Imagining you can pass through all twelve years of school without encountering a bad teacher is optimistic, but ultimately a futile effort. Bad teachers are as inevitable as taxes, death, and stubbing your toe on the edge of the bed in the middle of the night when all the lights are off after going to the bathroom. You need to be prepared to survive them rather than thrive under them. Fortunately, we have the internet to share our resentment with one another.
Reddit user, u/foothill2004, wanted to know the "Who?" and the "Why?" when they asked:
Who is the worst teacher you've ever had?
Putting You On 1st Grade Blast
Mrs. Davis in first grade.
One time, I had a messy desk (you remember those ones with the top that flipped up so you could store your books and stuff inside).
She picked up the desk and literally dumped all my books and school supplies on me and made me clean it up off the floor while the rest of the class watched. Of course I started crying.
What kind of sadist does that to 6-year-old?
Even Roald Dahl Would Look Away In Disgust
My year 2 teacher Mrs Fowler.
Think Mrs Trunchable and you're on the right track. She would throw chalk at us, threaten to lock us in the cupboard, not allow us to use the bathroom resulting in kids pissing themselves, punishing us for not writing in cursive. She even did headlice checks and ended up spreading them around the class.
That's...Not...No.
Grade 9 math.
He used most of the class time to dispense life lessons and read fake emails from students thanking him for being such a good teacher. He was pretty weird around girls.
Also one time he pointed to a row of Korean students sitting next to each other and called them the Great Wall of China.
Look, Art Teachers Can Be All Over The Place, But This Is Too Much.
My grade 9 art teacher. The first day of class was a presentation about her and the course, which is normal at that school, except that she said that art was not subjective and animations were not an art form.
She waged war on anyone who used a mechanical pencil (or said purple instead of violet), forced students who were starting to fall asleep to stand at the back of the room for the rest of class, and did not allow talking. During the art history lesson she ranted about the unrealistic proportion of Barbie for half an hour and how religion killed art.
One time a student was talking while doing art and when they responded to her asking what they were doing with the word multitasking, she argued with them about how multitasking does not exist. Later that day she sent an email to their parents with a YouTube video link and the words "educate your child".
I never personally had any bad experiences with her but I witnessed a lot in that class. This is only the surface.
Need A List?
I had a U.S HISTORY teacher who:
-claimed to be a part of the KKK but had a black boyfriend
-didn't believe the moon landing happened
-was an anti vaxxer and thought vaccines caused autism
-would say "my man Farley knows what's up" to the only black kid in class when talking about slavery
-dirty danced at prom to embarrass her daughter
-was approved to foster children somehow
-looked exactly like Endive from Chowder
"Not The Way I Wanted."
I had an art teacher and we got some weird tasks to do which were all very boring to me. I draw a lot in my free-time and so I decided to make these tasks a bit more creative!
However in the end she said "You didn't do it the way I wanted, this is far too good for the level you should have done, which is why I'll give you a 5"
(I believe a 5 here is the equivalent of an D or F in the US)
Holding Tight To A Grudge
Mrs.Falci, my 11th grade Spanish teacher. The biggest C U Next C-ntsday in the school.
Ok granted, I wasn't the greatest student. But she was known for being a raging b-tch.
She failed me on an oral exam because I messed up one word. One f-cking word.
She gave me detention for EVERYTHING. I literally got detention once for forgetting my homework in my locker.
That year I received 37 detentions. 36 were from her. I went to 1, not hers.
When the dean asked me why and I explained "doesn't it seem a little odd that I would have detentions from only her and no other teachers? That I'm failing her class and not a single other? I'm pretty sure its because she's just a b-tch."
That was the one detention I got that wasn't hers. However I was relieved from all the others. My sister was the deans favorite student from years before, so he took my side on it.
Turns out, she hated me because of my sister. When my sister was in her class she was a new teacher. Apparently they really walked all over her to the extent that she ran out of the room crying once.
Maybe Talk About Something Besides How Many Bells You Got From Nook's
Had a math teacher in 5th or 6th grade who spent the entire year talking to a group of students about playing Animal Crossing on the gamecube. Every single person in that class except for the 5 or so who were her animal crossing fan club failed that class and had to go to summer school.
A Stickler For Pointless Tools.
In fifth grade she yelled at me for using a mechanical pencil instead of wood on a page she would never read.
Bragging? Where Does That Get You?
A college business statistics professor who only talked about how rich he was from learning statistics and how he had a Porsche with a radar detector in the front and back. I failed that one. The next professor was much better and I actually learned from her, and passed!
Bias On Full Display
She looovveeedddd the boys, but always hated on and picked on the girls. Just as an example, I worked really hard on a project for her class. It came back with a D- on it. My mom had had enough of her sh-t and took my project to the principal. She asked him to tell her what grade he would give the project. He looked it over and read through everything and said it was definitely A work. Mom showed him the grade she had given me on it. Teacher was spoken to and my grade changed.
She also failed me in that class (along with several other females), claiming I had never turned in any homework. I had, but couldn't prove it. The boys in her class never received less than a B. The year after I had her, she "retired" after speaking with the principal and the school board again. Btw: I was a straight A student, except for her class.
Do What We Paid You For
Math teacher a couple semesters ago. Woman barely taught us anything and spent probably half the class time in the bathroom or somewhere. She mostly made us students teach ourselves and outright told us she wasn't going to teach us everything "because in life/the real world, you won't have people teaching you everything you're expected to know" (paraphrasing).
You Don't Mess With Puppies
I had a professor who was awful at teaching. I never liked him. He eventually got fired after an investigation into him, sparked by PETA we were told, found that he was doing unethical testing on puppies and falsifying data for academic studies before coming to our college. I forget his name, but he taught genetics.
Even Third Graders Recognize The Awful
Third grade teacher. She had her teachers pet that could do no wrong. One day she gets a low score on her test, and begins crying. To make her feel better, she points to the worst student in the class (that probably had an undiagnosed learning disability) and says in front of the whole class, "don't worry you could be like her and have an F carved into your report card. "
Even 3rd grade me was like wow whatta b----tch.
The Timing Could Not Be Worse
Mrs. Huddleston, grade 4. I had a troubled childhood, and I remember during that grade that I had found out my grandfather was divorcing my grandmother, and that he kicked her onto the ground and stepped on her while threatening her with an axe. So naturally, I probably had some issues but I never acted out like an a--hole kid.
Anyways, she was trying to teach me something after class, something with blocks and multiplication maybe, and I remember that she was getting angry and frustrated, so I was crying because my home life had a lot of anger and fighting. She eventually slammed the blocks on the desk in anger and started screaming at me, while other kids laughed.
Now she wins awards for all of her "good work". She could have had an off day, but that school memory sticks out to me more than any others during that time, and I'll never associate her with anything else. That was 1994 or something like that.
F-ck her.
Show Him Up
He asked me "did your father ever teach you how to act?" I informed him that my father had died 4 years earlier. Two weeks later my step-dad comes to pick me up for an appointment saying he's here to pick up his child. Teacher over the phone with the office; "you mean the deceased father is here for pick up?"
All through high school that teacher just kept doubling down, never showed remorse for what he had said. He would chase me into other classrooms because I had a hat on and I needed to take it off.
This gave me motivation to become the compassionate, empathetic, and awesome teacher that I am today. My kids always get the benefit of the doubt and I respect them.
Sometimes, You'll Never Find A Good Enough Reason
In sixth grade I was sick and missed a day of school, so I didn't know what the homework was. The next day in class the first thing I did was ask one of my classmates for the previous nights homework so I could do it that night. My teacher gave me a zero and a detention in front of everyone for not turning in the assignment. I went to her privately after class and explained that I didn't have any friends in the class and had gotten everything I needed to do it that night as soon I walked in before class started. She told me it's not her problem if I'm a loser and that I should have found a way instead of making excuses.
I was a great student with straight A's, never missed school, and was always well mannered. I was absolutely mortified and so deeply hurt because in reality, not only did I not have any friends in that class, I didn't have many friends at all. The friends I did have (which were more school friends than actual friends) were on another "team" so had a different set of teachers.
Later in the quarter, I turned in a poem that I was incredibly proud of. I got nice paper to print it on and everything, and the poem itself was very real and very raw. She failed me on the project, and when I approached her about why she failed me she told me the whole thing was stupid—the visual presentation and the poem itself.
My mom still has that project framed in her house, and reminds me from time to time how meaningful it was for an 11 year old to have written it.
I'm not sure what that teacher had against me and still haven't been able to make sense of it all these years later, but I've never forgotten how she treated me.