Sorry. Screwed up my HTML, didn’t mean to yell. >.

Ghosted by LemonWitch @ 09/10/2006 5:57 PM EDT

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Reading all the other responses is dredging up some long-repressed memories.

My elementary school art teacher was evil and more concerned about us messing up her artroom than anything else. I remember one project we did that involved some kind of ’special’ paper which was apparently on the pricey side and I remember her saying as she handed it out in this snooty pissed-off voice. “Now these sheets of paper cost a ~*DOLLAR*~ each, so if you mess it up you won’t get another one!!!!” This was also the same person who yelled at me for coloring outside the lines.

Fortunately, the sheer awesomeness of my middle school art teacher helped cancel this out.

Come to think of it, I got in trouble for that a lot. I hated coloring, I just wanted to draw my own picture with the crayons, so I would, reguardless of what the assignment was.

I got in trouble like that in Kindergarten once. There was this easel with tempra paints that you were only allowed to use TWICE per year during playtime (I know, WTF?). Because I loved to paint, I usedup my two times pretty fast, but one day we had a sub so I had this brilliant idea that I would ask her if I could use the easel again. It worked, and I got to paint for a THIRD (gasp) time. But my brilliant master plan came crashing down when my real teacher came back the next day, found out I’d thwarted the system and took away my playtime. My teacher was just ticked because I outsmarted her, something I did on a disturbingly regular basis.

One of my math teachers was also a nightmare. He would make fun of people in the meanest way humanly possible and liked to pick on me in particular. I was picked on enough by my peers and didn’t really want to get it from my teachers too, and him constantly singling me out in front of people who were already looking to start shit with me didn’t help me much. I would actually get made fun of more by my peers because of things *he* said about me. (It still hurts me to think about this so many years later–I can’t imagine being so messed up in the head that picking on a group of 11/12 year olds seems like a good idea.) He was also really fond of giving us homework that was entirely different than what he taught in class and then yelling “It’s all the same stuff!” at us when we didn’t get it and asked him to explain.

Sigh… *shakes head*

Funny thing was, the kids in my math class who didn’t get picked on *loved* the guy. My misfortune was their entertainment.

On the plus side, I found some of my favorite old teachers on that website and people were giving them high ratings.

Ghosted by Crow T. Robot @ 09/10/2006 6:20 PM EDT

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I was kind of “the smart kid” in school, because I was much younger than my peers, and usually teachers liked me, but there was one who DESPISED me… She acted nicely enough most of the time, but there were 3 incedents that lead me to beleive in her unfounded ( I was usually the “teacher’s pet”, quiet, polite, ALWAYS assignments done early, usually extra credit)hatred of me… I was in her Anatomy/physiology class, and she was standing infront of the room, lecturing. At one point during her lecture, she pointed to her arm and announced that that was where her tibia was. I immediately raised my hand and corrected her. She sneered, went to look it up, then got this sick look on her face and was queit for a moment – Before announcing to the class that she not only wanted them to read and do the activities in the whole skeletal system chapter of our texts, but also wanted everyone to draw and label the human skeleton because “she wanted everyone to know their bones as well as Amber…”… Now I will also mention that she was the ONLY teacher giving out homework, as it was the friday before a 3 day weekend… and she knew from experience that I was often accosted by the older, and therefor larger students who wanted answers, or wanted me to do their homework. Needless to say, I went home sore and covered in spit balls that day .
The second incedent took place a few months later – The school was participating in a big essay contest. If you won at the school, you got to go and read your essay for the county, then the state, then national. I was thrilled – I LOVED writing, essays in particular, and even though she was one fo 3 judges, I won the school contest, and was going on to the county competition, which was after school hours. She handed me a sheet of paper, very official looking, with the date, time, and place of the competition, and a breif congratulatory paragraph. The date was about 2 weeks away, so I had plenty of time to prepare, pick my clothes out, and memorize my essay. The big day came, and when I showed up, with my parents, and a few of their freinds, the building was dark and quiet. We found a secuturity guard and showed him the letter, and he was kind enough to call a building supervisor, who informed us that although the hall had not been booked for any school event, or essay competition, he DID know of the contest, as HIS DAUGHTER HAD WON the previous week – he even faxed my father a copy of HER letter (which looked NOTHING AT ALL like mine, even down to the sigature of the superintendant), along with HER essay, and her award. I was crushed, and my parents went to the schoolboard. The teacher claimed she had no idea where that letter had come from, that it wasn’t the one she had given me at all! But, nonetheless, she apologized, and even went so far as to get me a gift… I set of dollar store (they had the price sticker intact) salt and pepper shakers in the shape of pigs. Now I was 12, and what is a 12 year old going to do with salt and pepper shakers, for one thing. For another, I was a bit overweight, and if I wasn’t being picked on for being the smart kid, I was picked on for that. Several of my peers in her class had been written up for calling me “Ms. Piggy”.

Ghosted by Leigheshe @ 09/11/2006 10:25 AM EDT

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Well I never had any really evil teachers, but there are a few incidents that I can recall now that seem sort of mean.

I was in fourth grade at the time and we were having a math lesson. For math we would get out of our desks and sit on the floor while the teacher taught us lessons. The teacher’s name was Mrs. Henderson, and I didn’t really have a problem with her. This was pre-Junior High though, and I was an awfully dense kid back then. Anyway, I was bored so I wasn’t paying too much attention. Math wasn’t very difficult for me, and I already understood how to solve the math problems she was showing us… so I just thought about something more interesting. Then she began to call on people to solve questions out of the text book. Guess who she called? The unattentive me. She wanted me to solve Problem 4, but looking in the book, there were TWO Problem 4s: the practice question and the actual homework question. So naturally, I asked which one. She wouldn’t tell me! She got pissy and told me I needed to start paying attention in class and then she told me to go up to the board and solve the question. I stood up and went to the board… and proceeded to calmly wait for several moments before she let me sit down again. I don’t remember what she said next, I only remember my reply, “I don’t get embarrassed very easily.” Which was the goddamned truth because I was such an airhead back then that I didn’t even realize when people were trying to ridicule me! (Of course, that all changed come 7th grade in which I was teased mercilessly…) Even then I didn’t hate her. In fact, two years later one of my classmates mentioned that Mrs. Henderson hated me… and I was just shocked. Maybe the guy only remembered that one event? I don’t know. But it was awfully mean of my teacher either way.

Another time was in 7th grade and I liked the teacher, though I knew a lot of people, especially guys didn’t. Notes got passed behind her back, calling her a cow. *shrugs* None of my doing. Mrs. Aho was her name, and she was my Geography teacher. We were doing a group project and I was having a hard time of it because my groupmates weren’t doing their fair share of the work. The project was to create a boardgame based on a South American country. I think we had Panama, but the point was that this was a boardgame and boardgames needed dice.

Well everyone in the group forgot about those. It was our fault entirely as we were reminded, but what was insane was that the day we had to turn in the project, the teacher kicked us out of the classroom and woudn’t let us back in without a die. Well we were 7th graders, what were we supposed to do? We can’t just drive out to the nearest Snyder’s and pick up a pack. We tried all the obvious stuff first. We went and interrupted Math classes to see if the Math teachers had any… NO. Eventually we ended up back outside the classroom, trying to figure out where else we could look. Finally I got an idea and told one of my group mates to go back into the classroom and ask the teacher for a piece of paper, some scissor, tape and a marker. I then proceeded to sit down and MAKE a fucking die. It was enormous and didn’t even roll, but it was cube-shaped and got us back inside the room. No thanks to the teacher. Even when the games were graded and tested by other groups, she had to borrow a real die to the game. I don’t think this counted as real cruelty to us, but it does seem awfully dumb to actually expect students with no money and no mode of transportation to come up with some dice in the middle of school.

Alright, one last event that wasn’t really mean or thoughtless… just an example of outright pretentiousness. In 11th grade, I took Chemistry. Not my favorite subject, but it was a prerequisite to Advanced Biology, which I actually enjoyed for the most part. Again, I didn’t really have a problem with the teacher except for a slight tendency on his part to talk down on the students. Well one day he told us that he was quitting his job and that it was his last day. He had a better job lined up with the ‘government’ apparently. Maybe he gave the principal a two weeks notice, but he sure didn’t give us one. So because it was his last day, he was going to have us watch a video that would open our eyes to the truths of society.

Folks, he had us watch a PETA video. Yes, we got a peek at the disgusting and horrible life that pigs, cows, and chickens experienced before they’re off to the slaughterhouse. It was pretty nasty. Chickens with malformed feet, turning cannibal in their close-quarters. But throughout the entire video, I couldn’t help but thinking, “Just because you’re a vegetarian doesn’t make you superior to me, dumbass.”

Lunch was right after that class. They were serving hamburgers. I ate one just for him.

Ghosted by Sucrose @ 09/11/2006 2:25 PM EDT

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There was Ms. Tisdale, my high school English teacher, who let us watch the OJ verdict in class and when he was found not guilty, she threw a yardstick at the board and screamed, “THE EX-HUSBAND GETS AWAY WITH IT AGAIN!” and stomped out of the room. She was just crazy, but not necessarily mean.

The main honor goes to Mr. Kimura, who dampened our third grader Halloween spirits just after roll call by somberly stating that on October 31, when he was a small boy, his fisherman father went out for his daily haul off the small South Pacific island where he grew up. Apparently, the man’s boat capsized and while he was swimming to shore, two sharks came and ripped him to pieces while the family watched in horror from the beach. That man couldn’t wait to retire, and as it turned out, we were his last class.

Drew

Ghosted by Drew @ 09/11/2006 7:57 PM EDT

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Hey, this is depressing… I wanna just mention the very, very best teacher in the world, as a counterpoint.

It was the second-last year of school and I was almost failing maths and science (my fault for doing them on the higher grade I suppose), and I was crying in Mrs McGladdery’s office because I’d never failed anything before – and she had her massive drooly dog at work that day so I could hug it and cry in its fur – and she invited me to her beach-house for a day and generally cheered me up. She also insists that I do something impressive with my English. So I might be a teacher, just like her, moaning at students who write uncreatively: “If anyone uses the word “wicked”, that’s wick-ED, in their next Macbeth essay, you’ll get nought! And 400-year-old corpses CANNOT drip blood!”

My maths teacher was also awesome; she was hardcore, though, nearly killed you if you didn’t do all your homework, with corrections. But the tests were always marked and handed back the very next day instead of weeks later, and on the morning of our final maths exam she handed out all the papers personally and told all of us she thought we’d all be getting A’s – “You’re an A, you’re an A…”. Of course I knew getting an A is a top one percent in the school thing, but it really felt good to start the exam like that. Bless her.

Ghosted by arete @ 09/14/2006 4:22 AM EDT

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