In the case she is googling her own name and comes up on this I hope it’s a pseudonym…
I had so many good teachers there is no way I could pick just one. Worst teacher was a shop teacher. He didn’t bother bolting a sheet metal bender to the floor even though he knew it was top heavy. It tipped over and landed on a kids fingers. It took 10 of us kids to lift it off him. Still remember seeing fingers hanging on by a flap of skin.
Worst Teachers:
Two that really stick out.
Junior year religion teacher, completely unpredictable personality, changed the syllabus daily, mean as a snake, and fervently Catholic and anti-intellectual. At the beginning of the year I was a soft agnostic – this woman pushed me firmly into the atheist camp. She was completely insane and had no concept of teacher/student boundaries – for example, she once demanded that a student make up an exam IN HER CAR (the teachers’s car) while she was on parking lot duty.
The second was more incompetent then anything else, an adjunct calculus teacher who was clearly fresh out of grad school. Had him last semester in a 200-person Calc I lecture that was comprised of mainly freshmen. Poor guy had a terrible stutter and had the most circuitous way of teaching ever – started out with the first few lines of a theorem, took time out to do completly unrelated examples, then went back to the theorem. It did not help that all of the homework was online and timed. I ended up giving up half-way through and failing the course (that’s another story…). I’m re-taking calc I right now with a different prof. and currently have a A 
Best Teachers:
Dr. Cynthia Peterson, a professor of physics and astronomy. Her passion for astronomy was infectious – I fell very hard in love with the subject and switched my major to physics a month into the course.
My current physics professor – also extremely passionate about his subject, genuinely cares for his students but doesn’t take crap. His lecture style is very straightforward and I love the way he derives equations – really drives home how elegantly connected everything is.
Phonetically misspelled.
Worst teacher:
A Mr. L, who taught an electrical/communications technology course in 9th grade. I thought I was going to learn how to fix radios and do some basic electrical tinkering. Instead it turned out to be little more than a goof-off class, with him working on his own pet projects for an hour while the students watched TV, screwed around with an old reel-to-reel recorder and played CDs. You had to be a real fuck-up not to get a decent grade in there.
Best Teacher:
There are two that stand out. A Mr B. in 7th grade and a Mr. G in 11th grade who gave me a real appreciation for history. Made it come alive rather than just spouting off a bunch of dates.
Also a Mr. D who taught English in 11 grade. Up until that point in time I had only a vague idea of what I wanted to with my life, but he gave me a lot of direction and helped steer me into the profession I’m currently in.
My current American Racism professor, universally referred to as ‘‘Palmer’’ is one of the most amazing people I have ever known, much less had the honor to learn from.
Palmer is a 70 year old black man who shows up every day in a suit and tie and will only address his students by their surnames. The first time I ever met him I was terrified, because he walked in without even an introduction and started calling on people–a very interrogatory style. He intimidates a lot of people.
I knew we were in for it when he stood in the front of the class talking about how important it is for people to get beyond rage, self-righteous indignation, fear and shame when it came to race. He pointed at a black woman in our class and said, ‘‘What are you going to do if someone comes up to you and calls you a nigger bitch?’’ Then he turned to a white girl. ‘‘How about if someone calls you a white bitch? What will you do?’’
Little by little, his story came out. He grew up in the ghetto with 12 siblings and was shot and stabbed countless times during his violent youth. He reports that he he used to steal from the dorms of the university at which he is now a professor. Later in his youth he began directing his energy and frustration toward toppling institutional racism and was a major player in the civil rights movement–numerous arrests, the target of several attempts on his life, etc. He now has a JD and a medical degree and has founded a charter school in Philadelphia. This man is totally, utterly fearless. He is frequently brought in to settle gang disputes. When he does this, he basically puts a big cardboard box at the front of the room and requires the kids to throw their weapons inside, telling them to ‘‘leave it at the door.’’ And they do it!
The other day we were reviewing a newspaper article about the 1985 MOVE bombing of Philadelphia. The classmate who read the article summarized it, looked up at Palmer and said, ‘‘Now I just know you had something to do with this.’’
And of course, he did. He was appointed to mediate between the police and the organization and during the first incidence of violence (there were two, the second spawned by the first.) He was caught in the crossfire that ended up killing the police officer, James Ramp, for which this extremist organization was blamed. He says the police officer was killed by friendly fire – he witnessed it. So those people still are languishing in jail for a crime they didn’t commit, apparently.
He also takes pride in being a pain in the ass at our university. Penn has pretty much destroyed the community he grew up in through gentrification, and he’s not quiet about it. I’ve never met anyone so simultaneously critical of the administration and yet so devoted to the students.
Despite his complete and utter badassery, he is the most compassionate, gentle, helpful professor I’ve ever had. I don’t know how he has managed to accomplish so much, even in 70 years. He is academically rigorous and emotionally authentic all at the same time. He’s like some crazy social justice action hero, and I have never had a professor impact my worldview and sense of identity as profoundly as he’s impacted mine.
**Best: ** My high school math teacher Mr. Williams. He spent the entire first day of a trig talking about how much he loved to do puzzles and what some of his favorite puzzles were and why he found them interesting. It wasn’t until the end of class when I realized that he was talking about math. He launched the careers of at least four engineers, two science majors, and four medical field people on that day.
I took four years of algebra, trig, geometry, and calculus in his class.
Worst: - a quantum physics professor I had in college. This guy was the worst lecturer on earth. He would pause sometimes for five minutes and just stare at his calculations on the board. More than once he would then walk over to a corner and face the corner for 15 min. During that time we would just sit there and talk quietly. The guy barely acknowledged that he was in class.
At the end of the semester he told me that I was failing because I didn’t take the second test. I told him I not only took the test, I also reviewed his grading of it in class, marked my notes that I had a 91, and then turned it back into him at the end of class as instructed.
He said I should have come to him sooner to correct the mistake. I said I would have if he had told me that the grade was missing earlier. He argued that it was my responsibility to correct the mistake, not his. Again, I can’t correct a mistake I’m not aware of.
This when on for about five minutes to the point where I flew into a rage and chewed him out for ten minutes, told him he was worthless as an instructor, and said that I would do everything in my power to put him before an ethical review committee.
I walked out of his office and went to my adviser. He was a hard nosed guy to students and I pretty much expected him to tell me to take a hike. But he said he would look into it.
The issue got resolved. It wasn’t until after that semester that I found out my adviser hated the other professor. Both of them were German. My adviser barely escaped Germany before WWII. My professor was a scientist for the Germans during WWII. So my Jewish born adviser took on his colleague whom he believed to be a Nazi sympathizer.
Oh, wow, I didn’t even think about college for some reason. Let me add two more in the “worst” category and one more in the “best”:
Worst:
Freshman California History teacher. He was a visiting professor, only there for one quarter, and I got lucky enough to get him. My very first quarter in college. I was coming out of high school where essentially I aced everything, and I figured college would be the same. This guy was horrible. Lousy lecturer, terrible book, horrible tests. I ended up with a C in the class, and began to doubt my ability to do well in college despite my high school success. Fortunately this didn’t come to pass and the rest of my classes were fine, but this guy was an ass.
Another Poli Sci teacher at the same school, same year. I can’t remember his name now, but he was the most boring lecturer EVER. I think he should have been the inspiration for Professor Binns in the Harry Potter books. Nice enough guy, but he literally said “Uh…” almost every other word. I got more bored than usual one day and counted 100 "uh"s in a 20-minute stretch of lecturing! I’m amazed I got enough out of his lectures to actually do decently on the tests.
Best:
Dr. McK… International Relations professor. He wasn’t a popular teacher–had a rep for being a very hard grader and not putting up with any crap. I tend to gravitate toward teachers like that, because I consider them a challenge. We got along great, and I got As in his classes because I did the work, didn’t screw around, and actually participated in class. He became my senior project advisor, and I ended up getting an A on that as well–he complimented me on how good it was, and he didn’t do that often.
Favorite: Mr. P., HS physics and AP physics teacher. Good teacher, good-natured, put up with what little crap we offered with good humor (and since this was a Catholic HS, there really was very little). He taught us the elementary derivatives and integrals before we had taken them in calculus class (AP math).
Worst: a couple of nuns who were really heavy-handed (sometimes literally) with discipline. I was a good kid so I only saw it happen. But even they were okay teachers otherwise.
My only experience teaching has been a couple of one-day computer courses where I worked. That was hard enough. Just that small taste of what teaching demanded gave me new respect for ANYONE who does it every day for years.
The best teacher I ever had was Mrs O in first grade. She recognized that I was able to read at a 7th grade level in 1st grade, so I got to go into parts of the school library that the rest of the kids weren’t allowed in. She also encouraged my love of writing and storytelling.
The worst? A few, but the worst was the 6th grade teacher who was a pedophile and no one did squat about him being all touchy-feely with the 6th grade girls. He was my WV History and math teacher, and he scared the living shit out of me because I was afraid he’d go after me the way he did to several of my classmates. Thankfully, he didn’t.
The worst:
-
My professor in Intro. to Engineering Design, a freshman course. The teacher was a useless alcoholic, coming into class either hungover, or still drunk. He would slur his words, and sometimes ramble on about his bitch ex-wife.
The best: -
Algebra 2 teacher in high school. He made everything seems so easy. Very clear explanations and a good attitude.
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Engineering Statics professor. He wasn’t the regular professor of this class, but rather a semi-retired civil engineer. A very good teacher, as I recall everyone passed with a C or better, and his tests were actually quite tough.
I was fortunate enough to have mostly good teachers.
Worst: Ms W, my freshman gym teacher. Granted, I was a fat, clumsy kid, but I usually got along in PE. With her, not only did she make me continue playing basketball and finish up with running laps after severely spraining my ankle in her class, she openly mocked me when I returned the next day with a doctor’s slip excusing me from participating in class until it was healed. I absolutely hated gym after that.
Best: Mr. C, my sophomore advanced geometry teacher. He was a no-nonsense guy who would call on you if you were goofing off, sleeping or otherwise giving less than perfect attention in his class, but he taught me so much about setting down a problem. This skill has translated itself in many ways, few of which have involved lines and angles, over the years in my work.
Mr. M, my sophomore AP American Lit teacher. Introduced me to the wonders of the transcendentalist poets, Faulkner, Irving and more. He was also my senior English lit teacher and did as much to bring Shakespeare to life as he did the American authors.
Thanks to all of my good teachers past and to those of you who currently put your talents into giving students the best education possible.
My worst teacher:
My third grade teacher, Mrs. H*******. She was very mean and very strict, which is hard for a third grader to be able to handle. She made my life so miserable that I turned to food for comfort and ended up gaining a lot of weight.
My best teacher:
My criminology professor in college, Mr. Andrew A*****. He always makes learning fun and relates what we are learning to the real world. Also, he loves to tell stories of his personal life to the class making the class that much more enjoyable.
Best: Gary D, my 10th grade English teacher. An absolutely brilliant teacher. It is to him that I attribute any skill I have as a writer.
Worst: Nick C, my Chemistry I for Science Majors professor. Flatly told us that it wasn’t his responsibility to teach us (“You can learn it from the book or each other, I don’t care which!”) because he was there to do research. I could have, perhaps, accepted that attitude a little better if this hadn’t been at what was then a small state university which was primarily a teacher training institution. The professor for II, Neil A, was nearly as much of an asshole. Day one he informed us that to get an “A” you would have to be a better chemist than he. Both of them failed over 50% of their students and issued no grade higher than a “B” and precious, precious few of those.