Do you ever think of your old teachers?

[Taytocrisps]

I was mashing potatoes for a fish pie and I suddenly remembered back to my Home Economics class. We (friend and I) were mashing potatoes for the top of a shepherds pie. The teacher picked us to demonstrate how to pipe mash on top of the pie. Except our mash was lumpy and kept blocking the icing nozzle thingy 😀. She was less than impressed. Anyway, she was a nice lady and I hope she's doing well now. She left the school at some point and moved away. I only did HE for a year, so that class was over 40 years ago. Isn't it funny how teachers (and insignificant little incidents) stick in your mind.

Yes, different ones at different times (often because of MN threads.) Earlier, I was thinking about Latin and thus my Latin teachers came to mind.

I do from time to time. Like the substitute teacher we had that looked like the woman from the electric 6 danger danger high voltage song. We (my class in general) made her really angry and then she cried and she never came back. We were quite a horrid class, the ofsted inspector said we were the worst he'd ever seen.

Yes.

My English teacher was a friend of my brother's..,, still hear from him from time to time.

My Physics teacher was pretty instrumental in my post 16 education and career. He left halfway through my A levels to do a PhD. I think of him sometimes. I've to google him, to no avail.

Not very often, but yes.

My art teacher made an incredible impression on me. Nothing to do with the subject (although I am interested in art and going to art galleries, I suppose), but she was cool, well-dressed, unapologetically child-free, and knew what she wanted in life. She emigrated to North America with her husband and I sadly lost touch with her.

Even though I didn’t pursue art, she taught me that it’s okay to go after what you want in life and to give zero fucks what everyone else thinks or does - lessons that my parents, as well-meaning as they were, never taught me. I am now living the life of my dreams (incidentally I also emigrated to North America, though I haven’t tried to get back in touch with her), and I can honestly say she had something to do with that all those years ago.

Quite often!

I do think of them a lot more since my DC started primary. Had some great primary teachers - in my mind they all seemed quite old but some of them would only have been in their 30s 😂 I bumped into one of my infants teachers last time I was visiting my hometown and she’s still teaching: I was in her class in 1993 😆

My mum is 78, and recently wrote to her A level Art teacher (she happened to find out she was still alive and very much compos mentis). She told her how grateful she was that they’d studied the History of Architecture rather than the History of Art, and that it had given her so much pleasure every time she visited old buildings. She firmly believes she would have been bored witless learning about the Old Masters.

Me, I’m more of the grudge-bearing type. I have a list of teachers I think about for all the wrong reasons.

Yes, frequently. I loved school and was lucky enough to have teachers who really inspired me.
However, my home economics teacher was a total nightmare. We will call her Betty, because that was her name. Betty put us all in a class detention because we "weren't taking sewing seriously, and wouldn't all marry husbands that could afford to buy us new clothes"!
Luckily, thanks to the excellent education we received, none of us had to rely on a man to buy clothes (as evidenced in a 35 year reunion).

That is such a lovely story about your Mum's art teacher.

I find myself still saying things that a particular teacher taught me in secondary school, approx 1986.

Quite often, I’m in contact with one of them still (it was two of them but he unfortunately died during the pandemic)

Yes, I look back on it with adult eyes.

Home Ec teacher was so short tempered but there were also rumours of her husband cheating on her.

Maths teachers were freshly graduated, must have been so young!

Art teacher was, so unpopular but actually helped all the disadvantaged and abused kids.

And I think about those kids - they didn't have correct uniform or clean hair and always forgot the money for lunch or school trips. I was autistic and oblivious but I don't think any of us kids realised what was going on.

I do, often. One of my primary school teachers just lived a couple of streets away from me and I often walked past her house to go to the shops just so I could say hello and give her dog cuddles over the gate.

My R.E teacher in high school was fantastic. In my GCSE year I was thrilled to have her as my form tutor. We got along amazingly well. On the day I left school, I gave her my number and we said we'd meet up for a coffee and a chat sometime. She never called, and now I'm thinking she just couldn't tell me to my face that she couldn't be friends with a previous student. If she's still alive she'd be in her mid 80's. I genuinely hope she's had a fantastic life.

Yes. Some were wonderful and some were wicked and some were downright perverted. But yes I think of them often

I had a very unpleasant teacher in year 6 (then top juniors.) He used to put his hands up our dresses / skirts and also used to manipulate situations so that one girl would be isolated in the class and he’d then prey on her.

More favourably, I had some lovely teachers in senior school; my English teacher inspired me to do the same, French teacher was great, so was my RE teacher.

I only remember the nasty and eccentric ones.

I had 3 different Home Ec. teachers, all were various levels of doolally nasty.

One teacher ended up being jailed for paedophilia.

Another, caught peeping through holes in the swimming pool changing rooms.

And, another who in the late 1980's would pin primary school kids against the wall, shake them and scream in their faces ended up becoming a child protection officer.

Only because he hadn't been to my school, I suspect. We were absolute horrors.

I do think of teachers. Primary school ones were very influential and all but one had a huge positive impact. In secondary school there were a couple I was absolutely horrible to and would like to apologise. Bizarrely my boyfriend (from a different town, met on Tinder), knew my chemistry teacher who I'd have liked to apologise to for being such a horrible, but the poor man apparently died quite young.

There were also a handful I hope would think well of me. One tried to persuade me to go to a very prestigious university and offered to my parents to have his daughter look out for me. I was still a bit of a horror at the time but he saw potential and I wish I could trace him down to say thank you (he's invisible online despite an unusual name). Another was a wonderful man who sadly died very young but at least this one was not caused by stress of badly behaved pupils.

Maths teachers were freshly graduated, must have been so young!

My maths teacher, who was also my form tutor, was younger than my eldest sibling!

Yes. Some were wonderful, most decent. No actual bad teachers spring to mind, though I do remember the “Careers” teacher who said I’d never make anything of myself!

Yes my English teacher at secondary. Opened my eyes to books, told me I was good at something. And introduced us to pasta!

Yes, one I had in Primary 4 and 7. Then when I had my daughter at 19 and was going to college 30 mins away she'd be on the bus and sit beside me every day as she was a lecturer there. She was an amazing, kind teacher and a lovely woman.

There was another who was my Modern Studies teacher I really liked and think of, she was really Vivacious and spoke of her daughter who was a year older than us in such a loving way, which I used to love as my mum certainely wasn't like that.

My P.E/Guidance teacher who started coming to get her make up done by me when I worked in Cosmetics. She was by then retired and had cancer and she was a bit self conscious due to her loss of eyebrows and felt comfortable with me. All amazing women.

From time to time, when I’m talking to dc about thier teachers sometimes a memory pops up. I do have one on Facebook. She was my tutor/pe teacher and she was fantastic. She was particularly close to my girl group. She left us end of year 10 to teach in Australia. When she left she would email us all individually for a while. To Keep up to date. We tried to set her up with put other tutor/ pe teacher but we didn’t succeed. They did flirt a lot though so was exceedingly obvious to 14 year olds 😅

i always remember my year 11 English teacher too, she was all great, chill, fun.. use to take the mick out of us lightheartedly, the whole class loved her and I’m pretty sure she was the only teacher that had a whole class pass the subject.
I remember one term we came back and she had got married during the break, changed her name to a really funny one, she wrote it on the board and then told us we have 5 minutes to get it out of our systems, we threw jokes at her left right and centre.
Anyway my sister was born end of year 11 for me, I thought it was well known as my friends used to take the piss out of me about it. About 9 months after I’d left school, I was in Tesco with my mum and little sister, mum had wondered off and I was waiting with trolley when my English teacher almost bumped into me, looked at me, looked at my sister, I could tell by the look on her face what she was thinking. Ii just looked at her and said not possible, she asked anyway. I hope she isn’t yours. We had a joke about it and I still remember that moment to this day

I do of course. They have a huge impact on you when you are young I think. growing up in Ireland during the 90s had a few nun teachers that were interesting characters indeed.