Worst teachers/trainers/instructors you have ever came across

In My Humble Opinion
41

Would the proff who had a nervous breakdown in class count?

Honestly, I felt sorry for the woman, but she had skin thinner than onion paper and was not cut out to handle a class of graduate students!

This was my MBA probability class. For those who haven’t gone through an MBA program, some students can often be quite… err… combatative in the questions they ask. Not all of us, by any means. But many were expecting to be the alpha dogs in life and had the corresponding attitude. So our class bears part of the blame. Even so, she was waaaaay too sensitive to be teaching!

It was the second week of class and we were discussing the Monty Hall problem. It’s a difficult concept to grasp, and many were having difficulties with it. The discussion got heated. It wasn’t as bad as many discussions I’d had in other classes, but some students weren’t getting it and were becoming quite frustrated. At one point, one obnoxious blowhard piped up with “I just don’t get this–you must be wrong because I just don’t see it.” An arrogant comment, to be sure.

However, our proff just went into a complete melt down! I mean, the woman sank down to her knees and started crying! Then she started shaking and sobbing that none of us trusted her, no one believed her, and how could we all doubt her so–didn’t we see what it was doing to her?

None of us knew what to do. A couple ladies went over and took her by the shoulders and walked her to her office, then called the dean. She never came back. No one knows what happened to her.

As I mentioned, we do bear part of the blame (we were a tough class). But that reaction was totally over the top!

We got a new proff the following week. He started out by stating who he was, that he’d taught and done research in stats for X years and had countless papers published–so he was an authority. Oh, and he’d heard we were a class that included many assholes (yes, he used that word). He didn’t like assholes and wouldn’t tolerate them in his class. He graded us, so we’d better treat him with respect.

Damned if our class wasn’t on our best behavior for the rest of the term. After I got over the shock of the “asshole” speech, I found he was a really good teacher. He knew his stuff, could explain it, and could really read a room and command respect.

42

::: Rick reads each post closely, and does not find his name:::
Woot!
My two worst could not hold a candle to some of the gems here, but I will mention them anyway.
First was the prof I had for my first college level chem class. Ths Dr. was a freaking genius, other memeber in the department were in awe of his smarts. Anyway he would try to move his lectures down the freshman level and miss. Miss badly, as in you would have thought he was trying to teach a 4th grade class. Almost funny that.

My 11th grade AP US History teacher. This lugnut was usually assigned EMR, and ESL classes. For a reason that OG only knows they gave him an AP class. He gave out the same stupid fill in the blank worksheets for homework. I did not do them, since they did not teach they were just busy work. When he would lecture he would get his facts all hosed up one example:
Idgit: The need for a canal across Panama was shown when the battleship Oregon blew up in Havana Harbor, and the Maine sailed from the west coast and by the time it got to Cuba the war was over.
Me: Ah that was the battleship Oregon that sailed around the cape, when the Maine blew up in Havana Harbor. You know “Remember the Maine?”
Idgit: oh yeah you are correct.
Anyway he gave 4 tests that semester. The lowest score I got was a 94. I had the highest score in the class on 3 out of the 4. When the state final was given, I took the 115 question multiple choice final in 15 minutes. I missed 4.
Anyway this asshole gve me a D because I did not do his bullshit homework. I pointed out my test grades and pointed out that I did not need to do his bullshit homework to get the best test scores in the class.
Anyway I have a D on my transcript from this asshole.
Anyway no one is 100% bad. When I started to teach I used these people as an example of what not to do. My stuedents tell me I do a good job, so I guess I am OK.

43

Oh, so many to choose from. One of my high school science teachers set the lab on fire (but not too badly!) while demonstrating the safe handling of magnesium if I recall correctly. Oh well. No one was hurt.

My college stats professor droned in a barely audible voice. I dropped the class after a couple of weeks but not before some amusement. His class was dull. It was a huge first-year class of people apparently unmotivated to be there. People would naturally start talking (yes, abominably rude. Not surprising though.) So every ten minutes, he’d look up from his chalkboard and say “If you’d rather talk than listen to what I have to say, you can just leave.” Rather than shutting up, people would leave. About a third of the class at a time I’d say. I dropped the class the day I found myself throwing in the towel and walking out with the second third of the class.

One of my college politics professors was seen writing the final exam (two essay questions, each worth 25% total of the entire semester grade) by hand on a piece of paper then photocopying it while the class was already in the exam room waiting. Apparently he was just then deciding what they’d be. One of them was a discussion essay on the impact of force on international politics. This topic is so broad you could march several armies through it. (I did really well, actually. I was just bummed that he didn’t care to come up with good questions.)

44

My worst teacher was for a required health class in 9th grade. All we did was do ridiculously easy worksheets out of the textbook all period. What really annoyed me was that there was a girl in my class that a lot of people would make fun of, and the teacher did nothing. She had some sort of birth defect, you could see it in her face (that sounds so wrong, but I don’t know how to describe it), and a speech impediment. I am sure he must have heard, her desk was right next to the teacher’s desk. I didn’t say anything because I was a very shy kid. I don’t think I said anything in that class. Also there was this one incident where he was teasing this girl by holding her notebook above his head and it was so irritating. That girl had the most annoying voice. I wish I had said something.

I also hate those classes where the lecture is just a repeat of the textbook. Why even bother showing up?

I’ve never had any teachers who simply didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, luckily.

45

Asshole 1:

Grade 6 English teacher. In the middle of class, out of the clear blue sky, he points at me, sweepingly gestures to the door, and shouts “Go!” I sit there stunned for a second, so even louder he roars “GO!!” Tears rising to my eyes, baffled about what I could possibly have done, I rush from the class. He calls me back. “And that,” he explains to general merriment, “is an imperative verb.”

Asshole 2:

Grade 7 homeroom teacher. Kept getting irritated when I asked him questions so I could understand the material he was presenting. Once, exasperated by my messy desk, he picked it up and dumped out the entire contents on the floor, in front of everyone.

Asshole 3:

Grade 11 chemistry teacher. Once I accidentally dropped a mercury thermometer; he made me sweep up the mercury with a broom. On another occasion, he tried to force me to drink hydrochloric acid; he had all the other boys pound on the tables and chant DRINK IT! DRINK IT!

Asshole 4:

Translation teacher during my certificate course. A Frenchman, he was evil and arrogant to all the anglophones and speakers of Quebec French. He essentially acted as though everyone had had the same lycée education as he had and therefore all questions were simply born out of obstreperousness. After the evaluations were in, he turned even more evil.

Asshole 5:

Another translation teacher. First day, she comes in and says, “Hello. My name is X and I was the lead translator for the 1976 Olympics.” When you have to establish your qualifications by something you did 30 years ago, things aren’t going well for you, I think.

Later that day, she’s teaching and I’m taking notes on my Palm. She turns to me and says, “Stop playing with your cellphone.” I calmly say, “This isn’t a cellphone, it’s a Palm Pilot, and I’m taking notes.” After that, I couldn’t do or say a thing right, even when I was. Any suggestion I made would be immediately shot down, even when I knew for a fact it was correct - for example, when she misused “disinterested” for “uninterested.” (I even was extra-tactful in pointing it out – “do you think they’re really trying to say ‘uninterested’ in this context,” etc. - but she persisted.) I settled her hash nicely by whipping off the final exam in 15 minutes and getting 98%.

46

Wow, and here I thought my experience was the absolute worst. It’s still up there though. Last fall I took Quantum Physics. There were so many things wrong with this course last fall I’m not even sure I can list all of them, but I’ll try.

  1. The professor (the head of the physics department, no less) hadn’t taught the course in six years, another professor having taught it in the interim.
  2. She was this little old lady who immigrated from China 30 or 40 years ago. Her english was passable, but her accent was significant, so if she spoke quickly and was saying things that the students (presumably) hadn’t learned yet, she was incomprehensible. And she did both of those things a lot.
  3. There was no rhyme or reason to her lectures. No method to the madness. She followed no logical progression from one idea to the next.
  4. She would “explain” things in the weirdest and stupidest ways, with an unusually high incidence of referencing her son in these “explanations.” “My son is your age. He take classes just like this one. I always tell him to wear a raincoat. You should always wear a raincoat. Just like the electron in the atom.” ZUH?? :confused:
  5. The textbook was AWFUL. It was poorly written, and very dry. Trying to learn from it was nigh-unto-impossible. And the chapters were mammoth.
  6. Her powerpoint presentations. Ye gods. There were more slides on her powerpoint presentations than there were pages in the chapter. Trying to learn from these actually WAS impossible.
  7. Still on the subject of those presentations, this is what she based her “lectures” on. She would spend half the class flipping through them at speeds that made our eyes vomit, instead of actually teaching us. That’s right folks, her presentations were so bloated and nonsensical that even she who wrote them often couldn’t find the material she was looking for.
  8. The tests. For the love of all that is good and right in this world, those tests were an abomination. Physics classes revolve around two things: homework and tests. Even in the very best of physics classes, the lectures are at most supportive of those two endeavors. Her tests expected us to know every little trick and gimmick to solve the questions without actually calculating an integral or two or ten. If you didn’t, there was no way to even come close to finishing the test.
  9. Which brings me to the other staple of physics education: Homework. In a properly run physics class, doing the homework is like putting weights on a baseball bat - it’s deliberately grueling so as to make the tests seem easy by comparison. However, in this class, the homework was just an exercise in sifting through the blob of molasses that called itself my textbook to find the right equation, then plug-n-chug. I learned nothing.
  10. The make up test. It became apparent that some students in the class scored rather poorly on the first two, regularly scheduled, tests. So she inserted an optional make up test at the end of the semester. She stuck the first two tests together. Word for word, problem for problem, number for number. So not only was it no easier to do, it was twice as long. Oh joy. Is it any wonder I did worse on this one?
  11. The final. Same shit as the makeup test, only different problems.
  12. The in class exercises. The only reason I ever went to class. They were a task in finding the right equation in her powerpoint slides. Don’t ask me how I managed to do well on these, I don’t know.

The result? I’m taking the class again this fall. With a GOOD professor.

47

In Ap Chemistry, our teacher reviewed basic chemistry for the first semester then allowed someone who was STILL in college to teach us. Not only that, this student teacher was completely apprehensive and a push over. On top of THAT, the real teacher spent her entire day in the office, refusing to answer questions and coming out to yell at us for talking. We were a group of 10 kids who were basically given assignments along the difficulty of coloring within lines, with absolutely no learning happening. She was also the lady who got into theological discussions randomly. (FTR, I’m annoyed - but not mad - at her for envoking Pascal’s wager.)

Such bullshit, and I really tried hard to get a decent grade on the exam- at first. After awhile, I simply stopped caring. A 4 would of been nice, at the very least.

48

My first semester of college, I had an ear training TA who I don’t think had a good sense of relative pitch himself. This might not have been a problem, since the examples he used to teach us were handed down from above and he didn’t have to do much beyond playing the notes off a page and explaining the concepts. However, he was also a totally incompetent pianist. On listening exams, he would play an example three or four times, and play it multiple ways; the second time around, for example, a V chord might become a V7 or a Neapolitan might become a ii6. Naturally, if we dictated the wrong one, we’d have the exercise marked wrong. I really should have said something, but I was shy and I had an A in the class anyway.

I feel bad about mentioning him as my worst teacher ever, since he was a nice guy and he did generously allow me to retake the final exam after I misread the schedule, but there’s not much positive you can say about an instructor who actively misleads the class.

49

:eek:

Among the bad teachers I’ve had, these are the ones that stand out the most:

  • Grade 12 English teacher who would ask us open-ended questions about our interpretation of whatever we’d just read. He’d listen to students give long, well thought out answers, then reply with “Well, you could be right…but you’re not” and proceed to explain why his interpretation was the only correct one.

  • First-year general chemistry with a professor who made in plainly obvious that he considered teaching this particular class to be far beneath him. He appeared to regard all questions as a personal insult and would only repeat what he had just said verbatim rather trying to explain whatever concept people were having trouble grasping.

  • Second-year genetics with a professor who had just discovered the joys of Power Point. He made slideshows with 12-point yellow text on a red background. I gave myself a headache trying to read the first one before giving up in defeat. He then gave us a final exam that was not based on material covered in either the lectures or the textbook. Word is that before the department made him adjust the grades, 90% of the class had failed. Because this classs only had a midterm and a final, no assignments or papers, my final grade wound up bearing a suspicious resemblance to my midterm grade.

An honourable mention goes to a professor who was supposed to give a seminar for new grad students but failed to show up. It got rescheduled and he once again failed to appear. At that point the department gave up. Given what I subsequently learned about him, I suspect that he was at the campus pub both times.

50

2nd grade teacher: She seemed to take it as a personal insult that I had trouble spelling. I was always getting my 'b’s and d’s mixed up, or vice-versa :wink: (which I’m now told is a classic sign of a type of dyslexia). After correcting me once she seemed to belive that any further errors were the result of me being rude and disrespectful. This is the same woman who informed me (at the age of 7) that I would never amount to anything. She died a few years after I left her class, that fact still cheers me up.

10th grade History teacher - according to her only two subjects worth teaching were the Russian Revolution and the Australian Gold Rush. These she proceeded to teach by setting up three over-head projectors and putting all the note up for us to copy down. All the while glaring at the class.

51

Yep, I also had the prof who handed out notes, then proceeded to read the notes out loud, word by word, ever so slowly in class. That was his lecture, class after class. Absolute torture it was.

But I think I had a prof who’s worse than anyone here. It was an undergrad numerical analysis class. The instructor was a lecturer, not a tenured prof. He was still working on his PhD at the time. He would walk into the classroom and just proceeded to write stuff on the board, nonstop, that’s it. There were no exams. The only work we had to do was to code some algorithms, but the code was provided by the textbook! All we had to do was type the code exactly as written in the book, line by line, submit it, turn in the printouts, and you got your A. Now that wasn’t the part that made him the worst of all profs. A few years after I graduated, I read in the paper that he was arrested and convicted of homicide. He apparently got so frustrated with his PhD dissertation work, he took it out on his dissertation advisor and clubbed him to death! He even covered the head of the victim so that someone wandering into the office wouldn’t be totally shocked by the gruesome sight. I won’t mention the names of the people or the university, but it was a pretty notorious crime at the time. So let someone else come up with a prof who’s a convicted murderer.

52

Worst teacher? I haven’t had any horrific nightmare teachers, but I definitely had some classes where I would’ve spent my time better staying at home playing video games.

Let’s see…there was the networking class I took where the teacher showed up at least 15 minutes late to every class, where we didn’t start any actual network programming until the semester was more than halfway over, and we had one assignment that literally consisted of “Look up how to do SMTP on Google and write an SMTP client”; he didn’t even pretend to give any instruction except for that.

Then there was the high school physics teacher who denounced evolution and the big bang theory. He was suspected of giving higher grades to the students who were members of the Christian youth group of which he was the leader, but those might have been rumors. There were a few places where it was clear that I knew more about physics than he did.

But by far the worst teacher I had was an English teacher I had freshman year in college. I really wish I’d dropped the class after the first week. He claimed to be teaching English, but every class was just him rambling on about new-age pseudoscience. The essence of his “teachings” were that the “teachings of the ancients” were “now proven by science.” He misused more scientific terms than I have ever heard from anyone. In order to stop myself from going insane, I resorted to transcribing some of his funnier ramblings:

Among other anecdotes that I heard from a friend who took the class in a different section, he proposed that because thoughts are physical manifestations of electrical impulses in the brain, we could unlock some kind of psychic powers and walk through walls or something. Also, reincarnation is “a scientific fact. Ask any scientist, and they will tell you.” Not only that, the act of riding a bicycle is such a physical impossibility that the only way we could possibly know how to ride a bike is because we still retain the knowledge of how to do it when we mastered bike-riding in our former lives. In Atlantis. My friend’s argument of gyroscopic motion providing stability apparently fell on deaf ears. I wish I was making this up.

This would’ve been find had he actually taught English literature. But this was pretty much the entire class. Plus there’s one incident that I’m still bitter about. Ever read “The Cosmic Prison” by Loren Eiseley? One question on one of his quizzes was “What is the primary analogy of The Cosmic Prison?” My answer: A human being is to the universe as a lymphocyte is to a human body. His “correct” answer: The consciousness of a human being is to the consciousness of the cosmos as the consciousness of a lymphocyte is to that of a human being. Apparently the key word “consciousness” made enough of a difference for him to give me zero credit for that question. Ass. (Now I feel like starting another IMHO thread: “Minor incidents your teachers did that you’re still bitter about.” There’s plenty more where that came from.)

53

My god, are you me?!

54

My favorites:

  • An Eastern Religions professor who literally could not speak english, yet tried to teach the finer points of Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism to a lecture class of about 200. I’m not talking about a thick accent - he could barely communicate in english. These concepts are difficult enough for Westerners to understand (especially those taking a 2000-level class in them), but we’d only understand one or two words per minute of lecture. Horrific.

  • An English professor, teaching a mere 1000-level class, who ran the class as though it were a doctorate-level course. I’m talking about 200+ pages of reading for each class, multiple 30 pg. papers during the semester, but worst of all, the attitude - a condescending, combative approach. This dickhead would loudly sigh and roll his eyes in response to any and every quesiton or comment from the class.

55

I had a flight instructor who had a terrible habit of coming in slower than proper on final approach. I quit flying with him, but before the summer was out he’d trashed the landing gear on the airplane not once, not twice, but three times at which point he was told by the owner not to come back. Ever.

Also had a flight instructor who, instead of teaching flying, proceed to lecture me on the duties of a Biblical and “surrendered” wife and how I should step aside and let the man in the family get the license. Needless to say, he was a one-flight wonder.

I had a kindergarten teacher who used to tape kids’ mouth shut to keep his class quiet - thought that was pretty skeevy. I mean, we’re talking about six year old kids. Ask any parent: if a kid that age isn’t making noise you should probably check for a pulse and breathing.

My sister had a fifth grade teacher who’d come into class stinking, drink the “coffee” out of a giant thermos, and pass out in an alcohol-fueled stupor halfway through the morning.

And that’s just off the top of my head.

56

Well, I have two from university. One was a nice nice guy, just simply not a teacher. The other is one of the few people I genuinely dislike.

I went to a small liberal arts university, majored in computer science (yeah, I am starting to see the pattern…). All but two of my teachers were PhDs. One of the ones with only a masters degree was replaced my second year in with a new guy. Asking the head of the department, she said the reason was because he had a PhD and that was something they valued. I though that was shortsighted at best, since you were trading a woman who knew how to teach and seemed familiar with the material with an entirely practically-unproven man.

Still, he came, and there was little good word about him when he did. I took my first class with him, data structures, and immediately saw why.

The man was completely unable to teach. He had absolutely no idea in hell where to start. Again, nice enough guy, easy to get along with, but no teacher.

He first ordered a book. He didn’t know anything about it, but the previous teacher used it, so he figured it would do. So, first day of class, he shows up with, and then thinks to maybe look inside.

Preparation wasn’t a familiar concept with him.

So, after stumbling around and wasting the first day, embarrassing himself for having to makeup a rubric on the spot (all teachers provided a grading rubric and class outline on the first day, if it wasn’t a rule it was a very established tradition), the class was over. Maybe this would jolt him awake and his next class would be better.

Nope. Well, he did read the first chapter and decided he’d best just follow along with the book, since he didn’t know it well enough to make up anything original to complement it. During class, he just read aloud from it, paraphrasing here and there, but mostly verbatim. He copied the examples on the board, then attempted to trace through them, in doing so making his fundamental misunderstanding of how the stack works apparent.

A few days later, we get to the end of the chapter and take a quiz. Rather than just use the one out of the book, he makes up his own. If you understand the material, this works, but he didn’t. So, the quiz was mostly on trying to figure out what he thought the programs were about, and less of what they actually were. And as for the programs that he made up in place of the ones copied from the book… forget about them making any sense. They wouldn’t compile, let alone do anything remotely approaching the topic.

All this would be brought up during the quiz, of course, but he was totally unprepared to answer for the problems. In a few days, after he had graded the quiz and maybe tried a few things out, he would begrudgingly admit that, as written, the quiz was impossible, and he would invent grades out of whole cloth for whatever attempt was made at it.

It was a this point the absences started. The concept of teaching, which I can only assume he thought would just come to him, seemed to overwhelm him. We met three times a week, but by the time the class was half over, you could assure yourself that he’d miss at least one of those days. At first, he’d call in to the secretary, who’d leave a note stuck on the door saying not to wait for him, making up some excuse, but as time went on, he just didn’t show. He never once arranged for a substitute. When confronted about that, he seemed to not even realize that was possible. He would never admit to the days he didn’t come in. It got to the point that students just didn’t come in on Friday anymore, as chances were about 80% he’d not be there anyway. He missed over a quarter of the class.

As to tests, we had I think it was four, plus the final test. He was lost, completely lost. Writing a program was always a component, and that was easy for me (I knew how to program, I was quite competent in it. The class for me was just a requirement. God help those that didn’t already know the information.) But in grading them, it became quickly apparent that he didn’t know the first thing about reading someone else’s code (and reading his own was debatable). He’d start out, trying to make comments on things, but missing the point of what things did entirely, and getting hopelessly confused barely a dozen lines in. So, no more comment until the end, when it got a 100% since it ran and did what it was supposed to do.

A point that stands out particularly in my mind went like this: the programs were all exceedingly simple, and could have been written much more efficiently and made more compact, but I tried to stick to the book’s verbose style (with my other teachers, I knew I could do it my own way and they’d understand, but I didn’t want to confuse him anymore than he already was). He had copied a snippet of code on the board and had spoken about it for some length. I figured, surely, he must be familiar with it if with anything. So, in my program, I made use of its algorithm, barely changed, and layout. Really, there was virtually no difference between the two but variable names and the odd slightly changed line. If he understood his example, even passingly, this would be instantly familiar.

Completely baffled. Didn’t understand a word of it. At the end, after he’d expressed his not understanding, he added “but I guess it works, so… okay”.

When he handed it back (weeks later, he fell more and more behind in grading as the class wore on), I had to laugh. Just laugh out loud. The other students, the ones with the sense about them to see the class for what it was, anyway, knew why. I’m sure he didn’t, but by this time he’d figured out it was best to not question what he didn’t understand if he didn’t want to look like an imbecile. Really, it was just unfathomable how this man got himself hired. The correct response should have been outrage, but it was just so surreal, you didn’t think to be angry at the time.

Apparently, word had spread about him. The department head sat in on several of his classes, as did two assessors of some sort (I’d never seen them before, but I gathered they were there to assess his competency). He tried, very valiantly, to pull off a class for them. As long as he stuck very close to the script he’d prepared and didn’t get asked any questions (he’d pleaded before they came not to be asked difficult questions), you’d think he was just a mediocre to poor teacher. Probe any deeper, though, and you’d quickly discover he was no teacher at all.

After a week, the three had gathered whatever information they were there for, and class resumed normality. The final involved three programs and no written test. One of the programs was impossible the way he’d described it, and another was vague to the point of not specifying what the program should do, so it was really just one assignment. I identified the impossible task one immediately and didn’t waste my time on it (there were two snippets provided that you were required to work into a program that performed X task, but the two snippets were fundamentally incompatible), but many of the less capable students taxed there brains for many long days trying to figure it out. The second one was, as I said, vague to the point of being open-ended. He certainly didn’t intend it as such, though. That was not his way. I’m sure he had some topic in mind that he just failed to convey. So, with that noted firmly at the top, I went ahead and made up a question in keeping with the class and made a program to answer it. (Couldn’t we simply have gotten clarification from him what he was asking for? In theory, yes, but he made a point of disappearing in such times to avoid sticky questions like this.) The last question was quoted from the book, and a breath of fresh air as far as straightforwardness goes.

I got a 100 for the class, but I was expecting it. Others, who were heretofore failing, mysteriously all got upgraded to the 80-90% range. We assume this was the assessors doing. But he’s still there, and still pretending to teach. I wonder what his PhD was in.

But he was such a likable guy, it’s hard to be angry at him, even now.
Well, I said much more than I intended to. I won’t bore you with the second story, let’s just say he was a egotistical, pompous, ass who was entirely too full of himself and assured in the flawed idea that everyone loved him as much as he did. And he’s an example those who give liberals a bad name. We were at a liberal university in a liberal town in New England, it’s no use trying to deny where our sympathies lay. Even our token conservative teacher was far left-wing by mainstream standards. But this man’s hateful diatribes and awkward right-bashing comments were just in bad taste, even to us liberals. But he was blind to the stares and appalled gasps.

57

Lesse…
High School, Computer Science. Teacher was not technically literate, most of the class was. After a few days in which we took over the lab machines, we got in the habit of doing our weekly assignment (e.g., write a program demonstrating the proper use of a do, while, and do-while loop), then spending the rest of the week playing the pirated copy of X-Com that was passed around.

High School, Engineering. Teacher used to teach philosophy. Managed to boost my reputation at high school by sucessfully stalling him for a week talking about hypothetical utopian societies, and keeping him from remembering that there was a class he was supposed to be teaching.

High School, English. Was assigned a C+ by the teacher early on. Every paper was a C+, with the exception of the assignments given right after vocab tests, which were all C- papers. (The tests were aced, of course. I do hang out here.) Was kind of fun, towards the end; I could write whatever the hell I wanted, about whatever the hell I wanted, and still get a C+.

58

My mother ran into the teacher who had taught me for one year, when I was six, which was about twenty years ago at the time.

“So,” she asked my mother “is Pookah doing drugs nowadays?”

59

11th grade physics.

FIRST day of class, the teacher tells the class that Kepler was the first guy to put forth that the planets travelled around the Sun.

I said, “No, I think that was Copernicus.”

We had an mild argument about it. The next day I brought in, IIRC, the book “Cosmos” by Carl Sagan and an Encyclopedia Britannica that both stated it was Copernicus. I showed them to her after class. She goes, “well, my books say it was Kepler.”

Next: we were doing an experiment in which we shot objects horizontally off the top of the school and tried to predict where they would land. Well, long story, short. . .she had given us the wrong equation, which I pointed out. Whatever.

Come midyear exams, there’s a problem on a test with an equation describing how far out an object shot off a table will travel. The CORRECT equation for our previous experiment. Which, I, of course pointed out to her.

Well, she had a melt down on my ass after school one day, and actually took like a 2 week leave of absence.

Essentially, she didn’t know physics at all and was just showing us wrong things that a high schooler with algebra and a little calculus could catch. And, was completely unwilling to accept that.

Even if I was an ass about it (which I most certainly was), you just don’t act that way as a teacher.

60

This one.

I am pleased to report that I got an A in that course; the prof is no longer teaching there, having been forced to quit after that semester; and there have been no apparent long-term effects.

Robin