To ask about eccentric teachers you had...

[Tedster77]

I don't mean the ones who were clearly out of all order (we had several - I can think of at least 2 in prison). I mean the ones who just went their own way....

My textiles teacher used to put on Madonna's True Blue album every single lesson and sing along as we were presented with a dustbin full of offcuts and a sewing machine and our imaginations.

My report card said 'your daughter produced a draught excluder' - which was sort of accurate.

I'm so loving these tales, gotta be my most fave thread ever
My love of history was born out of the history mistress who re-enacted all the battles by charging up and down the aisles using a ruler as a sword and a cardboard tube which fired coloured paper balls as a blunderbus. She re-enacted the battle of Tewkesbury and my joy at finding a ball of shot in a field in later years was a high point of my stay there.
The phrase "therefore, three dots will do" during dictation, I mutter even now to myself even now when I'm taking notes... Oh, that was another teacher.
And there was no sex ed, tho we had a foetus in a bell jar perfectly pickled in formaldehyde on the desk. The development of a child in utero was apparently on p.64 of our textbooks, which we had to read for homework. And that was it. We learned about the sexlife of sticklebacks tho, so that was all right. Who needs more?
So many more, but my general question is, are these eccentricities in teachers still allowed in state schools? From what I gather, education seems to be so tightly regulated, just wonder...

Oooh concernedneighbour not that I remember but sounds like something he would have! Initials were J W

We had a crazy English teacher. He scared the shit out of us as naive first years by telling us the broken ceiling light fittings were where he'd thrown kids around the classrooms, and the pin holes in his cupboard door were where he hung naughty kids by putting nails through their ears. Sounds daft now, but we believed him then!

But, he really was crazy. He'd lock disruptive kids in his cupboard. Whereas other teachers would throw chalk to attract attention, he'd throw a reading book and get a bull's eye hit on your head. He would waste whole lessons arguing with the boys about football teams. He'd openly bully some kids - picking on the same weaker ones lesson after lesson without any remorse at all. Some lessons, he'd do silly things like stand up from his desk and do press ups or jogging on the spot for no obvious reason.

BUT, as he saw each year progress over time, he'd mellow, so that he was really friendly and supportive by the time you were in the 4th and 5th years. He'd still be a bastard to 1st years, so it wasn't him mellowing - he just changed his attitude once he'd got control of you and had eliminated the bad behaviour.

Funny thing was that he was incredibly successful with results. Kids who were average/poor in other lessons got A's in their English Lit and Lang exams.

are these eccentricities in teachers still allowed in state schools

I think so. My DS has a couple of whacky teachers who seem to spend more time talking about their hobbies, past, etc rather than teaching. One often brings in grenades and guns from the war which he collects (maybe slightly relevant if you're a history teacher doing the wars but not too useful in a Biology lesson). Another alleged French teacher seems to spend some lessons telling jokes (not in French either). Both seem to think of themselves more of entertainers rather than teachers and perhaps trying to hard to be friends with their pupils.

Physics teacher who would never teach us anything from a textbook but made us act everything out, remember him trying to act out electricity running around the room.

Maths teacher, lovely guy but sometimes would go a bit weird and start punching boxes/kicking boxes, told us that if we completed half a maths paper, we could draw willies on the other half.

Media lecturer who would never actually teach but would show us videos of stuff not related to lectures (e.g. the song, 'you're a dickhead' springs to mind)

History teacher who made you stand in the dustbin if you forgot book, called you a 'miserable worm' if you got something wrong, told us he despised us, interestingly I met him as an adult and he was really kind to me . ( But I was a swat in history). A Chemistry teacher who squirted us all with a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher , a geography teacher who told us we could write our answers in blood as long as we answered them ( this was because someone had forgotten his pen), I wanted to try doing that . Blackboard erasers being thrown at us constantly , being put in detention because A N Other had stolen my hat which we had to wear home , teacher would not listen .( I stole another girl's hat the next time it happened) . Boys being thrashed, Latin teacher who visited the pub at lunchtime and would then sing in class ( in Welsh) . An RE teacher who called us all heathens because I told him god did not exist ; he was nearly apoplectic ! Red face, frothy mouth, ah it was so much fun!

Y4 teacher lobbed whiteboard markers toward you if you weren't paying attention. They were meant to clatter on your desk and make you jump, but they clipped a couple of kids. One time one sailed over a kid's head and landed in her coffee on her desk and slopped it everywhere. Boy were we in trouble for laughing.

Y7-10 English teacher was a bit odd, if a lad was giving him lip he'd make some sort of homophobic quip like "didn't I see you dancing in a gay bar with your boyfriend on the weekend". He also had a mild vendetta against this one girl who was never paid attention in his lessons, even though she wasn't the worst one for it, he always gave her a hard time. One time he snuck up to her desk while she was turned round chatting and jumped up so he was standing on the desk "Oh you're paying attention to me now!"

We had a math teacher who hated talking in lessons and if you did he would throw an eraser so that it hit the wall between your faces with a loud bang. Or the desk between you if you werent sitting by a wall.
He never ever missed. Even could hit notes as they were being passed. He should have been a marksman.

Oh, and our loopy history teacher. We were doing something about bloodsports and he acted out being a cock cock fighting.

As a bunch of immature Y7s we thought sir being a cock was great, so for the rest of the year every lesson "Sir, sir please can you be a cock again sir?" "Oh okay I don't know why you all like it when I'm a cock" and he'd go to the front of the class and flap his arms and scratch at the floor with his feet while clucking.

A history teacher who was a keen walker and mad on the outdoors. Used to proclaim fresh air was good for us, and have all the windows wide open, even in winter.

We had an RE teacher who was well known for his political leanings and activities and so we hardly ever did any RE as we'd just start him off on a political rant and sit back and enjoy.
Likewise we had a History teacher who was the most boring teacher unless you got him onto medieval history when he came alive so the class would take turns in researching a character or a fact and then ask him about it at the beginning of the lesson so as to spend the lesson listening to him regaling us with medieval history rather than what we should have been doing.

To the stories about "my mate swears she saw our maths teacher doing slut drops on mdma... the history teacher used to keep whisky in his desk and we would check it EVERY LESSON to see how drunk he was...our science teacher forgot what carbon monoxide smelt like and breathed it in" etc

I say "Yeah, right that happened. Chinny reckon and my dad's Batman"

Lots of nuns in my school, obviously a Catholic school. If you were caught smokIng, the headmistress would literally tap your wrist and offer you sweets instead.

I had a superb English teacher for A level, who cemented my love for reading by using various voices and by generally being hilarious.

My primary school head, also a nun, sent us off to assembly and stayed in the classroom adding to the paintings we were doing. Very odd.

I don't think there are many very eccentric teachers left, it's far more about targets and I imagine there'd be hell to pay if teachers were a bit batshit these days. It's very 'corporate' in my school.

Ooh this thread is so funny. I had a fair few oddball teachers but as I only left school in the fairly recent past most teachers were pretty straight edge and wouldn't have got away with things that they could have done a decade or so before.

One RE teacher, who also did pshe lessons with us had a box we could put anonymous questions about sex into and she would answer them in the lesson. Someone had asked what an orgasm felt like, she told us it was like 'when you go over a bump or hill in the car... with your dad' she also told us, unprompted, that she preferred her husband to bring her a cup of tea in bed than him giving her an orgasm.

We had a history teacher whose lessons purely consisted of us getting the school laptops to play on while we watched historical dramas, roots and blackadder, two whole years of no actual teaching but we obviously loved it and we were all devastated when he was fired.

Our English teacher in sixth form allowed us to submit homework in cake form, so if you couldn't be bothered to do an essay on King Lear you could instead make and bring in a cake decorated with eyeballs, a jesters hat and storm clouds for example.

We had a maths teacher who was really unfairly strict and gave me more detentions than I can count for things like not having a sharp enough pencil or jiggling your legs under the desk. She was really really obsessed with Winnie the Pooh and would regularly give us work sheets with pooh bear themed questions, and this was at secondary school.

Another maths teacher was a total perv and used to lean in and sniff my friend who wore Britney Spears fantasy perfume if we passed him in the corridor and was constantly telling her how lovely she smelt. He had a picture of his wife and children on his desk but announced to our class that he had bought his girlfriend the Britney perfume for Christmas. He also fully grabbed my arse and pushed me off a bench during a teacher vs pupil charity benchball game.

Our headmistress was a real character and always got dressed up for our end of year plays where the teachers and leavers made up new lyrics to popular songs etc and really got into the spirit of it, she was lady gaga one year which was amazing. She also used to tell us about her 'French dog' and 'American husband' never described them without the nationality first, and we imagined she had multiple dogs/husbands of other nationalities she didn't mention. She used to do a little afternoon tea with champagne and cakes each month for the girls that turned 18. They put a stop to the alcohol after my year though. I bloody loved her she was a great head

Our English teacher had a portable heater kept in his classroom. Quite often there would be tighty whiteys (that weren’t white) drying on them. We thought he might secretly be living in there. He told us a roomful of children that he had a child but had never seen it as he hated all children.
He was great friends with our science teacher who smoked in a room full of chemicals. He also had a glass whisky decanter on his desk next to his pens
Our pe teachers would stand outside the shower and check we were naked and we were showering properly, with hindsight that was completely wrong

My mum asked me why I didn't do art or art history at school. I then told her about the strange art slide shows and mannerisms of the main art teacher, and so she understood why.

Totally forgot we also had a R.E teacher who was in the territorial army. He would regularly go of tangent and discuss bombs, weapons etc.

Part of the science team used to smoke in the room we stored chemicals in. I think they cracked the window open every so often, but the nicotine stained walls gave the game away. That and the stench of fags radiating of all the science staff.

Music teacher who cycled round the school.

Young woman who taught French and showed a lot of back and cleavage. The male half of her class, age 12/13, were not complaining!

I got kicked out of a PE lesson once because the teacher (old creepy male) told me that I had to do some squats whilst everyone else was doing something else (to prep for volleyball) and I refused

Same teacher (male) hit my bum once with a tennis racket. Female teacher laughed

History teacher who kept a bottle in the back cupboard because he thought when he was walking round that no-one would turn round and see him; he stank of it and was laid off two/three years later

I also remember that once classes (as in forms) had to take turns doing assembly in school for a few weeks, as in each form had to do it once. Our form did so bad that the headmaster told us it was awful and that we had to redo it next week and shouted in front of everyone (this was in primary school).

We had a violent RE teacher that threw: Bibles, his laptop, chairs and boardrubbers at us (the laptop wasn't at us but he threw the other stuff at us).

We had a misogynistic maths teacher who said that if a woman turned up with a lot of makeup/short skirt and he was interviewing her, then he'd make sure she'd never work in our county again for looking like a tart.

Not that bed except the PE one to be fair.

our cookery teacher who told us to "knit your own bras girls" her own breasts sagged almost to her waist so we were all hugely amused.

The headmaster who invited you in to smell his books - he was a legend and would do my Latin homework for me, but later was charged with being part of a paedophile ring.

The Latin teacher who was away with the fairies and often forgot to turn up for lessons.

The Latin teacher (sensing a theme here) who wore the same suit every day including same shirt and reeked like a polecat, sweaty and pissy.

The retired history teacher who had been an old boy of the school, lived a few minutes walk from it, and was an honorary house master. He was great and used to enjoy taking girls to Paris in spring time. I went and it was truly a brilliant trip - me and the other 4th year girls were the oldest and busked around Paris after we were meant to be in bed. Happy times.

Oh and a third Latin teacher who was an Aston Villa fan. My class was tiny, just me and 6 boys, and we used to start conversations with him about Villa's form just to stop him wittering on about Cicero and Ovid. As a football fan myself I could more than hold my own!

Yes. I'm definitely sensing a theme!

A level Teacher who used to carry a teapot around with him...and a clipboard.

A teapot?!!
And was he short and stout?
Just...why?
And why a clipboard, too?...