…just wanted to know, because I’m part of a soccer team where the coach is a plain jackass on the field (kind of weird though, because outside of soccer he’s a nice guy). But the thing is, I’m sure that as you get to more advanced levels in sports coaches get harsher and stricter. I suppose I am just sensitive, that’s all.
I don’t really have a prime example displaying this. But my coach has been known on more than one occasion to throw, kick, stomp, and (obviously) scream. He screamed at me once during a game: “You look like you’ve never played soccer before!” Another time, my teammate had just gotten back from a trip to Canada, and she wasn’t playing that well. My coach said “Just go back to Canada, Jane (not real name)!” During practice, if a player continually makes the same mistake, he sometimes stands up, tilts his head back, and *bellows * ARRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!! One of my favorites was when someone pissed him off again during a game. My coach was sitting in his chair and started stomping the ground. He then proceeded to kick over the water cooler and set it back up. All this with me laughing behind him.
So what are some of your experiences with harsh or weird coaches or teachers?
Another coach story:
I was a fat kid with asthma and was practicing football in 6th grade. End of the day, he was making everyone run suicides (start on one goal line run five yards drop to the ground, get up and repeat). He told me not to worry about it because he didn’t want my mother (a doctor) to sue the school or find out that I’d been running.
I remember being happy about it, but in retrospect, any kind of physical activity would’ve been good for me.
I guess he was worried about my asthma, but I was playing football, I hope he wasn’t worried about me having an attack during the game. Wierd.
A high school coach: “TUFFPAWS!! Maybe we should enroll you in the Special Olympics.” My response was something along they lines of “Nah, they would still out run me.”
Then I had that bitchy Algebra teacher that would read out everyone’s percentage in front of the whole class. I got cheers from my fellow students when I came in last with 6%
All in all, I never really got my feelings hurt via a teacher, though I could see how others in my situation could.
When I was in college, I had a prof who always liked to take playful jabs at me in a racially insensitive way, me being the only black student in all of his classes.
On a field trip to Sapelo Island, GA, he asked if we (the class) wanted to go on a tour of RJ Reynold’s plantation house. Then he said that if we went, I’d have to go in through the back door. It made feel so special, yes it did.
I feel lucky that that’s the height of all the weird comments thrown my way by an instructor, though. I knew he was being a jerk, so my feelings weren’t even hurt.
I transferred into a public school from a private one mid-term in 7th grade, so in addition to the normal hormonal discombobulation I was trying to deal with an entirely different culture and a school that had more students in my grade than the entire K-12 campus of my previous environment. My mother had helpfully went in and did the meet & greet thing with my teachers and for some reason one history/civics teacher picked up on the fact that Mom was born in West Virginia and had moved north as a young child.
Not that being from the south, or second-generation southern transplanted is an unusual thing, it’s quite common in this part of Michigan. No one had ever asked me if I was southern, I didn’t speak with an accent, and half the kids in my neighborhood had parents that talked with twangs.
Apparently he had some issues with it because whenever I’d do something wrong or just weird (like standing to answer a teacher, mandatory in parochial school but unheard of in public) he’d go off on a rant about everyone needing to excuse me because I was from them thar’ hills where backwards folk do things like that.
Walk like a clutz and bump a desk? “Queen Tonya’s just confused, they all go barefoot in the hills, y’see, shoes are a new experience for her.”
The example that ticked me off enough to call in the 'rents? He was ragging on me and I was ragging back (hey, at least private school equipped me with a better than average vocabularly, my peers considered me heroic for taking him on) and I ended a response with “Sir!” He then turns to the rest of the class with his patented sneer and said something about me being understandably confused since I’d never met an adult male I wasn’t related to, much less one with a job, unless it was the probation officer come round to check up on my relatives.
Happily, the day my parents came in to discuss the obvious problems I was having in his classroom turned out to be a day he was obviously stinking drunk. Mom tried engaging him in a rational discussion while Dad high-tailed it to the office and drug the principal back, he went on sabbatical shortly thereafter.
I had a math teacher in 6th grade say that my grades in math were below average and my life would turn out below average so he might as well stop grading my papers .
My grade has since gone up but recently the Army recruiter tells me that the Army was my only chance (not his exact words, but that’s basically what he meant) because I had average grades and didn’t even attend a regular high school.
Had a high school director once throw a chair across the room at rehearsal and then leave. We all all sort of stared at each other, stunned, and didn’t know what to do. Should we leave? Stay there? He’ll be right back, right? Finally, he did come back. Two hours later. Started up rehearsal again as if nothing had happened.
Another time, I was working alone with him on a very dramatic, weepy, angry scene, and I just wasn’t getting it. He exploded, and starting ripping into me, standing about 3 inches away from me shouting at me how worthless I was, how stupid, how I’d never, ever become an actress, what a pathetic loser I was, wasting his time. I started crying, and he kept doing it. He could direct the most pathetic lowlifes, but not me. Me, he’d never get anything decent from, because I was just a fat, ugly waste of flesh and stagespace. Finally, I snapped and started shouting back at him, tears streaming down my face. “Ah! That’s it!” he beamed. “Put THAT into the scene.” And sat back down and motioned for me to begin again.
7th grade (middle school for those not from the US)–I am tallish, with wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. I am not unattractive, if I say so myself.
My home economics teacher “christened” me with a nickname the first day of class: she said that I looked and acted just like Alfalfa from the Lil’ Rascals (before my time, too–I had to ask my mother who he was). I guess I should be glad that she didn’t insist on Buckwheat(?). Bitch.
7th grade Algebra teacher–wore go-go boots (NOT in fashion, even in 1974!). She was fair skinned and, looking back, must have had some “issues”.
She would ask a question about say, binomials. If student #1 did not know, she moved on to #2. If he did not know, she asked #3. If that was a no go–she started throwing shit. Erasers, chalk, whatever came to hand. And screamed while she did it–her neck and face would turn bright red. She had demon aim and hit almost all her targets in the forehead–chalk delivered at that speed to the forehead hurts like hell. It didn’t matter if you were one of the ones who didn’t know the answer or not-everyone got beaned.
We never reported her, strangely enough–I think(looking back) that we figured that this was just another crazy adult…
then there was the teacher who accused me of having sex on a field trip, but we’ve had enough fun for tonoc. Oh, I didn’t, BTW.
In junior HS we moved to a new city and I went from slightly anorexic (not terribly ill, just a bit underweight) to a raging bulimic who needed to lose a few pounds. Somewhere in there I also had a (again, mild) nervous breakdown and my grades went to crap. My family had a lot of problems. So as I entered high school, which was located in the adjacent building, I was not a particularly healthy girl. A friend and I were leaving school one afternoon and happened to cross paths with our 8th grade science teacher. Without prompting or invitation, this bitch proceeded to take me to task, sternly, vigorously, and at great length, for having gained so much weight.
When I was a youngun, I used to write the usual poetic dreck that any preteen puts out, and I was very proud of said dreck.
So I submitted it to my English teacher (I think it might have been sixth or seventh grade) for grading and whatnot, as we were doing an unit on poetry and creative writing. The comment that I got back from her?
“Almost rhythmic.”
I didn’t get it until a few years later. Oy. It was at that moment that I gave up on ever becoming a poet due to my, obviously, not having a single poetic bone in my body. (And nowadays I’m a technical writer. No poetry at all, I tellya. )
Just before the end of the last summer term in the infants we went up to the Junior school to see our new classroom and teacher. This was meant to be reassuring in case any of us were scared of going up to the “big school”. I wasn’t scared, I was excited, looking forward to being a junior and smiling all over my face. First thing my new teacher said to me “Stop smiling *We don’t smile in Junior School.” * Every night of the holidays I lay awake worrying. Once I was in that class the teacher used to rip pages from my workbooks, crumple them up then throw them and the books at mewhilst ranting about my poor handwriting. Uh yes, I would like to punch her if it wasn’t that she must now be a very old lady.
I don’t have a specific memory of the meanest thing a teacher ever said to me. But one thing my high school English teacher said to me has stayed with me going on 30 years. I like my language, and I can spell, and I have a decent vocabulary. I was asking my teacher once, what about the kids who fail subjects because they can’t spell well enough to understand the words they’re reading. She said, quote:
“If they can’t read, write and spell by the time they get here, it’s not my problem.”
How pathetic is that?!
Long ago, my 3rd grade teacher said to me, “Hurry up, poky!” because I was taking a wee bit too long putting my pencil box away. I should have responded, “Drop 300 pounds, lard-ass.” But I’m not mean enough to do that.
I once told a gym teacher in high school that it was too hot and that we ought to go inside the gym and do some dance routines rather than stay out in the nearly 100-degree heat and smog. Her reply: “It’s NEVER too hot to play!”
:rolleyes:
One of her fellow dumbassbitch gym teachers made us run around the field during a smog alert. I wound up out sick with bronchitis for a week.
In my 9th grade Social Studies class Mr. Von Stueben had us naming occupations for him to write on the blackboard (teacher, lawyer, butcher, etc.) My suggestion was “safe cracker.” After the laughter died down, Mr. Von Stueben said, “Nott, you are an iconoclast.” I had no idea what that meant. I was embarrassed, but when I looked it up later, I was so proud! Yes, sir. That’s what I strive to be.
)