Worst Teachers Ever

[XeEmO]

I've had a few teachers in my past that I couldn't stand for various reasons. I'm sure other people have had bad teachers as well, so feel free to post about your experiences. I'm going to focus on one I had last year. I ended up dropping out of his class.

I almost don't know where to start with this one. He never had any real reading material. Instead he relied on power point presentations that he would flash through while he briefly said something. Then he would expect you to answer a bunch of these random questions on tests that you first of all wouldn't know to study for, and second of all were usually badly worded in such a way that there was more than one answer that would be correct weather or not it was the answer he was looking for.

The thing that made me extremely angry, and drop the class, is one of the tests. We were doing what's called an "unattended installation" of Windows XP. This is where you simply install Windows XP and the information is read from a disk. For this test he told us to download Windows XP from this service Microsoft provides to schools. So I got my copy of Windows XP service pack 3 to use on the test like he said we would be using.

I tested this thing, and it worked perfectly. I got to class, and instead of using the version that he originally stated we would be using we were using a copy of service pack 2 on the schools server. Long story short, the product key stored in the file that told the installation what to do was for service pack 3. This wasn't compatible with service pack 2 on the schools server. Turns out that simple mistake that wouldn't have even appeared in the real world cost me 50 points on the test and he gave me an F.

Also, to clear something up, I was there were multiple ways of doing the test. I think I was the only person in the class to do it this way. This was also the only way to get a 100. The other way was supposed to be easier so the total amount of points were less.

GAAH...I hated that guy. I still hate that guy. Anyone else have similar stories? Edited June 9, 2010 by XeEmO

[Cat]

I had one teacher who just shouldn't have been teaching anymore. It was for basic basic Chemistry for students right out of high school. All he did was lecture and expected that we knew how to do the math involve. One of the problem is most students knew the math but had to do it his way to get the answers. Basically if you got the right answers to the question on the board, homework, or Test/Quiz but did it a different way you still would get the majority of the points off.

We were assigned homework each class but never turned it in or went over it in class. You also had a horrible textbook with misspelling and wrong information adding to the mix. I never understood why we had homework if we weren't going to at the very lest go over some of the problems.

If his hearing aid battery went out you couldn't even ask questions. Sometimes I think he turned it off on purpose.

The last blow to the whole deal not only did you have no clue on what he would test/quiz on but you also didn't know what date the test/quiz were on. You walk in one day after taking hours trying to figure out the home work and magically there is an Test that day.

Pretty much everyone failed the class who were crazy enough not to drop (like myself). Edited June 9, 2010 by Cat

[eleanor]

Not the worst story ever, but in high school our AP Physics teacher was pregnant. She had to leave halfway through the year due to complications, and for some reason the long-term sub was, like... not familiar with physics at all. He searched random PPTs on our textbook chapters and showed them to us. By the time the AP exams were coming up my entire physics class were terrified and I'm pretty sure most of the physics kids failed the exam

[Claire]

[quote name='eleanor' date='08 June 2010 - 10:27 PM' timestamp='1276050472' post='694922']
Not the worst story ever, but in high school our AP Physics teacher was pregnant. She had to leave halfway through the year due to complications, and for some reason the long-term sub was, like... not familiar with physics at all. He searched random PPTs on our textbook chapters and showed them to us. By the time the AP exams were coming up my entire physics class were terrified and I'm pretty sure most of the physics kids failed the exam
[/quote]

I had kind of the opposite of this. I took trigonometry in eleventh grade, instead of pre-calculus, because I'm awful at math. Halfway through the year, my teacher had to take a leave of absence because he was retiring, and I was horrified at the prospect of trying to struggle through the class with a substitute. Then the sub ended up being a lot more helpful than my original teacher and I found I could better understand the material. When the real teacher came back, everything got difficult again. Makes no sense.

I wish this was a thread for awesome teachers, because I need two hands to count the ones I've had. (IN FACT...)

EDIT: I just remembered my 8th grade language arts teacher. She was a nice person, but her class was kind of a joke. I think all we did was grade assignments from her other classes or read super condensed Shakespeare plays out loud. 8th grade is when you focus on the Holocaust here, but some of the people in my class were so immature and unintelligent that they actually laughed during sad/serious parts of the movies we watched, and the teacher didn't do anything to stop them. It infuriated me so much. Edited June 9, 2010 by Tonks

[OMNOMNOMALY]

[font="Garamond"]There was this sub that taught me from Jr. High to High School... his classes were an absolute joke. In fact, he even has a facebook group dedicated to him.
He was really old. Like probably well into his 70s, and just didn't seem all that with it anymore. You could make the worst excuses ever and get out of class, you could tell someone to say 'here' for you, and he wouldn't notice. He was just so ridiculous and made the most awkward jokes possible. He would turn around and people would sneak out of class. Oh and there was also the issue that he couldn't teach. Not a damn subject. For reals.
There was one incident where his fly was undone for the entire class. Hawt.

And then there was the guy's gym teacher in my Jr.High. Creepy is an understatement. He was essentially a hippy, had longer hair than all the girls, and thought he was gonna be a rockstar one day. He played guitar sometimes at random, and sang for us at assemblies. He 'wrecked' his voice one day singing, and from then on obnoxiously had a microphone headset (which he left on when he went to the washroom once. Good times.) He seemed waaaay to interested in this one guy in my grade who was a star athlete. He was an awful athlete. He showed up at our grade 9 graduation and some parents thought he was a hobo. D:
OHHH teachers.

Also, I can't believe I forgot, this past year I had a Japanese prof who effectively said "You suck, you should drop this class." no wonder I don't want to keep taking it anymore -___-;
[/font] Edited June 9, 2010 by mapthesoul.

[chibi-master]

My nightmare educator right now is my English teacher. She spent the entire year throwing crappy books and SYMBOLISM at us like an angry housewife throwing plates at her cheating husband! So after a year of nothing but SYMBOLISM, she decides to give us a test on a variety of literary terms that we have not covered all year and expects us to ace the test!

"How do you guys not know what a simile is?!" she asks.

"Maybe because you never bothered to tell us that we needed to know what the heck a simile is and in fact tell us what it is at all."

She's short-tempered and flips out over the smallest matters. Not to mention she LOST my VERY IMPORTANT book review that counted for a lot of my grade! She then says, "If you can hand in a new one by the end of the day, I can give you credit." I don't have any free periods besides lunch! And I have lunch 7th period out of 9 periods! I decided not to waste my time just because she can't keep a book review in a folder or desk drawer instead of having them lying out in the open on a puny table in the back of the classroom.

[Korey]

[color="#000080"][size="2"][font="Garamond"]My senior AP English teacher was a dingbat, plain and simple. She was new to the school and had transferred from some other school because the previous senior AP english teacher became the English Department advisor. So, we got dear Ms. Lawson. Her class had no structure to it and our discussions and assignments just seemed random as all get out. I felt I learned nothing from her class. Heck, when my Junior AP English teacher was giving out study sessions for her kids ( I loved having her class), I begged and pleaded her to give some sessions for us as well. Thanks to her, I got a great score on my Senior AP Lit exam and even re-took the Junior one and got a higher score. Awesome.[/font][/size][/color]

[Gavin]

[font="Tahoma"][size="2"]I've had to deal with a couple of lousy teachers over the last few years, some due to their personalities others due to the fact they were just terrible at or utterly disinterested in their job.

The two worst offenders that come to mind however were my 5th and 6th year (final two years of high school before university) English and Chemistry teachers. The latter is by far the single worst teacher I have ever come across, average classes would involve us dutifully jotting down her summaries of the whatever chapter we were working on in relative silence for forty-five minutes with nearly no interaction between us, made all the worst by her terribly monotonous, droning voice which would quite literally sap the will to live out of you. Her skill at actually imparting knowledge, as well as being able to actually display some level of original thinking of her own was severely lacking, if it wasn't explained in the textbook, or you didn't grasp the explanation of the textbook you were pretty much shit out of luck. Of the six of us in the class, five of us including myself were attending tutors, and the one who relied on the teacher ending up failing.

My former English teacher is a bit of a mixed bag, we both started in the school the same year and I've had him every year for six years for English and to be fair to him he does display a great aptitude for and love of the subject. The problem with this man however is two-fold, one if there is anything even remotely relating to the school's senior or junior hurling teams he will abandon all his classes (including those facing state-set exams that year) in favour of supervising the training or merely observing and these absences could occur as often as once a week. The second element I've always found distasteful about this man is his ego, and utter lack of respect to those who find themselves in his contempt often. While I absolutely respect a teacher's right to discipline those in his class who act in a wayward or disruptive manner, there were incidents which could only be described as vulgar and juvenile, the most irksome of which would be a tendency to snap his fingers and point with his middle-finger alone extended at someone whose attention he desired or roar abuse ("I don't remember asking you a goddamn thing" being a favoured response). While I got on well enough with him inside and outside of class I must admit there were times when I wanted to grab and break those offending fingers and generally viewed him with a mixture of loathing and disgust at a man in his now thirties acting like a spoiled-child.

Irish teachers also rub me rather the wrong way, but that's mostly because I consider it a practically dead language with absolutely no value continued by individuals with no interest in modernising it or the way it's taught and who invariably are at odds with anything resembling progression, the fact that I voice this opinion when asked probably doesn't help. [/size][/font]

[celestialcharm]

[color="#9932CC"][font="Book Antiqua"]My worst teacher was my grade one teacher! I know that sounds ridiculous that a teacher for that age group could be that bad, but it's true! Maybe she was hard on me because she knew my mom (my older brother was in her class, two years earlier), but I guess I'll never know.

Anyway, I used to get detention practically everyday (yes, they DO give you detention in grade one). I missed many recesses because I had to stay inside, and I even came home sometimes an hour late from school because of these detentions. I got detention, mostly for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Once, it was because we were supposed to line up, and we did. The teacher left the room, a classmate said someone had the cooties, and so everyone went wild. Someone gave it to me, so as I was about to pass it unto someone else, the teacher came back into the room. Only I had to stay in for recess that day. I also was banned from sitting beside my best friend because we "talked" a lot.

One incident that happened was when I was in detention. I had to draw an elephant for a journal exercise we had to do. She yelled at me because I sounded like I was scribbling, but I was actually shading in the elephant with my pencil. She felt bad and gave me a nice sticker (trying to buy me off )

The day I realized that there was something wrong with this whole evil teacher situation when her husband had a heart attack. It may sound horrible, but I was very happy that day because she was on leave, and it was karma (I was practically cackling in my head). Then I felt bad for her when she came back to school.

All in all, I swear this was the start of my anxiety problems.[/font][/color]

[Claire]

[quote name='celestialcharm' date='01 July 2010 - 01:49 AM' timestamp='1277963341' post='696264']
[color="#9932CC"][font="Book Antiqua"]My worst teacher was my grade one teacher! I know that sounds ridiculous that a teacher for that age group could be that bad, but it's true![/font][/color]
[/quote]

I had a really awful first grade teacher, too. The details are really fuzzy, but I can remember just never getting along with her and often feeling like she was being mean to me for no reason. One day, during playtime, this kid extended his hand and said "shake!" I didn't want to, so I said no. Then the teacher came up and SENT ME TO THE OFFICE. She called my dad and I got in a lot of trouble even though I didn't even do anything wrong. Even fourteen years later I feel confused as to why that happened, it was so unfair and unwarranted. Edited July 1, 2010 by Tonks

[DeLarge]

[size="2"][font="Lucida Sans Unicode"]I've been reasonably fortunate with my teachers, in that I managed to be taught by mostly the good teachers at my schools. However, when I was 11 I had a Religious Studies teacher who asked us to draw what we thought God looked like, and I got thrown out of class for drawing him on a motorbike, which I thought was intensely unfair.

Interestingly, one of my lecturers for first year Film Studies had the dullest teaching style, reading out from a textbook in a monotone, expecting us to write notes about everything he was saying. We really weren't impressed by him, until we got a little further through the course and realised that he'd actually drawn a short straw, and the module he was teaching us was a bit of a nothing subject, and some second years told us that when he's teaching something he actually engages with he's a fantastic teacher.[/font][/size]