In the 9th grade I had band on Thursday mornings. I’d go, fight with the teacher and leave. Everyone always left thier instruments in the band storage room on Thursdays since we had practice Friday at lunchtime, then take their instrument home for the weekend. One Thursday I did just that, but disaster struck! I got sick Friday and stayed home. On Monday, when we also had practice at lunch, I went to the band room and was horrified to see my saxophone was NOT where I had left it. One of the other students said that the teacher, who is one of the worst people I’ve ever met, might have put it in her office over the weekend. I saw that her office door was closed (it was connected to the band room) and locked, so I had to go ask her to open it. So out I went into the main room, where everyone was warming up and the psycho bitch as sitting on her perch, waiting to spend the next hour screaming at us for being the biggest fuck ups every to not be aborted. I said to her, “I need you to open your office so I can get my sax out of there. I was sick Friday and couldn’t bring it home.” Her head turned with alarming speed, her evil eyes burning holes in my innocent, 9th grade flesh. She stood up and said, loud enough for everyone to hear over the toneless noise of 45 people warming up various instruments, “You’re wasting my time, and the time of everyone else here!” Then pushed me out of the way and went to her office. She unlocked the door, threw it open, went in for a second, then threw my saxophone case out the door, into a wooden riser. She then glared at me again and walked away.
My first year of German, I had a really good teacher. After I moved, my next 3 years of German were with Frau Shulte. She was, easily, the WORST teacher I’ve ever had. She changed her teaching method every few months, and despite easily learning German 1 and half of 2 from my first teacher, I learned almost nothing in her classes.
Before the 2000 election, I was chatting with a friend of mine about how I hoped Bush wouldn’t win. Frau Shulte overhears me, asks why I’d prefer Clinton to Bush (which I never actually said, and we weren’t talking about Clinton, but I guess I see the connection). I told her whatever my reasons were at the time. She starts yelling her political beleifs at me in German, actually leaning over my desk. Given that I only understood a word here and there, I didn’t care.
I skipped her 4th year, 2nd semester final. A few classes before the final, she comments on my crappy, crappy homework grades (for 2.5 years, I scraped by with 75s, but by the end of fourth year, I really didn’t care anymore). She got all bitchy and told me I needed the credit to graduate. I looked right back at her and said, “No I don’t.” Then didn’t come to finals. We only had a requirement of 2 years of language.
To this day, I still remember most of what my first teacher tought me, but nothing from her. God it felt good to skip my last final with her. And I still graduated, heh.
Don’t let this story fool you - I only skipped class twice in HS, and did much better in my other classes where I had decent teachers.
Me: What would I need to get on the Final to get an A in this class.
College Speech Teacher (who I knew had issues with me): “Andy…I do not particularly like you and don’t like your type. There is no way you’ll get an A in my class.”
Me: “What if I aced the final?”
CST: “No”.
{aced the final, got a B. Wish I had know about filing academic grievances because I had a solid A from any reasonable standpoint}
====
College English Teacher: “Andy…you write adequately. People will understand what you are trying to communicate. However, no one will EVER want to read what you write”.
{This wasn’t really mean because it was the truth and I knew it. However, when I tell the story people think it is really mean}
One of the meanest things I heard a teacher say to someone else:
College Physics teacher {didn’t hear what provoked this}: “You can’t wait to get out there and be a button pusher, can you? People like you are a dime a dozen”.
Also…
Sixth grade Phy Ed teacher: “Patrick, I swear you have 2 and a half brain cells…and the half cell is dead.”
I had a few gym coaches that were real dicks. One made me wear my street shoes with gym shorts to play volleyball when I forgot my sneakers. Thing is I was wearing black, pointed toe cowboy boots. He kept calling me “tex.” I never wore those boots again. Another one probably had no mean intentions but made a play on my real name and called me “Pataco.” I suppose it’s technically racist but I never let it bother me. Better than “Padildo.”
10th Grade, AP English class. We had a hippy teacher that was going through the subject of transcendentalism when a bee flew into the room through the air vent. She asked the whole class to put our heads down on the desk, close our eyes, and mentally ask the bee to leave. Thirty-five minutes later the bee did leave through the open window and we resumed class. Time well spent, I tells ya.
catholic high school in the late sixties: my four years were a constant battle with the priest in charge of the school. we had way too many run ins to repeat here.
a few years after high school, during a conversation with my mother i found out why. after a minor infraction freshman year, he called my mom and told her i was a discipline problem. “i have completely researched your son’s case, and i know all there is to know. my suggestion is that you have his father speak to him about his behaviour” my mother replied,“if you had done your research as carefully as you have indicated, you could not have missed the fact that his father died when he was a year old…”
those four years were grim
My 8th Grade French teacher, out loud in front of the class, upon learning that I failed to do my homework: “You didn’t your homework again? You’re such a little pervert!” I swear, I did nothing (in my life up until that point) to warrant being called a pervert. The class laughed and I was called “pervert” by everyone for the rest of the year. Of course, the teacher was an absolute lunatic who didn’t shave her armpits and proudly displayed that to us. She also occasionally had a line of white lotion (about the thickness of toothpaste) on top of her upper lip, for no apparent reason. And she always, ALWAYS, smelled like fish.
But that was nothing compared to my friend, who grew up in Montana, who had a teacher who smoked cigarettes in class. One day, he heard a kid whispering to another kid. The kid was like 10 years old. He called the kid up to his desk and said: “You don’t like me, do you?” Kid shrugs. So the teacher opened up one of the large windows and stood up on the radiator next to it. He says to the kid: “You don’t like me? Well then push me out the window! Push me out now! Go ahead!” The kid starts bawling. The other kids are horrified. And then the teacher went right back to his desk and started teaching. Apparently, that kid didn’t say another word in that class ever again.
driver’s ed, sophomore year, that prick mackey was watching me try to do the serpentine in reverse thing. called me spastic. over and over. on the in-car radios so the whole class heard it (we had a big practoce range with 6 cars and 18 people at a time doing things) pissed me off and i remembered it forever.
my revenge came 21 years later. i’m in a golf outing for the school’s athletic dept. i’m stuck in a golf cart with mackey. by now i’m a respected, upright alum who spends time at the school and throws money at athletics and band. plus, i’m his boss because i’m a board member.
it’s wet that day, and as we pull away from one of the tee areas, i have some fun, and head sideways down a fairly steep grassy incline. not trying to tip, but i know the hill and it’s easy to lose control and slide down. which is what i’m shooting for, i want this guy to piss his pants.
sure enough we start to slide. i turn the wheel and next thing you know, we’re ass-backwards rolling seemingly out-of-control (ok, no-shit out of control) and flying. mackey’s hands are grabbing the front of the cart and he’s making this WAAAHHHHHHH kind of noise. at the bottom of the hill, before we start to seriously slow down, i lock the brakes, and whip the wheel around doing the best steve mc queen the 15th hole has evber seen. without so much as a hesitation, next thing you know we’re headed straight and true right towards where mr. macho dinked his drive. i stayed cool as a cucumber he whole time - turned to him before he could speak and said:
“spastic my ass”
i played 16 with another partner in the cart.
Catholic Grammar School:
The Sister Superior, the school Principal, stops suddenly while walking past me. For no reason that I could see (and till can’t), she suddenly blurts out:
“[CalMeacham], you’re so smart, you’re dumb!”
High School:
Our Gym Teacher’s definition of happiness:
“Happiness is when you hit yourself on the head with a hammer fifty times, then stop.”
We all thought he’d maybe gotten happy a few times too many.
I swam a lot in middle school and the first year of high school. The summer before my junior year of high school, I decided I loved swimming so much that I joined the community swim team. The community team met three times a week that entire summer, and each time was two hours long.
They had gotten Tim to coach the community team. I had swam in teams with Tim as a coach before, and quietly loathed him. He played favorites, and I wasn’t a favorite. Not even close.
I don’t know what it is about swim coaches. I’ve had plenty, and most seemed to be perfectly nice, decent people away from the pool. Invariably, they turned into nasty, sneering, jeering, evil bastards poolside. Maybe it was the chlorine affecting their brains. Well, Tim never changed. He was an asshole everywhere.
One particular day when we had all worked very hard to get our sets done early, he told us to get out of the pool and practice our dives off the starting blocks. Afterwards he would go up to some of the divers on our way back to the blocks and tell them what they should do to make their dives better.
He hadn’t said anything to me through three of my dives, so after my fourth I went up to him and said, “What did you think about my dives?”
So, he told me I wasn’t a baby. I shouldn’t crawl to him and whimper for affection. I just wanted someone to tell me I did perfectly and there, there, sweet Elysian, and fawn all over me. But it was the way he said it, sneeringly and angrily and nastily, that made me want to rip his head off and twist his testicles until they snapped like rubber bands.
I said, “I just want to know what to do to make them better!” And he spewed some more diarrhea at me and flung his hands out and almost hit me.
I never swam in a team after that.
“Why can you not be more like your older sister? She never got less than a B in my class! Your average is a 56%, NinjaChick! You are failing my class! Your sister was not this incompetent!”
–My 10th grade bio teacher, in front of the entire class. She taught my sister when my sister was in 7th grade, in a completely different class.
“Just because you’re not a miserable writer like the rest of your class does not make you intelligent. You’re not smart enough to have original ideas. You’re 15 and that makes you stupid. That is why you need to cite everything and build on other people’s ideas: You’re not smart enough to have your own ideas.”
–10th grade English teacher, privately to me, on why I couldn’t start from scratch on a literary criticism, and instead had to write a paper on what someone else said about a book. This is the teacher who went on to submit an essay I wrote for publication in a local newspaper, without even telling me she was doing it, to say nothing of asking permission. And the paper didn’t even try to confirm I’d written it.
Yeaaah, tenth grade? Good year. :rolleyes:
Ah I finally win.
9th grade History teacher repeatedly told me in front of the entire class that he wished I had been aborted as a fetus, in pretty much those words.
My fourth grade teacher did something like that to me. I was a pretty smart, well behaved, if not all together well adjusted, but at least I was quiet, kid who never made any trouble in class. Yet for some reason, Mrs. Resch just didn’t like me, and showed it in very odd passive-aggressive ways for most of the school year. Finally, the last day of school and and at the end of the day, she gives out little “awards” to everyone in class…best behaved, best penmanship, etc, along with some treats. I got lumped in at the end with the last award given with three “bad” kids who always got in trouble, talked in class, etc.
(Just a side note: After lurking almost every day for 4 years, I HAD to pony up the money so I could reply to this thread. It struck such a cord…)
Anyway. It was third grade. Little Lola, kinda short, shy, and very dysgraphic. (It’s like dyslexia with numbers) My cruel teacher liked to grade our math homework in front of the WHOLE class. Supposedly, this was to show us how to avoid common mistakes, learn as a group, blah blah blah.
Now, if the ENTIRE class had no mistakes, we got an extra 10 minutes at recess. Whoo hoo! One day, it looked like it was gonna be close…
Then I came to the front of the class. Knowing. Wishing I could just, I don’t know, DISAPEAR. Some of my classmates, already knowing what was coming, started to make comments. ("Oh man! WE coulda had an EXTRA 10 MINUTES!!!)
Sure enough, my homework was… less than perfect. My teacher sighed, looked at me and said, “Well, your just destened to become trailer trash.”
WHAT??? My humiliation was complete. Even now, 25+ years later, I tear up.
Sixth months later, I heard that Karp had died…
I can’t think of a story that directly involved me, but the scummiest thing I can remember a teacher doing is when my junior high school band director (who was brought in for the second half of the year because the first guy was an alcoholic) lost his baton, offered a ca$h reward to whoever found it, and then refused to pay up when it was found.
In Computer Programming i got a score of -1 out of 10. She took off 5 points for sloppiness and i was very mad/sad.
In second grade, my teacher slapped my face in front of the whole class.
Do I win?
Oh…oops I see, the OP was said. Slapping probably doesn’t count, nevermind.
Didn’t happen to me, but to my sister. She wasn’t very athletic, but she liked playing volleyball so she went out for the team as a freshman. When she realized that she actually had to run sprints and work hard in practice, she figured that sports just weren’t for her. Rather than just not show up to practice, she went in early and handed in her uniform to the coach and explained to him that she just couldn’t continue. Since she was not a superstar athlete, the coach didn’t try to talk her out of it. No big deal, right?
Well, from then on for the next couple weeks every time he saw her and her friends in the hall way, he would yell out, “Hey, there’s the QUITTER!”, or simply, “Hi, Quitter”.
That was back in 1985 or so. Now he’s the school principal.