What are your terrible teacher memories?

[lovelyjubbly888]

A bit random - and in no way a teacher bashing thread! I was just inspired randomly by a thread about whether people make sure the sink is dry after use.
I had an absolute hag of a home economics teacher - who one day had a right go at me after I had washed up all the dishes. She lifted up the wash basin, and there were soap suds on the bottom of the basin. She got angry at me for it, and made stay behind and wash it until there was not a soap sud left. I was then late for next lesson. I'm still indignant about it, she was a fucking loose screw.
This was only 10 years ago!!!

One of my PE teachers would mock my PE kit - it was a non-uniform school.
One time I remember I'd saved up to buy some fancy shorts and was feeling excited to wear them for PE so I could show them to my friends (who always had the latest fashion) and I thought it would put an end to teachers mocking however she stood watching me as I changed and loudly asked if I'd made them myself out of curtains. Everyone laughed.
She also told me I was fat and that I needed some new bras.

PE teacher who would only believe we were exempt from the shower if we could prove we were on our period. We had had to show her our soiled sanitary towels.

I had a teacher who accused me of faking stomach pain one day and refused to call my mum. Turned out to be appendicitis and I had to get rushed to hospital later that evening. By the time they operated it was closed to rupturing. Nice teacher!

This is awful. I'm so sorry

I was smacked for colouring out the lines.

I broke my finger playing netball and the PE teacher said I hadn't. My finger was black and purple! She made me play the next lesson regardless so I just sort of stood around and when the ball came near me I let it drop on the floor or kicked it. She bollocked me and told me I was a nasty little girl, that everybody thought I was nice but she knew different and I was actually really horrible and one day I would get my comeuppance.

Just completely OTT.

I used to love art til I had a teacher who told me everything I produced belonged in the bin. I stopped trying after that.

I got slapped around the head for arguing with a teacher about time he was saying midnight 0.00 was pm and noon 12.00 was am. It just didn't make sense. It happened weeks after the ban on teachers using corporal punishment. I walked out of the class and ended up in the deputy heads office as I was in the corridor on my own. I was taken back to class and he apologised.

My grade 1 teacher. Constantly picked on me because I wore trousers to school (this was about 1969). According to her little girls shouldn't wear trousers unless they wore a skirt over them, because they'd get them dirty. (Presumably she didn't have a problem with little boys getting them dirty.) It was bad enough that my mum came down to the school and tore a strip off her.

She also had a go at me once for not being able to tell the time yet.

My high school phys ed teacher. She was one of those sport-obsessed idiots who knew nothing about anything else and despised any students who weren't also sport-obsessed and fit. If you couldn't do whatever it was she expected, you were made to run around the oval. Great for an asthmatic, not.

The woodwork teacher and home eco teacher. Also types who had no time for students who didn't already have the skills they were meant to be teaching. I suspect the woodwork teacher wasn't happy at having to include girls in his classes - my year was the first one where we all did everything. On that point I agreed with him, I didn't want to do woodwork, I was very apprehensive about the tools and the thought of splinters!

I had a teacher who refused to let me go home after a particularly painful period had made me puke. My mum ended up being called in and gave her a right bollocking

Same teacher but even worse behaviour -

Catholic school with draconian very strict uniform policy.

Boy in my year who's mum died of cancer. We were 13/14. This happened in the summer term

Took a while for her to die so time to get affairs in order. She gave her son her wedding ring, got special permission from all the high ups in the school and church for him to wear it on a chain under his shirt in school.

Wicked teacher had a penchant for confiscating anything she saw fit. She was also head of RE and pastoral lead (so knew about the exempt for this boys dead mothers ring). She dedicated a school mass and assembly to this boys family (he had younger brothers in the school too). Obviously knew the score.

Shortly after, this lad was playing football at lunchtime and the ring had slipped out from under his shirt. This teacher instead of asking him to tuck it in, confiscated it. The boy kicked off so she gave him a detention.

As far as I know, his friend then called the boys dad who came into the school by the second break time.

Her office had a window that opened onto the playground. By the end of the break time, there was a considerable crowd gathered outside the window to listen to the absolute dressing down the boy's widowed father gave to her. I've not heard anyone so furious before or since.

It was the talk of the school for weeks. The teacher apparently didn't confiscate anything for the rest of the year and wasn't back the following year

PE teachers again. Ours always trotted out the mantra of "there's no such word as can't" all the time.

This led to an occasion when we were away for a week on school camp and out on a ramble. The teacher decided that walking along a proper pathway when going up a hill was too easy so she picked a sheer rock face instead as our route to the top. I was terrified and said I definitely couldn't do it as I hated heights and it also had hardly any footholds or anything to grip.

She started on at me with her "no such word as can't" mantra so I felt I had no choice (I was 13). The result was that I fell down it having got about 6 feet up. Thankfully I wasn't hurt, just badly shaken. It terrified both her and me and she was beside me in seconds. I got up, told her that I would not be climbing the rock face and began walking up the path. This time she didn't argue and just walked with me. Funnily enough, I never heard "no such word as can't" again.

I also remember the awful communal showers after each PE lesson, and them checking who was having a period by actually looking in their knickers. Horrendous.

I said hi to a teacher in passing in the corridor. She didn't teach me so obviously didn't recognise me. She called me back (I was alone at the time, very shy and introverted) and said I was patronising her and that she could make my life hell at school. It sounds very wimpish but as I walked away I went straight to the toilet and burst into tears

That's horrendous!

"No such word as can't" okay then PE teacher, how about you fly off that cliff? No? Why not?

God I hate PE teachers. They put me off doing any exercise classes for over forty years.

We had a technical drawing and woodworking teacher with a terrible temper. The chalk throwing type.

One time he lost it more than usual and threw the actual stools at us (tall 3 leg ones with metal legs and wooden seats). Or at least past us towards the back of the room.

Didn't actually hit anyone but it was a bit alarming.

Got taken aside by my female form tutor at the start of the year and told that she knew I just ‘fluttered my eyelashes’ at the male teachers and ‘got my way’ but that wouldn’t fly with her. She picked on me all year, and it meant when my sports coach kissed me and started a ‘relationship’ with me at lunchtimes, I felt it was as a result of my own unknown actions and didn’t tell anyone. When it finally got discovered, my history teacher (my favourite class) refused to ever talk to me again, and on results day handed them over without a word. I guess they were friends.

Also once got screamed at when I was told in class that I was wrong, after I said the capital of Australia was Canberra. Apparently it was Sydney and I wasn’t ‘little miss perfect after all.’ I was 7. I saw that teacher in a supermarket when I visited home a few years ago, and she approached me as if we were old friends. I explained who she was to my mother quite loudly.

I have much more animosity toward the teachers that did the singling out and petty stuff than the sexual predator! It was so isolating and created the conditions for that to happen.

Also once got screamed at when I was told in class that I was wrong, after I said the capital of Australia was Canberra. Apparently it was Sydney and I wasn’t ‘little miss perfect after all.’ I was 7. I saw that teacher in a supermarket when I visited home a few years ago, and she approached me as if we were old friends. I explained who she was to my mother quite loudly.

What the fuck sort of teacher doesn't know that sort of thing???

When one of my teachers publicly accused me of cheating while taking a test. I didn’t cheat and it was very humiliating. Oddly she was a favorite teacher as she kissed up to the popular kids.

Maths teacher - chain smoking 50 something year old.... told me to stand in front of the 'blackboard' and write 'let's have a Maths debate'

Secondary School 4th years thought it was hilarious.....

Omg, when I was in Year 5, I had a scalp problem and had to shave all my hair off. I didn’t want my parents to disclose this to the school. I turned up to school the next day with a headscarf (no one else was wearing one). My teacher asked me why, and I just said my head is shaved. The fucking bitch of a headteacher then made it a statement to make me stand up in front of my ENTIRE class, and got the whole class to pay attention. She then said I must remove it, which I did. I had very very short boy hair, and never had I felt so embarrassed.

Thinking back, this was so cruel and offensive to just demand I remove it by making a show of it in front of everyone, especially knowing I had my head shaved! The headscarf is religious clothing as well, with many Muslims at the school. Therefore, she was being unbelievably out of order and discriminatory, but I didn’t think to question it then, and neither did any of the other teachers. This was 20 years ago.

Third year juniors the class teacher was flipping us all over the PE horse thing in 1987. He tried to flip me but I landed on my back stood up crying and couldn't breathe. He screamed at me to go to the office. I was shy and in pain lucky I could move. I plucked up the courage. Lady was nice helped me get dressed.

Another time in infants I was smacked as my pencil was blunt.

These teachers would be sacked these day.

I still remember having to kneel on the floor while the teachers literally measured how far our skirt hems were from the ground. They told me off for not sticking to regulation. And I remember being super annoyed about it because I was pretty much the only girl in the class who didn’t roll their skirt up as soon as I was out of eyesight of the teachers anyway, I literally had the longest skirt of anyone and got bullied for it.

I also remember a teacher saying to me what colour was my hair scrunchie (FFS). We had to wear 2 regulation colours only. When I said black she enquired sarcastically had I got dressed in the dark? Because it had a few white dots on it which I thought would be fine (again other girls were wearing all sorts of completely non regulation things!)

I also remember a couple of my teachers really losing their temper and throwing chalk or a blackboard duster at some of the students, to be fair they were being heavily provoked into it, it was almost a game.

I also remember my maths teacher flirting heavily with one of the popular girls. She had him totally wound round her little finger. It was a big class joke at the time but I look back and think it’s mad that we all just thought it was funny at the time and not super concerning, he was actually being really inappropriate with her right in front of the whole class, however much she was encouraging it.

I also remember our horrible PE teacher, I particularly remember one time when I’d forgotten my gym kit (gym knickers which was bad enough in itself) and she made me do PE in my own knickers and shirt to “teach me a lesson”. It was super humiliating, I was about 13, not 5, and it was a co-ed school and PE class.

Every PE, Games and swimming class ever. The teachers were nasty evil spiteful sadistic bitches and put me off competitive and team sports for life, to the extent I even find it hard to socialise with people who enjoy sport. Of course dyspraxia wasn't understood at all in those days and sure, it's not like a congenital eye condition would make it hard to see where the ball was either.

It took me many years to find activities I did enjoy and to stop hoping they were all languishing in later life in a miserable damp terrace in Loughborough (when I was at school that was the university where the PE teacher production line was located).

The teacher who told me in front of the class that she was glad they were bringing in GCSEs specifically because I did well in exams and not coursework and she hoped I'd fail. I now know the coursework issue was ADHD.

There have been worse things. But that feeling, that someone in power, someone with authority, wished me ill, was horrible. Why teach if you want children to fail?

I went to schools run by the Sisters of Mercy.

Any Irish MNers will know I have too many stories to tell.