For math all through HS my math teacher was the same guy. He promised the first day of 9th grade (and every year thereafter) that if we would take his classes every year until graduation (which meant pass each year, because once you were in one of his classes you were in the “accelerated” track and would always get him) the last day of class before graduation he would fold his ears inside themselves. I took math from him for four years. The ear trick was a bit anticlimactic. Too much build up for a bar trick.
My 9th grade English teacher made us study Merchant of Venice instead of Romeo and Juliet because R&J wasn’t appropriate for 14 year olds in her mind. We spent the year “studying” works by having her read out loud badly abridged versions out of old, discontinued text books. Classes would often try and cause trouble but she was extremely easy to brown nose to. She had a little dog that was a Shitsu. She wouldn’t pronounce its breed above a whisper for fear of sounding like she was cussing. Of course, she was ancient then but is still alive and kicking now, although has been retired for over ten years. A couple of years ago she fell in her home and broke a hip. No one found her for over 24 hours and she wasn’t able to even get herself off the floor. Someone asked her how she stood the pain. her reply: “I taught freshman English for 27 years. I can stand anything.”
My favourite teachers were always the odd ones. In grade 12, I had a history teacher who was really passionate about the subject. He was a chalkboard fiend - everything went on the board. And, towards the end of the class, he would inevitably run out of room. He would start writing on the walls at this point. Now, white chalk on white walls is nigh impossible to decipher, and when someone pointed this out to him, he looked flabbergasted and suggested that we could “follow the motion of his hand”. Our solution, as a class, was to buy a box of coloured chalk and leave it for him. When he showed up that day, he was inordinately happy, and we were pleased to be able to read the notes from the last part of the lecture. However, the following class he was back to the white chalk. When we asked him why, he flushed and explained he’d had an earful from the janitors because the walls had to be scrubbed to get rid of the coloured chalk.
My most favoured teacher used to keep a nerf ball gun on his desk and lob nerf balls at students who fell asleep. Once, he ate chalk in front of a class that wasn’t paying attention (*I heard this second hand, wasn’t there for this event). He wasn’t beyond throwing chalk at students who were sleeping either. He threw a book at me once when he caught me reading Henry Miller in the hall by my locker in grade 11 - a book by John Fowles, if I recall, and yelled “read some real literature, not that crap!”. He was, hands down, the reason I majored in English in University.
I guess I’m lucky that I never had horrible teachers. There were a few unique ones - the 9th grade Civics teacher who let us watch “Thriller” right after it came out and liked to stick a suction cup cop light on his head while teacheing, or the 10th grade English teacher who would argue with anyone about anything being taught, forcing us to actually think.
However, I ran across two hideous elementary school teachers while completing practicums in college. One taught 1st grade. She always spoke in that “Talk to slow children” voice - “OHkay, now, children. Tooo-daay, we’re going to learn how to count. Do you want to learn how to count? Say ‘Yes, teacher, we want to learn how to count’…GOOD children!”. She also spoke that way to me. Most of my practicum with her was spent in the hallway teaching 1st graders how to color within the lines. Seriously.
I also completed a practicum in my old elementary school with a 3rd grade teacher who presumed my job was to take over the class so he could go smoke and chat up the school secretary. He made it very clear who were the ‘Stars’ and who were the ‘Losers’ by not only diving the class physically with the stars on the right and losers on the left, but responding to some of the students like “Yes, Jane, my star”. When I told him what my responsibilities were during the practicum (assist him, work one on one with students - NOT run the class) he asked that I didn’t return. Spent the rest of that practicum working in the library.
You poor thing. Since when did they start teaching sex ed in Catholic school? 35 years ago they didn’t even tell you about it in high school biology class.
My ninth grade gym teacher once told us:
“Boys, Happiness is when you hit yourself over the head with a hammer fifty times, and then stop.”
We all thought he was a little too happy.
Sophmore biology teacher. He was actually pretty good and knew his stuff, although you could tell he was just on automatic pilot a lot of the time by then. He look like an emaciated Buddy Ebsen with an astonishingly bad toupee that seemed to have landed on his head by accident. He had coffee/cigarette breath bad enough that you learned to breath through your ears if he had to come over to your lab bench for something.
The weirdest part though, was the extra credit he gave for students who brought in fresh roadkill to supply his hobby as an amateur taxidermist. Every once in a while a new glassy-eyed bird or squirrel would appear hanging from the ceiling of the classroom by a string.
I’m a Catholic school teacher, though I’m- er- clearly not a nun. There actually aren’t any nuns that teach at the school, though there is a priest or two. I’ve never asked, but I’m pretty sure I’d probably get in trouble if I started beating kids.
Although, I did huck a chapstick at a student once in a ferocious act of violence. Ok, it was a joke and he loves that he has a story about the time I “viciously and cruelly abused” him.
scribbles down note Will do.
I can happily (er, sadly?) report that I inadvertently do most of these things anyway. I mean, the super enthusiasm thing just comes naturally because I do really love what I teach, but I definitely throw in a little over the top excitement most of the time. For instance, my students are actually excited about the fact that we have a “Bell Curve of the Day” that I draw on the board during examples for them. I’m a speech teacher, btw.
8th Grade Earth Science class. Mrs. Drayden was mad as a hatter. She once argued with us for over half an hour and was very upset that we couldn’t understand her explanation that the Sun revolved around the Earth. :rolleyes:
This was also the first year we learned how to use Bunsen burners. She was very afraid one of us would blow something up by improper use. She had very detailed instructions that the entire class was to follow at the same time.
“Class, connect your hoses.”
“Now, turn on the gas only halfway.”
“Now, wait until I come by your station and I will light your burner.”
There were about 25 of us in this class. Gas slowly filled the room while she very methodically went to each station and lit burners one at a time, only after carefully checking that everything was done correctly.
About 10 students later, she got to William’s desk. After she checked it out, she proceeded to light the burner. A HUGE fireball and WOOOSH got everybody’s attention. He burned parts of his eyebrows and some of his forehead hair off.
That is, everybody but Wendy, who was actually turning blue from all the gas. She had to go home early that day after passing out.
My high school biology teacher never actually taught. For the first three weeks he had people take turns reading the textbook aloud, but soon gave that up, so we students would gossip and eat lunch during class. For grades, he’d ask us what we thought we should get.
He had a little makeshift kitchen in the front of the classroom, and would often sell us hot dogs. One day he brought in a cow’s heart “to show us how hearts work” and filled it with water and chased us around, squirting us. He then cooked the heart in a stew.
He was a proud graduate of Brown, and a former cop, according to him. He liked showing us his collection of venereal disease photos from his police training days.
He once brought in giant worms to dissect, but decided to hang some from his ears and fling the rest at us. He was small and wiry, with a crew cut and big square black glasses.
He was also a black belt in Karate, and his solution to every ill or problem was to “whack it out.” We tried never to make him angry.
He often stayed in an RV in the school parking lot. Rumor had it that his wife wouldn’t let him come home much.
I had a terrible chem teacher (I didn’t have the free periods to take AP, since it required an extra lab period). Now you’d think an advanced school would have great teachers… and it does… except the chem department for some reason.
This chem teacher would leave in the middle of labs with non-dilute hydrochloric acid, or possibly fire and come back at the end of the period…
With Jack in the Box. Luckily the admission test and subsequent weeding throughout freshman year ensures we’re smart enough not to kill ourselves. On the plus side she and the AP teacher let us raid the chem closet (within reason) at the end of the year, I got some fun things to play with (disclaimer: kids, do not raid your school’s chem closet for stuff to make explosives and thermite with, even if I did). I didn’t learn much “basic” chemistry but I make one hell of a self-taught demolitions guy because of that class. That was also my “majorly into the occult” year, so when we had presentations that had loose guidelines like being about an element or an acid I’d always have something interesting to do I learned from studying alchemy like dissolving gold (which she didn’t know how to do), she got kinda mad (but tried to hide it) once that I kept doing really cool stuff she never taught us about. Also, quote I’ll never forget “if I tell you to take off your clothes do it.” Now, this was good advice in the context of the safety lecture (if you spill acid on your clothes and she tells you to take them off to get the acid away from your body and minimize contact do it) but she could’ve phrased it better. There’s a parent organization entirely dedicated to her firing.
Then there was my middle school band teacher. He was awesome and insane. This was a higher tier fine arts magnet. He had flaws (he brought in people to talk to us about “focus” a little too much), but loved to tell stories, especially about his son who got diagnosed with a disease that no one knew what the hell it was (according to him pieces of him are still floating around research universities trying to discover what disease or combination it was) who got to conduct one of Disney’s bands from a Make-a-Wish request.
Anyway, back to the crazy. He really liked rubber chickens, for one (our band shirt one year featured them). But mostly he just did random off-the-wall crap. One day we were prepared for all our competitions (so didn’t REALLY have to practive) and he just walked in and said “we should start a rumor about a ghost in the auditorium” (as a fine arts school we had a REALLY good auditorium with all sorts of hidden nooks). We also would set up lights and hang things int eh catwalk in weird ways for concerts, which was mainly a function of me (and me specifically) being in both Tech (who set up the auditorium for stuff) and band and thus having unbarred access to just about any imaginable part of the school. It didn’t hurt that I HAD to be everywhere considering I was the only remaining member of tech that actually bothered to learn/knew how to work the “hard” equipment (by that I mean the lighting and such, as opposed to the cameras which everyone knows how to do). And alone/unsupervised at that (I was the “good kid” that every teacher trusted. I’m still shocked no one ever figured out it was me who did several ridiculously-insane-yet-ultimately-harmless stunts). Example of a prank my band teacher set up: we blinded my friend the oboist (who played clarinet in jazz) by cleverly setting up lights to be focused on her chair. Why? 'cause. Oh, and every year at the spring concert (a “casual” outside picknickish one) he would throw Twinkies into the crowd at random.
Then there was my 7th grade science teacher, Mr. Essig. Nothing too insane (he reminded me of a Bill Nye cum stereotypical Jew), but we did get to make hot air balloons and actual working rockets in the class. He would also surreptitiously introduce “unexpected” agents into his demo labs (i.e. pour corn starch in water he was going to use for something else and then act surprised when it didn’t pour out) to make the results wrong and hope someone would call him on it, to teach us the importance in science of paying close attention during experiments and noting even the most innocent looking details.
Then there was my AP European History teacher. He was awesome and funny and always had a story for SOMETHING. We actually had something akin to memes in that class. We watched the series “the Western Tradition” from time to time, and no one could remember the lecturer’s name in the videos so my friend called him “professor Dude,” Mr. Clifford calls him that to this day now. The only problem is his default voice tone sounds like sarcasm, a little harsh, and kinda deep. This doesn’t matter usually because he’s sarcastic and fun a lot. But it doesn’t help the person in trouble’s situation when the class is laughing while he’s legitimately mad because they think he’s sarcastic.
My 5th grade Band teacher was a combo of both of the ones you mentioned, she was kinda of mean, but she taught high school the year before she taught us. I liked her, she wasn’t THAT bad and had a lot to offer. She was staff during marching season for band my Junior year and actually came up to me and apologized telling me she realized she was a little demanding because she was trying to teach us like a high school band but was pleased with how well we handled it.
That’s interesting that there are now more lay teachers than nuns, and amazing to me that there are Catholic schools without any nuns these days. When I was in grade school my teachers were all nuns, and in high school the only lay teachers were those brought in to teach chemistry, biology and physics. All of the lay teachers that I had were much nicer than most of the nuns were. They might have been scared of them too. The only nun that I ever really liked a lot was our gym teacher. She’d hike up her habit and run around like a field coach blowing her whistle at us and cheering us on. She also let us have gym class outside in nice weather and pretended not to notice us flirting through the fence with the guys from the boy’s school down the block.
