This is in response to the thread “Inappropriate things that your teachers said and did…”.
It looks like pretty much everyone over the age of 30 has had some “bad” teacher experiences with the worse happening probably pre-1980’s.
As a person who went thru some crap myself I will say its left me with a somewhat bitter resentment towards say PE teachers and a general cynical attitude towards schools in general. Not that I dont like them, its just that I wont give them my blind trust and I made sure for my own kids, the teachers and staff saw me, knew me, and knew I was going to be on top of things.
I’d like to ask you all, especially you parents, has your experience changed the way you approached teachers and schools?
I had a math teacher in 4th and 5th grade who made students do problems at the boards. I was new to the area, my parents were divorcing, and I was shy. I also would
He was nasty and dismissive to the kids who got the problems wrong. I would freeze up and not be able to do the work. I never got the problems right.
The teacher told my mother that I didn’t know my multiplication tables. He sent home flash cards, which I did correctly.
I was switched to a different class in the middle of 5th grade.
That all stayed with me throughout school. I hated math and did very badly in it. I never did understand algebra or how it was supposed to work.
Years later, we found that I had dyscalculia. Had we known about that at the time, I might have done better in math with some coping strategies.
What I was looking for more was how we as parents later on treat our kids teachers. Are we scared of them? Do we watch for certain things more? Have we become cynical of all public schools?
I’m definitely aware that teachers are fallible based on my experiences with a few bad apples. It makes me more likely to ask questions at parent teacher conferences, rather than just listen to what they have to say. I won’t accept, “she’s doing just fine” as an answer. I want specifics. I want to know her challenges as well as her triumphs. I know my child. Anyone who doesn’t see that she isn’t perfect isn’t paying attention or isn’t being honest. I’m also willing to tell them to piss off if their requirements aren’t what she needs. There have been a few assignments that I simply said, “No, she’s not doing that. Find an alternate assignment or excuse her.” I’m not intimidated by teachers, although I try to respect them. (Sending back a newsletter marked with red ink for all the grammatical and spelling errors was probably not my finest moment, but the newletters improved after that.)
On the other hand, I also remember that I had some really awesome teachers who were always in trouble with the administration and the parents. Some people just aren’t good at talking to other adults, and I think elementary school teachers are over-represented in this group. Sometimes, they go into teaching kids because they don’t like dealing with adults. So that makes me more likely to listen to my kid and respect his/her experience in the classroom. If they’re struggling, then I’ll go Mama Bear. But if they’re not, I’m likely to let it slide. Just because the whole gaggle of moms is up in arms because the math teacher is demanding rote memorization and writing math facts 100 times doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea or that my kid isn’t benefiting from it. (True story. Guy got sacked after a year because the bitches were pissy that he made their precious snowflakes write their multiplication tables. The nerve.)
I absolutely hate being in an elementary school. Hate it. My anxiety goes through the roof, even at drop off and pick up. But that has a lot more to do with memories of social anxiety and bullying at the hands of students, not my experiences with teachers.
I’ve put myself in a position where I train educators and people who work with children, with the hope that I can limit some of the harm that comes from stupid bullies choosing jobs that give them power over the vulnerable.
Though I’m not a parent (I’m in my 50s, however), I have had a few teachers who have had a negative influence. If my wife and I were parents I would regard teachers (as any public servant, including the Prime Minister) as my employees, not my leaders, who have been hired as our society’s staff.
As such, I would have no problem telling a teacher (and the school board) what I think of the education my kids are getting.
It’s actually a tricky situation, as I know from what my wife goes through occasionally. She is an elementary school teacher. The parents are not her employers, despite what they think, the school is. In this sense: If there is a conflict between a parent and the principal, my wife has to do what the principal says.
I can recall two with clarity. The first was my son, years ago, when he was quite literally one of two Caucasian students at a big city high school. He started acting weird, and finally blurted out a question: “Mom, can I come home before Literature tomorrow?” I was rather taken aback, as it was the only class he kind of liked. When I asked why, he got teary and said, “Do you have any idea how hard it is being the only white kid in the class watching Roots?” :eek: Of course, I let him stay home and told his teacher we rented the film so he could fulfill the requirements of the course.
The other was a family tree in kindergarten. I hate family trees. I think they’re important to learn about, but as we lived at the time in an unconventional family structure, I explained to the teacher that ours literally didn’t fit in that format. I got a little push back, until I asked the teacher which of her mothers my daughter should leave off the family tree, or did she want to teach a lesson on polyamory and divorce and stepfamilies to 5 year olds? We did a celebrity’s family tree instead.
There have been just a few other random busywork kind of assignments that I’ve just added a note to that says something like, “With all due respect, she doesn’t need any more practice on this. Please give her an alternate assignment appropriate for her reading/math level or let’s discuss acceleration or grade promotion, please.” I don’t do that very often, but once in a while we get the sort of stupid busywork that teachers often leave with subs, and I don’t see the need to play those games.
I’ve also opted her out of PARCC testing, at least for this year. We’ll revisit that decision each year as the tests come up, but this year it was not in her best interest.
My nephews attend the same school my brothers and I did, they’re also expected to attend the same high school. A lot of the current parents and teachers are former classmates of mine and I can tell you that there are certain names of former teachers which can finish a whole discussion. Someone says something along the lines of “oh c’mon, a teacher will never bully the children, that’s just silly!” - someone replies with “Rosa Vega. Alfredo aka Frankenstein. Antonio, in [another school]” and the discussion is over; at most, the parent who isn’t from the area gets explanations later, over coffee. Yes, those teachers bullied the kids, damnit, and the current crop of parents doesn’t want it to happen again. Shared experiences make for great shorthand. We also remember those teachers who could not keep discipline, those who didn’t know their subject matter and didn’t know how to wing it either - and those who were good, very good, or great. We even had teachers who had to wing it the first year but winged it successfully and ended up becoming great teachers.
The nephews have parents as bad as mine were, but they have much better teachers.
I told my kids to use the bad teachers as a learning experience in coping with people who weren’t doing a good job. Even the bad ones usually could teach the basics even though they were/are bad teachers. My kids were expected to work with the bad teachers to learn the material. They (hopefully) learned to cope with both good and bad people. It helped that my kids rarely ran into either bad teachers or material they couldn’t get on their own, so my theories weren’t too tough.
When I was a small child, I was very outgoing. At some point I became very shy. Probably around first grade, where I had a Grade A Bitch On Wheels for a teacher. It was also around the time of my parents’ divorce. I’m not sure if one was the thing that change my behavior or the other or a combination of both, but having a totally GABOW fucked me up big time.
I had to stay after every day for made up reasons. I was NOT a bad kid. She just fucking hated me and singled me out. I wasn’t believed at home (and oh boy did that become a common theme throughout the rest of my life… knowing that asking for help when someone wronged me was going to be utterly pointless) and I never, ever, EVER got in trouble with another teacher until puberty (and I know I was wrong then… hormones.) We had a long-term substitute that same year and I flourished. GABOW came back and it started right back up.
One of the other things that is a problem is when I hear “oh teachers are wonderful,” I can’t say that. I can say MOST. I can grant you that maybe ALMOST all. But don’t tell me they’re all great. I don’t go around screaming “all teachers suck!” or anything. I had mostly great teachers besides the GABOW. It makes for uncomfortable situations sometimes when you don’t agree when people post insipid memes on Facebook, for example. Seriously, just because I had one horrible teacher doesn’t mean you or someone you know isn’t great at teaching.
So yeah, I had a lot of issues after that, trusting authority, asking for help. I did learn to read and to do math and she never laid a hand on me, so there’s that, at least.
I swear, there’s something about first grade teachers. That one was my worst. And my son’s worst (different teacher) and my daughter’s worst 4 (all 4 as her first grade homeroom teacher…maternity leave, reassigned to fourth grade, maternity leave, quit. That was not a good year.)
That is exactly the input I was looking for. Your case is the most extreme though in that many people have the same shared experiences with the same school and staff.
All that is also my experience. I’m very careful talking about teachers. know there are both good and bad and its up to us parents to learn from our bad experiences.
In year 11 (my Junior year?), the entire math class bar 3 quit at mid-year, and another teacher took over the 3 remaining and started over again at the beginning.
For all the math students who dropped out, yes, I guess that had a long term effect.
I had a fourth-grade teacher who should have been restrained from being near kids, much less being in a school at all, far less teaching. Her abysmal nastiness and obvious hatred of us and her job led to nonstop psychological abuse and little tortures that she must have learned from English public school movies.
I won’t go so far as to say she wrecked me as a student, but my struggles from then through the first years of high school were ameliorated only by a very good 6th grade teacher, and I’ve never found an alternate explanation for some of my learning problems in that stretch. I’m sure some of my classmates were damaged for life.
My daughter is/was generally a very good student, but she complained she was having trouble in her biology class. I spent the next few weeks going over her homework with her, helping her study, etc.
She got a D on her next test. I asked her to bring the test home, which she did, and we went over the questions she got wrong.
About three quarters of the questions marked Wrong were not wrong at all. And I don’t mean they were ambiguous - they asked about things that were in the text book, and my daughter and I went thru the text book and found the passages being tested for, and my daughter’s answers were correct.
So I scheduled a conference with the teacher, and showed her what we had found. The teacher blustered a little, but I didn’t react, and we agreed that the teacher would re-score the test.
Next test, the same thing. My daughter got (IIRC) a C. If the test had been scored correctly, she would have got an A-. I called the teacher again. This time she resisted, saying she was not going to re-score the test. I called the principal and scheduled a conference to discuss. A bit of conversation with the other parents in my daughter’s class revealed that my daughter was by no means the only student who had encountered this kind of thing.
The conference with the principal was relatively brief. The teacher in question was present, and it was agreed that the test would be rescored, for the whole class. About a week later, it was announced that the teacher was leaving to care for her sick mother.
