While good teachers certainly outweigh the bad across the globe, these stories of incompetent educators should remind you why they are the ones who are in need of some schooling.
If All Else Fails, Hire A Tutor Instead
“My math professor in college. The class could barely understand what he was saying. He never came close to teaching what was on our tests. Mid way through the semester he took two weeks off. The sub we were given was 1000 times better than our professor. We dreaded having our regular teacher back.
I ended up hiring a math major as my tutor who took the crappy professor’s course. So he could teach me what I should have been learning. I was one of the only people to pass that class. That was also his last semester teaching at our college” Source
You Will Tested Like My Graduate Students
“I had an Econ professor from Korea who had this strange, final-dying-breath type of accent that only a handful of students seated at the front of the class could decipher.
Also: On a midterm, he accidentally gave us the test for one of his graduate-level courses and told us to just do our best instead of going back to his office to retrieve our actual tests” Source
A Teacher Who Delved Into Voyeurism
“After leaving school I read an article in a newspaper the following year saying a teacher of mine had been arrested and sacked. Turns out he had installed a tiny camera in the girls toilets and got found out. Grim son of a gun.” Source
The Teacher Who Wanted To Be The Alpha Male
“My 8th grade chemistry teacher: He was relatively young, kind of a loser, and totally creepy. He was more interested in the 14-year-old girls in class than teaching and seemed to get a kick out of publicly making fun of us guys to try to impress the girls.” Source
Today’s Lesson: How To Commit Subtle Racism
“Had a few, but the worst was my ninth grade English teacher who decided she’d separate the class based on race. White kids sat in one area, black kids in another, Asians in another, Hispanic kids in another, you get the point. We were expected to work on group projects only with our race members, and she’d berate the white and Asian kids the most. The few of us white kids who sat in seats bordering where the black kids were sitting noticed we were getting graded differently (lower grades) for the same answers on quizzes. Apparently eventually comparisons to the Asian kids and Hispanic kids turned out that different racial groups were getting graded differently for making the same points in essays.
A diverse group of us went and reported it to the office. Turns out they had several complaints from other class periods of the same thing happening. Not sure actually these days if they ever did anything about it, but I think I heard she was fired. This was 2001 by the way, not that long ago” Source
Verbal Abuse And Bullying
“I have to list two. My Year 2 teacher who wouldn’t believe that I’d hurt my arm at recess and was trying to get out work. I was a reserved and obedient child (thanks to heavy-handed parenting) who had never tried to skive off. Returning to school the next day with a cast on my broken arm was also treated with the same lack of concern. And then there was my Year 5 teacher who took an intense dislike to me (for reasons I have never discovered), and would punish me for the most minor of infractions (eg: handwriting not perfect), and would keep me back at recess/lunch to verbally abuse me. Added to this was the knowledge that my mum would never do anything to intervene, she would’ve blamed me for it. So I got to endure 12 months of bullying from an adult ( I was 10). On the plus side, he later developed bowel cancer and really lingered through it.” Source
It’s All About the FACTS
“My 6th grade science teacher gave me a D and said “write more” on my science journal. I am a scientist now by trade. Never have I ever encountered anyone who said I needed more adjectives and had to “write more.” Science is about the facts, nothing else. No one cares how you feel about sh-t or how it reminded you of your summer at the grand canyon.” Source
The Language Barrier Deepens
“The French teacher for the highest-level class offered in school doesn’t feel the need to speak French with her students, even though there’s an end-of-year exam with large spontaneous speaking components. She then wonders why everyone’s skills are worsening.” Source
We’re All On Drugs
“Grade 2 Ms. Eckstrand.
She was like a 80 year old lady that hated children. So become a teacher right?
Anyways, this is back in the early 90’s when Ritalin first came out, and she would have parent teacher conferences and tell the parents to get their kids on Ritalin.
My parents were a few of the only ones that didn’t follow through with her recommendations. Thanks Mom!!!
Fast forward six months and she was a classroom full of drugged out kids. Fun times were had by none” Source
There Are Teachers Who Are Just Bad, Then There Are One’s Who Do Unspeakable Acts
“Worst at teaching? 11th grade chemistry teacher. He was a research chemist and his company had gone under. Dude had never taught and had no idea how. He’d face the board and mumble his lessons. The few of us that passed did it by teaching ourselves from the book. He was fired after his first year. I hope he’s doing well, just not in a job where he needs to interact?”
Worst person that was a teacher? 4th grade math teacher. He murdered his mother for her house. He’s in jail” Source
How Do You Like Them Apples?
“My second grade teacher. I was only 8 but she has always stuck with me as the worst teacher. Here is a sample:
I was never good at the math she was teaching. One day I learned that I could get help if I asked. After asking for help 3 times I learned that the teacher would yell at me and scold me for asking questions. She told my mother I was bad at math.
She constantly talked to the class about how important personal hygiene was. This was directed at me. She would ask my mother constantly if my clothes were clean.
I was accused of stealing someone’s cookie in class. A girl blames me and she refused to believe me. Then when I was scheduled to serve detention I was given no directions and missed the detention earning me more detentions. I ended up missing lunch recess for at least an entire week.
I have always wanted to look her up and push my masters in statistics in her face” Source
Harassment And A Nonexistent Educator
“I had a math teacher who put a giant X on my page and told me to give up learning math. He was a sh-t teacher who didn’t even teach. He was a terrible teacher who made a student write down exercises and notes on the board. All he did was sit and mark. He was fired a few years later. It sucks how they couldn’t fire him earlier even after numerous complaints because they couldn’t find a substitute.
Another bad teacher I had was a language teacher. The idiot made fun of me and my essay because for an exam I’d written the words I didn’t know in English. I was trying my best and you make fun of me for it? It wasn’t even in the fun, joking way because she did it on the day I was absent. All my classmates were telling me about it. F–king hell” Source
Algebra Class Becomes A Shaming Experiment
“My 8th grade algebra teacher used to pick on me for not understanding algebra and try to get the other students to join in. I’d try really hard, it just never made any sense to me (still doesn’t). Anyway, she would purposely pass out my tests and quizzes last to show the class how I failed then sarcastically say “better luck next time.” Then laugh at me. I still hate algebra.” Source
All Homework And No Play
“I worked all during college, sometimes with long hours, and most of my professors were fairly accommodating about this. This one day I got called in for a 6 hour shift after a coworker quit and I asked one of my professors through an email if I could have a small extension on a minor assignment because of that. He said yes and I thought it was the end of it and then the next class I had with him he called me out in front of the class telling them how I shouldn’t expect more time and how I have to put his class before work. I got furious and told him that tuition was too damned high for him to make that argument, for the rest of the semester he didn’t mention it again, instead just opting for passive aggressive sh-t.” Source
A Teacher Who Killed Your Interest In A Passion
“My old History teacher. I really enjoyed History, I found it fascinating how people lived back then, during the war, during roman times etc. Then we got a new teacher, she was entirely bored of History and couldn’t care less about the class. Every lesson consisted of us filling in a question sheet about dates of events, she never tried to make it interesting, just go over the boring facts. I wanted to study History for my GSCE’s, but because she made History seem so boring I decided against it” Source
Who Are You Again?
“Once, when I was in high school, I was a TA for an English professor. The class was a CE course (meaning you get college credit even though you are in high school). I TA’d for that class because my own English 1010 class was during my last period which I occasionally missed for sports. I used the TA hour to make up absences as required.
I was a great TA. I literally graded 80% of all of her students assignments. I made her job waaaaay easier. One day, an administrator pokes his head in and asks her if she forgot to submit a grade for a student on her list, pointing to a name on a paper he had. She said she had never heard of that student and had never seen them in class.
Turns out that student was me. I got an F (academic) and a U (citizenship, behavior based I guess). Luckily I was actually a fantastic student. I was up for Valedictorian and had been interviewed by an administrator shortly before. He knew me, saw my grade, assumed something strange had happened.
He got me out of class and took me to her to ask if she had ever seen me. She said yea, he’s my TA, he’s great! The admin then asked her why she gave me and F.
I guess she thought my name was something else. She didn’t even give me an A for that. She gave me a P (pass), because you aren’t really graded as a TA I guess. At the college level, P converts to a C on transcripts. Since this TA course counted towards my CE course, my overall grade in the course was a B (average between A and C).
Fast forward 4 years. Guess who missed out on Summa Cum Laude honors in engineering by .03 GPA?” Source
Not Even Canada Is Safe From Bad Teachers
“10th grade English teacher. I went to a public school in Canada.
For the third time that year, we were being forced to watch Remember the Titans. I don’t know why all teachers everywhere had a hard on for that movie, but I hate it. Racism is bad. Segregation is bad. But I had just finished Canadian and American history, and both classes made me sit through the movie. I’d also seen it twice the year before. I get it.
I asked to go to the bathroom. Took a short walk. Was out of class maybe 15 minutes. On my way back in the teacher stops me. Asks me where I went. I replied bathroom. She said something like “you’ll want to be careful, things like this can affect your grades”. I wasn’t too worried about it, because I was a straight A student and got 80s without trying. But suddenly my papers and assignments go missing. The ones that are marked start getting really bad grades. Late marks when I handed things in on time. Only that class.
I ended up failing that class. I had to do summer school, and it pitted my guidance counselor against me, which forced me into the less academic stream, couldn’t get into classes I wanted, etc.
The next year, she failed a friend of mine in creative writing because she didn’t like the content of the story” Source
Ms. Foul-er
“For me it was Miss Fowler. She was as her name describes: foul. I was not the wealthiest nor the healthiest of young children but I tried so hard to do well. She took over half way through one year and for some reason had it out for me, I never found out why. The one instance that stands out was the middle of winter, my whole body was so cold and I tried to warm up my gums with my tongue; this was interpreted as me sticking my tongue out at someone – inside my mouth? I got time out and was told “you know what to do” I had no idea what to do, I got in trouble for writing lines, she told me to write, how was I to know what this crazy lady wanted. I hope she walked on Legos with bare feet” Source
P.E. Class Becomes A Traumatizing Experience
“I had a lot of bad teachers, but the award goes to, hands down, the gym teacher I had on the school I attended from 1st to 5th grade. That jerk had favorites in each class, treated them well and gave them good grades, sometimes not even subjecting them to the usual tests. Those of us who were considered worst at P.E., he’d treat harshly and nothing good could come out of us. So far, not that bad, right? However, where he elevated himself to the top rank of awfulness was that he’d determine who was the worst in the class and always refer to him (never a her, AFAIK) with an insult instead of name or surname. For those five years, a kid (let’s call him Adam) got to be the one who always got the brunt of his meanness (and remember, we’re talking about kids 6 to 11 years old). In 4th grade, Adam had to skip P.E. for a month over a broken arm, so this jerk of a “teacher” determined the second-worse guy in our class would be Adam’s replacement for a month, so he began referring to me with the same insult he had used all this time on Adam. Most bad teachers, I’ve forgiven, but if I ever have to see him again, I’ll come down on him like a sack of bricks. For me and all the other kids who he traumatized for no good reason” Source
Here’s Hoping She Still Doesn’t Work There, Too
“One was an art teacher in high school. Old hippy lady who seriously only looked at her job as glorified babysitting. The first project was making newspaper baskets. I signed up for the class a few weeks late and she didn’t both showing me how to make a newspaper basket. I tried, but it failed miserably. I got maybe like a quarter a way through before we suddenly stopped making newspaper baskets and started another project. Teacher was gonna fail me because I didn’t finish the basket. Hell, my mom emailed her saying if I failed the class I would lose all my scholarship money for college (a lie, and not my idea but I was just a shy kid). Next day in class, teacher could not have faked how nonexistent of a sh-t she gave if I lost that money. But she had me write a paper on some artist I was supposed to present to class. Never did, and passed the class.
Second worst was in college. In college you become a lot more intolerant of professors who can’t teach. One such individual for a major-required class could not teach for the life of her. I mean seriously just read directly off power points and notes, no engagement, never let us ask questions, nothing. She fed us the same cut-and-dry assignments week after week. The entire class complained about her to the Dean and department head. Don’t know if she still works there” Source