Everyone has good, bad, and just average teachers. But what is the WORST teacher you've had?
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Mr Brennan, 2000, St Colmcille's National School, Knocklyon, Dublin, Ireland. Would throw board erasers at children. Hit many of us on multiple occasions. Most memorable being lifted out of my chair by my ear and collar, dragged outside the door and thrown into a wall. I was 10.
Told my parents and they wouldn't believe me. And then they have the gall to wonder how the Catholic church got away with years of abuse.
If I ever see him again, I can't guarantee I'll be able to control myself.
Wait, back it up - you told your parents and they didn't believe you? Did you not have a mutually respective relationship with your parents? Were you known to lie more than you should (white lies every once in awhile don't really count). They just completely dismissed your feelings about being bullied? BY AN ADULT??
English teacher in 6th grade used to punish us by making us sit under his desk, taking of his shoes, and then rubbing his sweaty feet all over our faces.
I'm sorry, what? Are you exaggerating? How long ago was this? Are you sure you aren't exaggerating?
My daughter's kindergarten teacher was awful. I'll shorten her name to Mrs. B. She should have retired years ago. This was my child's 1st experience with a teacher and it should have been a good one. She came home a few times pretty upset, and so I went to speak to her teacher. Her response was rather obnoxious and rude. She raised her voice and asked me, "So what do you want me to do about it?" I explained my expectations and left. I wanted her to be moved to another class, but every class was already to capacity. We finished out the school year. It wasn't until the next year when she moved into 1st and her teacher kept telling us how much she adored our kid that we started to learn more from our daughter about what really happened in kindergarten. She was yelled at, scared and bullied constantly. She's now in 4th and still traumatized by that woman. She brings it up every year before school afraid that she'll end up with a teacher like Mrs. B.
That’s so weird. I just made a submission on this thread about my first grade teacher. Her name was Mrs. Beasley.
My grade 10 homeroom teacher was an absolute witch. I am deathly allergic to bees. She refused to close the window so they kept flying in. And buzzing around me (I was nearest the window). I asked to change desks and someone offered to switch she refused. Made me keep the seat the whole fall. Refused to close it. At one point a bee got caught in my hair and I jumped up because it was in my hair and agitated. She sent me for detention for being disruptive. The guy next to me would kill bees that were near me. By the end of one day, there were 7 or 8 carcasses on my desk. Not including ones in the floor. If I made any sound... I was being disruptive, detention.
My dad was horrible at getting me to school on time, I loved out of city so getting a drive was my only option. I'd be ready and waiting, he'd finally take me. I'd get to class like 5-10minutes late and I was very quiet, I would close the door quietly and walk to my seat and take out my book. She would stop the class, tell me off for being late and send me to the office. I would then stand in line for 10-15minutes get a slip and come back effectively missing half of the class and being doubly "distuptive". My dad got really upset and told her that It wasn't my fault and genuinely he was trying things were hard and not to take it out on me. Every time I was late. Detention. It got to the point the clerks in the office would give me a slip but not write it down so I could enjoy lunch with my friends because even they thought it was a bit much. I was never disruptive, I never skipped school, I never was a troublemaker. It got to the point where by the end of the semester I was so defeated that if I was late, my dad would call to say I had an appt and would take me for breakfast so I wouldn't have detention.
Because I started missing half of the class and on top of it was high stress from bees (sometimes being sent for detention twice in the same period, meaning my entire lunch hour was spent in detention) i began doing poorly in math. I asked her to help me over lunch hour and she would agree but then always "forget", leaving me to wait for her the entire lunch hour any time I tried to take her up on her offer to help oeople over lunch. I had won the math award the year before and had always been a straight A student. I barely passed. Because it was fundamental to the next year I began to struggle hard in math. As hard as I tried... I still struggle with those concepts because I missed so much of her classes and examples which is sad since I always loved math. Even in uni the bits I would make mistakes in were just the grade 10 things everyone assumes you know because it is basic fundamentals.
I had a French teacher who really disliked me. Like beyond words. She would do really rude things that got progressively more passive aggressive. A few highlights...
She would correct my name. I would write my name (which while not the most common spelling is not unusual essentially it's the equivalent to kris instead of chris) and she would take a pen and correct it. I would subtly tell her that I had written my name correctly and she would ignore me. One time she wrote it on the board, I asked her to change it and she refused. I was sitting next to it so I reached over and fixed it, she came back over and changed it back and this happened 3 times before she finally told me to go to the principal's office for being disruptive. This was grade 8. I knew how to spell my name.
she only marked half a test and gave me 50%. It was front and back but she said I didn't write my name on it. I wrote my name in the front but not on the back of the same page. She didn't tell us to. So she only gave me 50%. I begged her to mark the rest sI was a straight A student and it wasn't fair. She begrudgingly finished but refused to change my grade.
In international French you don't put accents on capital E's when they begin a sentence. I had come from a French immersion school and obviously knew this. At the normal school, as review, they were learning which accents are for which words so we had to fill in blanks. One was a capital, I just wrote the letter. I got it wrong. I explained to her that I knew it had been an é but it had been a capital. She was like "that wasn't the exercise you're supposed to put the accents in where they were needed" I was like "exactly, it was a capital, it wasn't needed". She refused to change my grade.
She accused me of plagerising and/or not writing a paper because it was too good. As prev stated I was a french immersion student who had been speaking French since I was 2 because my mum is francophone. I was bilingual my whole life. We had a paper, submitted it through turnitin-- it came back saying it was 1% plagerised which was far below the 7% threshold. She said "even though it said it isn't plagerised... I know you had to have plagerised it. It's too good for someone at your level. "...i was a transfer student and I explained all this. She then said "well then you got someone else to write it. I know you didn't write it, there's no way you did. " I offered to prove to her in the spot I could write like that. I went to the board and wrote out all the conjugations of avoir (that school they only knew present and one of the past tenses). She still was not convinced and failed me on the paper. I genuinely wrote it all by myself. I had my mum read it over but I wrote it. It had been 15% of my mark.
Cut to me now applying for high school. I was applying for a competitive advance programme. She was my homeroom so needed to submit a doc and submit it. My friends for in and I didn't. I asked the guidance counsellor and she says she never received the paperwork from my teacher. I go to my teacher and she says she forgot then tells me I don't belong in high level french and that I should just take applied french... now she already gave me a 70 for the course based mainly on things she didn't feel like fixing that she had marked wrong. She erased the circle I had put on advanced as my selection, circled applied (the lowest level, like learning abcs in high school) and then told me not to even apply because it is too hard for me. Not only did I change it back and do advanced. I finished the entire programme (all my friends failed out of it), got a provincial award and had 90s all the way across the board in french. I went on to minor in french literature in uni.
Where were your parent(s) during this harassment? I really don't know any parent who wouldn't go directly to the President to demand that this b******t stops immediately, if not, would go to the media. They would say anything necessary in order to not have some insecure c**t bully their poor kid.
7th and 8th grade, mid 1990s, Mr. Fliss. Don't remember the subject. Mr. Fliss liked to talk to the female students breasts, no eye contact just his leering eyes and creepy a*s smirk.
He called me Biggums because I was endowed by sixth grade & my friend was Smalls.... The whole student body knew and talked about and other teachers knew but no adults did anything about it.
Headteacher at my junior school. Horrible man who, if we're still alive would've probably been in jail, but that's another story ... My most dreadful experience with him was when I passed out on a cliff beside a waterfall in the English Lake District. I fell a good 15m (50ft) - if not more - onto rocks at the bottom. His response was to climb down and stand laughing at me. Before forcefully dragging me up by one arm off the rocks and shouting at me for being a useless embarrassment. I was in agony, feeling sick and grading in and out of consciousness. The only reason I ended up going to hospital was because a nearby tourist stepped in and demanded it. Anyhow I don't remember what they did at the hospital but this teacher told them there was nothing wrong with me and that I should be discharged. So there's I was with my arm in a sling, in agony, feeling sick and dizzy and this guy's telling all the other girls in my dorm that they weren't allowed to swap bunks with me. So I had to climb up to the top bunk in the state I was. The following day he had me climb Helvellyn and go along striding edge still feeling dizzy, sick, in pain and my arm in a sling. Striding Edge is dangerous enough when you're not incapacitated. It was awful. All the others who'd not been up to the walk had been allowed to have a rest day, but not me. He wouldn't even let me or anyone call my parents to let them know what happened. Fast forward and I've suffered from a spinal injury ever since which means I've to drive a modified car. I also have arthritic joints thanks to breaks that were never set and a whole host of other problems. Every time I've had an x-ray over the years more damage is discovered. Horrible teacher and evil man. There's not a day in without pain so it's a constant reminder.
Not mine, but my little sister's 4th grade teacher and my mom's co-teacher.
Mr. P. Would call the heavier kids in class fatty, dumbo, chunkster, etc. instead of their name. If they answered a question wrong (only the heavier students) he would make them do physical exercises like jumping jacks, push-ups, or run around the classroom. While they were doing this, he would berate them or laugh at them.
It didn't sit well with my mum and she filed complaints. The school board knew this was a problem for YEARS before anything was done. (Small Town, he coached sports- known as a great coach.)
Finally, after many years, a parent had enough and sued the school. All I can think about is how many kids were negatively effected and BULLIED by this mean man who taught little kids.
at my school, he probably would have been greeted with a slap across the face. art students dont take s**t from no one.
When I was in the first grade, I sat for an hour holding my bladder because my teacher wouldn’t let me go. I couldn’t take it anymore and ran up to her desk screaming that I had to pee then partially peed there on the floor right in the middle of a group of students then ran out. So embarrassing. Lol. Not only that but she also gave me detention because she caught me staring at a girl. Homophobic? Who knows?
What?! I remember teachers regularly denying requests to go to the bathroom, but detention for staring? That's just awful!
It depends on worst at what part of their job.
If it's the worst at actually teaching, then it's my high school chemistry teacher. I have never liked chemistry due to my introduction to the topic being her.
If it's the worst at being an overall teacher, then that would be my standard four (that's around age 9-10 for non-British educational system folks) teacher. She was horrible. Always quick to ridicule me and believe punish me unjustly.
*believe lies to punish me unjustly....that's what it's supposed to say. Lol
Former college professor who could be "bought" with snacks. A box of donuts got you 10 extra points on the final but a 2 liter of Dr Pepper was only worth 5. Also another instructor who required insanely long research papers written in ridiculously short amount of time. He never read or graded them, just kept track of who turned something in. Could have copied and pasted Hary Potter and got away with it.
You should have done just that. You could have made the first 2 pages legit, and then go hog wild on the rest of it.
We'll call him Frank. He taught a college course that was supposed to be the entry point into the curriculum. So expect a little bit of weeding out, but otherwise the course material was not that hard. Except that he didn't actually teach it. Spent most of his time talking about his own experiences in the field and making reading assignments. Didn't answer questions in class - turned questions back to the class to come up with answers. And just in general a real a%%*&^e who would pick on students in class. Would always say "call me with questions, but just ridicule you for calling". He was contracted to teach the course for 3 quarters. First quarter (I'm in class) he flunked (in this case, that means not getting at least a C) more than 3 quarters of the class, which completely screwed up the student flow to next level classes. Those of us who managed to get signed up to take again the following quarter were open to fresh ridicule from having failed. Everyone else had to wait until the next quarter for that experience. His third class was his last - he disappeared after that. He was convinced I was cheating on homework with another girl in the class that I 1) didn't know, 2) didn't sit with, but 3) coincidently missed the same 2 questions on a homework assignment in a similar way. Why did he decide we were guilty? We lived in the same dorm. Didn't strike me until much later how creepy it was that he looked up where we lived. When I called for my final grade (because he basically told us on the final exam that most of us would fail) I was pleased when he told me my test score, but when I expressed relief he informed me he was taking more points off my final paper "after a second review" and that dropped me to just below the line for getting a C. That was roughly 40 years ago, and I would still throat punch him for being so hateful and vicious.
My 7th grade PE teacher was borderline bullying me. My name is Angeline but she would say my name as AngeLINE. The correct pronunciation is Angelene. She would refuse to say my name correctly, saying my name was said or spelt wrong. Now, my name is not English; matter of fact, it’s Italian-Greek. She would continue saying my name wrong and body-shaming by calling me a pig or cow.
My body is naturally rectangular and my family struggles with obesity (genetic; mom’s side) and I work hard to keep my body even remotely in shape.
It eventually got to the point we’re me, my mom AND my dad sent a very discreet but nasty email telling her off and showing her what she is doing is very wrong. If my dad gets involved, it means your in serious trouble because he takes no one’s s**t.
The next day, she grabs my shoulders to here I could smell you very onion-y breath and tells me that she would “tease” me because I always looked sad and she tried to “cheer me up”. I was suicidal and hid it very well but ✨not to her✨. 🙄 She encouraged the other students to bully and I got screamed in the face by one of the students because “I wouldn’t give up”.
It’s the next year and I have her for the 2nd semester and one of my friends or already being bullied by Her Royal Grinch-ness. I’ve contacted the h eww d of the school board to get rid of her. :D
You need to document! Write everything down! You do NOT deserve to be treated this way. You are worth 1 million of this horrid human. Have your friend document as well. Take to principal after one week- sounds like you'll have plenty! If you can audio record or have other students write statements, DO IT! Continue documenting AFTER meeting with principal. If the principal does nothing/ you do not notice a change, verbally tell teacher this is not acceptable and document her response. Lastly, have your parents find out when the school board meets with time for an open floor. Gather all your documentation and other students who have been bullied or witnessed her deplorable behavior and go to the meeting. You should have about a 90% chance of having her removed. If the first time doesn't work, repeat and try again!
I have been pretty lucky with my teachers. They haven't been too bad. I remember though, in 5th grade I had a teacher, Mrs. Dingle, and she was an awful teacher. I had never done so badly in math. I kept getting Ds and Cs, and the only reason I did not fail the class was because of retakes (As and Bs on them). Only one or 2 kids in the class got 100% on a test (there were like 5 kids who got into magnet schools, so ya). I was not the only one doing badly too. Most of the class had to take retakes. It was really really bad.
When I was in 3rd grade the student teacher would not allow me to use the bathroom. When the regular teacher returned to the room she let me go but I didn't make it all the way. I tried to clean myself up to no avail. You could smell me a mile away. When I told my mom what happened, she wrote a letter which I gave to my regular teacher the next day. The regular teacher and the student teacher left the room, the student teacher did not return.
My high school counselor. We called him Mr. Sil-utty (similar to his real name) I always thought he was creepy with some of ladies in my class.
He was too friendly with the young women who played sports that he found attractive. Equally as dismissive, rude and sometimes cruel to the other young women.
I was one he did not find attractive (I didn't play sports, and was a bit overweight, like 20lbs). For me, he was useless with college apps, scholarships and anytime I went to talk with him about suicidal thoughts etc, I was blown off.
However, if he found you attractive and you played sports: he would help find and fill out scholarships and college forms. He always had these girls in his office, all day long.
Found out a few years ago that he was a predator. I hope the young women he was inappropriate with are alright, they were brave to come forward so many years after highschool and I couldn't be more proud of them!!! Only regret is that I didn't speak up at the time. I guess we never thought he was preying on them for real- just that he was "trying to be popular".
My high school had a teacher who would go to the bar during lunch every day and have a couple beers. Everybody knew about it, but nobody did anything because it didn't seem to affect his teaching. This teacher claimed to have seen the bigfoot creature many times. These claims earned him the nickname of "Bigfoot". One time my cousin and I decided to go up on the big hill behind the teacher's house where he claimed he had seen it. All we found there was a huge pile of beer cans and wine bottles.
Probably not as bad as some of the others, but in high school my art teacher told myself and parents during a parent teacher interview that I had no talent whatsoever, and then proceeded to gush over how my brother had oodles of it. I loved art and it crushed me.
Even now, 15 years on, I find it hard to do anything related to art without hearing her words. I almost always end up giving up because I just don’t believe I’m good enough.
My junior year math teacher. I remember bleeding through my pants (not allowed to go to the bathroom at all), I remember him calling all of us stupid (Remedial math) on a regular basis, I still have vivid memories of him shaming anyone who did badly.
My second grade teacher used to smack your hand with a ruler if you counted on your fingers. She dumped people's lunches if she thought they were too smelly. Told people they couldn't sing, even though it was a requirement. Had outbursts of irrational screaming fits. Definitely had favorites, I wasn't one of them. I think she taught over 45 yrs. She was a terror.
the first day i came back to school after my dad died my 7th grade English teacher --in front of the whole class-- told me that she didn't like me, i wouldn't amount to anything, and then warned the other kids against being friends with me.
the warning worked.
My Latin teacher made it to the title of our biggest national newspaper ( „Bild“ ) as „Germanies laziest teacher“. To be honest I enjoyed his classes. He seemed like a nice guy who would just do lots of Dad jokes instead of teaching. But the newspaper was right, I didn‘t get a single written test back in two years. Instead after a couple of weeks or months after the tests when parents started complaining, he would simply come in and read a list with our grades. They were probably completely made up and derived from the grades in our previous years. This was well known in our school and other teachers told us they hated being assigned to teach a class that had him as a teacher the year before, since they needed to start from scratch. I have no idea how he could pull this of without getting fired, it wasn‘t even a bad school (in a recent school ranking it was classified as one of the best of Germany ). I still wonder who reported him to the newspaper.
idk if this counts as to bad but i have a teacher who wont let us eat drink slouch rest our elbows on our desks and she makes us unpack everything from her backpack and never use any of it f she caches some one who forgot lets say a book she will give them detention so ig just strict shes social studies btw
So in seventh grade we had a science quiz and one of the questions was "You are walking to school and you see a puddle on the sidewalk. When you walk back from school, the puddle is gone. Is the second statement an observation or a hypothesis?" My answer was "It is an observation. An example of a hypothesis would be if you made an educated guess and said 'I think the puddle evaporated.'" The teacher (lets call her Ms. X) collects my paper and says "Well that is not an example of a hypothesis, the puddle DID evaporate.
Me: Well the person wasn't there, so technically, although it is very likely that it evaporated, you can't know for sure and it is a hypothesis.
Ms. X: Evaporation is a scientifically proven process, it can't be a hypothesis.
Me: But a hypothesis is just an educated-
Ms. X: Honey, I don't want to argue right now. I won't take off any points for this now, but I will if you keep making this mistake in the future.
she then proceeded to use me as a non-example to the class, using my name, so the class bully told the whole grade I was, in his words, "Brain dead and r******d." That was the point where I was attacked by onion-bearing ninjas and I went to the bathroom. She continued treating students like this for the whole year. whenever someone corrected her on something, she would just say "Honey, arguing with the teacher is disrespectful." I really believed the things she told me, and I was scared to correct people for the rest of my life (my kung-fu teacher pronounced my name wrong for 4 years). I just want to know, so that I can have inner happiness, was I right?
YES you were right. I’m not 100% sure but even if you were wrong in the question you weren’t wrong for correcting her.
Life
Algebra 2, freshman year. My teacher hated everyone. She went to the E.R. 3 times in one year. The first time was because she had a stroke in the middle of class. The second time was because she choked on an apple. And the third time was because she had a second stroke. Eventually her classroom became the one next to the nurse's office.
I don't understand how having strokes at work means that she is a bad teacher
7th grade band teacher, Ms O'nan. She was mean to everyone. I played the flute for 3 years. It was my only solace in an alcoholic, violent, physically abusive home. She was so mean, I quit band forever because I couldn't cope with more meanness.
First grade. She was teaching us numbers. She would put up strips of paper with numbers on them, 1-100. She had a large stick (no, there is no hitting coming) and would point at a number and call on a student.
If you didn't know the number, you were sent behind a partition while she drew on the board. She would have you come out and there would be a stick-figure person with long ears, for example.
"You know what that is? That's you. Know what those are? Those are donkey ears. You're a donkey because you don't know your numbers."
I found out later my parents had specifically requested me to be in her class because they heard kids in her class really learned their stuff.
This isn't as bad as some of your guys but my kindergarten teacher wore all black leather, and literally lost me on the first day.
Now I realize I didn't have it that bad, but I'd say my physichs teacher from last year. She was horrible, barely thaught anything and almost failed the whole class. She would get mad when we'd know more than what she thaught and would only accept put projects if they were written exactly how she wanted them. She even made some kids cry. 13-14 year olds, I mean. I'm glad she's not in our school anymore, she clearly has issues
I had a teacher in my needlework class, who told me that I would never learn to sew. That was because I used some other stitches for hemming, than she had told us to. My niece is a taylor and says she would have used the same stiches that I used then. But this is not som much about that teacher as about teachers who says such things to pupils. I have more than once met someone, who has heard exactly that and given up trying to learn because of it. I have never understood how a teacher can do such a thing and still sleep at night.
My year 2 (about age 6/7) teacher was just generally a terrible person. She would get incredibly drunk in the village pub (where most of the parents frequented because there wasn't much else in the village) and make passes at the 19 year old bartender (idk how old she was but probably 30s at least). That's ignoring how she refused to ever punish my bully or even like hear my side of any of it. I have issues with trusting authority figures and this is probably a big reason why
I had a teacher in my needlework class, who told me that I would never learn to sew. That was because I used some other stitches for hemming, than she had told us to. My niece is a taylor and says she would have used the same stiches that I used then. But this is not som much about that teacher as about teachers who says such things to pupils. I have more than once met someone, who has heard exactly that and given up trying to learn because of it. I have never understood how a teacher can do such a thing and still sleep at night.
My year 2 (about age 6/7) teacher was just generally a terrible person. She would get incredibly drunk in the village pub (where most of the parents frequented because there wasn't much else in the village) and make passes at the 19 year old bartender (idk how old she was but probably 30s at least). That's ignoring how she refused to ever punish my bully or even like hear my side of any of it. I have issues with trusting authority figures and this is probably a big reason why
