Sister Evangelista was the horrible nun on which all horrible nun stereotypes were based. I had her in 3rd grade and spent half of the summer before crying because I was so scared. She was legendary in a terrifying sort of way. She was about 5’ tall and 4’ wide and had a hair trigger temper that she felt no compulsion to control. She was violent too. Every day someone got their palms smacked, she’d lash out at the boys and beat them with a yardstick until they fell on the ground crying, and once she twisted a pen into a curl on my head and dragged me around the room with it. If you cried she’d hit you harder until you stopped. Looking back at it she was clearly out of her mind and shouldn’t have been allowed near children. Are nuns still allowed to beat the kids in Catholic school?
Ah, Mrs. Carnes the music teacher. I had her for four years–she followed me from one school to another. Every year she told our class that we were the worst class she’d ever had. I asked her at some point, in front of the class, whether it was my influence in particular or whether she just told all the classes that. She wasn’t amused.
As she so often wasn’t. When she got angry, she’d stride over to the piano and start banging on it with her fists and singing her complaint–imagine someone playing “Frere Jacques” with their fists and singshouting “I WANT QUIET, I WANT QUIET, PLEASE RIGHT NOW!” It was not effective.
Ah, Mr. Resnick. Straight out of the army he was, and what better career than elementary school PE? He tolerated nothing less than military discipline from us. If the class was misbehaving in his mind, he would forced everyone to stand in straight lines, quietly, for the entire 45-minute PE period, without moving or speaking.
The gym was adjacent to the music room. We were standing there in our rows, trying not to squirm like the children we were. And suddenly we hear banging on the piano. “I WANT QUIET, I WANT QUIET, YES I DO!”
We lost it. Soon thereafter, Mr. Redneck lost his job.
My first music teacher in kindergarten used to teach college at the music level. I remember his explaining to us the history of written music (remember, we were five years old). And then he told this group of kids, barely out of diapers, the story of Prometheus and the eagles that tore out his liver every day.
He didn’t last long. I fucking LOVED him.
Daniel
I sometimes wonder if the kids I taught as a student teacher ever tell the story of the crazy guy who explained to them what being “tarred and feathered” and “drawn and quartered” meant and that they weren’t, generally speaking, things you got better from.
I’ve had some bad teachers, but I think Mr. Cavoli was the only crazy one.
The guy was a genius, plain and simple. He could speak at least 7 languages, was a sculptor, a painter, music aficionado, etc. He taught Latin III & IV. He was also way too enthusiastic about whatever subject he was talking about. He would jump up on his desk and start reciting Cicero’s first Catalinarian the way he thought Cicero had done it, waving his hands around and almost yelling it. He was fun. We watched ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’ in class.
The First Gulf War happened my senior year. Mr. Cavoli had several friends over there. He was a high strung guy to begin with, and this made it worse. We noticed. He came into class one day, acting weirder than usual. Staring out the window, looking at all of us one at a time, rapidly changing stations on the radio he played before class. At one point he looked at us and said ‘You hear them right? You can hear that they’re taking over?’ He kind of halfheartedly taught class, most of the time just sitting at his desk staring at us. When class was over he stood at the door and said goodbye to each of us personally, with a handshake or hug. It got worse throughout the day. The next class just sat in a circle and prayed. Eventually, word got out and several teachers took him to the hospital. He was going through sleep deprivation hallucination. Turns out he hadn’t had more than a few hours of sleep since the war started. He came back a few weeks later, and explained it all to us. He was seeing Iraqi military knocking down buildings on the other side of the street, hearing military propaganda on the radio, etc. He was a good teacher, I learned a lot from him.
I think the church manufactured the “Mean Nun” in large batches through 1960. I had Sister Bertha for fifth grade in a small Catholic School in Connecticut. Mean, mad, bad tempered, spiteful and violent. Being hit with a ruler, yard stick or the wooden pointer was common. Her down fall was giving bad grades because she didn’t like you. It’s hard to convince a student they deserve an F on a math test when they have 8 out of 10 correct. It’s even harder to convince a parent let alone the parents of several children paying to send their kids to school.
Mr. Guest, my 11th grade chemisty teacher, pulled a knife on a kid in my class named Tommy. This was after several weeks of Mr. Guest telling Tommy he wanted to meet him in the Wal-Mart parking lot to fight. Unfortunately for Mr. Guest, Tommy’s dad was the assistant principal at the middle school, so Mr. Guest was put on permanent leave and never taught at that school again.
We then went through a different substitute teacher every 2 weeks for several months, until we got Mr. Cornelius who was a huge Star Trek fan and made us watch Star Trek:The Next Generation every day. All of my Star Trek knowledge comes from 11th grade chemisty. I have absolutely no chemistry knowledge, however.
Mr. Cornelius is now a school principal, of course. :rolleyes:
Rumor had it that the Jesuit brothers were even worse than the nuns were. By the time we reached high school they mostly stopped hitting the girls because even nuns don’t want to deal with a bunch of sulking teenagers all day, but supposedly in the boys’ schools the brothers literally beat them up with closed fists. People didn’t sue as much in those days I guess and ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ wasn’t seen as child abuse.
Teach class in a ninja costume…worked for me anyway
I had a similar teacher in HS - he would stick his head into the classrooms until he found us if we weren’t in AP Chemistry and yell, “Hey, Overly (or whatever studen he was looking for - there were only 6 of us in AP Chem that year) - we’re going to blow stuff up after school. Wanna come?” He was awesome. He had been in the Peace Corps and had dred locks. He was required to cut them off to teach and was left with this shock of ridiculously curly, frizzy hair. He dressed up as Richard Simmons for Halloween. I missed that guy.
My 5th grade teacher was…well, I don’t know what she was. Retired within a couple of years of me being in her class, I remember that much.
She encouraged us to spy and tattle on each other, and made “outsiders” (her word) of the “bad” kids. Trouble was, she usually got it wrong. I told someone to stop trying to copy my answers, and I had to be an “outsider” (move my desk to a corner of the room, away from everyone else) for talking.
She also couldn’t figure out why my mom was concerned about my math performance. Sure, I couldn’t do the math, but I also couldn’t be having problems, because, “She don’t ever ask me no questions in class.”
Ah, western KS. Great place to be from. FAR from!
I had a french teacher who was a neat freak. She would stop talking in class to pick up little bits of paper on the floor (chads and the like). She would also give extra credit to kids who did the same. She failed to understand the economy thus created. Want a little extra credit? Throw some chads on the floor while she’s not looking and then clean them up for her.
I had a middle school shop teacher with anger issues. He would get almost physically violent with troublemakers.
My high school shop teacher thought, in the 80’s, that the equal rights movement frontline was in his classroom. This was in one of the most liberal (and diverse) school systems in the country, mind you. And yet something like spilling paint was an affront (A deliberate affront!) to his race. I remember watching the teenaged WASPs, jews, sikhs, muslims and catholics look on in bewilderment at his rants while the black kids squirmed with embarassment. Also, his speech impediments turned his fury into rather comical tirades.
Mrs. Sitaramin was a Hindu teaching in our all-girl’s Catholic school, and told stories about her girlhood in India when she and her friends would maliciously throw raw eggs at the Christians going to church on Easter morning. She also once refused to let me go to the restroom when I had something in my eye, instead making me come to the front of the room where she proceeded to take my eyeglasses off, prise open my eyelids and blow garlicky breath into my eye. It didn’t really help but I had to go back to my seat anyway.
Mrs. Dietz was less crazy and just obnoxious. We were all 13 and 14 year old girls, in the main, and all self-conscious, as teens are, about our bodies, and she found that unacceptable. Unfortunately, she also had major problems with even basic modesty, to the extent that she disapproved that when we undressed for mandatory showers (even when 1/2 of the gym period was spent standing in a line waiting for a turn or sitting on the circle being lectured and no one broke a sweat) we all took care to never be fully naked in view of our peers.
This was ridiculous, she said, and there’d come a day when we’d look back on our unwillingness toward communal nudity. When we had babies (and of course we would all have babies :rolleyes:) we’d get to a point when “dozens” of people would be parading in and out of our hospital rooms (and of course we’d have babies in hospitals) and they’d all want to look at our crotches and we’d get to a point, like with her, when someone would come in and we’d throw back the covers (because of course we’d be huddled in a bed as if very ill) and spread our legs automatically.
Very modest, very shy, very body-image conscious adolescent me wasn’t scarred by that depiction of childbirth at all, no, not in the least. :eek:
Later at another high school, Mr. Medrano, our incompetent (and, we discovered, unqualified) trigonometry teacher, gave our class president, a kid with a 4.5 grade point average who had never been in any sort of trouble in his entire life (and is now a minister) a week of detention for looking in his text book, trying to understand the concept that was being mis-taught with wrong examples on the chalkboard.
The next day, when he threatened another kid with detention for asking for clarification we all got up and walked out of class and went to the office, en masse, and refused to leave until someone had heard our complaint about his inability to teach the subject matter. The benefits of a small school. He never taught trig again, instead the very qualified “head” of the math department took over the class, started over from the very beginning (and still completed the full year’s curriculum, in 21 weeks rather than 36) and my grades shot up from D’s of complete confusion to A’s of understanding and mastery.
This is true. My dad went to Catholic High scool in the 50’s , and if you got out of line, the brothers would literally kick your ass…Nice…
My 7th grade English teacher used to get onto one kid for always being absent or coming in late (it was the first class of the day). When he came back, she’d always tell him that she’d brought the class blueberry donuts, and it was a shame he’d missed them. Then one week, he was on a family vacation. So, the day before he was due back she actually brought us all blueberry donuts.
My HS Freshman year, I had a teacher who, while not necessarily “crazy,” was just a bad teacher. Quite honestly, I don’t think I actually learned anything in her classes all year (I had her for two separate classes, back to back). Then, somehow, it came to light that she’d been fired from her previous school for throwing a stapler at a student. We actually asked her about it, and it turns out that the kid, in fact “had it coming.”
My high school chem. teacher walked into the classroom the first day and told us he wasn’t like our other teachers because he wasn’t from this planet. He then proceeded to take that whole first class and tell us about his home planet and how he got here. By the end of the class I swear half the kids actually believed him. He was definetly one of my favorites.
Miss Bastion had a nervous breakdown in the middle of sophomore HS chemistry lecture one day–she ran shrieking from the room and we never saw her again. We got another teacher over the weekend and ended up actually learning some chem.
My senior year Trig teacher was a dying alcoholic who stank of cheap whiskey and Kools. He had scleral icterus (yellow/jaundiced eyes), and the shakes so bad he couldn’t write formula on the board. He may have known trig at some point, but believe me, he imparted no knowledge to any of us.
Summer school Wester Civ was taught by two men: a whiney skinny man who told us that he was “hypoglycemic” and had to eat while he lectured and his sidekick, Mr Jerk, who never explained anything about Western Civ, but sure concentrated on the dates when things happened. That was an honors class, btw.
Mr Palmgren, in elementary school, enjoyed screaming at young kids. And if he caught you running in the hall, he’d make you tiptoe, linoleum square by linoleum square to the bus, often making you miss it. Nice.
Miss Smith wore her white go-go boots to school (this in 1975) and her Twiggy eyelashes (think of that crazy guy in Clockwork Orange and you have her fake eyelashes). She was a pale blonde with an uncertain temper and no teaching talent at all. She would scream at us, almost daily. She would also throw erasers, and when her supply ran out, she’d turn to chalk. She had a great arm. Her face would contort and get all red. She also had a vein in her forehead that would swell to ominous proportions…
Coach Handler liked to feel up girls–he liked to “help” us with our ice skating. Funny how it was always the cute, built girls whom he deemed in need of help on ice. Thank god he never got in the pool with us.
Is it any wonder I grew to hate math and avoided sports? I think not.
I too made this my goal my second year of teaching as I reasoned thus “My favorite , and best, teachers were always odd therefore I should actively cultivate an air of oddness” to do this I did the following things.
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I aways wore a blazer or suit to teach. This was a subject of much fascination to the entire school (students and factuality). I did participate in the whole school dress down days (though not the teacher only Fridays) and could tell from the amazement of all that my dress up tactic worked well.
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I was exceptionally passionate about everything I taught. New units in all subjects (this was fifth grade so I taught everything) were begun with a short speech about how awesome the following topic was. (This seemed to work.)
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I exposed them to my random interests. Examples: For Halloween I did daily dramatic reading of Poe stories/poems and my made my SmartBoard background a different famous monster each day. When other teachers might show a Disney movie on a day (like field day) where no teaching would work we’d watch silent movies or listen to old radio dramas.
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This was unintentional, but I give new meaning to the words ‘absent minded’. I’d loose my notes mid lecture by forgetting where I put them down and “REMIND MR. LECTOR TO TAKE ROLE” had a permanent place on my board.
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I’d randomly lob tennis balls at them. No not because they weren’t paying attention or were talking but just because I felt like it. I also use to bounce one while talking.
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I’d shout "en garde!"and poke them (someplace safe like the bicep) with a yard stick or pointer.
Do the last two at your own risk. Getting away with them really depends on: the students, the school, and the age involved. I didn’t do them until I had a good relationship with the students and never did them to any students that would take them badly. I also had firmly established that, though I was fun, I was in charge and misbehaving would have dire consequences.
I’m sure I did more but those are what stick out.
Oh, where to begin?
5th grade music teacher - He was better than us. All of us. We could never dream to be as good as he. Had he mentioned yet that he was better than us? The first day of class, we get this speech. Then we are informed that he wears a tie because he respects us. This lecture lasts fifteen minutes. :smack:
Two years later, he transferred to a high school where they promptly put laxative in his coffee.
9th grade English - “Today we will be discussing the existence of aliens. They stole part of my tongue, you know.” We watched Contact the first day.
10th grade English - “This frog is named Oedipus. That is why he has no eyes and is forever bleeding felt.”
11th grade English (pattern?!) - “This is my jar of Walden Pond water. No one will touch the jar.”
9th grade history - For a lesson on WWII, he turned the classroom into a bunker and brought in a dud bombshell. Invited us to touch it…which rapidly turned into the guys kicking it. One of my favorite teachers.
This education major has a lot to live up to and watch out for.
I’ve led such a sheltered life. I have never experience the incredible amount of ineptness of the teachers in this thread. How does a teacher like that even get hired let alone continue in their employment. In the “real world”, if I handled my customers like these teachers handled their students, I would have been tossed out of my ear unceremoniously. How can the world of academia tolerate this?
Hmm… the one that really sticks in my mind is the sub who could walk on his hands and played ‘Popcorn’ on his mouth.
Grade 5… he had a nervous breakdown sometime before Christmas. I can’t recall his name. French class was taught by writing in French on the board and having us write it down, Math was simply ‘Do this chapter by Friday. If you have any troubles ask [math whiz classmate]’.
I went to so many schools and had a variety of teachers but other than those two, most are a blur. Oh, one other one was a student teacher. He was sarcastic as all get out, and only 4-5 or so years older than me (I went back to school, I was about 19-20 at the time). The most amusing part of the class was all the 16-17 year old girls (there was a range of ages at the school, I was the oldest student in the class) dressed up and tried to flirt with him.