My astronomy professor. I need to do this in list form.
1. showed up the first day and told us his lesson plan was 25 years old, that he wasn't too keen on technology so there would be no visuals, and he wasn't going to read the homework or give essay questions on tests.
2. He enouraged us not to study so that the curve would be low and we would have an easier time getting ok grades. he was NOT kidding.
3. He lets class out most days 45 minutes early- in a 2 hour class.
4. He didn't ask or learn a single name all session, in a class of less than 10 people.
5. He suggested we not bother reading the book- he certainly never had.
6. This is by far the worst- he passed out the course evaluations at the beginning of our last class and remained in the room. This is against the rules at the UC, where the prof has to leave the evals and havea student bring them to the department to be read AFTER grading. He just handed them out, encouraging us to give him good marks, then he collected them, then he stood in front of the class leafed through the evals until he came to mine and READ THEM ALOUD!!!! He has complete contempt for the privacy of the students or the rules of the university. If I intended to challenge my grade with judicial affairs, this would be enough of a grievance to do it, since he read my comments on him, before grades were finalized, ALOUD. GAAAHH!!! I felt so violated.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
Well, in my HS we had a math teacher who used to give extra credit to female students who wore short skirts and crossed their legs. And if you brought him food. But took points off your grade if he didn't like the food. Or if you were Korean. Or Armenian. Or if you had an accent of any kind, or if he just didn't like you. He spent most of the class talking to his wife on the phone, who was the home ec teacher, and whom he had married the month after she graduated from HS (yes, she had been in his classes. Presumably she passed.) He didn't really teach, nor did he actually grade papers of students he didn't like-- just wrote "F" on the top. He was known to keep female students who were, um, well-developed after school and "help them with their work" with his arm around them.
Successive generations of students complained about him, and the district and the school did nothing. Finally a family threatened to sue and he was asked to retire.
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
I thought this could only happen in Romania. Go figure.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
What, bad teachers that don't teach?
Posted by Katarain (Member # 6659) on :
I hope you complain even if he doesn't give you a bad grade!!
Why aren't you out complaining about this right now?!!
Okay, it's 7AM (my time, anyway)... but still..
Go! Complain!
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I was going to email the department heads as soon as the final grades went through, but maybe that isn't the best idea. I should start the dialogue BEFORE that happens, although I am fairly sure I am getting an A in the course, and I don't want to jeopardize that, there is only one more class meeting, and then the final.
I think I will email the dep. head today and complain, but ask not to be named until grades are in and all that. I suppose that may bethe best idea.
Posted by Katarain (Member # 6659) on :
Yes, that is the best idea. If you wait, then they'll only see you as trying to change your bad grade.
And it shouldn't hurt if he does find out that you complained, since you can have your grade investigated by them, don't you think? I hope you've saved all of your assignments/notes/etc.?
He probably has tenure. Sometimes that seems like such a retarded idea.
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
Yes, complain now. Even if your grade is not affected, he needs to be stopped.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Sounds to me like an easy pass to me.
Theres ths 1 teach I had in cegep where he would teach the class and try to do so in an interesting manner but the tests were funny. He would say I'm going to make the multiple choice part woth 100% and then 5 minutes later as we are writing it incase you havent noticed by nwo the test kinda has a pattern infact incase none of you noticed Ill write it on to the board and then he would proceed to write "A" several times on the board.
^-^
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
...and I can see that you learned so much from that............ Posted by vonk (Member # 9027) on :
I've taken a couple of tests where there were obvious paterns in the multiple choice questions so the teach/prof could grade easier (which kinda defeats the point of a scantron, but whatever). I never trusted the pattern until the very last question, when I would look back and think "Well, yeah, it sure was ABACADABA all the way through. Darn me for working so hard!"
And I would definitely report the professor for number six on the list. That is just ridiculous. I certainly hope you didn't put your name on the evaluation, I've never had to. But the other five could just be odd quirks, not particularly worng, so long as he was a good teacher. Did he deliver the important information? Did you learn what you wanted/needed to from the class? Or was all of this just him being lazy so he wouldn't have work very hard at teaching?
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
Someone's tenured.
Posted by breyerchic04 (Member # 6423) on :
My most innapropriate teacher did a handstand in a skirt on the first day, offered kids to help her come move out of her husbands house, gave us A's if we tried, and offered methods for guys to score on Valentines. This was a high school class and yes she's still there.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote: Ever had a TOTALLY innapropriate teacher?
Yep. I was the only female in the class and he offered me a guarenteed "A" if I came to his office for "extra help <leer> <wink>".
I went to the dean and was immediately transfered to another section and graded on only my work from that point on, not anything the first teacher turned in.
Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
Just a thought on the last interplay between Farmgirl and Blayne from a teacher's perspective.
Tests don't teach you anything.
Tests can evaluate what you do or do not know, but they aren't meant to instruct. So, making an easy test does not automatically mean the class didn't learn anything. The evaluation may be invalid with results that are not representative of student learning, but that's another ball of wax.
If students (I'm assuming students like Blayne, though I could be misinterpreting his POV) feel that the grade is the important thing and consistently see easy tests, then they will study (and therefore learn) less. Of course, students whose ultimate goal is the grade (instead of understanding the material) study for the test itself and then move on to the next test, many times never achieving understanding. Students whose goal is understanding will learn whether there are tests or not.
The only students that difficult tests really help are those that would rather understand than not understand, but who aren't willing to put in any effort toward that goal unless there is some punishment for lack of effort. Still, even among these, a high grade does not necessarily mean understanding.
An anecdote: A honors seminar teacher I had in college started the first day of class by saying, "Syllabi are death. There will be no syllabus in this class. There will be no tests, quizzes, essays, papers, or evaluations of any kind. You will all be receiving A's. Now that that's out of the way, we can get down to the actual learning." And, because of his highly motivated honors student audience, this approach worked wonderfully. Everyone was interested in learning - we asked oddball questions, tossed out crazy ideas, argued about crazy theories, and dissected the topic in numberous ways. I don't think any of this would have happened if the students were concerned about their grade - these particular students would have been too busy taking notes for what might be on the test.
He said he wanted to use that approach in his Physics 101 class, but the administration wouldn't let him. It was meant as a weed-out class, after all. His opinion was that most of that 150 person into class would just stop showing up, and he would be able to give more individualized attention to the students who were there to learn instead of just there for the grade.
I do want to make clear that I am not defending Orincoro's teacher at all, because he sounds like a complete ass. I just wanted to address the "the test was easy, therefore nothing was learned" sentiment expressed by Farmgirl. While in Blayne's case that statement very well may be totally correct, I don't feel it hs general applicability in all situations.
Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :
Flying Cow- I'm in college because I need the outside motivation of tests and grades to help me learn. It's not that I don't like learning, I love it, I just have a lot of trouble doing it without outside stimuli.
Your approach would work great for some students, I'm sure, but it would cripple me.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
FlyingCow - I was being snarky because Blayne was talking about how "easy" the class was, while filling his posts with misspellings and bad punctuation, etc. In other words, he wasn't trying to show any skill in literacy in his post. If a person cares about their work, they usually at least proofread, and fix any mistakes they notice.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
There's also the fact that if everyone is given the answers, or given the same grade, it reduces or eliminates the meaning of the grades in the class, and, by extension, the value of the degree you receive. If everyone did those sorts of things, we'd have lots of people getting degrees who didn't know anything more than they did in high school.
I'm not saying that there aren't people who are that way now, but it's the college/university's job to try to prevent that from happening.
Posted by vonk (Member # 9027) on :
quote:There's also the fact that if everyone is given the answers, or given the same grade, it reduces or eliminates the meaning of the grades in the class, and, by extension, the value of the degree you receive. If everyone did those sorts of things, we'd have lots of people getting degrees who didn't know anything more than they did in high school.
I'm not sure that is necessarily true. Their have been some classes I've had where the professor completely disregards tests and grades. When I found out about this at the beginning of the class, I was ecstatic (being generally lazy and accepting of the easy way out). Unfortunately for me the professors who manage class this way generally have a much more strict attitude when it comes to making sure the students know their stuff.
That is, the professor won't care about tests and grades, but will care a great deal about making sure that you know your stuff and learn everything he wants you to learn, which is often more than the tests require. I have had at least two classes where I finished the semester with all A's on my tests and assignments, but got an Incomplete in the class because the prof didn't think I had learned enough.
I haven't had a great deal of these types of classes, but I have had some, and I always prefer them over the more standard classes, both because I learn more and because they are approached in a way I can appreciate.
[Edited for spelling]
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
I've had teachers fall asleep in class.
I've had teachers talk about steroid use with their students (not condoning it, mind you), even going so far as to display his personal preferences.
I've had teachers teach us the more colorful terms used "in the bush" in Vietnam. In ninth grade.
I've had teachers teach us how to perform an "arm drag takedown". In an English course.
I've had a teacher ask me to type up his final exam, an exam I myself was going to take.
I've had teachers ask me for cigarettes. In high school.
You got off lucky.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I've had a professor who approached innappropriate. We read A Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich apparantly purely so he could rant about the evils of communism. He was openly disparaging of certain groups. If you disagreed with him he'd make fun of you. He often seemed to be purely to be looking for a fight.
He gave out silly awards for answering snarkily on tests when you didn't know the real answer.
However, this was balanced by the fact that class was the most informative English class I've ever taken, and that his radical ideas and somewhat insulting stance on various issues made me think far more than other professors might. Despite the fact that he seemed to discourage opposition, he actually really liked the people who had their own opinions and argued with him.
I won the "most argumentative" award at the end of the year (and got a cookie), which is pretty stunning for me, and, I figured, not a bad validation of my existance as per this professor.
So I let him off his other transgressions. He never did anything really, really offensive or inappropriate, just approaching that.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
quote:Originally posted by vonk:
quote:There's also the fact that if everyone is given the answers, or given the same grade, it reduces or eliminates the meaning of the grades in the class, and, by extension, the value of the degree you receive. If everyone did those sorts of things, we'd have lots of people getting degrees who didn't know anything more than they did in high school.
I'm not sure that is necessarily true. Their have been some classes I've had where the professor completely disregards tests and grades. When I found out about this at the beginning of the class, I was ecstatic (being generally lazy and accepting of the easy way out). Unfortunately for me the professors who manage class this way generally have a much more strict attitude when it comes to making sure the students know their stuff.
That is, the professor won't care about tests and grades, but will care a great deal about making sure that you know your stuff and learn everything he wants you to learn, which is often more than the tests require. I have had at least two classes where I finished the semester with all A's on my tests and assignments, but got an Incomplete in the class because the prof didn't think I had learned enough.
vonk, the cases you've mentioned are very special cases. Are there instances where the "everyone gets an A" method works? Sure. Does it work the majority of the time? I doubt it. The lazy, indifferent students who just want the grade outnumber the ones who really and truly want to learn the material. Take it from someone who's taught at a college level for seven years now: most students, given an easy way out, will take it, even if it means not learning the material.
(In my experience. Yes, I know there are exceptions, and I'm sure everyone here is one of them. )
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
The guy should be canned. Astronomy in my college was probably the most fun course I took. (Not saying much coming from a Business major though.) The labs were just plain fun, and the lectures were very interesting.
We even went out after class with a very nice telescope to see Saturn. Actually seeing the rings of Saturn with my own eyes, and not in a book or on tv was one of those amazing things I have ever seen.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
I've had two teachers fired for molesting students. My music teacher/choir director in elementary school, and one of my religion teachers in high school.
Posted by FlyingCow (Member # 2150) on :
quote:Are there instances where the "everyone gets an A" method works? Sure. Does it work the majority of the time? I doubt it. The lazy, indifferent students who just want the grade outnumber the ones who really and truly want to learn the material. Take it from someone who's taught at a college level for seven years now: most students, given an easy way out, will take it, even if it means not learning the material.
Absolutely.
Though, at the college level, I really do believe that the onus is on the students to get value for their money. If they're paying the school so they can blow off class and fail, that's their choice and their wasted money. If they're paying the school so they can learn, that's also their decision to make the most of what they've already paying for.
Or, more commonly, what their parents are paying for. I'd venture to say this is the case with most unmotivated students. Those that are paying their own way generally don't blow off the classes they're working so hard to pay for.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
The only really bad teacher I ever had was in 8th grade.
She took an irrational dislike of me and did stuff like write to my parents complaining about how I breath (No kidding!)
She also marked me down in conduct for getting picked on in class. Apparently it's rude to ask her to do something about the little boy behind me pulling my hair and flicking my ears.
I'm so glad she had my little brother 4 years later. He's not shy and stood up to her crap.
Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
I had a high school teacher who threw pencils and erasers at me for getting wrong answers, and once threatened to throw a stapler. And locked me out of the classroom the day after the Columbine shootings because she thought I might try to kill her. When I finally got someone to let me in, the lecture that day was on why it's a good idea to martyr yourself to save your teacher from an armed attacker.
Posted by Libbie (Member # 9529) on :
Caution: This post is VERY LONG. But it's an interesting story, I swear.
Check this out. When I was a kiddie, I was in "gifted school" for the smart little nerdlings. Most of my teachers in that school were awesome - one, I thought hated me. Seriously, I thought that she loathed me as a human being and would be thrilled to death if I vanished from her world immediately. It made going to school every day a torture.
Although I was in gifted school, I got in totally on the merit of my bizarro ability to read (and understand) at college level by age 6. I was otherwise not at all gifted. I guess you could say that I was linguistically gifted in that I had a very firm grasp on English and understood the context of just about anything I read or heard from a very early age. By extension, I could also do (and had/have a great passion for) science, because science depends very much on reading and understanding data.
Otherwise...I was practically an idiot. I barely graduated from high school because I struggle so badly with math, and in college I had to take remedial algebra a few times before I could move on. Even my music classes in high school and college were extremely difficult for me, because music has an awful lot of math hidden in it. As much as I worked at it and studied with tutors and sought out really patient, brilliant math teachers, I never could fully grasp much of mathematics beyond the basics. I did somehow manage to get into trigonometry eventually and escaped with a C-, and that was as far as I pushed it.
So, as you can imagine, as a 10-year-old in Mrs. Anderson's super-smart-kid class, I was already having a difficult enough time. I was linguistically brilliant and read at a level far, far beyond that of even the other little nerds around me, but multiplication and long division would tie me in mental knots. Most of my teachers understood this, and probably realized that I was in these classes because to make me read and experience science at the level of normal kids my age would be cruel and unusual punishment. Mrs. Anderson seemed actually to revel in the idea that a kid like me existed, and I swear even to this day, sixteen years later, that she took EVERY OPPORTUNITY to embarrass me about my math problems.
I would get so nervous about math hour that I would shake and feel nauseous, but LIKE CLOCKWORK, she would call me up first to work the problems on the board in front of the whole class, and I'd try every time, but I never could do it. She'd respond by saying things like, "Is anybody smart enough to do this problem?" implying, of course, that I was not smart. My mother thought I was exaggerating when I told her about this, so it was never addressed with the school.
I don't know whether she was trying to make the other kids feel validated because I was a better reader than they were, or what. Or whether she just really delighted in the idea that although I was probably smarter than she was when it came to reading comprehension, I was a totally average little kid when it came to multiplying several numbers at once. Whatever it was, she had some kind of creepy agenda against me.
It also went further - I loved horses, of course, and I would try to work horses into every project I could. She started forbidding me to use horses in any project about midway through the year. The reason she gave me: "I'm sick of horses." Even back then, I would have understood if she'd said that I needed to try thinking about other things, or that I should expand my horizons, or something.
Final evidence on why she was a totally inappropriate teacher: The class pet was a turtle. We had a brainstorming session to name the class turtle. I offered the name "Myrlte," because it rhymes with "turtle." She told me, "That's a stupid name," RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE CLASS, and wouldn't write it down. WTF??? What the crap kind of elementary teacher tells a student that their idea is "STUPID" in front of the entire class? Or ANYwhere?
Anyway. Somehow, I managed to get through that year with my sanity intact, if not my self-esteem. I even had one very cool teacher in the next year of school, before I went on to middle school, who really went out of her way to help me with math and helped me feel a little better about myself. Finally I reached high school, and in the very last quarter of my senior year, during a private conversation with my creative writing teacher, whose name was Mr. Anderson, somehow the topic of that evil teacher in the gifted school came up. I was telling him all about the crap she put me through, and how horrible it made my life, and how it only added to my math handicap. I swore to him that she hated me and that she was deliberately trying to break me down every chance she got.
He told me he believed me, and said she hated children.
I asked him if he knew her. Why, yes, he did. She was his ex-wife!
WHAT? Yes! Apparently, she wanted to be a college professor, but never was able to compete effectively for the jobs that came up, so she had to "settle" for teaching incredibly brilliant children who learned at a college level. But because we were all children, and not adults, she took out her anger on us. Mr. Anderson said that's why he ended up leaving her. He loved teaching kids, and she HATED kids, and he couldn't take the differences anymore. He assured me that she was doing that crap to ALL the kids in the school, not just me.
Wow, what a great teacher.
THE END.
[ September 08, 2006, 01:14 PM: Message edited by: Libbie ]
Posted by Libbie (Member # 9529) on :
quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen: Well, in my HS we had a math teacher who used to give extra credit to female students who wore short skirts and crossed their legs. And if you brought him food. But took points off your grade if he didn't like the food. Or if you were Korean. Or Armenian. Or if you had an accent of any kind, or if he just didn't like you. He spent most of the class talking to his wife on the phone, who was the home ec teacher, and whom he had married the month after she graduated from HS (yes, she had been in his classes. Presumably she passed.) He didn't really teach, nor did he actually grade papers of students he didn't like-- just wrote "F" on the top. He was known to keep female students who were, um, well-developed after school and "help them with their work" with his arm around them.
Successive generations of students complained about him, and the district and the school did nothing. Finally a family threatened to sue and he was asked to retire.
Was his name, by any chance, Doug Openshaw? Because that is almost an exact description of a history teacher at my high school. Ewww.
Posted by Libbie (Member # 9529) on :
quote:Originally posted by Farmgirl: ...and I can see that you learned so much from that............
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I had a teacher once pull me out of class and yell at me loud enough for the other sixth-graders to hear. She yelled at me for "looking insolent." It wasn't even for being insolent! I wasn't! Apparently I LOOKED like I was insolent. Holy freaking crap!
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
quote: Though, at the college level, I really do believe that the onus is on the students to get value for their money. If they're paying the school so they can blow off class and fail, that's their choice and their wasted money. If they're paying the school so they can learn, that's also their decision to make the most of what they've already paying for.
Or, more commonly, what their parents are paying for. I'd venture to say this is the case with most unmotivated students. Those that are paying their own way generally don't blow off the classes they're working so hard to pay for.
I agree with this from the student's point of view. However, from the college's point of view, it's in the college's best interest to produce people that know what they're talking about, with degrees with that school's name on it. People who are knowledgable reflect well on a school, and people who aren't, don't. That's the principle behind using grades at all--it's a (possibly rough) approximation of what a student has learned in a particular class, program, etc.
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
quote:Originally posted by breyerchic04: My most innapropriate teacher did a handstand in a skirt on the first day, offered kids to help her come move out of her husbands house, gave us A's if we tried, and offered methods for guys to score on Valentines. This was a high school class and yes she's still there.
Where were these teachers when I was in school? Well, my school wasn't co-ed, so the Valentine issue didn't come up (thank God), but still...
I had one female English teacher show us the movie Animal House, unedited, in class. Cool at the time, but in retrospect that was really messed up.
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
quote:Originally posted by FlyingCow: [QUOTE]Or, more commonly, what their parents are paying for. I'd venture to say this is the case with most unmotivated students. Those that are paying their own way generally don't blow off the classes they're working so hard to pay for.
...I really, really hate the attitude embodied by this statement.
-pH
Posted by Uprooted (Member # 8353) on :
Libbie, your story reminds me of a 6th-grade teacher in my elementary school. We lived on the street behind the school, and it was in the days when neither our house nor the school was air conditioned, so windows were open in warm weather. Mrs. L's classroom was not far from our backyard, and on more than one occasion my mother heard her screaming at the kids. She swore that if I were assigned to Mrs. L's class in 6th grade, that I she would have me transferred to another teacher.
I was a very shy kid and easily mortified, and I just prayed I wouldn't be sent to her class so that my mother wouldn't do anything so awful as to draw attention to me by making a fuss. Well, I wasn't, and I had Mr. Lang, the best 6th-grade teacher EVER. But then we ended up splitting into reading groups based on reading ability, so once a week (I think) I was in Mrs. L's class. I'm not sure if I ever told my mother that. I still remember that we were reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (clearly a challenging piece for 6th-graders of any ability). We were reading aloud, and I remember when it was my turn that my stomach was in knots--unusual for me because I loved to read out loud. Maybe I was a show-off, and that's what got under her skin and prompted what ensued, but she just ripped me up one side and down the other. Because I didn't give a certain phrase the proper inflection. I remember she made me look like a blithering idiot--and I promise, I was one of the best readers in a group of gifted readers. I guess she was just going to cut me down to size, and she was pretty successful. I had tears in my eyes for the rest of the day, and although if I remember correctly she toned down her approach for the duration of the group, I was alwasy terrified of her thereafter.
What got to me was how many kids loved her as a teacher and were totally loyal to her. I figure she just made them part of the "in" group in her sarcastic comments. My mother called it right--she would have destroyed me if I'd been in her class every day.
Posted by Uprooted (Member # 8353) on :
But overall, I have to say that aside from a few jerks here and there, most of them in high school, and a fair number of eccentric characters, I had very good teachers and I can't believe the horror stories shared here!
Posted by pfresh85 (Member # 8085) on :
quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen: Well, in my HS we had a math teacher who used to give extra credit to female students who wore short skirts and crossed their legs. And if you brought him food. But took points off your grade if he didn't like the food. Or if you were Korean. Or Armenian. Or if you had an accent of any kind, or if he just didn't like you. He spent most of the class talking to his wife on the phone, who was the home ec teacher, and whom he had married the month after she graduated from HS (yes, she had been in his classes. Presumably she passed.) He didn't really teach, nor did he actually grade papers of students he didn't like-- just wrote "F" on the top. He was known to keep female students who were, um, well-developed after school and "help them with their work" with his arm around them.
Successive generations of students complained about him, and the district and the school did nothing. Finally a family threatened to sue and he was asked to retire.
When I first read this, I could have sworn that I knew the teacher you were talking about. Upon second reading though, I see that yours was a high school teacher, whereas mine was a middle school teacher. He did the same exact stuff though. He was forced to retire about 3 years after I had him because of the stuff he did. Creepy guy that one.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Going to a Lutheran Private school had its share of moments I must say.
In Kindergarten my mom reports that I got in a theological arguement with my teacher when she declared that God was a woman, and that sexist men had portrayed HER as a HIM. Apparently I impressed the teacher, and I became one of her favorites. I suppose thats not inappropriate but I can see why we seperate church and state in school.
In 2nd grade I had a teacher that just did not like me. I can't say I blame her I am a WHITE personality and I forgot my text books/homework all the time. She would frequently make an example of me in front of the class though. Every time I screwed up BAM she would pounce on me and announce my falicies to the class. Eventually my mom got sick of it and moved be back to 1st grade so I was a year older than everyone in my grade from that year on. It was kinda cool, I was the only kid who could drive a car in 11th grade (the legal driving age in Hong Kong is 18, and believe me it SHOULD be that way)
5th grade my teacher played the movie "It" on the last day of class. WHAT!?
8th grade my teachers wife died, and he only took 1 day off to mourn. I couldn't believe it when he came back to class to teach, he was so stoical about it. My mom eventually played matchmaker and hooked him up with his now current wife.
9th grade I was late to class on the day of the final, but I beat my teacher to class who saw me run in the door. He dismissed me from class and said I couldnt take the final. I always endeared myself to my teachers (I'm just that way) and my friends reported by mid class he looked really upset, and he polled the entire class as to whether or not I should be allowed to take the final. 75% said yes, 25% said no (I REALLY wanted to know who voted no). I go to take the final, and I got an A in class. That teacher went on to have an affair with a female student, and got fired I am not sure if his wife stayed with him.
11th grade my teacher screamed at me in front of the class when I sharpened my pencil during lecture. After getting out of class one of my friends found out I was in his class and said, "Do NOT sharpen your pencil during lecture." Too little too late it would seem. That teacher ended up loving me too and wrote my college letter of recomendation. I took Russian History from him in 12th grade JUST because I enjoyed his class so much.
My religion teacher in front of the class said that Mormons don't believe in God or that Jesus was the son of God. We disregarded the old testament, and we believe everyone else is going to hell. That was theological debate #10 by then.
For the most part I think I was happy with my teachers. It was college that REALLY upset me.
I had a history teacher, I attended every class, did all my homework, and got A to A-'s on all his exams. These exams SUCKED. They took 2-3 hours on the average to complete because it was basically barfing out EVERY little detail in the book and in lectures. You were screwed if you didnt study several hours before the exam.
At the last minute, just 3 days before the final a student mentions on the silibus that we had 2 term papers that he had never mentioned. We all wanted to murder that kid. The teacher said and I quote, "Well I was hoping nobody would mention those, but since the cats out of the bag and you have already started on yours I might as well give the rest of the class the same work load."
He procceeded to assign both 5 page papers and made them due the day before the final (remember 3 days later). But dont worry it gets better. I typed up his damn papers and did EVERYTHING he wanted. The day of the final rolls up and he gives us our projected grade while we are doing the final. He gave my papers a B and a C- respectively and I demanded to know why. He proceeds to tell me why
an example: "You said you were going to write on the Southern Campaign but you only wrote about one battle in that campaign."
my response: "It says right here in your SILLYBUS "Choose a campaign and then select ONE battle, and write about it."
We had that basic exchange about BOTH my papers SEVERAL times. I refuted every point as respectfully as I could and he still marked my papers up only a half letter grade. He ended up giving me a B+ for the semester. It basically screwed up my GPA and now getting into a better school just seems that much harder.
STUPID OLD MAN! GAH!!!
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Wow, these teachers are pretty messed up. Except for the one who showed Animal House - that sounds more cool than messed up.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Awesome story Libby, I feel for you.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
quote:Originally posted by Libbie:
quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen: Well, in my HS we had a math teacher who used to give extra credit to female students who wore short skirts and crossed their legs. And if you brought him food. But took points off your grade if he didn't like the food. Or if you were Korean. Or Armenian. Or if you had an accent of any kind, or if he just didn't like you. He spent most of the class talking to his wife on the phone, who was the home ec teacher, and whom he had married the month after she graduated from HS (yes, she had been in his classes. Presumably she passed.) He didn't really teach, nor did he actually grade papers of students he didn't like-- just wrote "F" on the top. He was known to keep female students who were, um, well-developed after school and "help them with their work" with his arm around them.
Successive generations of students complained about him, and the district and the school did nothing. Finally a family threatened to sue and he was asked to retire.
Was his name, by any chance, Doug Openshaw? Because that is almost an exact description of a history teacher at my high school. Ewww.
Nope. And like I said, he taught math. Well, maybe "taught" isn't the best word.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:He ended up giving me a B+ for the semester. It basically screwed up my GPA and now getting into a better school just seems that much harder.
A B+ screwed up your GPA? Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax:
quote:He ended up giving me a B+ for the semester. It basically screwed up my GPA and now getting into a better school just seems that much harder.
A B+ screwed up your GPA?
Yes I was counting on straight A's that semester, I am desperately trying to make up for 4 years of High School slackage. Posted by vonk (Member # 9027) on :
I had a highschool creative writing teacher show our class A Clockwork Orange. It was awesome. Though by the time half of the class got offended and decided they would rather sit out in the hall than watch the movie she decided to turn it off. She also suggested a good book we could check out of the school library that would show us what psilocybin mushrooms look like. Other times someone in the class would write a wildly inappropriate story and she would say "Well, I'm supposed to report that and have you suspended, but it was a good story, so your alright." She pegged three of the kids in my class as stoners on the second day and thought it was hilarious.
Man, I loved her...
Posted by Carrie (Member # 394) on :
I haven't had one aside from the professor who showed up for grad-level classes drunk, when he hadn't cancelled them so he could say home and drink.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
Syllabus!
And while I agree that he was unreasonable in a) not assigning the papers til the end and b) not taking into consideration his own directions, a) five pages is really not much at all, and b) if you said in the paper that you were writing on the whole southern campaign, he has a point. I don't know about how it was graded, or the criteria he used, but a lot of times writing quality influences how I grade papers (i.e., correct spelling, grammar, capitalization, and coherent paragraph structure).
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote:My most innapropriate teacher did a handstand in a skirt on the first day, offered kids to help her come move out of her husbands house, gave us A's if we tried, and offered methods for guys to score on Valentines. This was a high school class and yes she's still there.
This teacher would be very popular with my crowd.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
Heh. I've only ever seen students show up drunk and/or stoned.
Posted by vonk (Member # 9027) on :
quote:Originally posted by Carrie: I haven't had one aside from the professor who showed up for grad-level classes drunk, when he hadn't cancelled them so he could say home and drink.
Sounds like a precedent I could get used to.
Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
The Shakespeare professor at my college was a known mysogenist. We had to take his class, though, for an English degree, and he never gave women an A. He would "groom" young men who were good writers/students. Long story involving some friends, bla bla. Anyway, he was finally fired, a few years after we graduated.
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
I remember an angry, spiteful math teacher of mine in seventh grade was doing problems on the board. I sat in the front seat all alone, and I was a good, attentive, dedicated student. This day I was putting on chapstick (the vaseline kind in a tube, very unmistakeable)... I inherited dry skin and chapped lips from my dad... anyway. She whipped around and started YELLING at me that I should PAY ATTENTION in class instead of DOING MY MAKEUP. Traumatizing for an eleven year old. Other than her, I've never had an awful teacher. I'm pretty sure she hated all girls, she was always yelling at them for clothes and makeup and perfume.
edit: oh, yes I did, my band teacher in elementary school made me hate band (and I fully regret leaving it because of him). He was another one of those eventually-fired teachers (took him throwing a chair at a student to make it happen, though).
I did have a teacher in high school who showed us Animal House. Everyone loved him cause he swore a lot and he used to work for the CIA or FBI or something and had interesting stories that he could only tell us half of. And he loved literature, so it was great learning it with him.
Posted by airmanfour (Member # 6111) on :
My Latin teacher Junior year let us choose our marking period grades as the answer sheet to the final was being passed around the room. I loved her.
The instructor I have now is an Army Sergeant that got busted for smoking pot, and he curses a lot. A lot. And we make fun of a lot of things we probably shouldn't which is why a Navy girl ended up running out of our class crying today. I think she should be fired. The only reason we didn't get in real trouble is that our class leader (the one that made that particularly potent comment) is a Navy Chief and pretty much bulletproof. My class minus the crybaby is cool.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:The instructor I have now is an Army Sergeant that got busted for smoking pot, and he curses a lot. A lot. And we make fun of a lot of things we probably shouldn't which is why a Navy girl ended up running out of our class crying today. I think she should be fired. The only reason we didn't get in real trouble is that our class leader (the one that made that particularly potent comment) is a Navy Chief and pretty much bulletproof. My class minus the crybaby is cool.
I have a heinous coworker that was in the military for five years before spending another five years working FOR the military. Posts like this make me understand her a little bit better. I come from working for the BOY SCOUTS for five years. Needless to say our expectations of acceptable human interaction do not always concur.
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
That reminds me of a teacher in high school. Our school was made up of ten buildings, and the biggest was a large space with little dividers to make "classrooms" that you had to walk through to get to your own "classrooms". Made for some interesting times. This teacher was a former drill sergeant, and taught a law class next to my algebra class and another year diagonally next to my english class. Needless to say, his voice reaaally carried and I learned more about law in those two classes than I did math or english.
edit: *giggle* kat's post wasnt there when I was typing, I didn't mean to echo Needless To Say in the very next post Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
quote: And we make fun of a lot of things we probably shouldn't which is why a Navy girl ended up running out of our class crying today...My class minus the crybaby is cool.
Sexual harassment in the service academies is a serious and thorny issue.
Posted by vonk (Member # 9027) on :
Who said she was sexually harrassed?
Posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong (Member # 2229) on :
I am.
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
Making a girl cry is so manly.
Posted by vonk (Member # 9027) on :
I'm not saying making anyone cry is manly. But just because one makes a girl cry does not mean one sexually harrassed the girl. Just saying.
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
Oh geez, I'm sorry, that totally wasn't to you. I have no thoughts/feelings on the harrassment thing cause I don't know the circumstances.
Posted by vonk (Member # 9027) on :
Oh I know, I just wanted it to be clear that I'm not being defensive of the act.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
I don't think I had an inappropriate teacher that ranks with these, but there were some questionable ones.
The teacher that got me interested in drama took off most of one month for personal issues, than won a cruise so took off for two more weeks later in the year. She was not brought back.
My 7th grade science teacher was bad, but not as bad as we made him. We had substitutes for the first 6 weeks of class, who had no control over the class. Then he came in without taking back authority. He set up a schedule. Read a chapter, do the questions in the back, turn them in. Anything else happening in the room he gave up on. He left the room to complain to other teachers. There were drug deals going on in the back, and I as the brightest and quickest, was coerced to allow the rest of the class to copy my answers.
I had a geometry teacher who told us to skip the symbolic logic part of the book since we wouldn't be needing logic in our futures.
But my biggest let down was one of my favorite teachers. I hung around her classroom before and after school. She had all the fun projects to do. She even took over the drama classes. It was fun. It was sociable.
It was only later that I realized I never learned a thing in her class.
In college I had two interesting teachers. One was a drama teacher who taught in two of my classes. He enjoyed telling the same stories over and over again. I numbered them, so my notes for class ran #12, important stuff, #2,#5, #20.
The other offered the class sherry on the final day. Of course it was an honors class and there were not many in it--about 12, and most were legal age. I don't think he could have gotten in too much trouble, seeing as he was Howard Nemerov--one time Poet Laureate of the United States.
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
quote: Oh I know, I just wanted it to be clear that I'm not being defensive of the act.
Ohh ok! I re-read and see now. I'm so bad at getting intonation through the internet Posted by airmanfour (Member # 6111) on :
quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: I am.
Uhhhh, you're wrong. It was a religious discussion that took an unfortunate turn. And I don't belong to a service academy.
You should go and decide something baseless that's constructive.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Hmm.. the fun/sociable/cool projects class was the one where I learned the most. It was G/T. Most of the time we were left alone to do whatever project we were doing. I made a short (for fun, not a grade) a just shy of feature length (for a grade with the rest of the class. It was not nearly as good as the short) wrote a dozen essay length stories (not for a grade) a novella and a novel (both for a grade.)
I LOVED that class and I loved the other students I took it with and I LOVED the teacher. (all platonically of course =D )
Posted by Hank (Member # 8916) on :
There's a religion teacher at my university that made my (very religious) friend cry when he told her, "DOn't worry, I'm sure God understands why you don't love him enough to take my class."
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
My advisor made me cry several times. But now he's one of my favorite professors. I was just so worried about what he thought that I took everything really personally.
-pH
Posted by pfresh85 (Member # 8085) on :
Is it inappropriate for a teacher to lie to you? I had a G/T teacher junior year who lied directly to my face on 3 separate occasions. It wasn't a surprise to me when the G/T group dropped from about 60 to about 15 the next year.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
quote: (took him throwing a chair at a student to make it happen, though).
I had a teacher who was fired for flicking a staple into a student's eye. He wasn't doing it maliciously, just being an idiot.
A long time ago I had a teacher at my school who threw a student across the room when he was angry. He wasn't fired, although everyone knew about it. The student in question was pretty notorious for being bad (although young), so I guess they let it slide. I think also maybe (at least at the school I attended) the allowable eccentricity level was higher than normal.
Posted by dantesparadigm (Member # 8756) on :
I've had a disproportionate amount of really good teachers, and maybe half a dozen that just didn’t like me. I kind of have a habit of polarizing teacher’s feelings towards me. I took a theatre class sophomore year, and the teacher was, to put it lightly, a communist, hippy, anti-western religion, self-aggrandizing monster...
We got into some scuffles.
She repeatedly presented as a fact that Israel’s goal was to dominate the world and establish a Jewish hegemony over the world. In addition to her comparatively tame beliefs that modern medicine is meant to keep people drugged and in a hypnotic state to make it easier for the government to brainwash them, that the US attacked itself on 9/11, and that JFK was killed by a Zionist plot.
Whenever I tried to refute one of those points, she would tell me, "she was the teacher, I was the student, and I had no right to try to tell her what was right and wrong." Keep in mind that we’re in a theatre class, with her making these points as random irrelevant asides. The conversations usually ended with me getting sent to the office, not for being rude but for refusing to drop the issue. I ended up having to drop the class because the administration wasn't as concerned about her anti-Semitism.
The problem is she is the only teacher that does AP English, which I want to take next year, so I have to decide between taking the class I belong in and biting my lip until it bleeds every other day, or being condemned to mediocrity.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
Nighthawk took all my best stories.
I learned so much about sex, drugs, and Vietnam from that Earth Science teacher.
That English teacher who showed Animal House that Tres thinks is so cool is rumored to have had several affairs with students. She also took a disliking to me, and once told a kid that I was friends with to move to a seat further from me because I was cheating off of his quizzes. He stopped being my friend, because he thought I was just using him to cheat. The evidence? We both had exactly the same answers on a quiz. Of course, we both got 100%. She also accused me, out loud and in front of the class, of cheating on a different occasion on a test. The evidence? I got 100% of the questions right. Posted by Elmer's Glue (Member # 9313) on :
In 7th grade I was switched into all honors after taking a placement test, and one of my teachers decided to hate me because of it. And I had her for three periods. THREE!
I was left behind because she refused to help me with the work the class had already done. She took any chance she could to make me look stupid.
I had her in art too, which I am very good at, and when we were doing paper mache sculptures we had to come up with our idea on paper before we could start. I wanted to do a really good job, so I was taking a long time coming up with what I wanted to do. She then yelled at me for being lazy and not doing anything, even after I had told her I was still thinking. She then sent me to the school councilor to talk. I told the councilor that she hated me, and then, somehow, my teacher ended up being told that I was scared of her.
Then, after the project was done, the teacher had said that mine was one of her favorites.
On a rainy day, everyone would go inside the gym to eat. After my friends and I were done eating we stood up. Then the principal came and told us to sit down. I had a confused look on my face, and then he told me to come outside with him. He said I gave him a dirty look, then I was confused even more, and I asked him why he thought that, then he said I was talking back and sent me to sit in his office till he came back. I missed some of my next class.
Posted by Soara (Member # 6729) on :
Heard anything in the news recently (late July I think) about a teacher in the Midwest who got arrested for having an affair with a ninth grader at a high school in Baltimore in the 70's?
Yeah, and the worst part was, my mom had been very good friends with him, and apparently got in touch with him after he was arrested and sent him a card or something (she kept insisting he was really a very good person at heart...).
I was home alone one day, and the phone rang....Yeah, it was him.
It was awkward.
Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
quote:It was awkward.
Why?
Posted by CalvinandThomasHobbes (Member # 9158) on :
My u.s. history teacher would say funny, yet hugely inappropiate, comments to the girls in the class. He was also known for a long history of wierdness. Such as marrying a former 18 year old student/stripper. Also smoking wee with students in the dark room in photo class. Some girl said he sexually harrassed her this year, but it turns out she was lying.
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
quote:Originally posted by vonk: I had a highschool creative writing teacher show our class A Clockwork Orange. It was awesome. Though by the time half of the class got offended and decided they would rather sit out in the hall than watch the movie she decided to turn it off.
Yeah, I had a high school English teacher show us the same movie. He figured that, since we were the honors class, it'd be fine. I walked out not long after it started and at least half the rest of the class followed.
Yeah, it's not an appropriate movie to show to kids our age, especially not without, oh, I dunno, parental permission or something or at least telling the kids before hand what it was about so they could opt out.
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
One of my middle school teachers always gave me a weird vibe. A couple years after I'd taken two years of his classes, he was investigated by the FBI for having inappropriate sexual conduct with one of his 12- or 13-year-old students (via the Internet). Charges were never filed, but he was fired.
-pH
Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
When I was in sixth grade, I was in love with my science teacher. He was a great teacher.
A few years later, I heard that he had "run away" with a friend of mine, who was a year younger. She was fourteen at the time their "relationship" was outed. I am not sure how long it had gone one, but it was at least a year.He had been her speed skating coach.
He was fired, and I am pretty sure never taught again, though he does live back in the small town now.
Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
Dan and Icarus bring up a good point: the "cool" teacher.
There are always one or two in middle school or high school. They stay after, they are good buddies. They like the cool kids. They often gossip about student relationships, destroy friendships, butt their noses in where they don't belong. Students think they are great because they "understand them."
Later on, as adults, we look back and realize that they understood us because they were acting like adolescents, not like adults.
I think there is a fine line, and it is not often clear where the line is/should be between teachers and students. But I think those teachers can do some serious damage.
Posted by HollowEarth (Member # 2586) on :
The worst professor I ever had was removed as the course instuctor before the final (but after the last class), and I'm pretty sure they just gave everyone an A. He was fired before the next quarter began. This was his first quarter at my school, although it wasn't his first position. Gross incompentence is something you shouldn't have to deal with.
Posted by ketchupqueen (Member # 6877) on :
quote:The problem is she is the only teacher that does AP English, which I want to take next year, so I have to decide between taking the class I belong in and biting my lip until it bleeds every other day, or being condemned to mediocrity.
Okay, 1) you can choose to hold your tounge and not argue with a teacher even when she's saying things that are obviously not true. Took me a long time to learn that, but it sometimes does work. 2) Hatrack tells me that you can take the AP exams even if you are not in the AP classes, which I never knew when I was in HS. So you have a third option.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
You can indeed take the AP exams without the classes. I know because I didn't (I took politics instead of AP English) and I realised later that I could have completely... and even that the AP class didn't do that much preparation.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:We both had exactly the same answers on a quiz. Of course, we both got 100%. She also accused me, out loud and in front of the class, of cheating on a different occasion on a test. The evidence? I got 100% of the questions right.
I was accused of cheating without evidence. It went poorly for the teacher. We scheduled a parent-teacher conference which my Dad took off from work for, and the teacher missed that day. She had no proof I cheated. The kid sitting next to me had left his notebook out, which was missing a cover. The first page had all those questions you go over on the first day of spanish class - "Puedo ir el bano?" and so forth. The test was on subjunctive tense.
She went by and kicked the notebook by accident. This made a noise, and I looked down. Because I had looked, I must have been cheating off of it.
I got sent to the principal's office for responding to "Does anyone have any questions?" with "Is there another Spanish II class I can transfer in to?" By the end of the session with the principal, he assured me that this would be worked out. I heard from a reliable source that he chewed her out in the teacher's lounge and told her to "fix it." She ended up giving me a makeup test.
I did worse on the makeup test than the test I was accused of cheating on. It was Spanish class, and the makeup was an essay test.
The next year, she wasn't teaching any more.
My dad was accused of cheating in Latin class because his translation on a graded homework assignment was too good. After the exam, which was a translation of something original the teacher had written and which my dad did perfectly, the teacher apologized in front of the whole class for making the accusation about the homework.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I know someone who wrote a very good essay. It was the first essay of the year and the professor had no way of knowing the girl's skills. "I would have given you an A+," the professor said, "if this was your own work."
She promptly told him it was her own work.
Posted by happymann (Member # 9559) on :
I had a professor who'd been teaching from the same slides for 30 years and there was no way he was going to change now. He'd come to class in plaid shirts, sandals with socks, etc. Whenever we asked a question, he'd say "the next slide will answer that question" and it wouldn't. I stopped going but my roommate didn't. I ended up getting an A (just showing up for exams) and my roommate got a B-. I still don't get it. I know I didn't learn anything from that class.
Also, I know this was discussed earlier in the thread, but I did have a comment about it. I think if we restructure our whole system from the bottom up, we could get rid of the grading system altogether. As long as children grow up without the concept of "easy A" then they can take classes they care about and people will start to gravitate towards courses they care about instead of courses they can get easy A's from.
And on a minor side-note. My sister, when she was in the second grade, wrote a poem and her teacher accused her of plagarism. That sent her home crying. She now has a master's degree in English and is currently at Harvard.
Posted by Elmer's Glue (Member # 9313) on :
One time for our PE final we were supposed to write an essay about softball. I did mine on the history of softball. She read my first paragraph and was convinced I copied it off the internet because I had alot of the same things in my paper as another kid. Things like, the inventor of softball, and the date it was made. I don't know how I was supposed to write an essay on the history of something if I am supposed to come up with all the information without it being the same as it is.
Posted by Belle (Member # 2314) on :
*taking notes for her future teaching career*
1) Don't accuse student of plagiarism or cheating without proof.
2) Don't date students. (no problems there, wasn't planning on it)
3) Don't be the "cool" teacher who acts like an adolescent.
4) Let students develop their own methods of organizing their notes and binders/notebooks.
Any others?
(and I'm not being facetious, this is actually good information)
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Tests don't teach you anything.
Tests can evaluate what you do or do not know, but they aren't meant to instruct. So, making an easy test does not automatically mean the class didn't learn anything. The evaluation may be invalid with results that are not representative of student learning, but that's another ball of wax.
I take it you are not a teacher, or at least not a very good teacher.
Every test is a learning experience for the students. A good test will help the students to better understand the course material. A bad test, just teaches something about the system.
You are correct that an easy doesn't indicate that the class didn't learn anything. What an easy test does is ensure that grades do not reflect whether the students learned the important material or not? And that isn't just important to future employers or schools that might look at the grades, it important to any student who is trying to evaluate whether or not they have learned what they need.
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
quote:Originally posted by Belle: 4) Let students develop their own methods of organizing their notes and binders/notebooks.
That one is really, really good advice. I had a chemistry teacher who expected us to keep our notes a certain way, in a binder, and turn in the binders periodically for grading. It drove me up a wall because I was apparently the only left-handed person in the class, so I absolutely hated (and still refuse to use) binders for the purposes of writing notes. Her solution was to let me take notes in a regular notebook, then tear out the pages and put them in the binder. I think it was a complete waste of my time; we turned in binders when we had tests, and I should have spent that time studying, not transfering papers from notebook to binder.
But she took my side against my soap actress lab partner, who never so much as helped me clean up the labs. She'd copy down all my answers really quickly and walk out of class with no attempt to help. It was kind of fun to see how irritated the teacher was with her, since all the students in school thought she was so cool, gorgeous, whatever because she was in movies.
-pH
Posted by airmanfour (Member # 6111) on :
I was in a class a couple of months ago where the teacher gave the same quiz on the first day as he did the last day for the final. The day after the first day, when we had a chance to look at the course material he gave a much shorter version of the test we had been given the day before. Every day he would add to it until we were back to the original test. We learned the material and then studied what we missed on the tests. It was the easiest A I've ever gotten, and it was a lot of information.
It was a short class though (six weeks), and the majority of class time was spent doing non-academic activities, so I'm not sure how that would work for something like high school.
Posted by Epictetus (Member # 6235) on :
I guess I've gotten off light, but this thread does remind me of when my 11th Grade Honor's English teacher told me I was "incapable of taking literature seriously" after she overheard me tell a joke about how the "turtle" chapter in The Grapes of Wrath was probably just John Steinbeck realizing that there was a serious lack of turtles in American literature. A realization I believe Dr. Seuss also made when first conceptualizing Yertle the Turtle.
But seriously, complain about this Astronomy teacher now.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
I had a professor in Pharmacy school who REFUSED to teach us. He told us the first day of class that he wasn't a very good teacher, so he didn't bother. He split us into groups, gave us pages to learn for the day, and let us read the book as a group.
If anyone had a question, they had to ask everyone in their group, then everyone else in the whole class, and only if not a single person in the class understood something would he explain it.
I guess by that logic, a pharmacist should be able to just take all the books home to read and consider it a full education. What an a-hole.
Posted by TheSeeingHand (Member # 8349) on :
My 8th grade english teacher had something against me. She was so against giving me A's that on one essay I got a B++++. :-\
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:And that isn't just important to future employers or schools that might look at the grades, it important to any student who is trying to evaluate whether or not they have learned what they need.
That's a very good point. I know the few times I both thought I had aced a test and did poorly on it were the times I had mislearned the material - not just not learned it, but learned the wrong stuff.
Luckily, each time was a midterm and I recovered by the end of the semester. Without that grade, I would have thought I understood the material. The strangest thing about each situation is that the professor thought I was coming to argue my grade when I just wanted to know where I had gone wrong.
A poor grade after thinking I did poorly (differential equations *shudder*) was a different story.
There was one time I thought I totally tanked an essay and got an A. I had never had the aha moment in the class where it all falls into a nice mental framework and thought I was missing the point.
Turned out, I had gotten the point. And that was good to know. But, I wouldn't have learned that if the professor gave As to everyone in the class.
Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
quote:My most innapropriate teacher did a handstand in a skirt on the first day, offered kids to help her come move out of her husbands house, gave us A's if we tried, and offered methods for guys to score on Valentines. This was a high school class and yes she's still there.
Who was that Breyerchic? I don't think I ever ran into this teacher...
Posted by breyerchic04 (Member # 6423) on :
You were in the class, and it wasn't miss G.
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
quote: My 8th grade english teacher had something against me. She was so against giving me A's that on one essay I got a B++++. :-\
Hehe... that reminds me of middle school, where I had problems with my report card because in more than one class I had averaged final grades of A++, and report cards didn't go that high.
Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :
quote:Originally posted by Alcon:
quote:My most innapropriate teacher did a handstand in a skirt on the first day, offered kids to help her come move out of her husbands house, gave us A's if we tried, and offered methods for guys to score on Valentines. This was a high school class and yes she's still there.
Who was that Breyerchic? I don't think I ever ran into this teacher...
Drama
Posted by breyerchic04 (Member # 6423) on :
It was speech not drama. But yeah crad.
Posted by Launchywiggin (Member # 9116) on :
Had a college professor who taught us like we were elementary students.
It was a Secondary Music Education class. *sigh*
Posted by Lalo (Member # 3772) on :
Apparently, my middle school math teacher/baseball coach/football coach is now in prison for child molestation.
And come to remember it, he did use to change in the same room as us... how freaking creepy. I feel bad for whatever kid it was he went after.
Also, my principal from the same school -- and the math teacher's aunt -- is apparently also under charges of embezzlement from the school. All this while I was playing Pokemon...
Posted by quidscribis (Member # 5124) on :
quote:Originally posted by TheSeeingHand: My 8th grade english teacher had something against me. She was so against giving me A's that on one essay I got a B++++. :-\
We didn't get letter grades, we got numerical, as in percentages. It was made quite clear to us that our final grade would consists of assignments and exams weighted as a portion of our final mark, and the average would be rounded to the nearest whole number according to standard 4/5 rounding rules. This was a math class, and walking into the final, I had 100% on everything.
Apparently, I misplaced one decimal point in one questions, so ended up with 399 out of 400. My final average was something like 99.9%.
The math teacher refused to round up, despite the 4/5 rounding rules. His grounds? "No one is perfect." I ended up with 99% as my mark on the report card.
I wonder what he would have done had I scored 100% on that final.
Related note. When my parents saw that report card, they cussed me out for not getting better marks. Seriously. Despite three older siblings who were lucky to ever get scores about an 80%.
Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
Good heavens, quid! I wonder how much each plus of that B++++++ was worth?
One thing I think is rather silly is the philosophy of no A's in the first quarter. My principal told me I had too many last year. I told her that the students who received the A's had met all the criteria for an A, and therefore deserved an A.
But what would they have left to strive for?
I said, Another A?
Then, she was worried that the classroom grades would not match the state test grades. I pointed out that, as far as I knew, state tests did not include things like handing in work on time, working well with others, and other things which I feel are important to being a "good student." She said, if a student fails a test the first time, they should not be able to get a better grade for the test. I asked if the point was not to learn the material?
Ah, testing. How it rules us! And how it points to all the students needing extra help, so we funnel time and money that way to make our school system look better, while letting the brightest students fend for themselves.
Posted by MyrddinFyre (Member # 2576) on :
quote: The math teacher refused to round up, despite the 4/5 rounding rules. His grounds? "No one is perfect." I ended up with 99% as my mark on the report card.
In middle school I got letter grades, but in high school I got number averages. Our report cards only went up to 99%, exactly for the same reason your teacher didn't round up. It was ridiculous.
Liz, I have had all too many teachers hand out less-than-deserved grades in the beginning semesters to make themselves or the school look good. I wouldn't even have noticed had my mom not gotten mad at the school every time it happened... it definitely says bad things about some schools' priorities Posted by vonk (Member # 9027) on :
Oh! I just remembered my high school english teacher showing genuine shock that my parents were sending me to college. She instisted all day that they were going to waste their money. It turns out she was right, but still! Harsh.
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I am not sure if his wife stayed with him.![[Smile]](smile.gif)