American History, 11th grade, Giessen American High School. The teacher was an idiot, but I’d tolerated her in silence for the first half of the semester.
Mrs. Summerall: . . . and then Henry ford invented the automobile.
minty: [Not even bothering to raise my hand.] No he didn’t.
Mrs. Summerall: Yes he did.
minty: Henry Ford did not invent the automobile.
Mrs. Summerall: The book says he did.
minty: No it doesn’t.
Mrs. Summerall: Yes it does, right here on page 267.
minty: [Reading] “Henry Ford adapted the assembly line method of production at his automobile factory in Michigan.”
Mrs. Summerall: See, Henry Ford invented the automobile at his factory in Michigan.
Of course, this was the same teacher whose idea of teaching the Civil War was spending two weeks showing a TV miniseries starring Patrick Swayze. “The Blue and the Grey,” or some such nonsense.
Oooh, oooh, gotta meto this one. In first grade, I was always lost in reading group because I was impatient. We’d go around the circle, each student reading one sentence–sounding out every word, laboring over every syllable. You can imagine the tedium, and perhaps you even recall similar experiences. I’d get bored, read ahead, finish the story, go on to the next, be a third of the way through the primer, and suddenly it was my turn to read a sentence, and, of course, I had no idea where we were.
The teacher called my mother in and told her that though I’d tested into the highest group, I wasn’t keeping up–there must have been some kind of a mistake. Fine, my mom said, demote her to the second highest group. (Incidentally, this would move me to the other first grade class, away from this teacher.) But my teacher insisted that my problem was more profound; I was probably retarded. (This was the accepted term then. Fear not, it had little sting to me, since she routinely told me I was messy and stupid.) I had to be tested to determine just what my learning disability was.
I tested out at a fifth grade reading level.
Downside: that meant I stayed in the highest reading group, in her class. My mother vows that if she had a time machine and could only take a single trip, she would go back to 1980 and demand that I switch to the other class to get away from that evil teacher; reading groups be damned. I went back to see her when I graduated from college. I don’t know if she remembered me as the little girl she thought was stupid and messy, but it sure felt nice to wave a B.S. in astronomy and physics an an Ivy League grad school acceptance letter in her face–and to discover that I’m about a foot taller than her.
Fifth grade: My teacher wanted to make some changes to the seating arrangements in the back row. When one girl started to move her own desk, the teacher announced that girls should not do such things, and insisted that all the girls stand back while a group of boys moved the desks.
This same teacher would also do things like change “Norma the truck driver” to “Norm the truck driver” when reading math word problems aloud, because “women aren’t truck drivers”. Eight grade: During the Civil War unit in my American History class my teacher began going on about how the South to this day remains full of racial inequality, while in the North people of all colors live together in perfect harmony. I should point out here that my family had just moved North a few months prior to this; until then we had never even been out of the South. I knew that my teacher was full of it, but I wasn’t going to say anything…until she paused her lecture to single me out in front of the entire class!
“Lamia, YOU’RE from X, that was a Confederate State, why don’t YOU tell us about how racist it is?”
Right. I’m going to denounce myself, my family, my friends, and everyone I had ever met up until a few months ago as evil racists so you can feel like a good liberal Yankee teaching your LILY WHITE ADVANCED HISTORY CLASS. That’s right, there wasn’t a dark face in the room. All the African-American and Hispanic kids at that school were stuck in the “slow” section.
Well, I didn’t say all that, but I did say, “Well, I don’t know that it was any worse than it is here. I mean, in X our classes weren’t segregated.”
I can’t remember what grade I was in, but I think it was 1st.
Mrs. Jones was teaching us about the animals in Australia. Now, just that weekend I had watched educational program discussing plate tectonics and a bit of evolution. Of course, it was for children my age, so they didn’t use those terms. Here is what happened: Mrs.Jones: There are many exotic animals in Australia that are not found anywhere else in the world! Kangaroos, Koala bears, dingos Student: How did all those animals get there? Mrs. Jones: That’s just the thing. Nobody knows! Me (eager to show off my recently acquired knowledge): Well, Australia broke off of where India is at. Some of the animals got trapped on it. (Keep in mind I was in 1st grade, so this is as technical as I could get) Mrs. Jones (With withering look): Nobody has proven that. As a matter of fact, I think that’s false. Me: Oh.
This occurred to me on my drive home today (yes, I admit…I was thinking about Straight Dope threads in the car…lame, lame, lame!), and I remembered something that happened to me in 1st grade. I just want you all to know, however, that in order to tell this story, I have to violate my #1 rule on Internet interaction…never tell your real name.
Anyhoo…we were discussing syllables in my language class, and as an exercise, we all had to tell the teacher how many syllables were in our first names. My name is Gail. When it was my turn, I said “2 syllables”. My teacher contradicted me, and said that Gail is one syllable. HUH??? Gay-ul. Two. Count 'em. One. Two.
Let’s see, in a college level managerial accounting class, the professor once said, in relation to some long-forgotten topic:
“We didn’t have that forever until a few years ago.”
I’m still not sure what that means.
And in high school, there was a teacher (I believe Ogre can support this story - maybe) - an English teacher - who aside from having a very dysfunctional home life, told us that the Spanish Armada failed in their mission because they got trapped in ice.
True, but, as my advisor points out, he would insist we use at least three books as sources, and our internet sources had to be from scholarly sites, not just Joe Blow’s page on the Middle Ages…it had to be a verified source. Not just some random.
North and South. BTW, Anal Scurvy, I don’t blame the teacher for being upset-the assignment is a short paper. They want you to be able to keep it brief. Good heavens, they’d never have time to read 200+ pages. I’m not saying it was a BAD thing, but generally, there’s a reason for keeping things at a maximum amount-to teach students how to keep in the relevent things, and sort out what is redundant.
Just remembered another one. In 8th grade, we had a class in a room with it’s own door to the outside. The building was on the outfield side of the school baseball diamond.
The teacher was an elderly woman who’d stayed in teaching a year too long. She was pretty much incapable of controlling a roomfull of eighth-graders.
One day, when we were being rather rowdy, she tried something without thinking it through. She figured we’d be easier to handle if we burned off some energy, so she told us to run to homeplate and back as fast as we could.
Of course, we ran across the field and didn’t come back. We wasted the period sitting around on the grass, then went to our next class. She didn’t have the energy to walk over there to get us, and no one got in trouble since she didn’t have the nerve to tell the principal what happened.
She retired halfway through that year. I sort of feel bad about it, but we were only acting like kids that age are expected to. The poor woman should never have been given that class.
Is it just a legend, or was she born hermaphroditic? If so, what is her chromosonal make up? I’m guessing it’s not something she readily shares, so maybe all we can do is speculate.
I’m seeing a lot of posts that say something like “I knew something the teacher didn’t know, and I corrected her(for purposes of this post I’m using the feminine pronouns because most teachers below college level are female, but understand I mean both sexes), but she insisted she was right.”
There are two things going on here. When the teacher doesn’t know something that he/she should know, that’s ignorance. When she insists that she is right, or even worse, makes up something to cover the ignorance, that’s stupidity.
The sad part about this is that making a mistake and having a student correct your mistake is a good teaching technique. I love it when students find and correct a mistake I’ve made, because it reinforces the correct knowledge or technique that they need to know, because it gives the rest of the class the correct information, and because I learn something as a result. I will, a couple of times a day, intentionally make mistakes just to have the students catch and correct them.
And on internet research, my students (AP 5th grade) are required to use at least one internet source (of proper authority) along with at least one book source, and one periodical source, for their end of the year research papers.
When I was in 12th grade the only Physics teacher in the entire school received notice that she had passed the bar exam. She promptly quit. The school assigned a Chemistry teacher to our class who hadn’t so much as looked at a Physics problem since he was a freshman in college over 20 years before. Needless to say, the class was a joke but that wasn’t entirely Mr. S’s fault. The stupid thing that Mr. S did had nothing to do with Physics.
Mr. S used to delight in telling us tales from his youth. He grew up in Germany in the 1930’s and was a member of the Hitler Youth. (Backgound: the class was about 30% Jewish). Clearly you can’t hold that fact against him. He was a little kid at the time and his father left Germany and emigrated to the US because he hated Hitler. The problem was the way he told those stories of the old days like it was some sort of joke especially in light of the fact that there were so many Jewish kids in the class.
He would say stuff like, “It was just a bunch of fun. We would run around and yell, ‘Don’t buy from Jews’ and throw rocks through windows.” One day was the topper. Someone was whispering and he stopped his lecture to ask what they were saying. The student wouldn’t 'fess up and Mr. S said in a chessy fake German accent, “Vee have vays to make you talk. There’s an oven in the teacher’s lounge.” I was too young and too stunned to do anything. In retrospect I should have reported him to the District and made a stink. In my heart I don’t think that Mr. S was even close to a racist but I’ll never forget the ignorant insensitivity.
I hated that guy and due to the fact that I was a disrepectful, obnoxious kid he didn’t care for me. By the time the final came around I was already accepted into college and my grade in Physics didn’t matter so long as I didn’t fail. He told me that if I got a 92 on the final I would get an A and if I got a 53 on the final I would get a B. I asked him how many points I needed for a C and he told me 4. The final was ten questions worth ten points each. I did about 90% of the first problem in five minutes, gave it to him and walked out. He was furious but gave me the C that I deserved.
You’re right. I thought that “orientated” wasn’t a word, that it should be “oriented.” I just now looked up “orientated” on http://www.m-w.com, and I was wrong.
Teachers literally rock the world but there are ::ahem!:: lapses.
Coach Brown, f’rinstance: “World History” teacher, sophmore year in high school. (The football team tanked on a regular basis, too.)
Mostly he showed movies when available. We morphed from Hollywood Egypt to a short stop in Rome, then Shakespeare’s England, zooming straight on to WWII. But a few soundbytes from notable “lectures”:
“Cleopatra was the si-REEN of the Nile”.
“Alexander TREEKED across the desert.” (spawned endless jokes about “Star Treek”.)
In teaching WWII, confused “Axis” with “Allies”.
So…you saying sumpin’ happened that we didn’t cover?
BigDaddyD, check Snopes. i think that is currently listed as ‘yellow button’ (inderterminate).
i had a math teacher who would come in to work drunk, every day. he came in with alcohol on his breath in the mornings, and had a thermos filled with scotch that he drank during class. to give you an idea of the extent of this, well, i had a friend who lived near him. my friend said that he saw the teacher bring an entire case of scotch[sub](or something)[/sub] into his house, every saturday. this guy lived alone, and never had any parties- think about how much he drank! he was never fired while i was there. the principal said that ‘what he did while he was at home was not the school’s buisiness’, despite the fact that he was coming to school drunk, unable to teach, and drank a thermos’ worth more of hard liquor every day when he was supposed to be teaching.
i never liked that guy- he was also the school’s computer worker, and had a habit of replacing hard drives for newer models without warning and never learned to use file transfer connections; he just yanked em out and threw them in the trash.
