In second grade I remember first reading a word I didn’t know, and figuring out what it was. The word was “hiccup” I could see “cup” and sounded out the rest. Then, with context, the lightbulb went on above my head!
So I trotted up to my teacher, who was doing some work at her desk, and told her what had happened. She just said “We aren’t supposed to be that far in the book yet, go sit back down.”
Not to me but another student 
Of course, by a Phy. Ed. teacher.
“Pat…sometimes I think you only have 2 and a half brain cells…and the half one is dead”
I’ve got good one. When I was in high school, I think I may have been in year ten ( U.S. Translation: 9th grade - I think) I had this history teacher who was very traditional, very much of the “Old Guard”. His classes were always conducted in near absolute silence, and woe betide anyone who didn’t do their homework or didn’t finish the board problemsbefore the bell. Anyway, this regimented teaching philosophy didn’t really gel with my more laissez-faire approach to the classroom, which involved talking constantly, not listening, and brushing off the textbook questions with one word answers wherever possble. Yeah, I was a bit of a brat, and far from his favourite student. It didn’t help that I sat next to my best mate, and, while we were bad enough when separated, we were a nightmare together.
Anyway, one day he was doing a quick Q&A session with the class to finish off the lesson and he caught me talking to my mate about some bollocks or other, and he decided this would be the perfect moment to get some revenge. He wheeled round, pointed straight at me and bellowed “Stelios! You blithering idiot! What was the name of the German military strategy designed to defeat France in a blitz attack through Holland and Belgium?”
Now, we’d covere this the previous year, so he was clearly hoping I’d be stunned into a shame-facdd silence by my own ignorance. Unfortunately for him, he’d asked me probably the one question I actually knew the answer to, so when I casually replied “The Schlieffen plan, sir?” his face fell like a deflated balloon. It was lovely to watch, and made the ensuing detention for dicking about totally worth sitting through
In 10th grade I had a teacher who must have been straight out of school herself. She had a chip on her shoulder from day one. Either she wasn’t getting the respect she felt she deserved or, more likely, assumed that she wouldn’t.
One day I made the mistake of correcting her pronunciation of ‘Amontillado’*. She very snidely told me I was wrong and to not interrupt her. Someone in the back of the class checked the dictionary and interrupted her again to tell her I was right.
She flipped out and started insulting anyone who talked. Other students defended their classmates and she turned on them. Before long she was in full rage mode.
The breaking point was when she called a girl “dogface”. The girl in question was a very sweet, friendly, and likeable girl who everybody loved. She was also quite unattractive and was very sensitive about it.
The girl ran from the room in tears, and everyone who knew her followed. She ran to the restroom and all the girls followed. All the boys–without much discussion at all, marched to the Principal’s office to complain.
The teacher was gone the next day.
After a lifetime of teachers who always said, “There’s no such thing as a stupid question,” I was quite surprised and chastened by a college professor who snapped, “That’s a stupid question!” at me.
It seemed like a reasonable question to me at the time. I wasn’t even being a wiseass.
I had a 1st grade teacher pull my hair but I don’t remember what she was saying at the time.
I had a professor in college for an interpersonal communications class who stormed into the room on day 1 and announced that men are bad at interpersonal communications and that nobody will get an A in her class, especially the men. Everyone looked around and saw that it was all males, except for two women. One of them dropped the class a couple days later and it was all downhill from there. I think I got a C- in her class and a number of people complained about their grades. Every class session had her telling us how bad we are at interpersonal communications.
In the UK when I was at school going from 3rd to 4th grade meant going from Infant to Junior School, leaving the building and playground where we were the oldest and going a hundred or so years away to the ones where we were the youngest. It was quite a big deal academically too as we would be expected to start seriously woorking toward the 11 plus exam that would determine our Secondary schools (post 7th grade).
So it was arranged that the term before the move we would get a tour of the Junior school and meet our new teacher. We were told that the idea was to reassure us that it wasn’t going to be scary. Our new teacher must have missed that memo. I was tremendously excited and couldn’t stop grinning. I grinned through the tour and our new teacher’s introduction to life in our class. Unfortunately I missed that this was a Serious Talk. So she snapped at me to stop smiling because “we don’t smile in Junior School” I spent every night of the summer holiday in dread.
She never did like me.
I had a teacher in grade seven who only taught at my school that one year. We did not gel. He did not seem to think I was as smart as my reputation and made no effort to challenge me. As a result, I did the required work, but made no effort to hide my boredom. I was not disruptive. I read. Everyone else loved him. The following year, for our grade eight graduation, the class was allowed to invite a special guest to the ceremony. It was put to a vote, and sure enough, this teacher was selected.
At the graduation ceremony, awards are given out. Academic awards are based on achievement and the community awards based on nominations from the teachers in the school. I won a majority of the academic awards and a very prestigious community award.
As the local paper was taking a picture of me with my awards, this teacher came up and said, “Wow, I didn’t really think you were capable of this” and indicated the awards on the table before me.
Grade eight graduation is a big deal in that small town and I worked hard. Way to piss all over my special night, asshole.
In an odd coincidence to this topic, I ran into my grade eight teacher last week. I was a last minute fill in for a team she was on for a charity trivia event. Her reaction to seeing me more than 20 years later, “Oh, good, she’s smart”.
We had an American guy as a teacher who had moved to Australia in the early 80’s & was a Vietnam War veteran (a fact he made sure everyone knew).
One day in science class he went up to a kid who’s family had fled Vietnam after the war and held his right hand under his eye making a “V” sign with his index & middle finger while extending his left arm and holding up his left index finger so it looked like he was viewing the kid through a gunsight and said: “You look familliar, did I ever shoot at your daddy?”
To add the the asshole factor we latter found out that he spent the war directing B-52’s around an airbase in Thailand.
My mother was a freshman engineering student. In 1941. At a formerly men’s college.
Her first day, the professor passed out some papers to each person in the class, except her. He then began his lecture, and, about fifteen minutes in, he stopped, grimaced, grabbed another set of papers, stormed up to her seat and gave them to her.
She wanted the earth to open up and swallow her whole.
When I was in a seventh grade drama class in about 1961, the teacher (Miss Larson) told a black girl she needed to practice saying Me-Mo-Me-Mo because her lips made her less able to enunciate. I shit you not. After 50 years, I still haven’t forgotten how mortified I felt for that poor girl.
My high school government teacher tried to fail me, in a course required in my Senior year. He caught me in school on Senior Skip Day (I had AP English and couldn’t miss) and required that I write a 500 word essay on why it’s important to follow societal norms, or some such BS. I refused. My mother told me I’d never write such an essay. They let me walk with my classmates at graduation but wouldn’t give me my diploma. My mother went to the school board. The teacher threatened to sue if they changed the grade (he was a fan of the frivolous lawsuit) and they threatened to fire him. In the end I got the grade I’d earned (an A) and never had to see him again.
StG
I had a teacher whose term for anyone he thought was stupid was, “gym teacher.” For example, “Those gym teachers at the restaurant didn’t know that bacon isn’t kosher” or “That intersection is really dangerous, it must have been built by gym teachers.”
He was quite a nice guy and I thought he was a pretty decent teacher. He was kind to his students, too. But I cringed every time he used “gym teacher” that way. No doubt he’d been victimized by evil gym teachers as a child and was getting his revenge, but it simply wasn’t appropriate.
I… had issues as an itty bitty kid. I wasn’t able to really function in a normal class, and I bounced from school to school until my parents found the right special ed program for second grade. In the mean time, I had a lot of behavioral problems and didn’t always get along with my teachers.
For pre-K I went to the nearby private school that most of the local Jewish population goes to, and I had a horrible time there. I hated it. And the teachers… well, I guess they weren’t equipped to people like me. (Funnily enough, the special ed program that saved my life later expanded to this local school. Would have saved me an hour’s bus ride every day if they’d done it when I was there).
Two of the few memories I have of this time (well, memories of memories) were of teachers insulting me. One called me a pig because I forgot to clean up after myself at lunch. Another (or for all I know, the same person) told me I was acting like a baby and she was going to bring in a bottle of milk for me.
I was so glad to be out of there.
I think it was either my junior or senior year, I can’t remember, but we were starting golf that day in gym class. I was a little late to class, because I was meeting with another teacher. So I came in, handed the teacher my late pass, and she was like, “Okay, the bag is over there, start hitting a few balls, and I’ll come back after I go check everyone else out.”
So I’m like, okay, and I pull a club at random out from the bag and start hitting some balls (heh) and I’m like, hey, this is kind of fun. Well, a few minutes later, my teacher comes over, and looks at me, and then looks at the club I’m using. Now, keep in mind, I’ve NEVER played golf before in my life, except for one time playing miniature golf. So I know absolutely NOTHING about it.
“Are you retarded? That’s a sand wedge. You’re supposed to use a driver.” (I think)
WTF, bitch??? How the fuck was I supposed to know? I just kind of looked at her in shock. She was one of those, uber-jock types. Fuck her.
(No, I didn’t hit her with the club, but I wanted to)
Well, my sixth grade science(? or was it just general homeroom that happened to include science? I forget) busted out and started witnessing to me. As I recall, he put me right on the spot and got me to accept Jesus as my lord and savior or some crap.
Hmm. Am I still right by Jack Chick? 
ETA: Public school, by the way. I got better.
My class had a kid with muscular dystrophy. I don’t know the normal progression of the disease, but in Mark’s case, it was showing up as what appeared to be a shortening of his calf muscles - he basically walked on his toes in a rolling sort of gait.
One day, our sixth grade teacher had Mark go to the front of the class and attempt to walk and place his feet flat on the floor with each step. He couldn’t, of course.
If nothing else, it was a teachable moment for me in learning empathy for others. As a partial defense of the teacher (who I otherwise liked) - Mark’s younger brother Tim had just gotten out of braces which had fixed his stride. Thinking back, I guess that Tim had probably mimiced how his brothers walked (the oldest brother also had MD), and the teacher was thinking that all Mark needed to do was ‘walk right’.
Mark is in a wheel chair now - so the walking lessons didn’t help.
Well, she got that through.
I was rather large chested when I was a teenager, and was painfully embarrassed about it. I had a chemistry teacher who loved to point this out by mispronouncing my name. He always, always, called me “Miss Shapely,” which (kind of) rhymed with my actual name.
I despised him so, which was awkward for me because he was a very beloved teacher. I still wish that I had complained about it, though it likely wouldn’t have done any good.