Your favourite /least favourite teacher at school

Mine

Favourite - year 11 ICT teacher

Least year 6 primary school teacher

I wouold subdivide my teachers into four categories:

  1. Good, caring people who were interested in the principles of education, did their jobs the best they could, and were deserving of our respect. Most were in this group.

  2. Neat guys who thought teaching school was a lark. A couple of them.

  3. Complete incompetents who never should have teen teachers, and were bobbing for air. A few of these.

  4. Grandstanders in love with themselves. A couple of those.

Mine are slightly off: my favorite staffer wasn’t a teacher, but the librarian in junior high, who actually enjoyed talking about books.

My least favorite teacher wasn’t mine. In fifth grade my brother came home upset because his teacher demanded to know why our family didn’t talk “black.” This was the early 70s, and our teacher fancied herself an urban militant (yeah, in rural KY). Sixth grader me was outraged that a teacher would complain about someone having good diction and grammar, and the next day I explained that we did “talk black” because we’re black and that’s how we talk. She hectored my brother for being too proper the entire year anyway.

My favorite teacher was my homeroom and English teacher in 7th grade, who was a very nice lady who knew how to make literature interesting.

On the other end of the spectrum was the bad-tempered whale of a 2d grade teacher who tossed me out of class for reading ahead in the Dick and Jane book. Dishonorable mention to the 5th grade French/homeroom teacher who disliked and managed to alienate me and two of my siblings who fell under her evil eye in previous years.

*Mrs. Torres, who was unaffectionately known as “Torres the Bull”.

Favorite - Miss Dane in 3rd grade. She moved up to 5th grade when I was in 4th and I hoped I’d be in her class again the next year, but then she left our school system. :frowning:

Least - I can’t remember his name, but a maths teacher in jr. high. Nasty and sarcastic and probably put me off higher math entirely.

Least favorite was Miss Schiffman who taught math to everyone in 7th and 8th grade. She didn’t give a damn about the fact that I was the top student in her class; if I didn’t do her idiotic make work home you weren’t going to get an A and I didn’t and didn’t. She has the distinction of being the last teacher who didn’t give me an A in a math course. And I must have taken about 30 of them subsequently.

Best of all by far, was a college professor I will call Murray (which is what I actually do call him since he is still alive at 90 and we do occasionally still correspond). In my third year of college I took a two term course from of modern algebra/linear algebra that was easily the equivalent of a graduate course in algebra (which I have taught many times). He turned me on to mathematics; at the end of that year I was a mathematician. There is no other way to put it. I have a clear memory of that course and still have my notebooks to verify my memories. He has no recollection of the amazing things he did.

I despised my first grade teacher for years. I’m left-handed and she wanted to make me right-handed but my left-handed father was none too thrilled with the idea. She seemed to resent the fact she didn’t get her way. When I graduated from undergrad school, she called me (well, my parents as that was the only way she knew to contact me) to congratulate me. I kind of didn’t despise her so much after that.

My favorite was my fifth grade teacher. I really liked her even though she was an alcoholic who got arrested for shoplifting on several occasions. She was still a good teacher.

My favorite teachers were (tie):

  • My 11th grade English teacher, who was an older man, an awkward, weird nerdy guy with chalkdust in his hair and dandruff on his shoulders, who was known to be the toughest teacher in school. Nobody wanted to be in his class, and almost everybody disliked him. I, on the other hand, loved him. He was a damn tough teacher, but he was also fair. And he loved science fiction and fantasy books. My friend and I both used to hang out in his classroom during lunch, taking about nerdy stuff. I’m glad I made the effort to get to know him. He gave me a whole stack of old sci-fi and fantasy books right before I graduated.

  • My twelfth-grade AP English teacher, who was the antithesis of the 11th grade one: young, hot in an English-teacher way, irreverent, and boundary-pushing. The only thing he had in common with the 11th grade teacher is that he may have taken over the “toughest teacher” mantle from him. He claimed he never gave a 9 out of 9 to any student - I was the first to earn one. I still have the essay (it was on the play “Equus”). He intimidated me a little, but he was a fantastic teacher.
    Least favorite teacher: 7th grade PE. He was a little tin-pot asshole who had no sympathy for the kids who sucked at PE. He made no effort to make it fun for us. The funny thing was, he was an OK drafting teacher, but he sucked hard at teaching PE.

I had lots of great once, and lots of terrible ones.

The best of the best was probably my sixth grade teacher. He was infamously intimidating and devised punishments almost out of Roald Dahl. Once he got sick of my desk being so messy, so he picked it up and dumped it outside and wouldn’t let me return to class until I’d organized it. Once another student (call him Tim) started a petition “Who Doesn’t Like [another classmate]?” When the teacher found it, he declared that since Tim thought he was above everyone else, he could sit there: he placed Tim’s desk and chair atop a table and made him sit there the rest of the day. The rest of us bowed down to Tim as we passed his desk all day long, to his humiliation.

But man, could that dude teach. He was tough as hell, but he knew how to challenge you, to bring out your best.

As for the worst? Probably my algebra II teacher wins that one. She tought using the overhead projector, drawing graphs and writing formulas and muttering to herself in a nearly inaudible monotone. She stood directly in front of the projector, so that the projection was across her chest. She gave us tests that asked us to regurgitate formulas–formulas she’d written on posters around the room, and told us not to look at the posters during the test.

It was completely impossible to learn anything from her, and as a survival mechanism practically everyone in the class started cheating on tests–we’d each figure one thing out on our own and then trade answers during the test. She figured out people were cheating, so she started making like seven copies of each test to cut down on cheating; people responded by getting up during the test, walking over to a friend’s desk, and trading test papers with them so each person could solve the problem they knew how to solve. Such was her obliviousness that she never caught anyone.

It was appalling.

Hands down my best and favorite teacher was Mr. Bradbury, in sixth grade. This was 1966-67 and it was his first year teaching.

He was young and enthusiastic, and had the ability to make classes fun and interesting while getting us to learn. I don’t even remember anyone acting up in class.

Mr. Bradbury liked science fiction and fantasty, and each day read us a chapter of The Hobbit. I thought I wouldn’t like it but soon enough I was wanting to get my hands on the book so I could see faster what was coming. This year was also the year Star Trek debuted on television. And I remember that because when Mr. Bradbury wanted us to practise writing by doing a short story, one kid cribbed his plot from the show.

The summer after school ended he got married and had invited the class to the wedding. It was about fifty miles away, but eight of us(all girls) made the trip. First wedding I was invited to in my own right, not as part of a family. I bought a table set of a sugar bowl/creamer/ and butter dish that cost all of seven dollars. Mom coached me on wedding ettiquette, and I wore stockings for the first time, and felt so grown up.

Because of Mr. Bradbury’s kindling an interest in me of sci-fi and fantasy I read tons of books, and made many friends, that I might not have. I’ve gone on trips and learned things I might not have, without my teacher.

Mr. Bradbury retired as a school principal in another grade school and I attended the reception, the first time I’d seen him since the wedding. I told him how much he meant to me, and wrote a letter in the paper about it.

My favorite teacher was Mrs. Riordan, who I was lucky to have for 4th and 5th grades. She was tough, but fair, and didn’t care if you didn’t participate as long as you were reading.

Worst teacher was kindergarten teacher Mrs. Wahl, who hated my brothers and therefore hated me. She made me stand in the corner during recess. What did my 5 year old self do that was so bad??? I have no idea. Eight grade teacher Miss Ward was also a piece of work who hated me because of my brothers (see a pattern?). She wouldn’t let me sing in the 8th grade chorus and I had to go to the library with the other trouble makers, who were all boys. My mom, who usually defended teachers over her children, marched over to school about that one.