.

 

[zomgwtf]

I can only think of one of my teachers that were actually bad. And he was a first year teacher, so it was a little understandable. He was one of my algebra teachers. He used the Pierre LaPlace method of explaining things. Take an equation that takes up half the blackboard ... which clearly simplifies to a^2. Uh... it does? Actually, it always did once you checked everything, but a lot of the students just had problems seeing it when he skipped about 8 steps along the way. But they were steps the students should have already known, so skipping them was okay. All true, and he didn't even have to explain what he did - just stop for a second so everyone can see those parts for themselves and catch up!

While just about all were at least competent teachers, a few were really strange.

The deaf algebra teacher. He wanted all homework done in ink, which meant we had to copy it over once we'd completed it in pencil, since it's impossible to learn algebra without having to erase your mistakes once in a while. We'd get revenge near the end of class by having the entire class start to talk quieter and quieter until we were all silently mouthing everything we said. He'd start out adjusting the volume on his hearing aid and wind up completely replacing his battery.

My biology teacher ... was ... definitely ... man, I mean ... definitely ... a stoner, dude! He wasn't shy about it, at all. He'd even ask students how much they were paying for pot. He was at least smart enough not to share or sell any of his to any students, but, geez ... I was always shocked he didn't get fired. And he always tried these stupid ideas - like the grading period where we automatically got the same grade we got last grading period - just so we could see if we learned better or worse when we didn't have to worry about what our grade would be. It was a good biology class, though. It was also the first class I ever managed to get an A, a B, a C, and a D in the same class in the same year - that was start of my inconsistent phase as I found that whole "not having to worry about your grade" thing to be a little liberating.

My English teacher was dead. I had her two years in a row, believe it or not. In fact, my ex-wife had her about 3 years after I did. And she was dead that entire time. She both looked like it and smelled like it, so I'm sure she was. She liked my writing, though. She had some crazy 13 point scale where A+ was 13 points and you could go all the way down to 0 for not turning in a paper at all. I used to get A+++++'s, which was good. It only took a couple of those to turn a 0 into a passing grade.

One of those years, she was even more dead than usual and we had a substitute for over a month. The subsitute was pretty much clueless. On one of our tests, I had to write an essay about one of the short stories we should have read... except that story sounded like a chick story, so I didn't read it. I had to write my entire essay from true/false questions and multiple choice questions. I got a C on it... plus some of the strangest comments I ever read on one of my papers. Our substitute was positive I had read and understood the story, but who the heck was xxxxxxx? Geez, didn't she even read her own true/false questions? Probably a good thing she didn't. If she had realized I hadn't even read the story, she probably would have flunked me just on general principle.

hahahaha sounds like some good old times.

 

[hypatia]

My worst was my high school music teacher, he was a drunk. Many times we would come to class to find him passed out behind the drums. One time he was conducting us at a event and fell flat on his face.
What was really sad, his son was in my grade. We all knew what he had to live with.

 

[Chi Meson]

Wow, no upper limit to the grade?

Well, there is an upper limit in that a student will not be able to do a problem any more than "correctly." If they take a roundabout method of solution, then that is not worth any more than the most direct method which will involve three, four, five, or eight, or whatever number of deliberate steps toward solving.

In the case of "short essay" responses to conceptual questions ("discuss the similarities and differences between momentum and kinetic energy"), I will usually impose an upper limit on points available (five or six usually). This is to stop some of my students from writing their own textbooks on the subject, but it also encourages students to give more than the minimal effort required to "get it right."

Some kids say "Mr. C, why did you take off points for this, I 'got it right'?" I say, "I didn't take off any points; you said two correct things about it, and you got two points!"

 

[ThomasEdison]

I had an English Teacher who, when we read "The Scarlet Letter" as a class project, pronounced the theme of the book "The Scarlet Letter : A Woman and Her Sin."

 

[zomgwtf]

Well, there is an upper limit in that a student will not be able to do a problem any more than "correctly." If they take a roundabout method of solution, then that is not worth any more than the most direct method which will involve three, four, five, or eight, or whatever number of deliberate steps toward solving.

In the case of "short essay" responses to conceptual questions ("discuss the similarities and differences between momentum and kinetic energy"), I will usually impose an upper limit on points available (five or six usually). This is to stop some of my students from writing their own textbooks on the subject, but it also encourages students to give more than the minimal effort required to "get it right."

Some kids say "Mr. C, why did you take off points for this, I 'got it right'?" I say, "I didn't take off any points; you said two correct things about it, and you got two points!"

That's a great way of marking, my physics teacher marked this way as well. It made it easier to understand what was expected of you as the student (for the written answers more so) because you can see how much the answer should be worth.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I didn't realize that schools could be this dangerous until my brother started high school. He was failing all his classes because he wasn't going to school. My parents flipped out. He told them about the gangs and all the violence he saw every day that was unavoidable. The next semester he went to the school my sister and I went to, and started doing well. He made friends, participated in extracurricular activities, and enjoyed at least some of his classes, and he didn't have to bring a knife with him. He was too busy trying not to get jumped in the old school to do any of those things. How some kids come through these schools with any education is a wonder to me.

No one can learn when they are afraid for their life. Looking back now, it is obvious that I completely shutdown. This was my sophomore year. We moved to Northern California during the middle of my junior year. I was an honor roll student my senior year. What seems amazing now is that not one teacher intervened for almost a year. I had learned how to scam the system and no one really cared.

One thing that reminded me of this was a conversation last night with my cousin. I never knew that, later, Snoop Dogg attended the same high school.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

One of those years, she was even more dead than usual and we had a substitute for over a month. The subsitute was pretty much clueless. On one of our tests, I had to write an essay about one of the short stories we should have read... except that story sounded like a chick story, so I didn't read it. I had to write my entire essay from true/false questions and multiple choice questions. I got a C on it... plus some of the strangest comments I ever read on one of my papers. Our substitute was positive I had read and understood the story, but who the heck was xxxxxxx? Geez, didn't she even read her own true/false questions? Probably a good thing she didn't. If she had realized I hadn't even read the story, she probably would have flunked me just on general principle.

I had an english teacher that would have us read kids stuff. When she told us that we were going to be reading a story by Edgar Allen Poe I was excited enough to go home and read it out of my own collection at home. When I went in the next day she handed out a children's weekly reader that contained a version of the story made into a play. I felt like burning it there in class.
Once she had us read a book based on a made for television movie (yes you read that right) and then asked us to choose a scene and write an analysis of it. I wondered what the hell we were supposed to analyze since the writing was so simple and straight forward (not to mention really terrible). I decided to have fun by making a psuedo-Freudian interpretation of a scene about the "cool kids" smoking cigarettes and pot at school in which I likened it to an orgy. I got an A though she made a worried sort of face when she handed it back to me.

 

[Ghost803]

High School U.S History teacher. The only reason he was teaching was because he was a coach. He listened to Rush Limbaugh or something and would bring all of that into class. Instead of teaching history, he'd start on rants about Clinton. At first he just did this maybe 8-10 mins of class. But after the first month, I had enough and embarrassed him in front of the class. Which wasn't that hard, since he didn't know a lick of American history. In return he told me that there was something wrong with me, and that someone my age shouldn't know so much politics/history. And of course his tirades got longer after that, trying to needle me. Apparently he did this to other kids too, cause he yelled out during class that there was this "CRAZY" hippie chick in his earlier class that I should hook up with and that us "loons" would get along. He did this after I embarrassed him again.

His name was Joey Ray, lol.

 

[Galteeth]

My fourth grade english teacher was a crack addict. She would go into the bathroom multiple times during class (we only had two teachers in fourth grade) to "freshen up her lipstick" She would give these weird convoluted assignments, then change them without telling anyone, and pick her favorites who she decided had chosen the correct ones to do (who of course, soon realized they didn't have to dop anything). She didn't like me, because I called her out on a claim she made (it was some argument about how to spell a word, I think it was the use of their versus there) anyway, we argued about it for the whole class, and it got really personal, her arguing that I thought I knew everything, and i wasn't always right, and i wasn't as smart as everybody told me I was, etc. Problem for her was, I was right. And I told my parents about it, and they got pissed, because they of course realized I was right, and so she got in trouble for it (not so much for being wrong, but for making such a big deal out of something so basic that she was wrong about). Boy did she hate me after that! Whenever we read stories, we had to write a reflective paper on the story (which was fine), a "reflective" paper on that paper (ok, whatever) a reflective paper on that reflective paper which reflected on the original (uh..) and then another reflective paper on the entire process, as well as an additional reflective paper on that paper. She eventually extended this process to include basic homework (such as grammar questions, i fondly recall writing about the minute details of the table on which i would do my grammar homework.) After the first semester, though she intially asked for all the reflective papers to be stored in a portfolio (which you periodiocally had to reflect on) she changed it to your five best reflective papers (I believe due to complaints from parents).

She was caught a few years later with crack in her lipstick, and the student counselor was fired as an accomplice.

High School U.S History teacher. The only reason he was teaching was because he was a coach. He listened to Rush Limbaugh or something and would bring all of that into class. Instead of teaching history, he'd start on rants about Clinton. At first he just did this maybe 8-10 mins of class. But after the first month, I had enough and embarrassed him in front of the class. Which wasn't that hard, since he didn't know a lick of American history. In return he told me that there was something wrong with me, and that someone my age shouldn't know so much politics/history. And of course his tirades got longer after that, trying to needle me. Apparently he did this to other kids too, cause he yelled out during class that there was this "CRAZY" hippie chick in his earlier class that I should hook up with and that us "loons" would get along. He did this after I embarrassed him again.

His name was Joey Ray, lol.

Did you? Man, that seems like a great way to meet somebody!