30 Students And Parents Call Out Their Teachers Who Were So Wrong, They Shouldn’t Be Teaching Anyone
Young kids soak up new information like a sponge. That is why educating them is important from an early age. It’s also crucial to have your facts straight before telling them to children—some of them might never forget what they've learned from a teacher. Whether it’s right or wrong.
The AskReddit community discussed statements by their elementary school teachers that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Their examples ranged from blindly denying scientific facts to cases of plain ignorance, all of which prove two things: a) some of the information you learn as a kid sticks for years to come, and b) certain people should be taught rather than teaching.
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I had a teacher try to tell the class that Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus were the only planets known to have rings. I raised my hand and added that Jupiter had rings too, but that they were so faint they were hard to see. She vehemently denied it. When I politely (yes, really) told her that I had just seen it in a book, she gave me detention for trying to correct her in front of the class.
The next day, before class began, she approached me with an encyclopedia opened to a page about Jupiter, and apologized. She told the class I was indeed right, and that it's important to listen and learn from people even when we think we are 100% right. One of the more wholesome moments I can remember from school in my youth.
That if I didn’t learn my times tables I’d wind up a broke garbage man, never learned then but I’m a garbage man who made 6 figures last year
Sex ed teacher in grade 7 told me that the white stuff that collects in my underwear is semen. I’m a girl.
I learned way later that it’s actually discharge and EVERY vagina does this.
That I won’t always have a calculator in my pocket. F****n liar.
My name's pronunciation. 1st grade 1st day of the year we all told our names, introductions etc. My name is from a SEA country and not even that difficult to say just read differently than its spelled, its even monosyllable. My teacher screeched at me and told me it'll be pronounced the way its phonetically spelled in English which included swapping two middle letters for some reason. The other students went along with it and so did I. Even to this day I still introduce myself by that pronunciation except to people of my own race.
In university I started getting people that wanted to pronounce it correctly which was incredibly kind and they sort of pointed out how messed up it was for that teacher to decide that for me.
People are going to offer you drugs disguised as candy at the park.. Just say no!
20 years later and I still haven’t been offered drugs at the park.
"You shouldn't write 'Xmas' instead of 'Christmas' because you're X-ing out Christ."
The X is really the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter in the Greek word for Christ.
My mom told her 1st grade teacher her favorite color was magenta. Her teacher punished her for not picking a real color, and for arguing with her about it. My great-grandma, a painter, sent my mom to school the next day with a tube of magenta paint! Not long after this my mom skipped to the second grade😂
1st grade math
Teacher: what's 2-1
Class: 1
Teacher: What about 1-2
Class: confused
Teacher: See, you can't subtract a smaller number from a bugger number
Me, an intellectual: Hey, wait a minute, that's negative 1
Teacher: Shush, those don't exist til third grade
Hey but this is kinda funny. The teacher didn’t outright deny the existence of negative numbers, just kept all the rest of the kids from getting confused. At least, IMO. :)
That I could avoid a nuclear blast by hiding beneath my school desk.
Silly woman. I saw a movie about this, and now I know to climb into a refrigerator instead.
No, no, it only works with old refrigerators that had a thin lead linning, the new ones have insulting foam, só you may survive the blast lmao, but you Will end up dying from radiation poisoning .... ( And yes i am in fact jocking )
A student in my class asked why we call it the 20th century when the year was 19xx. The teacher explained that most likely that a long time ago probably in the dark ages they made a mistake in printing a calendar, but by the time it was noticed all the calendars had been made and sent out, so they just left it that way.
I heard her say this and knew it was all kinds of bull s**t, but I said nothing because I was a shy 4th grader and she was a hostile nun.
That the moon emits light, just like the sun. As a nerdy kid interested in space I told her that it’s actually reflecting the light of the sun, but she did not believe me.
Never forget it. In 4th grade we were learning about bats. And the teacher asked the class to name as many different types of bats as we could. I raised my hand and said "Vampire Bats," and he said name only real ones please.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_bat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_bat)
They are real, and I knew it. But he made me feel like an a*s.
6th Grade
Me: But what happens when you subtract a negative number *from* a negative number
Teacher: You...can't do that
That I couldn't have blue eyes if my mom had brown eyes. Thus began a life long obsession with genetics so I could prove her an absolute f*****g fool. Bless my mom's single recessive gene she passed to me. I missed the blonde but I'll take the blue eyes.
That's one we had as an example in biology class. Get one blue gene, one brown gene, your eyes are brown. Your kid will get from you either the blue or the brown and it's 50% chance on which. if both parents have one blue gene and one brown, they both have brown eyes with the 25% chance of a blue eyed kid (getting blue gene from both parents), 50% chance kid will have the one blue one brown combo with brown eyes and 25% chance the kid will have both genes for brown eyes (looks the same as the 50% chance kid, but can't have blue eyed kids, cause both the genes are brown)
Science teacher in 4th grade told us it takes food 45 minutes to get to your stomach after swallowing. Spent an entire class period on it.
He handed us each a piece of cereal to eat at the beginning of class. Halfway through (some 20 minutes later), we had to point to where it likely was in our system. The correct answer, according to him, was somewhere right above our collarbone.
Years later, a bite of too-hot oatmeal told me he was an idiot in all of about four seconds.
I got sent to the principal's office for using the word "plethora." The teacher thought it was a swear word. So did the principal.
EDIT: For those asking about a dictionary, yes, they looked it up. And there is some obscure, arcane definition that means a swelling of a body part. This, of course, is the only definition my teacher knew, not the extremely common one.
That there was no such thing as a black flower. She put a big X through my painting.
That Lincoln was the first American president. I told her she was wrong, it was Washington, and she snapped, saying ‘well why do you know so much about American politics it is pathetic.’ And all the other kids in my class started making fun of me for being stupid.
Reasons why I hate rural Canada.
Ah yes, the first 15 leaders of American are completely irrelevant. LiNcOlN wAs ThE fIrSt PrEsIdEnT!! /s
Not a teacher but the principal. When I reported one of the school bullies for physically attacking me (plenty of obvious proof), he put the blame on ME, & told me to "grow up". Spineless worm!
"The higher you go up on a mountain the hotter it gets because you're getting closer to the sun" - my 5th grade teacher
That in a court of law we are guilty until proven innocent. She confidently told us that multiple times, pretty sure she got it backwards
O.o It being the other way around is a fundamental human right and a cornerstone of democracy...
I had a primary school teacher ask the class how many hours were in a day. I proudly put up my hand and said '24'. She said no. So someone else said 12. She said no.
Her answer was 8. There are 8 hours in a say. I still don't know whether she was trying to ask about a work/school day, but asking 8 yr olds doesn't really clarify that, especially when she said in a day.
"You'll never be successful at anything you do."
Adjusted for inflation, I probably make 3 times her salary.
F**k you Mrs G.
I had a religion teacher tell us that humans evolved simultaneously across the world at the same time. This was proof of a "miracle." I insisted we all came from Africa and then spread out.
the argument that we evolved separately is to try prove we're different species and therefore race is real. not surprising from a religious person.
I remember an elementary school teacher warning us to not accept apples on Halloween, cuz some people put razorblades in them. I mean, wouldnt you see the big fat cut on the apple?
I was told in no uncertain terms that the match in shape between Africa and South America was coincidental.
*edit* That is to say: The match between the Western coastline of Africa and the Eastern coastline of South America.
I noticed this in kindergarten and pointed it out... If a 5 yearold can figure this out, so can a teacher. Unless she's a young earth creationist. Guessing from these being american posts, I'm going with young earther.
That when you get to middle school and high school, the teachers won’t constantly remind you of assignments that are approaching their due dates, or hunt you down for missing assignments
When I was little my 1st grade teacher told we would only be allowed to sit a certain way in 2nd grade so we should practice sitting “criss cross applesauce”. Yeah, second grade teacher didn’t care
Not many people know this but the USA bombed Pearl Harbour.
We’re Canadian, but still, an adult should know better.
Destroy your own military base as a world war is raging around you. Completely logical. Edit: I know that sometimes military bases are destroyed on purpose (but usually when they are retreating)
Note: this post originally had 59 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I’ve told this story before but in kindergarten, I had a teacher tell the entire class that there were no marine mammals and dolphins were fish. My nerdy a*s corrected her, and I got sent to the principal’s office. I got a lecture on you can’t fix stupid, and she got embarrassed by a 5-y/o
Wait till she learns about whales. Or seals if you define them as marine
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Wasn't so much teaching; moreso teacher/student conflict. Im epileptic and often seized in the middle of class in Year4. My teacher (Miss Hodgekins- deserves to be shamed) would yell at me regardless of the fact that I couldn't hear her. She would send letters home stating that I am ignorant and refuse to pay attention and often disrupt the class with weird noises. She called my seizures "daydreams" and my mother was livid. She stormed up the school and tore her a new one. Bear in mind I was 9 years old. This was a PRIMARY SCHOOL. A PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER! Wherever you may be Miss Hodgekins, I hope you step on a lego every day of your life until you do.
Atonic seizures exist. I also got in an argument with a teacher about this
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From my daughters primary school, only a couple of years ago: that we have Easter eggs because the rock that was in front of Jesus’ tomb was shaped like an egg: that Mary Seacole was not a suitable subject for a project on famous women as the teacher had never heard of her.
The British Hotel nurse. Teacher probably never heard of the Crimea War either.
Load More Replies... Im going to preface this by noting that I’m tolerant of all religions. But I was teaching geology to some homeschool students and was showing a fossil shell imprint that was found in Colorado . When I asked the kids how they think it got to Colorado (which has been underwater six times throughout geological history), the mother(their homeschool teacher) immediately insisted it was a flood, despite me holding physical proof that a shell(one of many ) had imprinted via natural geological/biological processes. I just gave up (since she was adamant about it)and went from teaching science to “look how cool these rocks are” so she wouldn’t interject again. She took her kids and stormed off afterwards. Don’t ask about science if you aren’t prepared to learn science.
I was also homeschooled for part of my childhood. A lot of homeschool curriculum is very religious. Evolution is refuted, "God did it" is the explanation for a lot of things, and the Noah flood is the basis for a lot of lessons across various subjects. My mom bought some books at a book fair that were full of religious rhetoric, presented as factual information. (ex. God created the earth exactly as it is today. He made beautiful things for us to enjoy, like the Grand Canyon. All of this has existed for exactly 6,000 years). The books were also sexist; with an entire social studies lesson on why women are inferior human beings. They threw out that set of books when they realized how awful they were. My parents were very religious, but they did try to keep an open mind.
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Arizona desert, 1956: found seashells all over yard, took them to Show 'n Tell. Teacher not impressed, said they were souvenirs from a beach trip. I checked cousins and neighbors' yards. Shells embedded in rock all over neighborhood. Teacher *should have told our class about the ancient inland sea that covered much of the area ...but no ...she said all the neighborhood finds were beach souvenirs. Right... someone brought home buckets of fossilized shells to scatter around neighborhood.
My mom once worked as a teacher's aide in a 3rd-grade class where they had a long-term sub who told the kids that there were 5 continents (in the US we define them as 7 continents), that the Arctic was a continent, and that owls were mammals. My mom was horrified.
Wait, so if the Arctic is a continent, what were the other four continents he recognised? Laurasia, Gondwanaland, Micronesia and the moon?
Load More Replies... I had a sex ed teacher tell us that guys knew when a girl was on her period because they could smell it :(
If they are giraffes then yup seems legit...was it a giraffe sex ed class? ...oh wait no that's if they are fertile... my bad.
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I can't remember now what the problem was, but my teacher was once stumped with a math problem because she got a different answer than the one in the grade book and couldn't figure out what she did wrong. I ended up explaining it to her and the class. It was very satisfying considering that teacher hated my guts and would verbally harass and gaslight me (literally, as in she tried to convince me I was crazy and that the Devil was speaking to me) on a near daily basis. F**k you, Ms. Harris.
She probably knew you were smarter than her and was intimidated by a child. Just because teachers are adults and supposed to be mature and responsible, doesn’t mean they actually grew up and learned life lessons.
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When I was in the sixth grade, our class had a weekly spelling bee. The opposing team had to spell my word, which was 'invincible'. The teacher said that she had never heard of that word before. I answered "Yeah, it exists. It means 'to not be beaten''." To her credit, she believed me.
I bet there are a few thousand words in the dictionary she also hasn’t heard of…
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I had a S.S teacher who said autism was because cavemen didn't eat enough vegetables. Also a friend's brother has a Science teacher who does not believe in evolution.
Got sent to the Principal's office for correcting a teacher who said the Lost Colony was in present-day Roanoke, VA. It was in present-day Manteo, NC, which was part of the Virginia COLONY, not the current state. I knew this because my family lived there every summer, but the teacher was insistent. Never admitted she was wrong, either.
My first grade teacher was antisemitic and did a lot of passive aggressive behavior, but what I still remember is right before Christmas break all the other kids got presents of stuffed animals and candy and I got nothing. When my parents complained, she gave me a small Santa ornament.
This makes me so glad I went to a DOD school most of my life... We apparently took better care to get competent teachers cause I never had any experiences like this
In high school, my Marine Biology teacher kept using Giant and Colossal squid designations interchangeably. I informed him they're actually two species of squid and the terms are not interchangeable. He denied it and moved on with class, continuing to use them this way. I went home that night and printed out pages from the internet that included their exact taxonomies, which showed them as separate species, and brought them into class the next day. The teacher thought it was pretty cool that he could still learn something about his own topic, so that was neat.
Was told if I didn’t learn touch typing I’d never get a job as a secretary.
I wonder how long ago many of these experiences occurred? There was a time when women who went to college pretty much got the choice of being nurse, being a teacher, or finding someone to marry. There were probably a lot of them still teaching some 20 or 30 years after that was no longer the case.
Circa 1960s: denied science career. Girls had 2Choice Plan: Homemaking and Secretarial.
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My first day in Kindergarten my teacher read my last name and stated that it was wrong. There was no such last name as mine. I went home crying because my parents had given me the wrong last name The next day my mom straightened out that teacher.
I had a terrible sex ed teacher one year who told the class that boys can have sex with any girl without consequence but girls will hurt and bleed and get a disease from everyone they do it with. I think it was a scare tactic for the girls to reduce teen pregnancy but why single us girls out? The same year we had a wonderful student teacher who gave us a great exercise on sexism. He gave us professions and told us to give the person a name (no pictures, just the job). For example, a bus driver and you could say Joe or Sally or whatever. After about 20 of these he asked how many were given man names and how many were women names. My parents were old fashioned so I was taught that unless I wanted to be a teacher or nurse I was a mom and nothing more. So of course all but one had a man name. He gave me hope for my future to not just be a vessel for babies. Wish I could remember his name.
Tenth grade world geography "coach" insisted there are 8 continents & year after year would mark any other answer wrong... until my Mom arrived to take the matter up with the principle. You'd have thought he would have learned the 1st time when my older brother was in his class, but he clearly needed a refresher course when I got him 5 years later. Central America, if you're wondering.
My sister’s teacher told her to measure from the end of the ruler. Not a metal one, a plastic one where the end is about a cm before 0.
Well I guess I had pretty good teachers back as a kid in the mid 70’s and 80’s, but I was also curious and read a lot myself about anything that interested me.
I was told that the suburb my aunt and uncle lived in in Sydney was not in Sydney but in Melbourne. Funny it never seemed to take that long to visit them for the day!
In elementary school we had these reading things called SRA and RFUs. You read the story and then answered questions about what you read. Each had its own number so that you could mark which ones you had done on the list. Having done this for about 2 yrs I knew how to mark them. But a new teacher told me I was wrong. That I mark number 1 then the next one I mark number and so on even though I did like #30. Went home very upset. Mom called the teacher. He went back and realized his error and apologized. Drama director in HS told me I did nothing when I received an award from my peers saying I wouldn't have received it had it been her. I put a lot of hours in with drama. I have put costumes together that Ive won awards on (nothing fancy just put together from several different pieces I find or have). I always do a raspberry at her name with every new costume and specially with an award in my hand. Miss yarborough you were an #!!#!#!
(sigh) I don't remember teachers being this stupid when I was a kid.
To be fair, not all teachers are like this. Mine are very clever and always willing to learn new things. (I'm 15 btw, so there's still some sane teachers nowadays)
Load More Replies... I’ve told this story before but in kindergarten, I had a teacher tell the entire class that there were no marine mammals and dolphins were fish. My nerdy a*s corrected her, and I got sent to the principal’s office. I got a lecture on you can’t fix stupid, and she got embarrassed by a 5-y/o
Wait till she learns about whales. Or seals if you define them as marine
Load More Replies... Wasn't so much teaching; moreso teacher/student conflict. Im epileptic and often seized in the middle of class in Year4. My teacher (Miss Hodgekins- deserves to be shamed) would yell at me regardless of the fact that I couldn't hear her. She would send letters home stating that I am ignorant and refuse to pay attention and often disrupt the class with weird noises. She called my seizures "daydreams" and my mother was livid. She stormed up the school and tore her a new one. Bear in mind I was 9 years old. This was a PRIMARY SCHOOL. A PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER! Wherever you may be Miss Hodgekins, I hope you step on a lego every day of your life until you do.
Atonic seizures exist. I also got in an argument with a teacher about this
Load More Replies... From my daughters primary school, only a couple of years ago: that we have Easter eggs because the rock that was in front of Jesus’ tomb was shaped like an egg: that Mary Seacole was not a suitable subject for a project on famous women as the teacher had never heard of her.
The British Hotel nurse. Teacher probably never heard of the Crimea War either.
Load More Replies... Im going to preface this by noting that I’m tolerant of all religions. But I was teaching geology to some homeschool students and was showing a fossil shell imprint that was found in Colorado . When I asked the kids how they think it got to Colorado (which has been underwater six times throughout geological history), the mother(their homeschool teacher) immediately insisted it was a flood, despite me holding physical proof that a shell(one of many ) had imprinted via natural geological/biological processes. I just gave up (since she was adamant about it)and went from teaching science to “look how cool these rocks are” so she wouldn’t interject again. She took her kids and stormed off afterwards. Don’t ask about science if you aren’t prepared to learn science.
I was also homeschooled for part of my childhood. A lot of homeschool curriculum is very religious. Evolution is refuted, "God did it" is the explanation for a lot of things, and the Noah flood is the basis for a lot of lessons across various subjects. My mom bought some books at a book fair that were full of religious rhetoric, presented as factual information. (ex. God created the earth exactly as it is today. He made beautiful things for us to enjoy, like the Grand Canyon. All of this has existed for exactly 6,000 years). The books were also sexist; with an entire social studies lesson on why women are inferior human beings. They threw out that set of books when they realized how awful they were. My parents were very religious, but they did try to keep an open mind.
Load More Replies... Arizona desert, 1956: found seashells all over yard, took them to Show 'n Tell. Teacher not impressed, said they were souvenirs from a beach trip. I checked cousins and neighbors' yards. Shells embedded in rock all over neighborhood. Teacher *should have told our class about the ancient inland sea that covered much of the area ...but no ...she said all the neighborhood finds were beach souvenirs. Right... someone brought home buckets of fossilized shells to scatter around neighborhood.
My mom once worked as a teacher's aide in a 3rd-grade class where they had a long-term sub who told the kids that there were 5 continents (in the US we define them as 7 continents), that the Arctic was a continent, and that owls were mammals. My mom was horrified.
Wait, so if the Arctic is a continent, what were the other four continents he recognised? Laurasia, Gondwanaland, Micronesia and the moon?
Load More Replies... I had a sex ed teacher tell us that guys knew when a girl was on her period because they could smell it :(
If they are giraffes then yup seems legit...was it a giraffe sex ed class? ...oh wait no that's if they are fertile... my bad.
Load More Replies... I can't remember now what the problem was, but my teacher was once stumped with a math problem because she got a different answer than the one in the grade book and couldn't figure out what she did wrong. I ended up explaining it to her and the class. It was very satisfying considering that teacher hated my guts and would verbally harass and gaslight me (literally, as in she tried to convince me I was crazy and that the Devil was speaking to me) on a near daily basis. F**k you, Ms. Harris.
She probably knew you were smarter than her and was intimidated by a child. Just because teachers are adults and supposed to be mature and responsible, doesn’t mean they actually grew up and learned life lessons.
Load More Replies... When I was in the sixth grade, our class had a weekly spelling bee. The opposing team had to spell my word, which was 'invincible'. The teacher said that she had never heard of that word before. I answered "Yeah, it exists. It means 'to not be beaten''." To her credit, she believed me.
I bet there are a few thousand words in the dictionary she also hasn’t heard of…
Load More Replies... I had a S.S teacher who said autism was because cavemen didn't eat enough vegetables. Also a friend's brother has a Science teacher who does not believe in evolution.
Got sent to the Principal's office for correcting a teacher who said the Lost Colony was in present-day Roanoke, VA. It was in present-day Manteo, NC, which was part of the Virginia COLONY, not the current state. I knew this because my family lived there every summer, but the teacher was insistent. Never admitted she was wrong, either.
My first grade teacher was antisemitic and did a lot of passive aggressive behavior, but what I still remember is right before Christmas break all the other kids got presents of stuffed animals and candy and I got nothing. When my parents complained, she gave me a small Santa ornament.
This makes me so glad I went to a DOD school most of my life... We apparently took better care to get competent teachers cause I never had any experiences like this
In high school, my Marine Biology teacher kept using Giant and Colossal squid designations interchangeably. I informed him they're actually two species of squid and the terms are not interchangeable. He denied it and moved on with class, continuing to use them this way. I went home that night and printed out pages from the internet that included their exact taxonomies, which showed them as separate species, and brought them into class the next day. The teacher thought it was pretty cool that he could still learn something about his own topic, so that was neat.
Was told if I didn’t learn touch typing I’d never get a job as a secretary.
I wonder how long ago many of these experiences occurred? There was a time when women who went to college pretty much got the choice of being nurse, being a teacher, or finding someone to marry. There were probably a lot of them still teaching some 20 or 30 years after that was no longer the case.
Circa 1960s: denied science career. Girls had 2Choice Plan: Homemaking and Secretarial.
Load More Replies... My first day in Kindergarten my teacher read my last name and stated that it was wrong. There was no such last name as mine. I went home crying because my parents had given me the wrong last name The next day my mom straightened out that teacher.
I had a terrible sex ed teacher one year who told the class that boys can have sex with any girl without consequence but girls will hurt and bleed and get a disease from everyone they do it with. I think it was a scare tactic for the girls to reduce teen pregnancy but why single us girls out? The same year we had a wonderful student teacher who gave us a great exercise on sexism. He gave us professions and told us to give the person a name (no pictures, just the job). For example, a bus driver and you could say Joe or Sally or whatever. After about 20 of these he asked how many were given man names and how many were women names. My parents were old fashioned so I was taught that unless I wanted to be a teacher or nurse I was a mom and nothing more. So of course all but one had a man name. He gave me hope for my future to not just be a vessel for babies. Wish I could remember his name.
Tenth grade world geography "coach" insisted there are 8 continents & year after year would mark any other answer wrong... until my Mom arrived to take the matter up with the principle. You'd have thought he would have learned the 1st time when my older brother was in his class, but he clearly needed a refresher course when I got him 5 years later. Central America, if you're wondering.
My sister’s teacher told her to measure from the end of the ruler. Not a metal one, a plastic one where the end is about a cm before 0.
Well I guess I had pretty good teachers back as a kid in the mid 70’s and 80’s, but I was also curious and read a lot myself about anything that interested me.
I was told that the suburb my aunt and uncle lived in in Sydney was not in Sydney but in Melbourne. Funny it never seemed to take that long to visit them for the day!
In elementary school we had these reading things called SRA and RFUs. You read the story and then answered questions about what you read. Each had its own number so that you could mark which ones you had done on the list. Having done this for about 2 yrs I knew how to mark them. But a new teacher told me I was wrong. That I mark number 1 then the next one I mark number and so on even though I did like #30. Went home very upset. Mom called the teacher. He went back and realized his error and apologized. Drama director in HS told me I did nothing when I received an award from my peers saying I wouldn't have received it had it been her. I put a lot of hours in with drama. I have put costumes together that Ive won awards on (nothing fancy just put together from several different pieces I find or have). I always do a raspberry at her name with every new costume and specially with an award in my hand. Miss yarborough you were an #!!#!#!
(sigh) I don't remember teachers being this stupid when I was a kid.
To be fair, not all teachers are like this. Mine are very clever and always willing to learn new things. (I'm 15 btw, so there's still some sane teachers nowadays)
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