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Original poster

Weird things your teachers did, which they would be fired for today.....

499 replies

muriel76 · 27/09/2011 19:15

Bit of a random question, but I was chatting with an old school friend the other day and we were remembering our teacher at primary school having a new bathroom fitted and she wanted to check how the workmen were doing.

The whole class was told to 'line up at the door' and off we marched down the road to her house, with teacher leading the way (small town BTW she lived near the school!) but no other adults in sight.

We then all sat in her back garden while she chatted to the plumber!

Ok this was back in the 80s but it made me think - you would never get away with this today.

Anyone else got a similar story from before the days of the national curriculum and parental consent forms etc?!

OP posts:
SnapesMistress · 27/09/2011 20:02

One of my male teachers was very flirty with me, it never went anywhere but we spent a lot of time alone after school chatting about nonsense and stealing glances.

BuntyPenfold · 27/09/2011 20:02

We were very closely observed in the showers - no towels allowed. This reduced some girls to tears.

Chalk was thrown at us by an irascible maths teacher.

A mad geography woman would hit us on the head, sometimes only with a pen, but could be a textbook if you were unlucky.

All pales into insignificance when I remember that a married physics teacher, (who used to bring in photos of his baby girl), had regular sex with a 14 year old pupil - not in school time, but after a music club he ran in his spare time. We all knew. I know one girl who told her parents, who said it could not be true, and nothing was ever done. Their relationship continued for several years. My mother doesn't believe this even now.

Oh, and any item not exactly correct uniform was confiscated by the mad-as-a-hatter head from the cloakroom during the day and not returned ie. it was actually stolen.

schroeder · 27/09/2011 20:03

On a school trip abroad, we were left to our own devices in the evenings whilst the teachers went to the pub.

We were fine just got pissed on the docks Hmm aged 15.

begonyabampot · 27/09/2011 20:04

One of our high school teachers brought his yacht into school when the kids refused to believe he had one - it sat in the car park. He also dangled one pupil out a 2 story window by the ankles. Another used to charge the pupils money to borrow a red pencil, he also used to play beat the belt where you get belted for not knowing the answer. Other teachers used to line up whole classes to belt to make a point or when one person wouldn't own up. Another teacher used to send pupils down to the chemist in town for tampons and stuff. The headmasters office did get petrol bombed though - so we'll call it quits!

BastardDog · 27/09/2011 20:04

A secondary school French teacher who used to throw the chalkboard duster at unruly pupils heads.

A primary school teacher who used to drag her really long finger nails down the blackboard, making that awful screeching noise, to make the class be quiet.

ImperialBlether · 27/09/2011 20:05

I'm in hysterics here. I know most of it is dreadful, but it's funny to think of the way they were so unconfined. They literally did whatever they wanted, like Miss Trunchball.

RueDeWakening · 27/09/2011 20:05

My yr2 teacher in about 1980 was married to a farmer, and every year at lambing time she used to make a little pen out of straw bales and we'd have a couple of baby lambs in the classroom - the entire school would traipse through our class in turn to come and see them!

pinkhebe · 27/09/2011 20:05

our history teacher would staple the boys, by their ties, to the wall. he would throw anything he had to hand, board rubber,chalk,staplers at wayward children.

He was also one of the best teachers in the school

SnapesMistress · 27/09/2011 20:05

Also had several unsupervised maths lessons in yr8, other teachers used to pop in and tell us to shut up but never sent anyone to come teach us. Hmm

oldsilver · 27/09/2011 20:06

ImperialBlether absolutely not - in fact the boy ended up going to "special school" and on release died not long afterwards after being stabbed. We also lost all respect for the rest of the teachers for leaving us in the hall - the last couple of years at school were not pleasant.

oldsilver · 27/09/2011 20:08

BuntyPenfold we mentioned this ourselves to the PE teachers after finding out the boys were allowed to wear trunks in the shower ... apparently they were looking for signs of physical abuse.

ImperialBlether · 27/09/2011 20:09

It does sound like it was a terrifying place, oldsilver. And I agree with you, the lack of trust in those teachers who left the room must have been incredible. Poor boy, though. Really sad story for him.

EggyAllenPoe · 27/09/2011 20:09

on April fools day the teachers used to deliberately arrive ten minutes late, and the class hid in the prep room/ cupboards to leap out and 'surprise' them.

oh how we giggled :) thirty three totally unsupervised kids working out how to put a bucket over the door...

begonyabampot · 27/09/2011 20:09

oh and one I forgot. At primary we used to line up for confession from the parish priest who used to visit the school. Remember some of us giggling as we peeped through a gap in the door to see him stroking one of our friends hair as she confessed. At the time we thought it was hilarious, but not so sure now.

cardibach · 27/09/2011 20:10

I had a Physics teacher who did a velocity experiment with an air rifle - firing it at a truck etc - but he missed his target and very nearly took out the only one of us who actually uderstood Physics. Nice little hole in the wall after...
My music teacher was a pipe smoker and if you had to go into his office you could barely see him across the room for all the smoke. He did training for practical music exams in there too!
These were both in the late 70s/earl 80s, but when DD was at primary (2001 onwards) the infant teacher was still eccentric - with the full support of pupils and parents who all loved her. WHen boys reached 11 she would put on bright red lipstick and leave 12 lipstick kisses (one for luck) on their faces. GIrsl she would kick up the bum 12 times. It was not even remotely dodgy and the kids loved it!

5inthebed · 27/09/2011 20:10

I went to school mostly in South Africa. Teachers would regularly cane the girls hands and boys arses. one teacher had a perspex ruler she used, and another had a huge wooden spoon called Mr Pepper. One teacher would put tobasco sauce in the mouths of kids who swore. Another carrie a loaded gun in her hand bag as she was terrified of being car jacked. Perfectly legal in SA.

A teacher in the Uk as teaching us sex ed, and he threw the book in the air and told us the "true" facts of life which we weren't meant to be told about. It was much better than the usual sex ed talk.

therugratref · 27/09/2011 20:10

In the 70's at primary school smoking teachers were pretty common.
My 4th grade teacher used to have a big wooden metre ruler , he would sneak up behind you and either slam it down on the desk or on the back of your hand depending on the severity of your transgression.

Chemistry teacher mid 80's- he was probably only about 8 years older than us, used to tell us stories about his drug fuelled uni days.

He also got bored one day and taped a candle to a can of WD40, we wandered all over the school nuking paper wasps nests with the homemade flame thrower.

Another time he put a bucket of water in the middle of the quadrangle and used a long pole to tip a lump of sodium into the water the resulting bang brought an enraged headmaster and the entire school out. Happy days

Pixel · 27/09/2011 20:11

Schroeder has just reminded me of a school trip to France where the last we saw of the teachers in the evenings was them disappearing into the lift carrying a crate of beer between them.

Fizzylemonade · 27/09/2011 20:11

My friend was always greeted by the teacher with "here comes the drama queen" when we were 6, because she was a bit sensitive Sad

Our classroom was so cramped in junior 3 that the chair backs were against the wall and there wasn't enough room to walk behind them so we had to walk over the chairs in order to get to the right seat.

In secondary school if you misbehaved in class you had to hold the blackboard rubber between your forehead and the blackboard, leaning there for the whole lesson.

We had teachers punch students and still work there he next day.

Ah, I do so miss my catholic schools.

fifimagoo · 27/09/2011 20:11

One of my teacher sent me to the shop accross the road to buy '20 rothmans' (cigarettes) when I was about 8 or 9. Hilariously enough, the shopkeeper just looked me over and said ' Oh right, are these for Miss Toohey?'. She'd probably been doing it for 20 years.

addictedtofrazzles · 27/09/2011 20:15

I had a history teacher who would staple your hair to the display board if you mis-behaved!!!

Original poster
muriel76 · 27/09/2011 20:19

Some of these are Sad

But some of them are hilarious, so eccentric and pre-political correctness!

Just remembered DH telling me about his biology teacher at his all boys' school telling them to put their pens down and giving a nothing held back lesson on girlie bits, what was where and how to turn a woman on complete with pictures!! A far cry from today's sex ed lessons, I imagine!

OP posts:
addressbook · 27/09/2011 20:20

In my high school (mid nineties) in one year three teachers were sacked

One for having child pornography on his computer, another for getting drunk and shouting racist abuse at a police officer and the last for bitching about other teachers to the pupils Shock

So not strictly in keeping with the thread but it brought it back

Matsikula · 27/09/2011 20:23

At primary school one teacher, a nun, once tied a rather chatty and distracted boy to his chair. On another occasion she sent him down to the infants class to ask for some writing tips. I got away with the odd thwack with a ruler for talking.

also, and this is just icky, we once did a play about the founder of the order of nuns that established my school, and all the girls had to dress in the nuns' actual clothes.

It made being made to do PE in your knickers at secondary school if you'd forgotten your athletics pants (despite having uniform tracksuit bottoms and netball skirt to hand) look positively normal.

SocialButterfly · 27/09/2011 20:26

One of our primary teachers taped one of the naughty boys to a chair with brown parcel tape when he wouldnt behave.

We had a supply teacher that would bring her son in with her and we would take it in turns to push him round the playground in his buggy.

We had a nun that used to come in to lessons on a mobilty scooter and if we were good she would give us rides round the corridors.