Teachers. Did they make or break you?

[bubblegum7474]

I remember when I was in year 4, my class teacher embarrassed me for not knowing my times tables. I sat there and cried. He proceeded to tell me to 'get out' when he realised I wasn't very good at it. I wish he was a teacher that helped after finding out my biggest fear/struggle. Alas, now at 30 I still hate Maths (somehow managed to get through the GCSE's with a grade C) but I know with a little more help I may have had the courage to better things and make better decisions academically.

Do you have any stories and how did it impact you?

At school not so much, but uni had some awful teachers who told me I wouldn't succeed in my chosen field, I don't even think they were saying it to motivate me either like reverse psychology. Anyway I had the last laugh as I did get a job in the subject I studied. Another one told me I should be working in HMV instead of in further education, I don't know what's wrong with HMV as I would have quite liked to work there at the time

I think you can be an encouraging teacher without being rude, and some do cross the line evidently!

My year 6 teacher coached me for grammar school without me realising. She just pitched it as a game. Then my senior school deputy head persuaded me to apply to take a degree and became my mentor.

PE teacher left me with a 30 year loathing of sport though.

I Had some ghastly teachers,odious bullies primary & secondary. I recall them,no long term damage but I am appalled they ever got to teach young people

@Mintjulia same with PE teacher. Absolutely awful feeling PE teachers who really didn’t seem to see what hurt they were causing.

I had an absolutely wonderful History teacher who was just an all round lovely person and a pretty great RE teacher. I’m not remotely religious but I still have a lot of respect for his views because he expressed them so well.

I was physically abused by my first primary school teacher.

Several of my secondary school teachers were amazing. Two in particular — history and English — inspired me to do what I still do now. I wish I could track them down and thank them, sometimes.

And my English Language A-level teacher introduced me to Tori Amos, for which I’m forever grateful.

Yep PE teacher was the worst. She had her “favourites” who were all allowed to call her by her first name. The old pick her 2 favourites and let them pick teams was horrendous as I was bullied and always left till last. I do think my aversion to sport had its roots in those experiences.

Please if anyone is a PE teacher on here, don’t do that to kids. It’s soul destroying.

Other than that I stayed pretty much under the radar so wasn’t really influenced either way by any other teacher.

I had some awful teachers and some who were just okay. Not a one ever took an interest or encouraged me, and I was bright enough and creative. I did okay socially, was in drama club, but they only seemed interested in the ones who had big talent at a young age (mostly sports, but also drama, writing, etc).

One or two tried to break me (spoiler alert, they failed). One or two were very sweet but unsuited to teaching, and a couple were quite possibly diagnosable psychopaths. One and one only said very casually that I had academic potential (I don’t think they realised exactly how important it was to hear that).

My teachers failed to protect me from years of bullying, verbal and physical abuse. They basically just laughed it off when I reported it. We were often put into groups based on alphabetic order of surnames, my worst bullies were either side of me in the alphabet so I was constantly put into groups with them, despite me already having reported their bullying. But, of course, they were the "cool kids" who were good at sports (so loved by the games/pe teachers), in the school choir, etc., so basically they could do no wrong! In my 5 years at the crap comp, there is only one "stand out" teacher I remember who actually listened to me and tried to protect me at least in her lessons. None of the others could give a shit really!

@Meruem

Yep PE teacher was the worst. She had her “favourites” who were all allowed to call her by her first name. The old pick her 2 favourites and let them pick teams was horrendous as I was bullied and always left till last. I do think my aversion to sport had its roots in those experiences.

Please if anyone is a PE teacher on here, don’t do that to kids. It’s soul destroying.

Other than that I stayed pretty much under the radar so wasn’t really influenced either way by any other teacher.

Yep, the "wait of shame" is still done today. I thought it was long consigned to history, but the games teachers are still doing it at my son's secondary. No wonder so many people are overweight and don't exercise when they are subjected to that kind of abuse by teachers.

My drama teacher was horrible. I was involved with lots of youth drama groups outside of school and had won acting competitions, so the logical part of me knows that I must have been ok. When I collected my exam results she had given be a D for my contribution to the group project, even though the entire concept was my idea. She then took me to one side and said, let's face it acting isn't really your thing. It absolutely crushed me and I've never got over it. Such a cruel unnecessary thing to say. I've not acted again. It was never going to be my career but I really enjoyed it and think I would have got involved with amateur dramatics at university and in later life.

They were either trying to sleep with you, break your morale or a rare few actually encouraged you.

This was the 90s, BTW, not some Dickensian dystopia.

@Meruem

Yep PE teacher was the worst. She had her “favourites” who were all allowed to call her by her first name. The old pick her 2 favourites and let them pick teams was horrendous as I was bullied and always left till last. I do think my aversion to sport had its roots in those experiences.

Please if anyone is a PE teacher on here, don’t do that to kids. It’s soul destroying.

Other than that I stayed pretty much under the radar so wasn’t really influenced either way by any other teacher.

Yes this was me too. I used to hate PE. It was plain embarrassing. I remember always making excuses to not want to play even though a part of me loved it. Thinking about it now, I feel like the choose your groups was a ploy to demoralise the ones that were always not very confident.

It's so sad

I don't understand why some of these teachers would want to follow a profession they were so bad at. More than text book sh*t it would have helped me if I was guided with empathy and understanding as I couldn't get that at home. My parents only ever cared about my behaviour in school and just expected me to magically be good at everything but that's another story.

I must have been oblivious to all this. My music teachers gave me lots of encouragement but didn't really address my severe performance anxiety - one just laughed after one of my exams. But that's about as much influence as a teacher had on me. No-one in school really inspired me, but they didn't break me either. Maybe I'd have done more with music if they'd addressed my confidence, but I think that was just they didn't know they could or should help with it.

Nice.
Start a thread to slate an entire profession.

I'm sorry some of you have had bad experiences but this thread is unpleasant and goady.

I had a lot of teachers and it was a while ago. I think i mainly liked them at the time.

Funny, was just talking on similar lines earlier. There was a boy in my form who was an absolute toerag. No SEN but came from disadvantage and was angry, disruptive and explosive. Constantly.

Teachers always told him he wouldn't amount to anything unless x, y, z. He needed to set lower expectations for his future career, he needed to change, he needed to listen to them.

He left school with 1 GCSE

He is now a millionaire.

I did EVERYTHING that teachers told me to, was constantly praised and hailed as a future "star" considered a swot, went all the way in education.

Definitely not a millionaire. Or anything close to a shining example. The irony is not lost on me.

Yup there was the day when I was about 6 or 7 when our teacher said that those who got 10/10 in end of term maths test could fill in the rest of their star chart.. Those of us who didnt had to sit and watch the rest who did.. there were about 3 of us 'failures' ( her words) who didn't . Me included.. That was the day when Maths and I parted company , and despite going on to get 3(!) University degrees, I still do not have any maths qualifications ( and never will now I am over 60 and not working) ...

Seriously school was just hell..

Neither really. I think school probably ruined more opportunities for me than it presented. I wish my parents had thought to let me go to a different one, as I kept saying.

I am ready to homeschool mine if necessary. I would never make my child go to a school where they were unhappy.

I hated my school, but it wasn't the teachers' fault. It was the culture I think.

But I went to further ed college and then onto university in my 30s on govt training schemes and Access to learning and it was just so liberating.Such brilliant lecturers and I actually realised that I was quite intelligent after all !

Some good, some bad - just like any other profession I would have thought.

But I will be forever thankful that in my last year in primary school I had a teacher who believed in me and told my parents that I was university material. Coming from a family where no one had gained any qualifications, let alone gone on to further and higher education his words lit the spark of aspiration and inspiration in me at the age of 11.

In secondary school my English teacher introduced me to poets and authors I still love today. My RE teacher gave up so much of her time and was so patient and interesting - a true inspiration.

Ugh so many examples.
In primary a teacher humiliated me for allegedly messing around with a tape recorder (wasn’t me that actually did it). She made the whole class quiet to shout at me when she had no reason to do that, she could have come over and asked the question instead. She was of course a cool teacher who had her favourites and they could address her as a shortened version of her name.

In secondary, maths teacher used to set the lesson then leave and sit in his car smoking. PE teachers split the year into sets and if you weren’t sporty you’d play rounders for a year whilst the other sets got to play netball and football. Eventually we had a biology teacher teaching us tennis and history teacher doing aerobics with us, utter bonkers. Clearly the PE teachers couldn’t be arsed to even take the lessons by then. I hated sport at that age, no wonder. Now I love sport and going to the gym. Had a music teacher who made us tap on the table to work out who had rhythm and who didn’t didn’t. Those who didn’t were ignored there after.

My English teacher and art teacher were lovely. Both were young and enthusiastic and I learnt a lot from them and remember enjoying their lessons. Probably because they cared and didn’t randomly humiliate their students.

Here we go again...