Probably one familiar to many band students:
Once during a rehersal, the teacher decided to give us some advice that is useful in many situation in life, including the topic we were discussing: intonation. His words echo in my mind to this day, “When in doubt, pull out.”
Well, there was Mr. Robinson who called me “you stupid little boy!” in drama class when I was in grade 9.
Although the most gratuitous cruelty I can remember was when Mr. Meredith in Grade 6 wheeled on me out of the blue in English class, pointed out the door, and bellowed, “GO!!!” I gaped at him, and he shrieked “GO!!!” even louder. I dashed from the room in tears, bewildered and humiliated – after all, I hadn’t even been doing anything, and being sent out of the class was tantamount to excommunication at that age – and he started to laugh, and said, “And that, class, is an example of an imperative verb.”
Back in 10th grade English, the teacher had a complete meltdown. We were taking a quiz, and everybody’s just sitting there, quietly filling in answers, nobody was saying anything, when suddenly she stood up, stomped over to her lectern, and just started screaming at us for driving her up the wall with all our talking. Then she ran out of the room while we all watched in a perplexed fashion. The woman was totally insane.
I was in mock trial my junior and senior years of high school. This same nutbar was our mock trial coach, and the night before the big competition she gave me a list of questions she wanted me to use for my cross examination. Mine weren’t good enough. Well, I wasn’t comfortable with that, I wanted to use my own questions. I worked hard on them, dammit. So, when I got in the van the next morning, I told her I would be using my own questions. She got all red in the face and yelled, “I am at the end of my rope with you, Mishell!” I ended up ignoring the bitch and using my questions anyway. Scored extremely well, too.
Then there was the time when I was in speech competition my senior year. Once again, the psycho freak was the speech coach. My category was literature interpretation. The year before, she had chosen my piece for me, a childrens book about some bizarre monster in Alaska or some crap. I hated it, and I didn’t score well. So, my senior year, she had picked out another shitty children’s book. I told her I didn’t want to do it, I wanted to choose my own piece. She asked what I wanted to do, and I said, “a selection from Salem’s Lot by Stephen King.” She said, “no, the judges never score horror well.” I insisted that I didn’t care, I wanted to read something I enjoy. She finally said fine, but that she would not help me rehearse. Okie dokie. Fine by me. I ended up scoring straight I’s (the highest) at the first competition and got to go to State. Scored straight I’s there too. I ended up being chosed as an All State Outstanding Performer, one of two in my school. At the big show where we all performed our speech pieces for parents and whatnot, this is what she said: “I helped Mishell choose this piece, and I knew she’d do a wonderful job with it.” :rolleyes:
When I was a senior in high school, I started the year in a journalism class.
Before I continue, I’ll admit I wasn’t the best student there was. I was lazy and obnoxious, but no more so than average. Down in the country-music-lovin’ bible belt, I listened to that heavy metal, work dark clothes & earrings, played guitar. I later learned that I was one of the schools “known but unproven drug dealers”. That surprised me, considering I never touched anything stronger than a cigarette while at school. (And it was OK to smoke there - my high school had a smoking patio for the students. One of the benefits of living in a state who’s major source of income is tobacco.)
Anyway, this journalism teacher actively despised me. My every word or action would draw contemptuous looks and sarcastic comments. I remember working on an assignment in her class, absent-mindedly tapping my pencil on the desk while I thought over whatever it was I was doing. She snapped at me. "You ever heard of ‘the short rows’? You’re in 'em. "
The final straw came during some team assignment. Myself & my buddy were paired with one of the classes good ole boys. My buddy & I - we worked on the assignment. Maybe not “hard”, but we worked as much as our good-ole-boy team mate did. He stole our work, put his name on it, handed it in & said we hadn’t worked on it at all.
The teacher kicked us out of her class. Aside from the complete injustice of it all, I was happy - I dreaded the notion of going through an entire year of that class while that unhappy bitch despised me & tried to make my life hell for no discernable reason.
I ended up in my third year of JROTC instead. When I joined the military later, I entered as E-3 because of it. So, all in all kicking me out of that class was the best thing she did for me, though I’m pretty sure that’s not what she’d intended at the time.
Anyway, that’s my story.
“you have really gotten fat since you had that accident and you really need to lose weight”
5th grade gym class
I had fallen down a waterfall during the end of summer and I missed the first 2 weeks of school. I had to wear a leg brace for 2 months and even after it was removed was restricted from running at all for 3 months, so yeah I got a little chubby 
Speech class in 9th grade we were assigned to listen to a specific person’s speech and then comment on it. The speaker was suppose to remain silent as their speech was reviewed. When it came time for my speech to be reviewed by another student. The student started speaking and I tried to interrupt…
Me: um Mr. Speech Teacher
Mr. ST: quiet
Student: blah blah blah
Me: um Mr. ST
Mr. ST: I said to remain quiet, you know the rules and you are being rude by interrupting the other “student’s” comments
Student: blah blah blah…The end
Mr. ST: Ok NOW MISS what did you want?
Me: That was not my speech that the student commented on
Mr. ST: Well, that’s besides the point and I am giving you a low grade just for speaking out when you were suppose to remain quiet
I never did get my speech reviewed :mad:
Mishell : we had the same teacher, but mine was 10th grade chemistry.
She ran from the room one day, after screaming herself hoarse and we never saw her again…nimnut.
Violacrane --that must have stunk, but I find it funny–“We don’t smile in Junior school”–I’m stil laughing.
I find it fascinating that so many of us have these stories–some, like me, have been out of school and “grown up” for over 20 years. Feels like yesterday for some of this…
“Men, there is no such thing as a bad win or a good loss.” My High School Wrestling Coach
“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether you win.” My High School Track Coach
When I was playing under 18 rugby we had a coach only a few years older than most of the team, which we thought was really cool. One day he was making us do the same pattern over and over again because we kept getting it wrong. I was the guy who had to do all the running and I never even got to touch the ball so I was bitching and moaning…a lot. He said to me, “Shut up and practice, go home or end up on your arse.” I chose shut up.
When I was a junior in high school, I took AP U.S. History. Naturally, the class was full of all the “smart kids,” and we were all friends. The teacher (I’ll call him Mr. B) was a cool guy–smart, stern, but with a great sense of humor.
I had a huge crush on him (as did every other girl in the class).
It was a pretty fun, friendly class. We had a lot of inside jokes and the atmosphere was pretty casual. We learned a lot, and had a good time too. I didn’t talk much in there, though. I swing between two extremes in classes–either I talk a lot, or I never talk. Totally depends on the class. That was just one of the classes where I didn’t talk.
Toward the end of the year, Mr. B was standing in the front of the class, making a bunch of funny “predictions” about the various students. Not about everybody, just about a few standouts.
Then he got to me and said, “And maybe next year Q.N. will get a personality.”
That really, really hurt. All my life, most people have tended to only see that I’m smart, and nothing else about me. So I’m sensitive about that anyway. Then to have a person I liked and admired say that? Really stung.
My 11th grade history teacher. Mr. G (name withheld), the teacher from hell.
I never had a teacher abuse me as much as he did. For some reason, he took an active disliking to me from day one, and from about day three of the class, the feeling was mutual. Granted, he was pretty much an asshole to everyone unless you sucked up properly to him, but no amount of sucking up could get him off my case. I begged the school to let me change classes, but no joy. I decided to gain my revenge by keeping my grades high, but I couldn’t even do that. He gave essay tests and always knocked my scores down because, although I might have been right, he didn’t like the way I phrased things - even when I quoted him word for word.
During the last class of the year, he told us how much he had enjoyed teaching the class “…except for a few of you, like Mr. Clothahump, who has not amounted to anything all year and will never amount to anything in his entire life.” At that point, I snapped. I stood up and said, “I will take that as a compliment coming from you, considering that you are a dick that walks around pretending he is a man.”
I got hustled to the office for that and my parents got called. However, I actually came out reasonably well. I got the headmaster to read every one of my history tests and he commented that there was nothing wrong with them. In addition, I got a couple of other students to come in and describe how Mr. G had been ragging on me. I didn’t get in trouble and the headmaster had a come-to-Jesus session with Mr. G, which resulted in my grades adjusting up two full letters and Mr. G being invited to teach elsewhere.
It most assuredly taught me the value of standing up for myself and not letting anyone bully me, adult or otherwise. I should have done it earlier in the year and saved myself some grief.
That’s funny, my college cross country/track coach said the same thing. This same coach also told me that I needed to lose weight in order to reach my running potential. Not only was this completely inappropriate and insensitive to say to anyone, it really upset me at the time because I was recovering from an eating disorder and really sensitive about my weight. Fortunately, he only lasted as our coach for two seasons.
I also had a swim coach that yelled and screamed at everyone. I must have been 12 or 13 when I came down with the stomach flu and was too sick to swim in one of the meets. He immediately called me at home to say that I was lazy and not dedicated enough for the swim team. Looking back on it all, I can’t believe he got away with that nonsense, or maybe I should have gone to that swim meet and thrown up on him to prove I wasn’t lying. I’ve heard that he still coaches in the area, and I wonder if he is still the asshole today that he was 15+ years ago.
I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever had a teacher actively dislike and mistreat me as a student, but I do remember one time that there were a couple of students in 8th grade gym that got the gym teacher so angry that he kept all of us 15 minutes past the end of class just so he could yell at everyone. This, of course, made everyone tardy for their next class. Smart move, gym teacher!
I also had an Algebra II teacher in High School (Circa 1984) that would just ignore everyone that was doing poorly in his class (which included me). He was a truely awful teacher. Here we were trying in vain to understand and do the work he assigned us and when we asked him a question, he would just get all huffy and say, “Why are you asking me this? You should know this already.” Nevermind that he would blow right through concepts and never take time to fully explain and break down what he was teaching. It got so bad for me that I asked him if I could spend time after school with him for extra help, but he said he didn’t have time for that because he had “other things” he was involved with. Well, my dad called him up for me and proceeded to ball him out for not taking the extra time to help his students that were having problems. Suddenly I was in his class once per week after school for extra help, but the guy was so bad that it didn’t really make a difference for me.
My varsity wrestling coach pulled me aside after my second match ever, which had been a JV match against a varsity wrestler who’d been thrown down to JV because of matchup concerns (stylistically he wasn’t good against our varsity 215er). I did a trick that I’d developed in the practice room where I essentially flopped my hips around to keep from being taken down (which I later found out is supposedly a sound defense even at high levels if you’re skilled enough to use it - I accidentally figured it out by being thrown to the wolves as a rookie), and used my then-minimal knowledge of wrestling holds and the significant ballast of my sumo hips and beer gut to put the guy on his back and pin him in the second period. My JV coach had handled my first match, so this was the first time the coach had seen me work.
“You know,” he said to me, “I learned something about you tonight, Tommy. For a great big fat guy, you’ve got great balance.”
Well, my story is kind of the opposite. I mean, it is wierd, but in this case, the meanness wasn’t directed at me but instead virtually everyone else in the class 
I had a Theatre History class that I took as one of the last parts of my English Major. I got upper division English credits for the class, because it was one of those classes that counts toward multiple majors (English and Theatre Arts in this case). However everybody else was Theatre majors, mainly actors who had all performed in multiple productions and some of the other students were quite arrogant about their acting ability.
For a particular assignment, we had to memorize and act out a scene from Moliere’s “Tartuffe”. I had never heard of this play before, I had never acted before, I was just some peerless English major who would read “The Illiad” with the same enthusiasm a 9 year old would read a comic book. Anyway, I had a lot of anxiety about this assignment, but I wanted to do a good job so I worked very hard at it. I was totally convinced anything I did would pale in comparison to everybody else- after all they had far more experience than I did, and the professor certainly was not going to lower the bar for the sake of the one guy in class that had never done this before. When I did my scene, I had a lot of fun with it. Not only had I memorized my lines, but I had memorized my partner’s lines, and when it seemed like he would get stuck, I mouthed him the next of his lines so he wouldn’t stumble or hang trying to remember. Aside from one other person, Nobody remembered their lines, they had to have the scripts in their hands. Mind you, we had several weeks to do this. I actually had a disadvantage because I was absent the day she handed out the scripts and missed a whole weekend to practice my lines and yet I was able to pull through when these actors who had spent 3 years doing this could not.
The professor was furious. She told the class if they couldn’t do something as simple as one scene, then acting is definitely not for them. They might as well quit now and apply to MacDonald’s to avoid the future disappointment they will face :eek: . Summed up as “You people suck and you’re never gonna amount to anything.” At first I thought she was directing this to the entire class, but near the end of the rant she said, “I can’t believe how badly you dropped the ball here. Our sole English major in the class, Incubus here, was able to pull of the assignment. I expect you people to at least demonstrate the level of professionalism he did in this assignment.” :eek:
That’s the first time that ever happened to me. I felt wierd about it the whole day.
When I was in 7th grade, my parents came in on parent-teacher conference day and my science teacher told them that I was conniving. After my mother defined the word for me, I still had no idea to what she was referring. I was a bit of a troublemaker in 7th grade, but I must have tried to weasel out of doing something. I guess that’s why I was in detention in her class sometimes.
When a friend of mine was a junior in HS, she was discussing college options with her guidance counsellor, who told her that she didn’t “have what it takes to go to college”. Her mild-mannered father gave him a piece of his mind. I would have paid to see that! By the way, she graduated 3rd in her class, went to college and is now a Physical Therapist. Nyah-nyah! 
My first name is Mitch. I played basketball on our local recreational league team from about age 9 to 14. I was not wholly unathletic, but basketball was not my sport. I only played because my friends all played and I didn’t want to feel left out. I sucked at it. I wasn’t the lowest tier of player, but I couldn’t handle the ball to save my life and there was exactly one spot on the floor I was comfortable shooting from. I ended my season as an 11 year old averaging maybe 5 points and 5 rebounds per game.
It was traditional that the team went to a local pizza joint at the end of the season for the awards ceremony. Looking back they were small trophys, certificates and cheap plaques and not worth having in the first place. At the time though getting your trophy was a big deal. That year the coach gave everyone a different award. So he gave out ‘Best Player’, ‘Best Defender’, ‘Most Improved’, ‘Best Free Throw Shooter’, you get the idea. Your award was inscribed on a certificate and it was handed to you in front of everyone.
I was one of the last one’s to come up. I was hoping for something postiive, and I really wanted to get home and hang it on my wall. I come up to the front and he presented me with the **"Just Plain Mitch’ ** award. In his speech he basically gave me credit for trying and that was about it. That has been a lasting humiliation as you can tell.
oh boy…
From grade 7 gym teacher: “ok, now bend down like you’re a jew picking up a penny”. Got him fired over that one.
From Grade 11 math teacher on my report card: “congratulations on your successful lobotomy!”
and lastly, during a grade 11 math class, another math teacher came into the room during some problem-solving quiet time. He leaned against the door jam for a few minutes, surveying the class, then said loudly “You’re right, Mr. Smith, the girls in my class are a lot more attractive.”, and left.
Once had a teacher call another student “Rumple Foreskin” I still laugh when I think about that one.
After acing an Algebra Mid-term " How come YOU are doing so well in my class?" :dubious:
After being cornered by a teacher. " Look, I know you smoke just give me one. Better yet two I have to stay late".
MY favorite. “People this is so easy, Mr. (me) is getting it. Why aren’t the rest of you?” I know I should take that one as some sort of half-assed compliment, but this was coming from a some-what educated person.
And people wonder why I was voted “Most likely never to go on to further his education”. Gotta love them public schools
My first year of high-school, I was on the freshman boys basketball team. I was a decent player and had nice height for a freshman shooting guard (6’2" at the time). Unfortunately, I was skinny as a rail and had the raw strength that goes with said condition. For this reason, all through junior high basketball, I had perfected what I’ll call a “push” shot where I would loft the ball from my chest. This gave me much better range on my outside shots.
Well, about the third practice in high school the coach stopped practice, approached me and yelled, “Jammer, if you shoot from your titties again, I’m going to be kicking you in the ass for the next hour while you are running windsprints.”
It seemed harsh at the time, but damned if I didn’t start working on my jumpshot form. I broke the bad habit and went on to do pretty well through the years. I’m 39 now, but I sometimes hear him yelling at me even when I’m shooting baskets in the driveway and it always makes me laugh.
Jammer
That 11th Grade chemistry teacher didn’t last long…
The guys in the class and I “enjoyed” several weeks’ worth of his flagrant favoritism toward the young ladies in the class. I called him out on it when it started to affect people’s grades. In the middle of class.
“Why is it you seem to play favorites with the girls?” I asked him. The bastard had the audacity to respond “Because they’re cuter than you are” in front of the entire class. I shut up for a while, but mentioned it in passing to my homeroom teacher, who was a vice principal. She laughed it off.
Then there was the incident where he called me “Mr. Horse Piss” when calling on me (a take on my last name). That was it. I lost it. Kicked out of class, parents were called, the whole nine yards.
Conference time. Me, the chem teacher, both parents and the aforementioned homeroom teacher. The fool actually admitted to his sexist favoritism in the meeting. Then he made up a story about how the “Horse Piss” thing was a slip of the tongue - he claimed to have had a student named Hislop in the distant past and he mixed the two of our names together when calling on me. I called bullshit and asked my homeroom teacher to pull a list of students since the year he started teaching. No such Hislop existed.
He finished out the year, but didn’t come back the next.