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worst teacher you had at school/college

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A teacher who always shouted to get her point across. She didn't have an indoor voice and had the tendency to spray you with saliva if you sat at the front. Also, she had this odd habit of sitting at the front of the class tearing bits of sellotape and chewing it.
Reply 221
Year 10 Geography teacher. Everyone thought he was a bit of a legend because he used to have arm wrestles with students and we could piss about in his lessons, but then a new teacher came in Year 11 and she informed us our coursework was crap and more than half the class got an E in their mock. I'm now eternally grateful to her and realise the first teacher was ****.
My English lecturer (college, they call themselves "lecturers" instead of teachers to make themselves feel more important) who today, told me that he thinks it's my attitude causing my absences, not illness. Sorry, but no amount of positive mental attitude or whatever is going to suddenly get rid of the blinding headaches and stop the pain in my arms and legs which means it's agony to move.

I'd like to see him be in a rush to get to college to sit through an hour and a half of his boring lessons with his droning voice attempting ridiculous accents that make us all want to punch him in the face, when he's woken up after a ten hour sleep still feeling exhausted, can't move and has a headache so bad it feels like his brain's exploding. Then he can tell me it's my "attitude".

Sorry for the rant, I'm just getting to the end of my tether with him and the way he spoke to me today was unacceptable. One more time and I'm really going to tell him what I think of him :mad:
I never had any really bad classroom teachers, but my head of year was amazingly bad at his so called pastoral duties. Whenever there was an argument or fight or anything the only question he would ask is "Who was involved?" and then he would use his prejudices to lay the blame. He had his saints who could do no wrong, and his non-saints who could do no right. It wound people up so much, because the 'saints' were just the most manipulative ones. It's such a cliche, and something that all teenagers seem to think about their teachers, but with him it was true. The double standards were baffling.
For some reason, I never get on with any young (20 - 40 age group) female teacher. I don't like them and they don't like me. That's just how it goes down.

At the start of Year Ten, my Maths class had been through about half a dozen teachers, and no one quite knew what to do with us. Our grades had started to slip because most of our teachers were supply and didn't care if our phones were out during the lesson. Anyway, in September in came our new teacher, and immediately I knew we weren't going to get on. As a primary school teacher she would have been brilliant, as she struck me as the kind of person who would get on really well with kids - all smiles and dimples, with this sugary soft voice. I probably would have liked her myself if I was six, but six isn't exactly the age to start setting standards: I liked the Spice Girls then, too. As it was, I didn't like her one bit.

From the above paragraph this teacher sounds like a dream, and in a strange way she sort of was. We never managed to do the work set for us, she had no control whatsoever over the class, and halfway through Year Eleven she went off and had a baby. Furthermore, she had only decided a couple of years previous that she was to be a Maths teacher; until then, she not have an A Level in Maths, and told us numerous times that in that period she hated Maths, and never understood it. I was horrified. Though I was in one of the top sets for Maths, I've never fully understood the subject. I didn't have enough money to pay for a tutor, and the other Maths teachers in the year were unable to help me as they had their own classes to teach. My only resource available was MyMaths and, although the teacher received many warnings over her standards of teaching, nothing was ever done about it and my class's grades as a whole slipped down further than some of the lower sets'. When it came to the mock exams, most of Set Three passed Module 3; most of my set failed it. My own grades slipped down from an A to a B, and by the end of my GCSEs I barely managed to scrape a C.

I'm well aware that my overall Maths grade was mostly my own fault. I should have revised more and maybe bought a different textbook to help me through the areas I didn't get (basically, anything that wasn't Statistics). However, the fact that the teacher was allowed to teach us at the expense of our grades continually irritates me. Granted, it's not her fault that she wasn't that good a teacher, but she continually got on my nerves, too, and I was frequently sent out for backchatting and generally being a little bitch. Something about her cheery personality irritated me no end (I'm not exactly the cheeriest of people myself) and my own personality no doubt irritated her, too.

At the end of the day, we annoyed each other, and I'm glad we're out of each other's company. I think I was more annoyed by how many people's grades slipped when she came along, as well as being annoyed at the school for not doing anything about it. If we're talking personality-wise, I've had far worse teachers than her in the past, but in terms of teaching standards, she was far and away the worst, and I'm so glad I've now finished Maths.

Rant over. Phew! :tongue:
Reply 225
Original post by TheSownRose
The worst one for me has got to be the primary school teacher who didn't believe me when I said my ear hurt. Turned out I had an aggressive, fast-moving ear infection that destroyed hearing in that ear. :mad:


My mum's friend was a teacher's assistant at a primary school. A boy complained of a headache, so she went to ask the headteacher whether he can be sent home, but she refused. That boy died at school!
Original post by Sashari
My mum's friend was a teacher's assistant at a primary school. A boy complained of a headache, so she went to ask the headteacher whether he can be sent home, but she refused. That boy died at school!


Meningitis?

Yes, I know about nanny state and children have too much freedom, etc, etc ... but seriously, if a kid complains, let them go home. If you end up looking like a fool, so what? It's better than a dead or deaf kid because you assumed they were lying.
Reply 227
My Physics teacher in Yr 9 was awful. Just stood at the front of the class talking a monotonous voice for the whole lesson. No wonder I'm giving it up after GCSEs...

My Chemistry teacher last year (Yr 10) was also awful. Learnt nothing in that year. Also giving it up after GCSEs.

My current History teacher isn't that bad but we had an AWESOME teacher last year so no wonder he seems average :biggrin:
We had a DT teacher who turned out to be grooming young girls. He got kicked out in Year 9, but it was obvious from Year 7 that there was something odd about him. He'd obviously favour girls. He would sit all the girls by his desk and put the boys by the back of the class by the machinery even though there was enough room nearer his desk for us. He was overly sweet to the girls and horrible to the boys (he even told a few students to bully me in the middle of class).

As a teacher, he wasn't the most incompetent (I'll talk about those later), but he was quite lax at his job. For instance, he'd often go into the cookery classes for half the lesson to take food for himself. This is considering he was teaching in a classroom full of dangerous machinery in a school which is known for having troublesome students.

What I still don't understand is why it took him so long to get fired, and when he was fired, it was for living in a van in the school grounds. Maybe there wasn't enough evidence against him? Either way, he appeared in the paper about half a year after being fired for being charged with grooming teenage girls. Still surprised how long it took though, considering our headmistress was extremely competent.

As for incompetence...we had one teacher who was only there for a short while (he got fired), but in the short space of time he managed to teach the wrong class twice, walk into an exam room twice accidentally, fail to answer most questions he was asked, and even locked about 20 kids and another member of staff in a classroom for half an hour. One kid hurt himself jumping out of a window and falling into a bush of nettles. Granted, that was the kid's own fault, but still, it would have been avoidable if he hadn't locked us in. Also, his surname was rude and hilarious :tongue:

Also, we had another teacher in school who, despite not teaching a lot of us, was obviously incompetent. Instead of punishing kids, he'd take them to another teacher for them to punish. He was supposed to teach music yet failed completely at it. He got fired when he ended up teaching the kids a different subject altogether.
Reply 229
What astonishes me having read a significant amount of the above posts and my own school experience is that schools can go so long employing dreadful teachers, and that something only happens when the teacher flips out, the students get reallybad grades or the police get involved.

When employing new staff, schools need to actually see the teachers teach surely? I would be far more interested in how well students perform under the applicant than how the applicant performs at interview. I understand that sometimes there isn't a pool of unemployed amazing teachers that schools can dip into at a moments notice, when the last teacher is arrested for murder (this happened to us...whoops), but new teachers are qualifying every year and there are quite a lot of unemployed people about.

Am I the only one who thinks being a teacher isn't that hard? Respect of a teacher comes from their knowledge of the subject, their discipline and pupils being able to learn from them full stop
Original post by alexlduffy
Instead of punishing kids, he'd take them to another teacher for them to punish. He was supposed to teach music yet failed completely at it. He got fired when he ended up teaching the kids a different subject altogether.


Apart from the strange undertones of 'a different subject altogether' (which obviously means sex ed :p:), one of my music teachers was exactly the same. What is it with them...?
Original post by TheSownRose
Apart from the strange undertones of 'a different subject altogether' (which obviously means sex ed :p:), one of my music teachers was exactly the same. What is it with them...?


I think he started teaching them French, but I wouldn't be surprised to be honest xD Sex Ed in our school was terrible, we didn't get an actual Sex Ed teacher until Year 10.

But yeah, music in school could be quite terrible. For me, music in year 7 and 8 was either playing on the keyboard or doing karaoke. Year 9 was interactive quizzes (but we did a bit of music theory with the other teacher), then we didn't have it in Year 10 or 11.
My high school maths teacher

1) English was his second language and was not fluent in it, his accent really didn't help either
2) he has a grade E at GCSE maths.... and he teaches us the subject
Reply 233
Worst teacher in our college was my yr10 maths teacher. She had the worst temper and she had no idea what she was on about half the time
Reply 234
Original post by TheSownRose
Meningitis?

Yes, I know about nanny state and children have too much freedom, etc, etc ... but seriously, if a kid complains, let them go home. If you end up looking like a fool, so what? It's better than a dead or deaf kid because you assumed they were lying.


I have no idea, but she just told me today because I couldn't believe I couldn't believe they would sent my 5 year old brother home for saying 'my tummy hurts when I cough' whilst he doesn't even have a cough! So her telling me that made me realise that they are best to be over-protective then let a child suffer...
Original post by alexlduffy
I think he started teaching them French, but I wouldn't be surprised to be honest xD Sex Ed in our school was terrible, we didn't get an actual Sex Ed teacher until Year 10.

But yeah, music in school could be quite terrible. For me, music in year 7 and 8 was either playing on the keyboard or doing karaoke. Year 9 was interactive quizzes (but we did a bit of music theory with the other teacher), then we didn't have it in Year 10 or 11.


Ha, now I've been reminded of the substitute we had for English literature who came in, decided he didn't like the book he was supposed to be teaching us about and instead had a chat with us all week about life in America (where he previously lived) until the head of department found out. :rofl:

Our music teacher just gave up in the end - unless she was being inspected, we sat in groups and played hangman all lesson.
I have a drunk Maths teacher.
He smells of Alcohol, he goes out for drink breaks in class. One has to question how hes allowed to teach A level Maths. Its ridiculous!
We also waste about 10 minutes every lesson playing countdown( CORRECTION, * He plays countdown and we watch) lol
My form tutor in year 7 was pretty useless. It took about half an hour to do the register so we we always late leaving. He was also my maths teacher and those lessons were awful. No-one did any work an everyone just ran around the room screaming. Eventually he left half way through a day. He was in morning tutor, then in maths period 3 he was gone and we never saw him again. In year 9 I had this terrible history teacher. He was a maternity cover teacher and he couldn't control the class at all. He just kept sending people out and getting the head of history to come in and tell us all off. I don't think I learnt anything in his lessons.
Reply 238
Year 11 Biology teacher is one that automatically comes to mind. She was a laid-back woman in her mid-twenties. According to her, watching episodes of The Simpsons every lesson was a good way to pass exams:s-smilie:
Reply 239
Well , I had a teacher who tried teaching us on how abortion was the same as the holocaust and how dinosaurs were a test of faith by god to distinguish the true believers from the non believers who would eventually fall to the satanic teachings of modern science.
Might have added a little to me not taking up any Science based subjects at A-levels.

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