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 teacher hated me, he used his size to intimidate me (standing over me with hands either side of me on the table), and regularly mocked me for wrong answers, for being shy, and then I was always too scared to answer anything so he mocked me more(in front of the whole class and on one occasion during a whole school assembly). He told my parents I was too stupid to pass his class at GCSE so wouldn't enter me for it. I eventually got moved to a different teacher and wound up with an A* in that subject. I still see him around and feel sick with anxiety when I do.

I was studying History A Level with a History Teacher who had laid on 'special 'lessons' after school for me and my friend. Mother who was the deputy head was taking a detention at the time . Thus, she came out of the room she was taking the detention in to the History room and asked the History Teacher if she could join the class or was it just for 17 year old girls. She ordered me and my friend to go to the room where the detention was taking place and stay there.

The History teacher was gone by the following Monday. My Mother told me a few years later that she had asked him did her fancy 17 year old girls in particular her daughter, to which he went quiet and walked out of the classroom never to return.
My mother had an intuition about him which came true a few years later when he was dismissed for dating a 16 year old.

Did he fancy 17 year old girls..

I was beaten by a teacher when I was 5 years old.

Around 1963, we had desks with lids and the boy next to me had his hands inside the desk, fiddling with something. God knows why, just little boy stuff.
So the teacher raised the lid of the desk high and let it fall on his hands.

Female PE teacher, openly gay, which was not usual in the 80s, in a Catholic all girls’ school. She’d stand and watch us shower, obviously naked and make us go back in if our hair wasn’t soaked. I deliberately kept my hair dry one day because we had needlework next and didn’t want to drip all over my work. Was made to go back in and soak my hair.

English teacher told me my hair looked like Medusa’s. Thanks for that! (And thanks, mum, for never arsing yourself to teach me about conditioner) One of my year 9s thanked me last week for teaching her a curly girl method: she used to just scrape her hair into a fuzzy ponytail, now she has beautiful defined curls.

I’m not sure too much has changed since my days in the 70s/80s.

I didn’t dislike school or teachers, but I do remember a few teachers who were dreadful, but most were lovely.

It was a girls’ boarding school (I was there aged 7-13) and I mostly remember kind and thoughtful teachers, understanding that being apart from your parents was difficult. I truly only remember one teacher who truly awful, especially to we boarders.

She died (probably early fifties) from cancer when we were in J1, possibly now Yr 7? I was sad for her family etc., but didn’t cry and remember even my friends thought that was awful of me 🤷‍♀️She was an incredibly nasty person who relished in humiliating boarders, as she knew (if we were lucky) we’d only see our parents once a term. Most of us saw our parents only in the holidays.

However I have two children one of whom is still in school.

They’ve both been ‘taught’ complete rubbish -especially in Geography. Capital of Turkey is Istanbul 🙄 Sicily is a country in its own right 🤷‍♀️ and this was in Yr 4 -it got worse.

The physical brutality is no longer there, but the psychological manipulation of young minds remains.

My youngest was told by a unpleasant retiring MFL teacher that despite getting a 7 in her Yr10 exam, she’d probably only get a 6 at GCSE. We asked why she thought she would drop a grade and she said she’d probably get a 7.

New teacher arrives -obvs been ‘drip fed’ poison- but after a term realised he’d been lied to about the class. Three of them (incl my child) got 9s

There are a lot of teachers who should not be teaching in primary or secondary schools.

PE teachers -well, if you teach any other subject you have to explain why pupils don’t progress, why they don’t engage etc.. That doesn’t seem to happen with PE -it should.

I’ve come across some really good Sports teachers -but very few who can enthuse all pupils.

French teacher, screaming at me one day, spittle gathered round his mouth. Think I’d scored badly in a test. He used to tell us who the best looking girl in the class (was the music teacher’s daughter, I’m surprised he didn’t knock him out!)

My science teacher back In the mid 1980s. She absolutely terrified me. Her temper was renowned and the slightest thing could trigger her off . I was a well behaved student but still managed to piss her off on occasion for the smallest of reasons. She loved calling us ‘sunshine’ and ‘cocker’ when telling us girls off. Vile woman.

Ouch!
What it is with PE teachers and (without wanting to sound racist but...) Catholic/Irish schools?
I went to school in England: two CoE state schools and one private Catholic school with a lot of Irish staff. The latter had a kind of spite that the first two didn't. I went to all 3 schools after the cane was banned, but it was only at the Catholic school that I encountered teachers who would tell us how much they wished they could still hit us.

@DavesSpareDeckChair PE teachers tend to be fairly low in the staffroom pecking order, from what I gather. They don’t traditionally have the same level of academic qualifications as, say, the Maths, Chemistry or Latin teacher (indeed some in primary school may, in the past, have been completely unqualified), and some of them have sizeable chips on their shoulders. Add to that the uniquely physical nature of their subject, allowing them far more access than normal to their pupils, and you get a powder keg.

The Irish Catholicism thing, well, the Irish Catholic Church in the mid to late 20c was right up there with the mad mullahs and the Bible belt when it came to cultish fundamentalism. Priests were given far too much power over people’s choices and lives. This was reflected in how the smallest and most vulnerable were treated, and how the institution was far more important than the humans within it.

I think in the case of nuns there was an idea that you could, "do purgatory on earth" so you went to be a nun and then were sent to do something you hated, so if you liked children you would not go in to teaching, you might be sent to work with the elderly.

Some teachers in the 70s early 80s shouldn't have been near children. The ones that whacked knuckles and heads with the edge of a metre rule, threw wooden chalk dusters, slapped and grabbed kids, shouting and humiliation in classes, struggling kids being written off as thick, perv pe teacher insisting on watching us shower and not hide our genitalia just an average day in a 70s early 80s secondary school.

In my secondary school (actually an all-through from 4 to 16) we had a French teacher who periodically lost it with us and spent several minutes ranting on. She didn’t really seem all that threatening for all that, and we were more amused than anything, especially when her accent reverted to her native Northern and she screamed that she was ‘fed oop’ with us.

Looking back I think she was struggling. She left after a couple of years to have a baby, and never returned.

Oh gawd that twisted martyrdom thinking is so familiar to me, looking back. I can see exactly how dangerous it can be when not counterbalanced with ideas about gifts and natural talents.

I was at school late 1960’s through to late 1970’s, in Scotland. A lot of teachers were abject bullies. Like the Maths teacher who randomly chose 1 boy & 1 girl from our S1 class on our first day with him, and strapped them on the hands.

Just to show what he could do.

Or the male teacher in P7 who strapped a boy for being allegedly inattentive in class. The child probably had adhd or some such. No attempt to understand the problem,. The boy’s mum and mine were friends and he was a pal of mine. The teacher actually rocked off his feet as he brought the strap down.

And the middle-aged sleeze-balls who ran ballroom dancing classes, just for the girls…

I had some lovely teachers, but the majority would be unemployable these days ( or at least I do hope they would)

I think the one that bothers me most still, and I think of often, especially since I've recently started working in a secondary school and all the safeguarding we have to go through is that I told my head of year I had been sexually assaulted, outside of school by the boys in my year.
She dismissed it. Basically made it my fault. As far as I know she never mentioned it to anyone.... certainly didn't call my parents or even speak to the boys involved.

This was the late 90s and I'm glad things have moved on with safeguarding being taken more seriously. I often wonder, if maybe she'd listened and taken it seriously I might have told her about the others thing going on at the time.

Aww I'm so glad you have been able to do that 🩷

What is it about PE teachers? There was one in my old school who would always pick on the overweight kids and make them run around the track on their own. I caught them laughing with another teacher about it. I was 9 and I knew this was bullying. Those poor children!

We were on school journey in Scotland ( April time and snowing). Three girls were caught talking after lights out and a particularly mean F maths teacher made the 3 girls stand outside in the night snow in just their nightwear for a good hour we were 12.

The primary school teacher who used to make a 7 year old assume a punishment position with his legs apart back from the wall and his arms wide as they would go against the wall and he wasn't allowed to move a muscle. One day she asked him, whose daddy wants to put him in care because he doesn't want him anymore? Early 80s.

Mines nothing really compared to alot of the comments in this thread but when I was in year 6 at primary my teacher made me stand up in front of the whole class and do a presentation, I had struggled with the work set and had told her so i hadn't really wrote anything but she made me do it anyway and I almost cried in front of the whole class. It's effected me my whole life, I've had horrendous anxiety since and I avoid talking in a group of people because when they all turn to look at me speak I turn into a puddle of anxiety and mix all my words up.

There was also a time when my DD was in year 1 at primary, she had lots of issues but the school kept telling us she was just naughty and on a few occasions when standing outside the classroom doors at the end of the day to pick my dd up the teacher would shout me over and just said follow me in front of all the other parents and marched me down to the head teachers office without saying a word to me so I'd have no idea what was going on, I honestly felt like a little child in trouble, anyways my daughter was finally diagnosed with ASD in year 6 after her new teacher in year 3 came to us privately and told us to have her assessed despite what the head teacher and senco says.

Bullying and when I summoned the courage to report him he totally ignored me and made no attempt even acknowledge I was in his class.

I moved schools the following year which was like being beamed to a different planet : so grateful for that.

Just realised this is a zombie thread