Your Worst Teachers

1. 84

   Freeway Flyerposted 13 years ago

   What were some of the qualities / traits / teaching "techniques" of the worst teachers that you ever had?

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   1. 60

      John Holdenposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      When I was about 8 or 9 I loved to sing. I decided to join the school choir.
      In to the room in front of a crowd of sniggering smirking peers, the music teacher demanded to now what I wanted and without finding if I could read music or not, thrust a piece of music in my hand and ordered me to sing.
      It wasn't a song I knew and she was banging out a piece of music that I did not know.
      After several bars she slammed the piano lid down, shouted out that I was useless, couldn't sing and should get out!

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      1. 84

         Freeway Flyerposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         Wow. Sounds like a terrible nightmare. How do these people keep their jobs.

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         1. 60

            John Holdenposted 13 years agoin reply to this

            And that was back in the day when if you didn't like a job you could very easily get another one.

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      2. 79

         Uninvited Writerposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         That is awful. Thankfully my first music teacher was the polar opposite of that one...

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2. 59

   paradigmsearchposted 13 years ago

   Teaching by rote with absolutely no enthusiasm whatsoever.

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   1. 57

      Dave Barnettposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      SOLUTION: First, Detention and an apology for being bad, then back to class.
                Not as a teacher, as a student in the grade below the grade they taught. That way, they would have to pass that grade, before they can proceed to the next level grade. They better pass, because it could be a LONG WAY TO GRADUATION, because they have to pass each grade until, according to the rules, they get a degree. That is what is lost when they are a bad teacher.

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3. 61

   cookibuqposted 13 years ago

   We once had a substitute French teacher with a lisp and a stutter - someone actually counted her saying 137 "uhs" within half an hour...
   we didn't learn very much

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   1. 84

      Freeway Flyerposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I guess that the word "uh" is a universal. It shows up in all languages.

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      1. 61

         cookibuqposted 13 years agoin reply to this

         yeah. at least we learnt that I suppose...

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4. 69

   Steele Fieldsposted 13 years ago

   I got my hair pulled once for whistling.  Nuns were rough back in the day.

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5. 60

   Jaggedfrostposted 13 years ago

   My worst teachers were the ones who wouldn't return justice for justice, or keep the bullies away.

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6. 84

   LoganGposted 13 years ago

   I had an engineering professor that was teaching a class for the first time. Somehow he acquired premade powerpoints on the material. All class every class he remained turned around facing the screen and trying to figure out what the slides showed. It was like he'd never seen the subject before despite teaching for 15+ years. He spent more time mumbling to himself, lost, than he did talking to us.

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7. 90

   Pcunixposted 13 years ago

   That would be 7th grade math.  Freshly arrived from two years in a then nascent  Gifted and Talented class, we were assigned to dear Mrs. Baker, who informed us that she didn't believe in tihs G&T nonsense (this was in the early 1960's so these programs wrre new) and assigned us page after page of basic math practice.  We had already been exposed to far more advanced math, but she did not care and bored us to tears for weeks.
   
   Then there was the history teacher who told us that there was more to Malthus than our books told us - his worry was that the great mass of human bodies might affect our orbit. I got sent to the Principals office for my blurted response to that idiocy

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8. 92

   habeeposted 13 years ago

   I had a wacky geometry teacher in the 9th grade. He was a crazed genius, but he was a TERRIBLE teacher! He was a big guy with crossed eyes. Whenever we had a test, he'd leave the room and announce, "Group scramble!" The boys would always put 409 in his coffee, booby-trap the door, and hide his lunch. In turn, the teacher would throw erasers and rotten fruit at the class clowns. It was a fun class, but I don't think I learned a thing. Wait...he DID teach us how to make a mobius strip!

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9. 60

   SomewayOuttaHereposted 13 years ago

   ...hmmmmm.....Ms. Casey....would love to meet her again...first couple of days of grade 9 in catholic school...didn't have my gym suit for the first day of gym....found myself lying on the ground with her straddling me...she was red faced...really angry...because i didn't have my gym suit....just a shy skinny kid starting highschool...left the catholic edu. system for my last 2 years of highschool in the public edu. system....
   
   ...teachers like that should have been fired on the spot...but kids like me were taught to respect authority and not speak up....found my voice later...

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10. 83

    camloposted 13 years ago

    We had a chain-smoking music teacher, whose classroom was, conveniently, located right next to the staff room.
    She'd usually come into class too late, put on a long, long piece of utterly boring classical music, tell us to take notes, then disappear into the staff room and return long after the music had finished. In her usual, brusque tone, she'd ask a couple of us what notes we'd taken, but none of us had ever taken any - for one thing, we had no idea what we were supposed to be noting. The bell would then ring - end of class!

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