Should I try to find my seventh grade math teacher to tell him he was wrong?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Basically, we all know that a certain percentage of people are jerks(or “dicks” if you prefer). The difficulty in any field is identifying these people and not hiring them in the first place.

Many jerks interview well and do a good job contributing to their job in early years. After their comfort level rises, they reveal their jerkiness and it’s practically impossible to fire them(they are to entrenched in the office/building).

The unfortunate thing is that this happens in education. As a 7th Grade teacher, I do see “jerk” teachers and it’s frustrating. They are like many people: bitter, angry, and vengeful. The added difficulty is how they directly affect children, especially sensitive or highly innocent ones.

I’m lucky in that all the teachers I work with(those who share my children) are great. Other parts of my school have to continually apologize and make up for their jerk colleagues.

I’m sure other teachers in your building as a child agreed with your feelings about this teacher. Nothing can be done now, even though it hurts.

I’ve told another teacher in my building that, “feeling bitter is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

It’s true.

42

2nd grade. Teacher was telling us about her favorite historical figure, Winston Churchill. I said I had just been in London that weekend and seen a statue of him. She INSISTED that I hadn’t. When I refused to back down she said MAYBE LONDON NORTH CAROLINA! (I’ll never forget exactly how she said this, it seemed like she was trying to make me feel stupid in front of the class, and it worked.) I told her I was absolutely positive that it was London, England, as I did not spend 8 hours on a plane to go to a town 75 miles away. She was so enraged that she held me after class, marched me to the office, and called my dad, who was working 3rd shift at the time and sleeping during my school hours. He yelled at her for waking him up and told her that we did in fact go to London that weekend to visit family. Bitch never even apologized.

43

Well, if you’re going to track him down and call him a jerk, be sure to call him a real kneebiter at the same time.

44

It would help if you could look a bit like an immortal alien, too.

45

I think it’s a little strange that a few people are saying that you should wait until you’re older, not just 22. This seems pretty rude to me. It seems like you’re saying, “Hey, you’re only 22, maybe you will be a fuckup, better give it a little more time to make sure you’re not actually going to be a fuckukp.” If this isn’t what you mean, there must be a better way of saying it! :dubious:

46

It’s easy to say “get over it” – and hard to do. I know all too well.

One of my earliest memories is in kindergarten, of the teacher yelling at me (!!) that I couldn’t color inside the lines, and my work was that of a 3 year old. I suspect that this incident contributed in some significant part to my inability to address interpersonal issues, as I freeze up under stress, reverting to the 5 or 6 year old being chewed out by his teacher.

Much later, we found out I had (and still have) small-motor skills issues, and it was at that time physically impossible for me to color inside the lines. I needed assistance, not a scolding.

There is no excuse for a teacher to yell at a student.

47

I don’t think I agree with your final statement. Probably the best thing that happened to me in my k-12 education was when my high school Spanish teacher* sat me down after school and said I was not going to accomplish anything. This time, though, it was just because I wasn’t doing the work, but it was obvious from the times that I was doing the work that I understood it and was just lazy. I basically needed the kick in the pants in order to pull my head out of my rumpal area and put the slightest bit of effort into it. I guess the fundamental difference was that A) she was right, I was in danger of failing and it was just due to laziness, and B) she gave me a good chewing out and then said, “so how do we fix this?”

*who was absolutely everything the 7th grade math teacher wasn’t - kind, unbelievably dedicated, always encouraging. If anything concrete comes out of this, it might be a letter - actually mailed - to her. I was lucky enough to have her for four years, in retrospect, if she hadn’t kept pressing me, there is a serious chance I might not have actually graduated high school. Last I heard she’d finished her doctorate and taken an admin position somewhere else in the state; I think I definitely should look her up.

48

The closest analog I have to this is a Sunday School teacher I had in the 5th grade. It was a small class, maybe eight other girls, all of whom I knew well and knew me well. I loved Star Wars, and everyone in that class knew it.

We took a test on the nature of God and evil, with one of the questions (multiple choice), being about if God always wins, or if evil wins occasionally. One of the answers, the one I chose, stated that while God will always win overall, there are some cases where evil wins (to my 5th grade reasoning, if people go to Hell, then how can God always win?). There was a Star Wars analogy included in this answer, but I would have chosen it anyway, as it best represented my thinking.

When the test was over, we discussed it as a class. Turns out she had put that answer in there specifically to call me out and tell me I was wrong. When I tried to point out the logic behind my answer, I was essentially given the answer “No, and because I say so”, plus a little dig about my possible unnaturalness for liking Star Wars.

I hate that woman. Note, it is for more reasons than that (she’s the mother of one of my very good friends from elementary thru high school. I got to watch as that woman completely destroyed my friend’s self-esteem and do long term damage. HATE.). She’s one of the reasons why I am largely on the fence about Christianity/churches.

She is a hateful, hypocritical woman. Every time I see her I have thoughts about confronting her, both over this situation and what she’s done to my friend. I then start feeling awful for putting her little attack on me on the same level as all that she’s done to her daughter. However, the reason why I don’t do it, and won’t ever, even on my last day in town (small town, am moving to a different city for a new job in the near future), is because IT WILL NOT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE. She’s wrong, wrong in so many ways, but she will never ever see it, not if I say something, not if the entire town said something. My confronting her would likely result in her thinking I was being influenced by teh DEVIL!!!1!, and she would take it as further confirmation that she is so godly that Satan is after her.

Apologies if this brings up a storm of replies about awful Sunday School teachers/priests/pastors, etc.

49

I must fight your ignorance here. It’s a great job, to me anyway. But I love kids and I love English, so despite its bad days like any other job, overall it’s wonderful. Please don’t use such a broad brush to tar an entire profession. Thanks so much.

50

Yes, that description of middle school teachers pretty much jerked my chain, as I’m sitting here in my middle school classroom. I’ve taught for nigh on twenty years now, and I don’t think there’s ever been a kid that I alienated. Some have come into my classroom with their own baggage, and I have given them an attitude adjustment. But I’ve never run into a former student that didn’t act glad to see me (and there have been several who I wouldn’t have recognized if they hadn’t introduced themselves).
But, I can relate in that I had a sixth grade teacher who told me I could never amount to anything because math was an enigma to me. It just didn’t make sense to my brain. I had wanted to be a vet up to that point, but gave up after he made fun of me.

51

You should be very proud of yourself, but don’t bother with him. He was probably hopeless then, and he’s likely stuck in his ways now.

You really hit a chord with me. My math nightmare was in elementary school where I was in the lowest (of 7!) math groups and could not memorize my times-tables for the life of me. I would study as hard as I could, but when the pop quizzes inevitably came, I would be stood in front of class:

Teacher: What’s 6 x 7
Me: Um…
Teacher: DON’T SAY ‘UM’ JUST SAY THE ANSWER!

I’m getting nervous just thinking about it. If I meet that teacher again I might have to gouge her eyes out with a compass.

Somehow, in my last 3 years of high school I started to “get it”. In University I got straight A’s in all my calculus, statistics, linear algebra and analysis classes.

I still don’t know my times-tables.

52

I’m lucky in that I’ve never had any negative relations with my teachers. The worst incident I can think of was a summer school teacher who insisted I was pronouncing my last name wrong. :rolleyes:

53

He is an evil piece of shit who deserves not a moment of your precious time. If you must do something, write the school board about what he did and name names. Follow him to every job he ever gets and do the same. A bad use of your time, but he deserves not a moment of your kind explaining. He deserves punishment.

54

I had a plan worked out with regards to my 8th grade teacher.

I went to look him up and it turns out he died. :slight_smile:

I still feel kind of good whenever I think about that.

55

I had a teacher in high school who used to give me a lot of shit. One time, she bitched me out in front of my brother and one of our friends. So as she walked down the hall I flipped her the bird behind her back. She happened to turn around before I could recall my bird flippage so I tried to pretend like I was waving to her or something, Didn’t really work and I ended up with like a weeks worth of detention.

Anyhow, it was totally worth it. 20 years later, she isn’t the teacher who gave me shit in high school. She’s the teacher I told to “fuck off” in front of a hall full of students.

The moral of the story is, revenge is a dish best served immediately. 20 years later, who gives a fuck? It just seems petty to try to get vengence on some perceived slight.

56

Damn straight.

57

I would write a letter telling him what you’ve said to us. I would address it and add then postage. Then I would light it on fire, and never give this asshole another thought.