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Rotten Teachers

post #1 of 24
10/11/06 at 3:06am
Thread Starter 
The school shootings thread reminded me of some of the lousy teachers I've had to endure over the years. If I had a gun, they would have eaten plenty of ammo.

I've had some real pieces of work. Some real losers who apparently hated themselves and everything about their life so much they would take it out on their students with mind games, idiotic rules, just an overall shitty attitude.

My 7th grade shop teacher comes to mind. Richard Forcum, A real asshole. This guy must have been in the military because his moves were very similar. Lots of yelling, name-calling, mocking, intimidation, typical alpha-male bullshit.

This guy made Gny. Sgt. Hartman seem loveable. I remember very little teaching going on, mostly him telling us what a pack of losers we were and that the table saw would tear our arms off if we used it.
He loved to humilate people in front of the class. The slightest perceived fuck up, he would pounce on it and make you wish you were dead. Trivial dumb shit that wasted his time, yet he felt compelled to reduce the kid to an insecure mess.
I recall his most infamous incident of getting into this kids face. About an inch away, he screamed at the top of his lungs. It was loud. Being in the basement probably gave him some perverse satisfaction that he could get away with shit like this.
The worst part was that kid sat there and took his abuse. It was disgusting. I couldn't believe a teacher would do that to a kid and that the kid didn't get up and leave the room.
I was lucky enough to escape his antics, but his presence was so overpowering, I couldn't help but wish this prick dead. Of course with every situation like this, there's always a Dwight in the group who thinks the teacher is the best thing going. Those guys were more annoying than the dick teacher as they laughed and indulged his socipathic tendencies.
As fate would have it, I got stuck with the cock for my 9th grade shop class. Not as bad as the two years before, but he was still a miserable skin tube that needed to die.

Also, in my 7th grade, right after shop was another hour in hell with math teacher Don Swanson. This guy was over 6'5 tall, humped back and smelled like anchovy's cunt. He looked like a fat version of Monty Burns.
Often described as "the walking dick with ears", Mr. Swanson loved to crack the yard stick on his desk to make us all pay attention. Dumb as a post, I doubt he knew any of the material anymore, if at all. His moment of infamy came when he made me stay after class for closing my book five minutes too early. The guy wasn't not the menace Forcum was, he was just incompetent and smelled worse.
As bad as he was, some of the kids in that class made it look like the next generation of Jabba's henchmen. They gave off the kind of creepy feeling that would make Carny folks feel uneasy. How I ever got out of there without throwing some punches I'll never know.

High School was relatively jerk-off free. There was one english teacher, Mrs. Patchins, who had pop bottle glasses and looked like a Mole wearing a Prince wig.

Anyone else have some lousy teacher stories?
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post #2 of 24
10/11/06 at 3:18am
Those were lousy enough for me, trenchcoat.
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post #3 of 24
10/11/06 at 9:18am
When I was at the Kubert School, we had this one teacher whose art background I found highly questionable. She gave us the assignment to redesign a corporate logo to better emphasize the image that corporation was selling. Since my dad worked for Johnson & Johnson at the time, I chose them. I took it a step further by meeting with my dad's boss, J&J's NJ Marketing dept., some of the employees, etc. showing them all a half dozen logo ideas and eagerly accepting and working with their feedback. As a result, the finished logo easily met the project requirements, and got the J&J blessing (I later sold it to them!). So, when I bring the logo into class, along with the feedback I received from J&J, my teacher's comment was she hated it because it looked, and I quote, "too happy".

I was stunned. Then I got pissed when one of my housemates turned in a literally 5 minutes before class hack job for a hair metal band. She did everything but dry hump the guy in front of the class. Whenever anyone elses logo came up, and it looked like they actually did some legwork and research (y'know the stuff you should do when you're designing a logo that will be seen by millions), she gave it the most asinine, unconstructive and unprofessional criticism. The fuck kind of a criticism is "too happy"? Like if you're taking a product from a well established company, with a logo that's a symbol of quality, that's going to heal your wounds and make you feel better you should be pissed off about it?

I did get my payback though when I flashed my check and "thank you" letter from J&J corporate in her face a couple of weeks later. In class.
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post #4 of 24
10/11/06 at 10:45am
I had just a few issues with teachers in high school.

One fellow, the head of the english department, was the sort of cat who was really high on the fact that he was a high school english teacher. He considered himself a scholar of all things Shakespeare. The truth was he knew very little about performance or the actual dramatic history of the plays. This is the problem with Shakespeare and other plays being taught by English teachers who don't understand that it really is another medium.

Sophomore year I had to drop out of performing in his school Shakespeare Festival. I played sports and was an actor in mainstage school plays. I had a pretty packed schedule. He wouldn't let me hear the end of it. He harrassed me about it for the rest of the year. Cut to the year after and I'm stuck with him for Honors English. It was hellish. He gave me the usual constant grief about my writing style, mumbling in class (when in reality I would answer the questions he asked directly he was just too deaf to hear what I said) etc and so forth. My work was damn good though so he could never actually give me below an A-/B+.

He would constantly send me to the Vice-Principal. The Vice-Principal was a genuinely good educator who understood what was actually going on. He would cancel any demerits and generally defuse the situation for me.

This type of stuff carried on into AP English with a different teacher. The first thing she ever said to me was, "Ah, Mr. Duncan warned me about you. None of that this year." Of course I made an enemy of her by writing an angry criticism of the entire body of Emily Dickinson's work. It turned out she had named her daughter after the tortured Ms. Dickinson. This was the first essay of the year and it pretty much set the tone. Pretty much anything I wrote would get a nasty note. The woman even yelled at me because I told her "Shakespeare In Love" was a terrible Best Picture winner. (This was spring 99 and such things were hot topics)

Once I got to college I never had a problem in English classes. My writing style was constantly complimented and I never received lower than an A on any paper. I'm pretty happy with that considering I did the college thing for five years and was an english minor.

I guess the moral of the story is that the english department at my relatively expensive private high school was terrible. It really didn't matter in the end. I got through college getting paid to edit papers and I get paid now to write. They still teach english...poorly.
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post #5 of 24
10/11/06 at 12:43pm
I had a pre-cal teacher in my Jr. year of high school who spent an entire class period telling us about this time that her and her BF were at a drive-in movie theater watching a movie. Half way through the movie, a UFO started flying over them. They decided to follow it and did so for a few hours. After following it for awhile, it led them to this old corn field. While driving around the corn field, it suddenly noticed them and proceeded to shoot fire and chase after them down the road. It did so for a few miles before giving up and flying away. I would've thought she was joking but she said it with such a straight face that it wasn't funny so much as it was just sad. She also believed that God speaks to her on many occasions. And not in the "that sunset is so beautiful" kind of way, but the back and forth conversation you see in the children's videos kind of way. She never got any of the example problems right and never bothered to correct her mistakes. Worst teacher I ever had.
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post #6 of 24
10/11/06 at 12:49pm
Oh Christ I have far too many to bring up. I'll put some highlights here...

At my first high school I was in the 'gifted class', which was bullshit 'cause they taught you as if you excelled in virtually every thing put your way, which was bullshit. All the math classes in high school were taught to us as if we were all in the upper echelons of math skills in the class, which is insane 'cause there were tons of kids who did math for fun on their own time and were 1000x better than any of us. In grade 10 it was the absolute worst when I had this teacher named Ms. Werhun.

Ms. Werhun was a vile overweight woman who lived on a farm and you could tell that she just liked to live out her frustrations with her own shitty life on any student she thought was trouble. Now, I'll admit I was a slacker and a trouble-maker back in high school, but the fact remained that she only provided an adversarial counter-point in addition to responding like a cunt for any requests for help with math or attempts to improve my situation at school by not acting up.

While it's within her reason to get pissed if we goof around, it's not for her to single anyone out who doesn't get the math and act like a bitch whenever anybody asks for more explanation. This just led me and the rest of my ilk to give up on the class, which led to many of the wonderful exchanges where she'd give us back a test and go "Why didn't you do better on this?" and I'd go "I didn't get it." and she'd say "Why didn't you come to me after class?" and every time inside my head I'd be screaming "BECAUSE YOU SHOULD BE DOING YOUR FUCKING JOB AND TEACHING US ALL DURING THE TIME ALLOTTED TO US IN CLASS! YOU'RE ALSO SUPPOSED TO SINGLE OUT ANYBODY WHO ASKS FOR MORE CLARIFICATION AND ACT LIKE THEY'RE A BURDEN TO YOU AND THE REST OF THE CLASS!"

She was really petty too. Once the class was distributed their tests and I was working on mine when I came upon a question of a sort we'd never done before. I went up and asked her what to do 'cause we'd never done this questions before and without even really looking at the test, she goes "That's because that's the wrong test." and I said "What?" and she said "Didn't you check what test you were writing?" and I said "No, because I trusted you would do you job right and give me the right test. How am I supposed to know what is the right test?" and she told me I should have looked at the course code to notice that, as if it's common practice for teachers to fuck up and give the wrong test and checking for such things should happen all the time. Suspiciously, *I* was the only one given the wrong test. How is that fucking possible? How is it that *I* happen to be the only person to get the wrong test in the whole class? That's far too coincidental to be a mistake.
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post #7 of 24
10/11/06 at 12:54pm
Get over it.
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post #8 of 24
10/11/06 at 3:56pm
I once had a junior high art teacher with a glas eye that was always pointed in the seperate direction. I didn't find this funny or scary, but occasionally, she'd be looking in the opposite direction when she'd say my name and exclaim, "You're staying with me during recess." I got in trouble about five times by her claiming she saw me do something.

Naturally, whenever I asked what exactly I did, she responded with the old standby, "Oh, you KNOW what YOU did!"
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post #9 of 24
10/11/06 at 3:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by General Zod
If I had a gun, they would have eaten plenty of ammo.
I'm just gonna step away slowly now.
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post #10 of 24
10/11/06 at 4:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by fabfunk

Naturally, whenever I asked what exactly I did, she responded with the old standby, "Oh, you KNOW what YOU did!"
Some things never change.
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post #11 of 24
10/11/06 at 5:39pm
There's an intensely upsetting gag about fabby and a woman with a glass eye buried in this somewhere, but my mind won't settle on it.
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post #12 of 24
10/12/06 at 1:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Timothy225
When I was at the Kubert School, we had this one teacher whose art background I found highly questionable.
Judy M??? Loved collages? Kept reminding the class her relative was married to Howard Stern or some nonsense? I hated that flaky bitch. I graduated in '98. I gotta funny Irwin H story in the Talking Shit thread. Nice to see a fellow X-Kubie here on CHUD.

I had a Gym/Health teacher by the name of Mr. Smith in HS (early 90's). A definite throwback to the 50's. He was older (fit for his age). Had a crew-cut, birth-control glasses, and shorts that were so short, there was a guaranteed scrotum sighting in every class. It's so stereotype, but so true all the same.
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post #13 of 24
10/13/06 at 12:48am
Thread Starter 
birth-control glasses? This is great, what exactly do they look like?
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post #14 of 24
10/13/06 at 12:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by General Zod
birth-control glasses? This is great, what exactly do they look like?
I wear a pair of "Buddy Holly's" when my contacts are bothering me, but these are guaranteed to keep you from getting laid:

EDIT: And no, this isn't me.
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post #15 of 24
10/15/06 at 7:52am
Darkmite - that was her! The collages and Howard Stern reference brought it all back. Christ, I was just out of college, had been in Honors art courses, student-taught, had shows, helped run an on campus gallery, and she was treating me like I was a noob from junior high.

She also wanted us to visit NYC and take in the smaller galleries, and give our opinions - during one of the WORST times ever (late 80's). The scene was full of pretentious asses, the shows were crap and the artwork was really bad impressionism that every artist copied from one another. I wound up hitting a half dozen galleries, hating each one, then hitting the museums to cleanse myself. My report got an A, but she asked me not to be so analytical and caustic next time. Hey, lady, you asked my opinion and I gave it to you.

I bailed out of the class and school so after - just when the industry started to crash. I know of only 2 students that made it into the field from my class.
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post #16 of 24
10/15/06 at 12:02pm
How about some good teacher stories?
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post #17 of 24
10/15/06 at 12:08pm
I had an English professor in my first year of college who yelled at me in front of the class when I was 5 minutes late one day and I went to explain why.

"Good morning, sorry I'm late. I...."

"SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN!"

The weirdest thing about all this is that she was completely approachable and friendly to me outside of class.

Her name was Dr. Richards, but after that incident, she became ingrained in my memory as Dr. Bitchards.
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post #18 of 24
10/15/06 at 12:14pm
One thing - people who act like a royal fuck-up in high school and then act surprised when the shit hits the fan, or the teachers write you off - what do people expect?

And the fact that this thread started by referencing the recent slate of school shootings and then led into a diatribe on teachers - too much.
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post #19 of 24
10/15/06 at 3:30pm
Best teachers I ever had where in college (Monmouth College/University). My art teachers especially - a whole crew of sophisticated eccentrics who stirred up everyone's creativity while making their students hunger for more and more knowledge.

Case in point - I had one teacher, Professor Ryan (good ol' Irish lad!) who had me make plaster molds of snow and ice for an extra credit assignment. It was great - I'd made these huge amorphorus blob molds, filled them with clear colored resins, and after the resins hardened, shined light through the sculptures. It was like looking at an acid trip in 3D. Ryan and I had a blast making them, and he subtly would fill my head with Roman sculpting and molding techniques (lost wax, metal molds, etc.). The guy was a class act.

My other art teachers, DiMattio and Jankowski, were also our student advisors, and definitely had our best interests at heart. They helped us with portfolio reviews, job hunting, wrote letters of recommendation, and didn't hold back when it came to student critiques. Good times.
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post #20 of 24
10/15/06 at 5:52pm
I have encountered a variety of douchebag teachers and don't really have a specific story that comes to mind, but a favorite technique I noticed is to do a horrible job of teaching so a student would have to be psychic to have any clue what the point of it all is and then when the entire class fucks up the test they go with the "I'm really dissapointed in you guys" guilt trip.

Actually, in a finance class I took in college the teacher was a legendary asshole, I kind of appreciated it from a comedy standpoint although he only gave 1 person in out 200 person class and A and that guy was Dwight and absolutely made out with his ass on a daily basis. Anyway, the guy made the class impossibly overcomplicated and the average grade on every test was around 45% and he'd then curve it up so people got Cs. Before the final a guy walked up to him while he was smoking a cigarette in the courtyard and askied if he had any tips for the final, he said "yeah, don't bother me." Then during the final (which was worth 50% of the grade) he was some kind of a nazi about being there on time, which is retarded because it's 3 hours long and everyone finishes early. So everyone has nazi marched into the stadium like classroom and are watching the clock count down like it's new years and at the top of the hour he shouts out "you can begin" and immediately afterward some girl quietly opens the door in the corner and everyone looks at her like a scene in a movie. The asshole teacher gives her a cartoon come here finger motion and after 20 seconds of inaudible discussion she runs out of the room crying.....I guess she failed.
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post #21 of 24
10/18/06 at 12:17am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Subotai
And the fact that this thread started by referencing the recent slate of school shootings and then led into a diatribe on teachers - too much.

I know it's un PC to say, but there are some miserable teachers out there who don't give a shit. Take that with lousy parents, a persmissive culture, you got trouble, that starts with T that rhymes with P that stands for pricks.

I only say they are pricks because I was not a fuck up in school. I did my job, I wish they had.
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post #22 of 24
10/24/06 at 5:05pm
It's trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for "prick."
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post #23 of 24
10/24/06 at 5:30pm
With the benefit of hindsight, most of the bad teacher stories I thought I had in school were entirely my fault. I was an argumentative prick.
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post #24 of 24
10/25/06 at 3:21pm
Zod, I hear people say without so and so teacher I wouldn't be where I am today, which is great, but for me and some other people I know it's more like despite those fucked up teachers I am where I am today. In most cases I would've been much better off with just a textbook.
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