Your Worst Substitute Teachers?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Grade 8 Science:

Our science teacher has been away for the last couple of days. So far everything has been normal, all the substitutes have been fine. Most of them kept us from slacking off, which is a pretty good accomplishment for a substitute.

In walks today’s substitute. The guy looks rather grungy, unshaven and wearing a polyester shirt and brown pants. He wore a look of dazed amazement for everything. He was a real sight. He tells us to get to work, pointing at the assignment on the board.

I go up to him to ask him a question. I didn’t understand part of a question, and neither did most of the people around me. He looks up from his paper he was reading, apparently very annoyed that I had disturbed him.

“Excuse me sir, I didn’t quite catch your name, what was it?” I said. Well, nobody knew his name. Apparently he never told us.

He said, matter-of-factly.

I’m taken aback a little.

"All right, but what does…” asking whatever question I had.

He told me.

Dejected, I head back to my seat. Several people had left already, just because they thought they could, and indeed, the teacher didn’t really care about anything going on in the class except not being disturbed.

He pretty much stayed the same way until the class was done, just sitting and reading. By that time everyone was raising hell, yelling and screaming and throwing everything that wasn’t held down. Everybody who asked him for his name or help was rejected. He was even doing it to the TA.

Someone shot a spitball at him. It landed in his hair. He didn’t even look up from his paper, despite everybody, including the TA, laughing. It was there when we left, and it was still up there when I went in after school to get help!

Please share your Worst Substitute Teachers.

2

6th grade social studies. Woman probably had dentures or other dental work: at any rate, whenever she made an “s” sound, it reverberated just like a whistle, and at equal or higher volume than normal conversation. Thankfully she never used the term “social studies” :slight_smile:

3

I had one in English in high school, Mr. Ostling. (How do I remember such things???) Anyway, he had the bad habit of saying “uh” very frequently. Since he was there for a week, a few of us brought calculators with us and just hit “plus one” every time he said it to see how many times he was doing it within the hour. One day we clocked him at 600 “uhs.”

We were awful.

But then, so was his repetition.

4

Years ago, in a high school English class, we had a sub on the day we were supposed to have a spelling test. The sub (the school’s swim coach) had no idea what these words were and had trouble pronouncing several. One of the words was ‘maniacal’ and he mis-read it as ‘manacle’ which threw off some people and a small chorus of “huh?” murmurred towards the swim coach. He stammers and reads “mana… m - a - n - i…”

Evidently, HE was the one needing the test.

5

7th grade (I think it was for social studies):

An odd man, seemed clueless as to the teenage interpretation of what he was saying. Actually, it was more like he just didn’t comprehend the meanings of many words.

Some girls were knitting quilts for their knitting club. He sees them and says, “Oh, look, it seems we have some hookers here.”

He then went on to talk about how, when he was a young man in Cuba, everyone wanted to be like John Travolta but he didn’t give in to the hype.

Then there was the shop substitute who looked, sounded and talked exactly like Cotton from King of the Hill. I swear Mike Judge must have been thinking of him when he created that character.

This guy decided to talk about the wonders of WD-40 for the whole period. He even wore a tag on his shirt pocket that said:

I saw him several times over the course of 3 years and he always had that tag on.

6

Grade… 11 or 12.

He wasn’t a bad guy, but his name was Mr. Man.

That was two-and-a-half strikes right from the beginning.

7

Not so much a bad sub, but one that was definately lacking knowledge in the subject.

It was an AP Calculus class and we were about two months away from the AP exam. The teacher had to miss a month of class because of medical reasons. The sub had no idea how to teach algebra, much less AP calc. One of the guys in the class had to take over and teach it to us.

I think majority of the class didn’t pass the exam.

8

Orchestra. High School. Nothing really wrong with him, except that he made the really, really unfortunate mistake of stopping us mid-song and saying:

“Stop, stop. Sorry everyone, I got a beat off.”

That spread through the HS like wildfire.

9

I knew this sub who used to show up to work all scruffy wearing the same clothes from the night before (sometimes having not been to bed yet), or just wearing sweats and sandals. Once he made the entire high school ballet class dress-out, even though their only assignment was to watch a movie. There was no need for them to put on leotards…

Oh wait… that was ME. Damn I miss subbing! Too bad it didn’t pay well.

10

I had a substitute once that I swear looked and acted just like Kramer. Really.

And another one who spent half my class playing the digeridoo. Good thing I like the digeridoo.

11

I got into a minor scuffle with a fifth grade classmate, no punches thrown, a shove or two and we hadn’t even gotten up from our seats. The sub grabbed me hard at the back of the neck and started dragging me across the room so I said “Get the hell off of me”. Granted, children shouldn’t be allowed to swear at teachers without consequences, but she slapped me across the face. Had this happened today, I guess my parents would have sued.

12

I worked as a long term sub while in grad school and thinking about a teaching career. I never gave my name out after the second time I subbed. I have an unusual last name and one of the kids used it to find out my home phone number and address. It took three months of constant pleas and a police complaint to get his parents to stop him and his bratty friends from harassing me.

Kids are often very cruel to subs.

13

Feh. Amateurs.

When I was a high school freshman, we all had to take a semester of sex ed. Our teacher, a member of the home ec department, was truly wonderful. We could talk about anything and she’d never bat an eye. That made her substitute seem just that much worse.

Mrs. Uhart (she wrote her name as U and a heart, in case we couldn’t read) would not permit us to use the word “sex” in our sex ed class. She said it was obscene. Being fourteen, most of the euphemisms we knew actually were obscene, so we tried going for “making love.” No dice. "That’s not love, it’s lust. " We wound up going with the awkward “making lust.” And you could just forget discussing anal or oral lust when Mrs. Uhart was there. I do believe the woman would have drug us to the office to have our mouths washed out with soap. Of course, in her classroom it was a horrible offense to use the word “penis” as that was also obscene. She preferred “tallywhacker.”

It’s really sad when the fourteen year old kids are able to discuss sex in a more mature manner than the sex ed substitute teacher.

14

When I was in 10th grade, we had the most awful lady sub in our science class. Now, our regular science teacher was one of those teachers who could be sweet and tough at the same time, and was a firm believer in teaching to all the learning groups - for example, when we were working on continental plates, she wrote on the boards the different kinds of faults, had us say them, and then had us show them with our hands. We had big thick Biology books checked out from the library as part of the class, but didn’t ever use them.

So this sub comes in, and right away I know there’s going to be trouble. I had her as a tutor for a day or two, and that’s all the time I needed to see that her teaching styles were totally incompatible with my learning styles. Plus, she kept invading my space!

Well, she comes in, and right away she tells us to get out or books. Most people didn’t have their books, because we don’t have lockers and those things were too damn heavy to carry around. So what does she do? She starts taking names of people who don’t have their book, all the while telling us that she hopes that we won’t be as bad as the class last period. She won’t let us go to the library for our own books, but makes two people go for the whole class. She won’t let anyone talk to anyone else, and if they do, it’s automatic detention. Then, we get to read out of the book for the whole class period. Not even read out loud, but just sit and read. And I swear, she totally singled me out because she knew my name already. I never saw her around the school after that day - I think so many people complained, that she wasn’t asked back.

15

When I was in 10th grade, we had the most awful lady sub in our science class. Now, our regular science teacher was one of those teachers who could be sweet and tough at the same time, and was a firm believer in teaching to all the learning groups - for example, when we were working on continental plates, she wrote on the boards the different kinds of faults, had us say them, and then had us show them with our hands. We had big thick Biology books checked out from the library as part of the class, but didn’t ever use them.

So this sub comes in, and right away I know there’s going to be trouble. I had her as a tutor for a day or two, and that’s all the time I needed to see that her teaching styles were totally incompatible with my learning styles. Plus, she kept invading my space!

Well, she comes in, and right away she tells us to get out or books. Most people didn’t have their books, because we don’t have lockers and those things were too damn heavy to carry around. So what does she do? She starts taking names of people who don’t have their book, all the while telling us that she hopes that we won’t be as bad as the class last period. She won’t let us go to the library for our own books, but makes two people go for the whole class. She won’t let anyone talk to anyone else, and if they do, it’s automatic detention. Then, we get to read out of the book for the whole class period. Not even read out loud, but just sit and read. And I swear, she totally singled me out because she knew my name already. I never saw her around the school after that day - I think so many people complained, that she wasn’t asked back.

16

Aww, shit. Sorry 'bout that.

17

5th grade:

School cafeteria “pizza” is notorious for being awful, and the “pizza” at my elementary school was no exception. One day we had a sub and it happened to be pizza day, and the pizza this day was topped with chunks of vegetables. That’s right, I’m talking about cubes of diced green stuff - Celery? Kiwi? Cucumber? Something that didn’t belong on pizza, that’s for sure.

Anyway, the sub saw me not eating that lovely specimen of government surplus food, and demanded that I eat it. I said no and she sent me off to the corner.

7th grade:

A math substitute, who apparently didn’t have any math to teach us, decided instead to teach us pronunciation. She was sick of hearing 20 pronounced “twenny” or “twunty”, so instead of learning math, we spent the hour clearly enunciating “twenty” and other exciting numbers.

18

In 11th grade, Science Fiction class (was my high school cool or what?) we had a sub that hadn’t been in a classroom in over 20 years.

We were just supposed to read the whole hour. Some of the kids started talking, as kids often do and she started getting upset. Now admittedly, we should have shut up, but we didn’t. She got madder.

She eventually screamed, “I’m gonna call the principal!”

We returned with a chorus of “oooooooooo”.

The vice=principal had to finish the class while she sat in the teacher’s lounge shaking.

Then we had the guy for U.S. History who spent the whole hour noting the horrible things the U.S. Government had done over the last 200 years.

19

In 8th grade P.E. class we had a substitute teacher who had a tendency to show just a little too much interest in what stages of dress we were in while in the boys’ locker room by sneaking glances down each row and watching us go in and out of the shower. :eek:

In elementary school we had a substitute named Mrs. Thompson. She didn’t have any specific faults or eccentricities, she was just plain all-out BITCH! Absolutely everybody hated her. She yelled at everyone for every slight indiscretion, even the good students (such as myself :smiley: ) who never got in trouble. She spent more time disciplining the class than teaching any lessons. Had I known which days she’d be there I’d have faked being sick. These days were sheer hell.

I also learned that having a substitute teacher in band class meant that you wouldn’t be playing any music that day. Instead you’d get to bring materials from other classes and study. Hoo-frickin’-ray.

20

I was once threatened with detention by a sub because I contradicted her in saying that bats weren’t birds. We must’ve argued for ten minutes, she kept saying over and over again that mammals only lived on land, and therefore bats couldn’t be mammals and were birds. I didn’t want to know where she would’ve went if I’d mentioned whales or dolphins.