Turruble Teacher(longish)

[Ryowyn]

I hope this fits this forum enough to be on here, but in my opinion, the relationship between student and teacher is somewhat customer-like.

First of all: Teachers are human. Nobody expects them to be perfect.
There are many things that can be forgiven, for example...

1. A physics teacher asking if Australia is in Africa.

2. Same teacher trying to take a note saying "Alex eats[in class]" ("Alex isst"), but ending up writing "Alex is" (Alex ist).

3. Every teacher ever being unable to handle any kind of presentation equipment (DVD-player, VCR, powerpoint, beamer, ...)


But I think they should be able to at least teach their subject.

I know of an English teacher who uses phrases like "cyrcle of life".
I want to tell you two stories about such teachers.

How to loose respect
The teacher I just mentioned was asked (age of students/pupils: ~17) how to spell "to lose".
She spelled "loose", and was instantly corrected by a student.
Now, she could have saved face and told the students she misunderstood the question.
Nope.
She went on explaining that "loose" does not exist.. of course, she was corrected once more.
...of, and at the end of the year, the guy who kept pointing out her mistakes got a grade worse than should have been possible.

A healthy interest in cancer
My sister told me this one.
You see, in German, "Krebs" is the illness, the zodiac sign, and the animal with pinchers.
My sister(16 back then) knew that cancer is the word for the illness, and that the animal is usually crab or crayfish, but she didn't know about the star sign.
So she asked her teacher if cancer was the right word for the third "Krebs".
What did the teacher say?
"I don't think so."
Good thing my sister had learned not to trust her already, and checked online when she came home.




So yeah, that's something I used to witness quite a lot, sadly.
Anyone got similar stories to share?

[ADeMartino]

I didn't witness this personally, but there was a story somewhere about a teacher who insisted a kilometer was longer than a mile, was corrected by a student, and eventually the student got sent home because of his 'disruptive' behavior. In the note that accompanied, the teacher ADMITTED HIS MISTAKE and still claimed that he was justified for sending the student home because the student had corrected him in class.

When I was in high school, many, many years ago, our physics teacher was discussing electricity, specifically the relationship between current, voltage, and resistance. Now, one thing that was drilled into my head in electricity class (separate class) was that current is the same at ALL points in a series circuit, it's VOLTAGE that varies depending on the resistance - something that was, in fact, clearly demonstrated in lab. My physics teacher got it confused with a parallel circuit, in which it's exactly the opposite - voltage is constant on all branches, but current depends on the resistance in each branch.

When TWO students (myself and another fellow) spoke up about the error, he immediately replied 'Who's the teacher here - me? Or YOU?'

On the test covering that material later that week, I put the CORRECT answer - and got dinged for it. I then took the entire test to my electricity teacher and suggested he and the physics teacher got to together for a little tutoring.

Yeah, my physics grade wasn't so hot after that....

[fireheart]

The only real occurances I had of more or less shitty teachers in primary and high school were:

Year 4: teacher was a bitch. Several of us couldn't keep our books on our desks because they were too narrow, so we put them on the floor. During this time, I had started piano lessons. I came back from a lesson to find my books in the bin. I had to fish them out.
She did redeem herself however, by letting me skip most of a class project since I had a piano lesson. All I had to do was just write out some stuff my partner had already researched.

Year 10/11: SOSE teacher. She was a fairly easygoing teacher at times, although one thing I remember was her "formative" assignments. Now these didn't account for a huge amount, but basically, it was "name <x> things that might happen if <x> occurred" or something along those lines. She would then actually GIVE OUT THE ANSWERS in the same lesson and still count it towards our mark for the semester! I actually LIKED the topic itself, but guess who got A's for that class? She pulled the same crap in my Year 11 Social Studies class. (thankfully I didn't encounter her in Year 12 since Social Studies was taught by a much more awesome teacher! )

And as for uni:

Arts co-ordinator: this wasn't a tutor for my topics at all. This was the co-ordinator. She would hold lectures in the afternoon, which were irrelevant and useless to the topic at hand. When it came to organising the big assessments, she actually was very loose with the due date for one of the assessments, which made me go <stabbity> because I was panicking so much over handing it up on time!

Maths tutor: set us a case study to do while we were on placement. Seemed simple enough right? Well, the assignment word count expected was 1500 words. NOBODY could get their word count under 1500 to provide the amount of detail she wanted. Several people ended up submitting 2500-3000 word assignments.

Tutor I have this semester: She has been known to lose track of what she's saying in the workshop. She can remember WHAT she taught in the previous week, but keeps losing her thread on the stuff she was meant to teach us that day. This one I can't fault her entirely on, as she teaches about a dozen topics all up, spanning across undergrad, postgrad and two different schools (school of education and school of health sciences, specifically disability studies)

[LillFilly]

Wow, that reminded me of a coworker who was FURIOUS at his young son's teacher. Coworker was mixed (half-Black, half-White, from a particular pacific island area) and he had a unique blend of features. His son was lighter (though his wife was darker), and apparently was asked to explain his heritage. The teacher flat-out told him that there was NO WAY he was Black, and that he was OBVIOUSLY Hispanic. Ummm, don't you think the kid and his dad would know what he was? I admit, the blend of features could confuse you, but to flat out tell the kid that he was or was not something was just plain wrong!

[MoonCat]

When we were in grade school, one of my sisters had a teacher who had sis's birthday written down incorrectly. Sis tried to correct her--you know how kids are--if they know one thing for sure, it's when their own birthday is! Cake, presents, etc, after all. Well, teacher insisted SHE was right and sis was wrong.

I also had a teacher way back in third? grade...who copied out a poem on the blackboard. The poem used the word "through" ...the phrase was "through off the blanket." I told the teacher I thought the correct spelling would be "throw." Teacher looked at the book from whence the poem came, stared at the board for a while, and said, nope, it must be correct. It's in the book!

[Andara Bledin]

I had an English grammar teacher who couldn't spell for shit, and her grammar was worse.

I failed her class because I didn't do a damn bit of the work in it.

My brother also failed her class for much the same reason, but he added in correcting her until she would cry fairly regularly.

^-.-^

[Whirly_bird]

I failed her class because I didn't do a damn bit of the work in it.

Don't think the teacher is what made you fail the class then.

[Andara Bledin]

Don't think the teacher is what made you fail the class then.

Oh, no, the lack of doing the work was actually a symptom, not the root cause.

Not only didn't I have any respect for the woman, it actually grated on my nerves to listen to her mangle the English language so utterly and completely (nails on a chalkboard don't bother me, but inexcusable ignorance drives me nuts), so I made a point to keep myself distracted with other things for the entirety of that class. As a result, I never knew what the assignments were, and despite passing every single test ever given, it still wasn't enough to pull my grade up to passing. Of course, I never thought to make sure she did the math right... I'm not sure she was any better at that... >_<

For reference, I only ever failed 2 classes in my entire school life, and the other one was a Literature class run by a pompous ass who made reading a hideous chore. >_< That one, however, I will accept full responsibility for, even if I have always despised every literature class I've ever had.

^-.-^

[Whirly_bird]

Well, my experience is that its hard to fail a class about the language you speak. Think the only class i ever failed was a math class-and then I learned i needed to have taken other classes before it that i hadn't taken.

[Pizzacommando]

The daughter of a family friend told me this rather sad story.

They had recently moved to the east coast of the US from California. In class they were studying state capitals. The teacher says "Since you're from California, can you tell us what the state capital is?" The girl promptly answered, correctly, that Sacramento is the state capital. The teacher tells her that she's wrong and that Los Angeles is the capital. When the girl argued that she was right, the teacher produced a map showing LA as the capital

I'm not sure which is worse, the teacher who doesn't know the facts, or the map makers who don't know the facts when it's supposed to be their specialty.

[Crossbow]

I had a college mechanical engineering professor that during class got one of the basic laws of thermodynamics wrong on the board, and then argued with not only the class, but the text book AND his boss (head of the department) that he was absolutely right.

[Pagan]

When we were in grade school, one of my sisters had a teacher who had sis's birthday written down incorrectly. Sis tried to correct her--you know how kids are--if they know one thing for sure, it's when their own birthday is! Cake, presents, etc, after all. Well, teacher insisted SHE was right and sis was wrong.

My aunt had a grade school teacher insist that she didn't know what her own name was. See, my aunt's name is Betty and it's not short for Elizabeth. Even went so far as to send a note home insisting that my aunt was wrong about her name.

The daughter of a family friend told me this rather sad story.

They had recently moved to the east coast of the US from California. In class they were studying state capitals. The teacher says "Since you're from California, can you tell us what the state capital is?" The girl promptly answered, correctly, that Sacramento is the state capital. The teacher tells her that she's wrong and that Los Angeles is the capital. When the girl argued that she was right, the teacher produced a map showing LA as the capital

I'm not sure which is worse, the teacher who doesn't know the facts, or the map makers who don't know the facts when it's supposed to be their specialty.

At least she knew California is a state....

[Gimli]

[QUOTE=Pagan;1078891]My aunt had a grade school teacher insist that she didn't know what her own name was. See, my aunt's name is Betty and it's not short for Elizabeth. Even went so far as to send a note home insisting that my aunt was wrong about her name.


I had a teacher do that to me. I have a rather unusual first name and my PE teacher from k-3 insisted that my name was Beth Ann. She never would accept that it wasn't my name, the crabby old bat, despite the fact that my correct name was on ALL of my school records.

On a side note, when I got to middle school, somehow my first and middle names got switched on the school paperwork. Took about a year to get that corrected. I think someone looked at it and decided that the name listed was so unusual that it had to be my middle name and my middle name, which is pretty common except for the spelling, had to be my first name and just decide to change it. Go figure.

[ozcatbug]

My aunt had a grade school teacher insist that she didn't know what her own name was. See, my aunt's name is Betty and it's not short for Elizabeth. Even went so far as to send a note home insisting that my aunt was wrong about her name.

This happened to me. In primary school I had a teacher that insisted that my name was pronounced as it was spelled. The only problem with that is that my name has a silent "O". My name is a common sounding name with a number of different spellings, my spelling being rare in Australia as it is a Scottish variant. My mother is Scottish so she knows how it is pronounced. To make it easier to follow, my name is Catriona, pronounced Catrina.

So this teacher would call me as my name is spelled (Cat-tree-owner), and I would try to correct her (Cat-tree-na). She actually berated me for not knowing my own name, and that she knew how my name was pronounced and I would answer when she called me that. I was about 6 or 7 at the time and this really upset me, so when I got home I told mum what had happened. She was furious, and the next day she took me to my class and informed this woman that my name was not pronounced as it was spelled. She explained the origins, and her own, and told this teacher that she was saying my name wrong. The stupid teacher, instead of listening to the woman that had named me, told mum that she was wrong, and that she would continue to call me Cat-tree-owner as that was my name.

Wrong, wrong, wrong thing to say to an upset Scottish mother. Mum took me aside and said that if my teacher mispronounced my name, I was to ignore her. I was only to answer if she called my name. It took over a week of her yelling at me to answer her, and a single meeting with the principal and my parents, but finally a good outcome. Our class got a new teacher. It was only a few years ago that I found out what happened to my teacher. Seems the principal was unimpressed (to say the least) about her yelling at me, and not listening to both me and mum about my name, so she was fired for being unsuitable for the position. Seems a primary school teacher that resorts to yelling and screaming at very young students when it is the teacher that is in the wrong, this sort of person was not really welcome in the school I went to. Pity that principal wasn't cloned for all the other schools I went to.

[Andara Bledin]

My brother had an issue in one of his classes and my mother went in for a parent/teacher conference.

After the woman screwed up our family's name three times (adding an 'r' where there was none) and ignoring corrections, my mother got up, walked out in disgust, and demanded that my brother be transferred to a class with a teacher that respected her students enough to actually learn how to say their names.

Our principal was awesome, and everybody in the school thought so, so he agreed that the situation was unacceptable and my brother was in a new class starting immediately.

This is the same principal who, when it was discovered that our useless counselor (I'm a good planner [it's like a puzzle], so never realized how pathetic she was; my brother, however, was not) had managed to allow him to take multiple free periods despite the fact that he wasn't taking enough credits to graduate, chose to waive the requirement and allow him to graduate with his class as opposed to penalizing him for trusting his counselor to know how to do her job with at least basic competency.

^-.-^