What was one thing your teacher did that you still can't forgive them for?

concrete_baby@sh.itjust.works to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 111 points –
124

My primaryschool maths teacher taught us roman numerals and one of the tasks we got was to write out the current year in roman numerals.

I came up with MCMXCVIII ... to which he smugly replied that it's wrong and the romans were a lot more clever and it's just IIMM (take 2 off 2000).

Years later I learned that he was quite wrong about that and my answer is in fact the only correct one.

TFW your school insists you learn something utterly pointless and then the teacher teaches it completely wrong.

IIMM just looks so silly. If that were allowed, then why would the Super Bowl roman numerals be so long in the 1900s?

(I don't even watch football.)

There is a modern normative convention but there was never an official standard, and the Roman's usage actually had a lot of variation. Your teacher may have been right that some Romans actually wrote IIMM, but he certainly wasn't right to claim you were wrong.

"I gave you a 98 because I don't give out 100's." Even though I got everything right, I couldn't get the grade I deserved because of some high school health teacher's ego.

I had a university professor give me a 99 on a written exam because "only Jesus is perfect".

I didn't really care but it's also something I may never forget because of how bizarre I found it

Elementary school we has televised morning announcements where 2 different kids were randomly selected each week to read the script as the "hosts". I got selected one week and while the camera was turned to the flag for the pledge of allegience, the other kid and i quietly, under the desk, started fighting with hand puppets that were on set. We stopped when the camera got back to us, but the music teacher, who was in charge of the whole schtick, decided afterwards to get angry and take me, specifically, off of morning announcements.

That's not even the part I'm still mad about though. When it was time for music class that day, since it was entirely floor seating, I positioned myself under the lip of the teacher's desk to sulk, like is a normal response for a 6 year old who feels like they were unfairly singled out. The music teacher then proceded to pour a glass of water on my head, in front of the whole class.

I can't even remember his name but I hope he had a shit life afterwards. What kind of teacher does that to a child.

4th year in college in a 3rd world country. Final exams. Last exam. About to graduate after an agonizing year of microbiology. I don't remember exactly what I did, but he saw me and thought I was cheating off of another student. I was not. Starts yelling at me. I start yelling back. Fails me on the last test on the very very very last day of the last year of college and I was about to go on with my life. I had to repeat the whole year because of him. College is different in my country. You fail one class, you fail the whole year. I still hate him to this day. When he dies, I'll go shit on his grave.

In fifth grade, we had this medieval month where we all built castles and competed in events to earn a knighthood. You only had to earn like three medals out of maybe 10 different games, like throw a ball into a circle, or make another student laugh.

Every contest, the students were helping each other, or bending the rules, and the teacher was like "whatever." Except for me. I didn't earn a single medal, and everytime it was close, I got fucked by the rules. There was one I remember vividly, because my thrown soccer ball was on the line, and was ruled out. Then another kid's ball was on the line, and his was ruled in. I complained to the teacher, and he went up and toed the other kid's ball into the circle.

That kid was then the one I had to make laugh. Every other jester attempt, kids were giving away laughs. Literally everyone got a courtesy chuckle, but I remember that fucking kid sitting there stone faced while I tried to tell him jokes knowing he'd never laugh no matter what I did or said.

Looking back, I'm sure I was probably an insufferable twat about the rules or something, but I was 10. I definitely believe that teacher had it out for me, and I was one of two kids who weren't knighted, the other having missed the games with mono. My classmates definitely had it out for me, and it was a miserable year all around, but I remember the moment I realized that the teacher was also one of my bullies.

Man that sucks, that teacher should know better, excluding 2 kids like that will definitely stay with them for a long long time. And what a perfect lesson plan for everyone to get knighted, that could lead right into knights of the round table and King Arthur, have everyone sit in a big circle and talk about his knights.

Stupid stupid teacher.

I think you gotta keep in mind that he was a very punchable child and that isn't the teachers fault. Really, the actual victim was their entire classroom

that isn’t the teachers fault.

The...the teacher was literally encouraging his punchable behaviour though.

That really sucks. I had a hockey coach like that. If you weren't in the main group, he either ignored you or humiliated you in front of other kids. I was a passable defense player and he only cared about forwards so I mostly escaped unnoticed but several friends and I stopped playing hockey because of this guy. In the league we were in they kept teams together and we kept getting him as coach. We were 13 or 14 at this point and it just wasn't fun anymore which sucks because we all loved hockey but he was just such a bullying prick.

My dad was in construction (ran an excavator, mostly) when I was a kid. He found a large megalodon tooth in amazing condition at work and gave it to me. I brought it to school and my teacher took it from me. I never saw it again.

It's especially infuriating now because I know the value of teeth in that condition and size

That's fucked up, I would be seething if they happened to me

A middle school social studies teacher of mine gave me detention on numerous occasions because I refused to take notes in his class.

Partway into the year during parent-teacher conferences, where parents met with teachers to discuss their children's performance in class, the issue was brought up.

"Pixelscript is having some difficulties in my class. He is not taking notes during lectures. I've given him detention several times."

"Well that's strange, it says on his report card that he has an A in the class."

"Well, yes, he does extremely well on homework and tests, but you see, he doesn't take notes...."

"...Are you kidding me?!"

The greatest irony of the situation was that on the few occasions he forced me to take notes, it lessened my comprehension, because focusing on writing in real time during the lecture actively harmed my understanding of the lecture. God forbid a student actually listens to what you have to say...

I think people learn differently. Most lectures I have to wait for the instructor to finish their slide or something and then begin copying notes. If they're going really fast I don't understand anything, at that point it's just writing them down as fast as possible in order to study later instead of learning in class.

I had a similar experience with a high school biology teacher. I always took very scarce notes (just what i knew i needed to write down). She insisted we take thorough notes and later copy them over neatly into another notebook. I refused. Nevermind that my handwriting has always been abominable. She based some part of our final grade on turning in these copied over notes, and I consequently got a poor grade despite doing well on tests. I took great pleasure in telling her about my 5 on the AP test at the end of the year. (It was a national test, scored 1 to 5.)

It's a classroom management thing.

I didn't understand this until I was a teacher but unfortunately, "if I let you do it, I have to let everyone do it" ends up being pretty true. Kids will absolutely point to other kids and say, "but you let Joey put his head down and listen."

My response can't be "but Joey is passing my class." As much as I would like it to be.

It's also a respect thing and I don't mean that like you might think. I don't demand unearned respect from everyone like an asshole. But one thing that happens is, if you let kids skirt classroom expectations and let them avoid doing things you ask them to do, they learn that your rules/expectations are actually just suggestions. Everything becomes negotiable.

Sorry dude, I would have made you take your notes too.

I'm sorry but you're wrong here. Kids need to learn that everyone is different and everyone is not treated the same. The oft liar is never trusted. The fat kid is probably the one that stole the candy. The nerdy kid probably did most of the group work. If you get good grades, the teacher gives you more slack in some areas.

And your example sucks. Putting your head down and "listening" is not the same thing as sitting up and paying attention to a lecture but not taking notes.

Don't get me wrong. I see where you're coming from and agree generally, but on academics, there's too many different ways to learn. Whatever someone figures out that works best for them should be left to that if their marks are good every evaluation.

Much as I'd like to agree with you, you're clearly talking out of your arse.

Teachers are hamstrung by administration nowadays. If we could treat kids differently, we would. Alas, terrible admin+awful parents means differentiation isn't even remotely possible.

Who said anything about putting heads down? I wasn't pissing about reading a book or playing games on my laptop during lecture, I was paying attention. Head up, eyes locked, watching.

"Classroom expectations"? The only reasonable expectation here is that I pass the class. Whether the teacher thinks patting my head, rubbing my belly, and jumping up and down whilst doing so is the ideal way to acheive it is irrelevant. Especially so if it is demonstrably to the contrary. Literal data for this exists in the form of grades displaying the trend.

My response can't be "but Joey is passing my class." As much as I would like it to be.

Maybe my anecdote is no longer reflective of modern institutions where teachers are increasingly restricted and scrutenized over dumb factors they don't even control, but I find this quite a strange take, because a different middle school teacher of mine in the same school played this exact card to great effect. It is not immediately obvious to me why you couldn't.

EDIT: Sitting on that response for a moment, it seems that to some degree you read it as if I was being disruptive in class, or otherwise not paying attention and setting that example to my peers. In these cases I would take your side. You have a responsibility to teach students the soft skills of proper attention and listening comprehension.

I was not violating this. My whole debacle was very specifically the putting pencil to paper part. In my view, notes are strictly an assistive tool. If I demonstrably did not require this tool to perform (evidenced by grades), and even moreso performed worse with it (further evidenced by grades), I do not agree that I should be forced to use it, specifically at a time where students are arguably old enough to start making choices like study strategy for themselves.

And I am not sufficiently convinced that this specific kind of selectivity is sufficiently toxic to your teaching position that you have to cast aside your better judgement to not rock the boat. But perhaps things really are that dire now. If they are, well, I guess that's just a bummer for both of us. :/

As a kid, I always took everything apart, because I can't help myself and I need to know how everything works. I still do it today (it's my job now!)

I'm 4th grade, I was taking apart my mechanical pencil and putting it back together, and my teacher took it, snapped it in half and under) threw it away.

She told me I'm no longer allowed to use mechanical pencils, I can only use wooden ones.

Since I didn't have a wooden one with me, I was sent to the hall the rest of class.

They should be encouraging that behavior, seeing as it's so common that that curious behavior leads to techy jobs and all.

I'm so sorry for the theft and damage too. She could have just hidden it from you until the end of class or something, if she had to.

I never let it stop me. I started working at a print shop, and the huge copier (xerox 1000i) kept jamming. I'm talking huge jams, this thing is about as long as 2 Mazda miatas.

The fuser belt tore on me at like 4 in the morning during an emergency print job, and the technician wouldn't be there until about noon, so I broke into his parts cabinet and figured out how to replace the belt. I had it up and running about an hour later. The fuser on that machine is about as big as a Brother desktop multifunctional copier.

He did come in, and scolded me for repairing it, but was fascinated I did it (it's a 2 week training in New York just to work on those).

I ended up bugging all the techs to hire me and eventually, they did! So now I work on photocopiers, and I absolutely love it.

Congratulations, that's amazing!!! I worked in a print shop too and am now studying computer science, and printers are the toys of the devil as far as I can tell. Always determined to fail in the most inexplicable ways.

She could have just hidden it from you until the end of class or something, if she had to.

Or she could be more interesting than a disassembled mechanical pencil.

I had a high school math teacher who had me convinced I was too stupid to do the assignments. I literally couldn't do high school algebra. I had an average of 11% in that class, and she would tell everyone their grades each quarter. Out loud, in front of the class, and I had an 11%. Questions were met with "You really should know how to do this".

25 years later, and my lemmy shitposting is interrupted by a meeting where intelligent and talented people discuss drawings of a proposed building. Drawings that were created by me. For the building I was paid to design.

I can math just fine, when someone takes the time to show me how. Algebra, geometry, trig, I can do them all. But when I was a teenager, a supposedly smart and educated person had me convinced I couldn't figure it out.

I got told all through high school and college I was bad at art. Turns out I just had to learn differently than what they were doing and I'm not bad at it. I draw, paint minis, pixel art, some 3d now and am really happy with my work. Same thing with music I can't wrap my head around reading music so teachers all told me I wasn't a creative type. But hand me an instrument that is intuitive to me and I'm actually decent at playing along to things or making my own music.

It can take so long to convince yourself that teachers were wrong about your capabilities. I didn't unlearn all that self deprecation until my mid/late twenties.

I never liked afternoon naps as a kid, so I brought some Tom & Jerry comic books to read during nap time at kindergarten. The teacher told me that everyone has to take a nap, took my comic books and never returned them. I'm now 25 years old and still salty about that.

I was feeling saucy after having learned about the metric system, and for a lab report I deliberately wrote 125 mL as 1.25 dL. I lost half of a letter grade for that.

Wtf thats completely valid

These mistakes happen when the teacher is not paying attention, or got their 12 year old child to help them grade papers. Should just talk to the teacher and get it fixed instead of holding a lifelong grudge.

I did go to her. This was at a religious school where I was lucky to be learning any science at all, and when I asked her what was wrong about it, she refused to explain besides that we hadn't learned about deciliters yet.

Oh so she's a dumbass. Sorry to hear that

I think she just wanted to punish me for being a smartass, which I was, so perhaps some forgiveness is in order.

When I was about 13 I was spending a lot of my lunchtimes in the library working on programming a game. One day I logged on and saw all my code had been deleted. I assumed I'd done it by accident and pulled the latest copy from git. The next day I was called into the assistant head's office because "games are not allowed on school computers". He then for some reason told me that the graphics I'd made myself were bad and that my game was buggy and that if I continued to do that in school I would be suspended. He did, however, say that I could do it at the computer club which was on every Thursday night. Great, except there was no computer club.

Omg this is mad. Nice that you had everything in git! Pretty badass.

First year of high school we had a creative writing assignment for English class. The idea was we all wrote a short story about anything at all. I decided I'd write something comedic.

It was about a guy who studied hard for a big test and then on his way to the test one thing after another delays him and the things get more ridiculous as the story goes on. Once he finally makes it to the place just on time he's told the test is actually the next day.

The teacher then asked me to stay after class so she could tell me my story was stupid, I'm not funny, and I should never try comedy again. Talk about inspiring creativity!

That really makes me appreciate the teacher I had in HS who told me she liked my idea but a short story may not be the best format to try multiple points of view in the narrative.

Sounds like it would have been a great comedy movie in the 90s, starring Steve Martin perhaps?

Had a teacher tell me my father was in hell because he lost his battle with mental illness. Catholic school was scarring.

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I had an art teacher when I was around 12 years old who hated my guts. I wasn't the most well behaved student but the things she did was sometimes petty other times aggressive.

She once threw a water bottle at me because I had a chat with the guy next to me. She missed but the bottle damaged the wall next to me.

She told my girlfriend to stay after class because she wants to talk to her. She spent 10 minutes trying to get her to break up with me.

She never failed to tell me that I'm a good for nothing and I'll probably end up as a homeless drunk and I'll live beside the road.

She always made fun of my drawings and paintings trying to humiliate me in front of the class.

I wasn't her only target, she had one in every class.

I had a teacher like that, who thought I was a bad influence on my other students. The worst part is that if you do turn out okay, they think that they did a good job by motivating you by being such a dick head. No, you aren't motivating me by being a jerk to me. I motivated myself. You were just an asshole.

Once my science teacher gave me a 98 on the final exam. “Your answer is right, but weeds are plants so you don’t need to write both of these in your answer.” Ok well I’m 12 and writing about what mice eat.

I gave my kindergarten teacher a love letter when I was 6. Not only did she turn me down, but she also put it up on the board for everyone to see.

School yard monitor used to punish me any time I fought back (verbally) against the students that tormented me for years. Apparently them pulling my pants down, surrounding and attacking me was fine though. Eventually had enough, waited until one of them got too close and decked them. No punishment and the bullying stopped. What a lesson to teach children Ms. Mcbride you evil bitch.

Had an anatomy teacher in high school that only gave a shit about students that did well. Everyone had a partner in the class so that no one had to dissect things or do projects alone. It was nice and helped a ton.

Part of the way into the year and my partner transfers out of the class. So now anything I worked on meant I fell behind by default because it was one pair of hands vs two doing the work. I was already struggling a bit in the class but when I was partnerless, my grade was basically in free fall.

I expressed that I was struggling to the teacher and then to my parents. We had a conference with the teacher and, this is the worst part for me, he said I was doing perfectly fine. He was not willing to even face the fact that one of his students wanted to do well but needed the extra help. He straight up lied about my performance, when I had the lowest grade in the class. Absolutely refused to acknowledge the problem so that he didn’t have to contribute anything extra. Even saying “hey, you might want to look into a tutor” would’ve helped, but nope. This dude offered nothing. Even my parents were taken aback by it.

I ended up transferring to another school entirely. On my last day, I basically had to go like it was a regular school day so that I could get my transfer paper signed by each teacher. When I got to the anatomy class, I asked the teacher to sign it, he did, I said absolutely nothing and walked out of the class. Not going to sit there and endure that insufferable twat any longer than I had to.

The shitty part is that I loved anatomy and biology. In my previous biology class, I regularly got the highest test grades and could name all of the various animal organs by heart. I was also an ADHD kid (and now an ADHD adult) that didn’t get anything of value from most traditional learning methods. So that teacher’s absolute shutdown was more of a blow to my self-esteem and willingness to give a fuck about school than he realized.

3rd year in highschool a teacher pulled down my pants in the (very crowded) hallways to shame me

That's got to be sexual assault or something. You were 16 or so...

In hindsight, yes Teacher hated my guts and my immature mind didn't really make those connections

Holy shit. Did she immediately get fired?

I got bullied in the locker room and used a padlock to try to defend myself. I got in trouble for using a "weapon" and had to apologize to my attackers.

I had a similar incident, with similar results. One thing I noticed though, is that my parents wetent mad, and more importantly, a sweaty sock with a master lock in it will shut down a bully faster than anything the school ever did.

It was my final exam. Everyone , including the president (or whatever it’s called), but one said I was great and all, and we were chilling talking about my future. I said I wanted to get a CS degree, to which my math teacher replied with “People like you can only be good as carpenters”

EDIT: just to point out, I got the highest grade lol

people like you can only be good as carpenters

This reminds me of that meme like "teachers will tell you that yiu don't want to end up collecting trash but won't tell you that the trash collector makes more than they do."

Oh another one, when I was 8 or 9 one of the first grade teachers threatened me with expulsion for making a fart sound in the hallway. Cried for hours, the wicked bitch. She's dead now though!

Choked me, but no one believes a 9-year old anyways so nothing happened.

My classroom had this weird hidden "library" at the back of it and various teachers would randomly take students to the back of it under the pretext of performing "health checks" that really were them just taking us there and raping us. Mostly a few specific male teachers including the principal and my female teacher as well. One time I was selected to undergo a health check and refused and the teacher slapped me so hard across the face I fell out of my chair and hit the ground. This was in like second grade too so we were pretty young.

That school has been shut down and the buildings leveled now. No idea if anyone was ever persecuted over it though.

Name of the school

Are you insuating someone would just make something up. On the internet????

It's not made up but I'm not going to name the school to a bunch of internet strangers. It's not in the US if that matters at all.

All of my art teachers giving me shit grades / relentless criticism from kindergarten on, which gave me life long issues with typical creative activities.

To this day I can’t enjoy drawing, painting, models, etc. I can’t figure out what made teachers be dicks to me when I was just 6-7 years old. I’ve gotten around it with more technical creative things like photography, but I still have very negative feelings towards most other creative things. Why even try if it’s just going to result in people letting me know it’s bad?

My high school teacher never liked me and most of the time she ignored me and the times she didn't, looked at me like I'm a loser.

I didn't do very well on the big exams (similar to sat) and after few tears I served in the army, I did some courses to raise my grades.

These exams happen to be in my high school with all the 12th graders, and so I was sitting there and waiting for the exam to start and then I saw her peaking from the door after years I didn't see her.

She got in and called my name with a huge smile on her face saying "I knew I would see you here some day".

I'll never forgot this mean smile and I have to say, this smile really helped me on hard times at the university. It kept me motivated.

This was 13 years ago and today I have a bs.c. In computer science and working at as technical team lead in a big software company, managing engineers.

I sometimes remembering this and smile to myself. I don't think she knows what I'm doing today, but the fact that I know I made it, gives me comfort

From grades 1 to 4 (6 to 9 years of age) we had the same teacher. She was fine for the first 3 years but somthing must have happened because during the last year she completely changed.

That last year is still burned in my mind. She would verbally and physically assault us at the minimum mistake. For example, when she was delivering tests she had us go to her to pick it up and the ones with average or bad grades would get a knuckle punch to the forehead (it hurt like hell).

Slapping was common occurance, as in several times a day. She also once broke a plastic ruler on a girls head for speaking out of turn and banged another girls head onto the blackboard several times because she was writing with too small letters.

One of the worst things I recall involved the special needs kid. I don't remember what condition he had, just that he had no understanding of social rules and also had trouble reading. One day this kid decides to climb on the toilet and look at a girl that was peeing (the closed toilets to the classroom were unisex). The girl came crying to the teacher and she proceeded to grab the kid by the ear and twisted it hard. While he was crying is hear out, she pulled down his pants and underwear and slapped his ass several times. He was quite never the same after that...

The worst part? Telling my parents about this and them thinking I was crazy because there was no way a teacher would behave like this.

Luckly that was the last year and I moved to another school but the memories remain.

If you're still alive, fuck you Lena.

I was reading a book in class, and after finishing it my Earth Sciences teacher asked to read it. He never gave it back and swore for years I never lent it to him. It was a book one of a series that my dad had given me.

Princess of Mars, book 1 of Edgar Rice Borroughs's Barsoom series. The edition from the 70s. I just recently found new copy of the missing book at the used bookstore so I could complete my shelf.

My kids know this teacher's name, and call him my nemesis.

Primary school 4th year (as it was called then). Teacher had some items/words and asked what they had in common (can't remember the exact phrasing), anyway it was things like triangle, tricycle, triceratops. I usually kept quiet even if I knew the answer, but this time nobody spoke up and I was feeling unusually confident. "Tri", I said. The teacher wrote "try" on the board and basically humiliated me. "Anyone else?" I think there was one other answer, and then somebody else said "tri" (or maybe they were clearer and said "they all start with tri"). Anyway, they got congratulated and my protests that that was what I said went completely unheard.

I mean, if you know the answer is "tri", why would you hear and write "try". This incident probably knocked my confidence and made me even more shy of sticking my hand up than I already was.

Dude WTF.

I've played this back in my head repeatedly, and I still have no idea.

for things like this I just assume the person's brain just exploded for a second. I could definitely see myself doing this with 2 hours of sleep, and feeling 100% sure you said try is also something a sleep-deprived person would do. Still sucks when it teaches you not to speak up though

I had a teacher accuse me on front of the entire class (university) of helping the guy who say behind me cheating from my test. He used the word "collusion".

I had words with the guy who had in fact cheated off me after class, outside. He told the prof I didn't help him. I also made it clear he shouldn't sit behind me in front of everyone at the next class.

The prof had it in for me because he completely screwed up the time period of this sort story and I was able to explain why because of a song and artist specifically mentioned for that purpose by the author.

It stands out because he accused me of cheating in front of everyone. I was 25 years old at the time, used to working with people who would literally fight you for impuning their character like that, and it just really made me angry. I'm pretty chill most of the time.

My senior year I took mostly AP courses and there were these two "nerd" bullies, Noah and Cory, that loved to target me because Noah's mom (a teacher) made sure he knew I was on the spectrum. These two guys were physically weak, but their parents protected their mouths from fists. I remember one of them intentionally caused a collision with my vehicle in the parking lot, then lied, and I got the ticket because of who Cory's dad was. The AP English teacher really disliked me for whatever reason as well and would encourage these two to come after me in class, sometimes he'd even join in.

There were many incidents with this teacher's bullying, but one really sticks out to me. Towards the end of the year, I was sitting in the back of class minding my business and reading. A group of kids, including the two bullies, were at the teacher's desk talking to him about what colleges they planned to attend. Out of nowhere, the teacher yells "Hey (me)! What college are you attending? Alcatraz University?" Of course the two assholes erupt in the loudest laughter and the rest of the class follows suit. Not only was it moronic, it was completely unprompted.

Fuck you, Noah and Cory. But a special fuck you for Mr. Betscher.

I was 12 or so, rather depressed, in a new school which was crappy, and dealing with a difficult home life with my mother who has BPD, and I was doodling shitty things in my notebook in class, I didn't feel like I had many friends so I wrote stuff like "Anna looks like a poodle with her perm" and 'Jennifer looks like a banana in her yellow jacket", just petty stuff but it was getting me through a bad day. The art teacher noticed me writing, took it away from me, and read it out loud to the entire class. I literally had zero friends after that. It was a pretty harmless thing for me to do and I was just trying to blow off a bad mood, obviously,, but she decided to wreck my life out of spite.

I wasn't right to do that, don't get me wrong, but I was just a kid and didn't deserve public humiliation for simply getting some feelings on paper.

Mans gave me hell for needing accomodations, like I would have been in my rights to open a civil rights suit against the school for it.

Luckily the resolution was allowing me to earn the req by taking a climate risk assessment course.

BTW, same guy returned the first exam lecturing the class about how it was the single worst class score he had seen in his 20+ years of teaching, as if that wasn't a condemnation of how he was doing his job.

I have a past teacher who took a Gameboy Micro away from me because I played it during school. It still sits somewhere in her desk.

I had a teacher who had us read a certain amount of books on our own per semester. We could choose pretty much any book.

I chose a book in the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy series.

He would check that we’d actually read the book by sitting down with us and turning to a random page, reading a bit and then asking us what was happening, who the character he’d read about was, that kind of thing.

Well, yeah if you’ve ever read HHGTTG books, you know it can go on random tangents. My teacher read one of these random tangents about a character never seen before or again, and which had no connection to the rest of the story at all except as a setup to talk about something else that did have to do with the story.

My teacher could not wrap his head around this. He read a couple more random selections and I did explain those, but his assessment was that I had only hastily skimmed the book instead of properly reading it, and therefore lowered my score on what was normally an easy 100% assignment.

mock me in class constantly cuz i was born in and brought from a village to city

soon almost every classmate just bad mouth me for the same reasons as if its okay cuz the teacher did it

Professor gave extra credit for attending talks by visiting speakers if you got the speaker's signature as proof you were there. I attended but couldn't get a signature from the speaker before they left. Saw the professor there, had a chat with them and left. Professor proceeds to deny extra credit "because there was no proof I was there." We literally had a chat at the talk and you don't know if I was there!? Ok.

That same professor had a habit of essentially bullying students singling them out in class and mocking them if they didnt understand the material (that the professor did a poor job of explaining which is why exams were typically in the 40s and 50s on average) and looking at their reviews indicated that theyd been doing this for years, decades even. So their end of semester feedback came in and they were no longer teaching that course.

I want to preface this by saying this teacher used to be my favorite teacher. He was really good about talking to our level, but not treating us like little kids (this was the seventh grade). You could have an adult conversation with him and he was good about engaging the class.

So anyway, for History class we had this project about the Canada Home Children. For those not in the know, while Canada was still a British colony in the 17th century, the government started this program where colonists in the Canadian territory could adopt British children from orphanages to help on their land. In practice, this meant that people were 'adopting' unwanted children so they could have cheap labour. In class we learned that the kids were treated basically as slaves and typically went through lots of abuses.

At the end of the term we had this project where we had to summarize the typical child's experience. For my project I decided I was going to make a satirical comic. I drew several strips that each detailed something we learned about in class. I remember a kid getting lost overboard on an overcrowded passenger ship, one getting frozen solid in ice because of the harsh Canadian winter, and another being made to eat a raw turnip while the rest of the family was having a Christmas dinner.

My teacher gave me a D for the project because he said it was disrespectful to the children.

I went to a lot of effort for this project, really went above and beyond because I love comics. I felt I was showing the abuses the kids had gone through, and I thought the comics were funny but tasteful. I also felt that it was pretty clear that since I'm drawing the abuses of literal friggin' children it went without saying that I was also condemning the program as inhumane.

We had a parent/teacher meeting about it because I'd never gotten such a low grade in my life. And I was pretty upset too, I worked hard on this thing. My teacher goes on to explain that if you have to be careful with this kind of thing, because satire is tricky to get right without offending people. He then goes on to talk about A Modest Proposal, a satirical essay from around the same time where the author proposes that since the Irish were having a famine they should just eat their babies. He was talking about this as if it was the appropriate way to do satire.

My dad asked how my cartoon about abuse was any different from a story about eating babies. My teacher didn't have an answer, but I still had a D

In hindsight, the story did teach me a pretty valuable lesson. If you're going to make satire, you're going to offend people, and you're probably going to suffer for it. I like to think he was trying to teach me that there are stakes for speaking against injustice, and you have to be willing to accept that people are going to be critical or dismissive of you. But if you've offended someone with your satire, then... that's kind of the point. Anyway, I'm happier thinking there was some lesson to it other than him just being a jerk about my project

Failed me in discrete math and I still don’t know why. I did ok (passed) on all the exams, which was basically the metric for passing/failing. Most of the class failed too. Dude probably had a shitty time and took it out on the class.

Picking me up and slamming me into the lockers because I tossed some trash into a bin but missed. Before I could pick it up I was being held by my neck against the lockers. Teacher never got in trouble because he was "going through some tough times". That same semester I got suspended for defending myself after being attacked by another student too, I didn't even start the fight.

Bunch of bullshit, but that's life I guess.

Not directed exclusively at me, but I had a math teacher throw a temper tantrum directed at a classroom of 4th graders about how much of a personal injustice it was to her that our parents kept sending her complaints, and that has got to be the worst thing she did.

To give you a picture as to why she might've been getting so many, when my Mom sent in one of these "complaints," she received a response in the form of a metaphor about how coal must be put under immense pressure in order to become a diamond... I think my Mom responded that something like a flower might serve as a better metaphor for a fucking 9 year old, though I doubt it did much to change that jerk's mind.

Anyway, having her as an instructor set me back at least a year in math, and I've had other people who were in that class say that that's where their issues with anxiety started.

Just treated us like human garbage well before I was old enough to know it was fucked up. 4th grade, treating a bunch of 10 year olds like garbage. Screaming, flipping desks over little girls wearing makeup. She'd been complained about for years, but the school wouldn't remove her. I can remember that was the year my issues with anxiety started.

My English teacher made fun of me in front of the class, completely out the blue, because she wanted to be respected by the popular kids who bullied me.

Really dig in her heels on the idea that 50% is not equal to 1/2. Thinking she must be joking I wrote a two-page proof explaining all of the reasons why 50% is equal to 1/2 and she was more than a little bit mad at me for not letting it go...

I ended up having to appeal to her department chair who walked into the room during my class, sat down at her computer, changed my grade on that test, and said to her, "I really shouldn't have had to come down here to do this myself. I don't want to have to come down here again. I'm asking you to drop it."

She didn't say another word for the rest of that class period and was not in school the next day. For the life of me I can't understand what the fuck she was thinking was going to happen. Math doesn't recognize opinions or authorities outside of math and she should have known that.

High School Tech Theatre Teacher. Many of the teachers in the theatre department at that school had somewhat of a reputation. This one, I felt at first, might've been unearned. She seemed genuinely good at her job, besides the occasional slip-up. During one class period, she explained to the class that she expects us to set up our big giant table and the chairs for it(It was a rather unfinished building specifically for the theatre department with no actual classrooms, so our classroom was actually just a square nook in a hallway.) before class began so we could get through lessons faster. Reasonable request, that's fine, we were getting rather...nothing done for awhile because of how janky it was to have a classroom setting like that. That's not necessarily her fault.
One class, though, there were some band students moving their instruments - talking cellos, saxophones, tubas, entire drumsets, and other big and/or fragile instruments and class materials - to the auditorium nextdoor through said classroom which was...just a hallway. Y'know, using the hallway as it's supposed to be used, rather than as a classroom. We, as people with common sense, didn't start moving around our heavy class materials likely to cause injuries just to make the path even narrower than it already was. Once class started, teacher RAILED at us for about a minute. She was clearly SEETHING as she ranted about how when she says to do something we do it. One student tried to explain our reasoning for the delay, even saying "There were other students moving heavy stuff through here. Why would we form a big block?" Her response?

"Why would you not?" I am not fucking joking, those were her exact words. She then interrupted him before he could respond and told him he was saying he didn't care what she had to say and he was being disobedient. When he tried again to explain himself she threatened to send him to the principal.
This was not the only thing she did that proved to me she was a power-tripping removed who saw us students as her inferiors, but it was the one thing I just can't get out of my mind because of just how absurd it was in the moment. The only funny part was that she didn't even realize she was taking up MORE class time than we took setting up as she raved about such a petty issue because we apparently questioned her authority.

Exist. The US education system failed me.

I am not "normal" I can't read a chapter and pass a test. I need to be hands on. So the system gave me a C and moved me on to the next grade.

I was given the privilege to realize I can program, and by high school had already become pretty handy in C++. This is before high school.

I was a star in every tech class they had. Got Cs still of course cause i didn't give a fuck, but it was very clear I was light-years ahead of even the teachers.

Not one teacher, staff or administrator asked me why I wasn't going to college? Sat me down about my grades and got me aligned. No one gave 2 shits.

I got lucky. I got myself into the career without college. But man, those students who didn't have the privileges I did, that just got dropped to the curb. Shame.

see them work as a "factory workers" and not actually teach, do classes without worrying about transmitting something to you (banally it is a common attitude to almost all teachers).

Back in 5th grade my teacher accused me of speaking during a school show. I was the quiet kid in class.

Is "contributing to the bullying with my bullies" a good enough reason? It's one of the reasons I can't trust anyone in a position of authority now.

I was not allowed to go on the next class trip because I talked when I wasn't supposed to on the bus ride home during the last trip.

My report cards were always excellent academics but needs improvement or unsatisfactory on behavior because I was talkative. They wanted little meek drone robot children to feel superior over in their miserable jobs and lives. I imagine the feeling of power over a captive youth who have no choice over interacting with them therefore they can do almost anything they like was the only thrill most of these teachers received in life. Even as a kid, I never granted respect to anyone, classmate or adult without them earning it.

The next class trip was to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. I remember seeing commercials and wanting to see the animal tricks. I had to stay at school alone that day and I never did get to go to that Circus.

I hated disgusting school lunches so my parents made mine. I had a teacher dictate how I was eat my lunch which I brought from home and when I refused to eat in any other order but the way I wanted to, told me to sit on my hands. That got handled by my parents and I was never told a damn thing about my lunch again.

Another teacher lectured me about learning to live in the world with other people when I complained that the classmate behind me was repeatedly kicking my chair and jolting me during class.

Looking back, these situations were always a conflict of wills where students weren't supposed to have any and just mindlessly follow or allow themselves to be picked on by others.

Suffice it to say, the majority of my teachers were scum and my favorites were few and far between. This is why people homeschool. Poor teachers, propaganda and brainwashing as education, and crap school lunches.

Not letting me dehydrate a lemon when he told us to bring in "any fruit you want to dehydrate" as a fun class activity. He said something along the lines of I was being difficult.

Fuck Mr.Moen and the fuck the horse he rode in on.

I’m very sure I’ll be able to contribute to this conversation at the end of the semester. I have an Organizational Behavior class and the teacher is a prick, narcissist and a bully. Treating us adults like we are misbehaving children and gaslighting us every class.

I wonder if he sees the irony in what his Behavior is doing to the Organization of students he's teaching :\ For real though, nothing takes the joy out of learning quite like a teacher treating you younger than you are. I hope that class goes by as quick as possible

Forced me to explain my ASD to the class. This was after I made a lot of progress in my early childhood; by the time I got to highschool I no longer thought my former ASD diagnosis defined who I am, and I preferred to keep it to myself. I certainly didn't want people to think of me differently because of it, but my teacher thought otherwise.

I got accused of breaking a window (i didn't) and i had to take responsibility for it, if i ever find that old witch again i will let her know how colorful my language is.

A sub called me to the front of the class while we were lining up for lunch to shame me for my atrocious handwriting in 4th grade.

She had a big drawn out discussion with me about how "shameful" it was that I still wrote like that at my age.

Yes, she used the word shameful.

I still think about it when I try to write at 28 and it looks awful. I can't do anything about it despite trying my whole life.

Edit: this happened while the entire class was standing in front of the door single file waiting to leave for lunch, so there were no distractions. Everyone saw and heard everything.

Encouraged my bullies to keep it up, stood me up in class to talk about everything I did wrong on my book report, shook me like a ragdoll for not turning in my religion homework and hurt my neck. 5th-8th grades sucked big time

It was more what they didn't do. Back in high school, I got bullied. And one time, during a longer break, another student and me, we figured, we'd borrow a soccer ball from another student, without asking.

Well, when that student returned, of course, he'd take issue with it, not because there was an issue, but because I was involved. And the other student who played ball with me, the spineless traitor, started lying that it was entirely my idea to grab the ball.

The teacher did a whole intervention thingy, sitting the whole class down to talk about this, without realizing that:

  • It's a fucking non-issue. Even if I had destroyed that ball, just buy a fucking 'nother.
  • Of course, I did not fucking come to the idea to take a ball without someone else who also wanted to play.

I didn't get punished or anything. But that teacher, being an adult and all, should have realized that it's absolute horseshit and should have had my back.

So, you took something that wasn’t yours, and were part of a general discussion about taking things that aren’t yours with the entire class, and you weren’t punished otherwise? You should be praising that teacher, who showed a real grasp of proportionality. They addressed an infraction in an equitable way and matched the seriousness of the issue with their response.

That student brought it to school to play with the class during breaks. It was quite normal that others borrowed it and he never had a problem with it. And it's not like the ball was taken away. At best, it had mild usage marks, which again, would have been no problem at all to compensate financially.

Edit: You might be thinking of the American-style school system where classes are a lot looser, i.e. different per subject. I'm speaking of a European(?)-style school system, where a class has all subjects together.
So, the ball-bringing student knew me and the other student quite well, and had no reason to worry that we'd not return the ball or whatever.