Inappropriate but in a good way. Primary school teacher who brought his dog to school. Sheeba - she was there every day neatly curled at his feet.
The next class up the corner of the room was caged off to the ceiling and housed both gerbils and canaries!
We had two or three campus dogs - canines; it was an all-male school - that lived with the Jesuits in the residence. One was a deerhound usually seen as a gray streak running across the lower athletic fields. One was a very old, fat Lab that loved to wander into classrooms in summer and throw himself on the cool floor, usually with quite audible thumps, grunts and moans of pleasure.
Said Lab would also occasionally interrupt his naps with truly prodigious farts, which was usually the end of that class.
Said Lab quite unintentionally got me into very deep hot water. He wandered into Biology one late-spring summery day and I mouthed off, “Oh, hey, your wife’s here.” The young (lay) teacher impaled me on an eye-sword and said, very quietly, “Have you ever MET my wife?” (I hadn’t, but did many times later, hanging around his house over a summer or two. Very nice lady. I was a very bad boy. She once walked into a room and quietly muttered, “Woof!” at me.)
I had a teacher who was sent to prison for 40 years for molesting 2 brothers 40 times. He was a middle school teacher and I had already graduated high school when he was arrested. I came back to my hometown and my friend was showing me clippings of it from the papers. At first I was pretty shocked but then thinking about it, it seemed pretty obvious. There was a trio of creepy teachers in that school who all hung together and I’m moderately surprised one of the other two wasn’t arrested as well.
At a family party when I was young, my father mentioned a shop teacher in his Catholic school who threw a crescent wrench at him because he didn’t stop talking. I’d have written it off as hyperbole, but my uncle walked in and collaborated in a “You talking about the time Brother Pete threw that wrench at you?” sort of way.
I clearly remember being yelled at by a teacher because I dared to speak up about abortion. You bet your ass I never spoke up on a remotely controversial topic again. How dare teachers try to download their political views into our little heads instead of teaching us that there is opposition and sometimes, people disagree.
I had another teacher paddle me. Frankly, I think that’s right up there with inappropriate. Teachers shouldn’t be allowed to paddle (no one should, really), and definitely not a straight A student who made one mistake. She was a cast iron bitch though.
1981 or '82 or thereabouts.
10th grade gym coach. Our all male group sitting in the gym and a class of girls from another gym class goes by. As the last of the girls leaves the area, our crusty old coach sings out “Down boner! Down boner!”
In high school I had an extremely right-wing history teacher who assigned J. Edgar Hoover’s Masters of Deceit as required reading. He gave an exam with essay questions in which we were expected to parrot back Hoover’s commie-under-every-rock nonsense.
This is the way it should work in a free society. Science education is what it is, and these are the generally accepted findings and the research behind them. You are also allowed freedom of religion and can accept it personally or not.
Other than the usual sadistic gym coaches?
The ninth grade biology teacher was a young man who the girls were all madly in love with. At a Christmas dance, he was kept busy dancing with all of them. At one point, somebody came over with a piece of mistletoe (I’m sure the girl dancing with him at the time put them up to it). I’m sure she thought he would, at most, give her a peck on the cheek, but instead he grabbed, threw her into a deep dip and laid a huge lip lock on her that lasted for several seconds. When he stood her back up, she was red-faced, and her knees buckled. Nowadays, he would have been fired for that.
Eighth grade math teacher Mr. Grube (Groo-bee), receding hair, poindexter, middle-aged, liked the girls. A lot. He would walk around the room, stand behind the prettier ones and put his hands on their shoulders while leaning over close to ask them how they were doing on a particular problem. Dude was creepy.
Fourth grade: Mrs. Triber was a tyrant. She sent me home several times for talking in her class. But the worst was when she lost her temper with another boy because he had his desk top up and was whispering to someone while hiding behind it. She walked over and slammed it shut, breaking one of his fingers in the process. Nope, she wasn’t fired.
When I was first in the Navy and in ‘A’ School (what the Navy called an apprentice training school), we had a Chief Petty Officer who taught one of the classes. Looking back, I’m sure the guy was gay. Had long fingernails, drove a Porsche, was always asking guys if they wanted to come for a ride and see his house. When he had the Officer of the Day (OOD) watch, he would come over to the barracks late in the evening and stand in the doorway of the gang shower and talk to any guys who were showering.
nm
I had a high school vice-principal who, as far as I know, has now been in and out of jail several times. When I went to high school, he was caught looking a or downloading child porn on a computer (not sure if it was a school computer.) What an asshole.
In their private life, sure. In a classroom? Hell no.
I am with robert_columbia. It seems like he taught the material fine, then just briefly remarked that he, personally, did not believe it. From what we have been told, it is not like he tried to pick holes in the evidence or arguments, or “teach the controversy” and present a YEC alternative. Are you saying teachers must never mention their personal beliefs at all, just because they might be ones that you and I may agree are stupid? That seems seriously over restrictive to me. Do we really want teachers who are allowed to do no more than parrot the government approved curriculum?
Do student teachers count? In my senior year, there was one (I wasn’t in his class, thank god!) that was really good looking – and he knew it, too. He was always flirting with the girls, (Yes, myself, too, when I was in the library trying to study one day. No, I wasn’t amused – the guy was a complete himbo) Most of the freshman girls had a crush on him. The seniors all thought he was a total idiot.
At one point he showed the librarian some modeling pictures he’d done. The teacher he was working with was so disgusted by the guy he said he’d never work with a student teacher again.
Yes, I had one like that. A (not so elderly) nun who told us, during preparation for our first communion, that if we were to bite the host, it would turn to blood in our mouths.
I still can’t bring myself to put it to the test.
Slight sidecar…lots of nuns taught this. Lots of kids I went to school with were pigs/slobs who you did NOT want to eat lunch with because their eating habits were disgusting. Last thing momma want in first communion pictures is little Jesus drool dripping down their kids first suit. My theory is nuns said this because they knew the host would dissolve and lead to fewer problems.
Maybe he was hedging his bets and did believe all of it? If there were some powerful colleagues who prefered intelligent design, he might have been covering his back.
Several of my teachers would come in on Monday with bruises, black eyes, scratches and the like. They said it was from playing rugby - it was a rugby school so no one disbelieved them. One evening some friends were in the pub - we were 16/17 then - and two of our teachers were face to face arguing with a group of guys. The third teacher, a real character from Australia, got in between the two groups, took a large gulp of beer and sprayed it at the other guys. A massive brawl followed.
One of those teachers came with us on a holiday to France. One night we were up late, as usual, making quite a lot of noise when he staggers in, shouting obscenities. He then ‘closed’ a cupboard door with his foot, breaking the top hinge, and punched the lightswitch but missed and made a hole in the wall. I broke a bunk bed in that room, landing on a mate’s head who was sitting on the bed below, some guys broke into the basement and found wine, and we generally messed up the place pretty badly. The school wasn’t invited back.
Oh, and the Aussie teacher appeared on a late night TV chat show, playing spoons on his legs, the furniture and his head. He was quite a character.
I don’t think teachers should blurt out their personal beliefs in class, especially when they contradict the facts they’re supposed to be teaching.
To contribute to the thread, I had a teacher who taught us that Bill Clinton “wants to kill babies”.