My 9th grade math teacher, Mrs. Batts had it out for me for the entire year. She was the only teacher to ever accuse me of cheating and skipping school. I missed a couple days one semester because I was sick, so I had to make up a quiz. She told me to come in on Monday before school to make it up. No problem. School started at 830 so I got there at 10 after 8 and there were 2 other kids in the class making up the same quiz. She wasn't in the room. One girl went and grabbed me a copy of the quiz and I began to take it. About 10 minutes later, mrs. Batts comes storming in the room yelling, "What do you think you are doing?!!" I said, "I'm making up the test but you weren't here so cheryl gave me a copy." She tore it up in front of me and said, "how do I know you weren't cheating?" I responded, "how do you know they weren't cheating? You weren't here. None of us were cheating." Her excuse was that she was there at 8 when she handed out the test and I wasn't there so I was late. She never told me a specific time. I am therefore a cheater. My dad went in there and screamed in her face and told her she was a big fat zero, just like my grade. She told him that I should come in before school to take it again. He said, "is that 8 am or just before school?!" I got to retake it and I got an A. Fuck her. Another time, I left to take a shit, but the nearest bathroom was disgusting. So I went to a cleaner one down the hall. She sent someone to look for me after 10 minutes in that one specific bathroom. I wasn't there. She promptly called my mom at work and told her I was skipping class. My mother called her a stupid waste of a person.
I was always teacher pet, straight A student, glowing comments on my report card...you get the idea. I moved to North Carolina at the beginning of my junior year of high school and had to enroll in Spanish, since my new rural county high school didn't offer the Latin courses my preppy Connecticut school pushed on the honors students. My Spanish teacher was a military vet and had served as an interpreter in Costa Rica- because of this he was able to use an alternative process to teach without actually having the proper education credentials. Now I'm sure he was a fantastic translator, but he was a terrible teacher. He tried, he really and truly did, but his attempt to keep current and apply new learning methods/styles were more distracting than advancing (I can sing lots of pop songs in Spanish, but in 2 years we never went beyond future tense). All of this is really an aside, since the reason he stands out in my mind as fitting the alt focus is that I was sent to the principal's office because I informed him that strawberries don't grow on trees. He had created some stupid role play exercise where I was supposed to pick strawberries off of a tree and talk about them. I was confused and asked if he meant apples instead. He responded by laughing hysterically and making fun of me for not knowing that strawberries also grow on trees. I once again restated that strawberries do not grow on trees and I was sent to the principal's office.
(This actually happened to another student, but the alt. focus says "to you" so I'm telling it in first person). One time in ninth grade shop class, we were using hot glue guns. I've always been an immature little prick, so I was amusing myself by rolling the glue into the shape of sperm, and showing off my glue sperm to everyone like a dumbass. Now it was normal for kids to make a mockery of shop class because the teacher was an old man with a huge speech impediment, but I'm such an idiot that he would always get the best of me. This time was no exception. He walked right up to my table and bellowed loud enough for everyone to hear "I KNOW WHY YUH MAKIN THOSE INTO LITTLE SPUHM, TJ, IT'S BECAUSE YUH CAN'T PWADUCE ANY ON YUH OWN!!!"
Back in high school I took this Honors English class with a teacher who really liked my older sister when she had had her, which I thought would give me a leg up. Not so. On the first day of class, we were doing some group exercise and afterwards the teacher decided to reward everyone with candy. When I received mine I immediately offered it to a fellow classmate because I didn't like that particular kind of candy. Apparently this a somehow rude and a huge no-no because I was immediately chastised, and ever since that day, she hated my guts. Luckily she wasn't a big enough bitch that it affected how she graded my papers (and she easily could have since she graded everything "holistically" as she put it). However, we knew for a fact that she played favorites, big-time. While she hated me, on the other end of the spectrum was my friend Marc, also in that class. She absolutely adored everything Marc did. He and I, along with 2 of our friends sat in the corner farthest from the teacher's desk. One day, when a substitute was teaching the class, my friends and I were apparently too loud after having finished some quiz, so the substitute said we would be getting in trouble when the teacher get back. Not wanting to get in trouble, and being the badasses we were, we snuck into the classroom after school to see what we could do. We saw the note from the substitute on the desk, and on a piece of paper was how each class behaved that day. In the middle of the list our names were written down as having misbehaved, including Marc's name. So, because this was all on one paper we decided there was nothing we could do (if our names were on a separate sheet we would have just pilfered that) and decided to take our punishment. The next day when we arrived to class, we all had detention slips on our desks, except for Marc. He had nothing on his desk. The problem was we couldn't exactly say "Hey bitch, we know Marc got in trouble too because we snuck in and saw the paper." Ultimately we ended up doing nothing, but it was worth quite a few laughs among my circle of friends about how much she hated me and clearly loved Marc.
I think little kids should be called on their shit more often. We would have less of those children grow up to be idiots. For instance, I would love to see an institutionalized version of Maddox's critiques of children's art work.
I always thought that F meant "loser", but I could be wrong. My grade 3 teacher had the hates for me. I was a good student (ie I was a nerd) at that young age, and I wasn't disruptive. However, I had messy handwriting. For some reason, I just couldn't get my scrawl tidy to her satisfaction. It's not that it was illegible, it just wasn't up to her standard. She threatened to fail me at everything I submitted that wasn't in handwriting to her satisfaction... which at that age is everything. I was worried sick all year that I was going to fail, but I didn't. Bitch. Then at the end of grade 9 (high school freshman?), after final assessment but before the release of grades, I got reamed out in front of the class by my science teacher. He proceeded to tell everyone that I wasn't getting an A, and that I wasn't getting an A because I didn't apply myself to my full ability, that I spent too much time slacking off and talking, and not paying attention. He went on and on about how I was wasting the talent I had. I didn't give much of a shit because, while science was fun and I enjoyed it, I wasn't continuing with it in senior years. Despite that, getting ridiculed in front of the whole class made everyone uncomfortable and me a little embarassed. Then I got my grades; I got an A. Stupid fucking teachers.
To date, I've spent 2 years in middle school, 2 years and high school, and 4 semesters in college learning Spanish. I should be fluent. Unfortunately, I am at an intermediate level at best and even those are because of college. My high school Spanish teacher and I had a fun relationship. She had my older sister before me who was very good at it and took it up to the AP level. When I arrived, I already had a rep of being one of the smart kids so she expected a lot of me. Unfortunately I was simply horrific at learning that damn language. Luckily, she was a fairly easy-going woman and we mostly together made a mockery of my ineptitude at Spanish. Then came the end of sophomore year when the teacher would decide whether or not to recommend people for Spanish 4 or AP or none (we started at Spanish 2 in freshman year). She would call up students one by one and in a very private talk, she would have a brief discussion and then she would make a recommendation and sign off on it. When my turn came I stood up. We looked at each other and both couldn't help but start laughing our asses off. Immediately the rest of the class joined in; I sat back down and she went on to the next person. She was a really nice lady and I really wish I was better at that language. On a stupider note, in freshman year of high school, our World History teacher told us something about how the moon had no gravity and that's why astronauts could jump so high on it. I told her that if the moon had no gravity and an astronaut jumped on it, they would simply float away. I brought up how Newton wayy back when had showed that every object has a gravitational pull, and she replied by asking me why we weren't all stuck together then. Seriously. I argued further, and was sent to the principal's office. Retarded.
My Grade 10 Math teacher was a racist. We had three Asian students in our class who could hardly speak English, yet he insisted that they speak English in his classroom. If one of the Asian students forgot to hand in an assignment, it wasn't the least bit unusual to hear something like, "If this happens again, I'm going to send you back to China on a boat." My Grade 12 English/History teacher was a creeper. "Close you're legs Tara, the whole class can see your undies," was just one example of the many sketchy remarks that he made during the year. This very teacher was recently involved in a sexual-assault case involving a 16-year-old girl. He was found guilty of sexual assault, and actually spent 30 days in jail and is now a registered sex-offender. He was a great teacher, and someone who I thought (at the time) was a 'stand-up guy.' But I'll admit that I saw it coming. He would constantly undress the female students with his eyes, and he got what he deserved.
My fifth grade teacher, Sister Mary Lawrence. A nun. That should tell you everything you need to know. This woman was just a shrew. She hated children and loathed teaching, and it never occurred to her that children were going to make mistakes. She and my mother had so many run-ins because of what she called a "poor performance" on my part, which was me struggling in math. My mother finally said "Sister, call my daughter stupid one more time and we are going to have an issue." When the nun said I wasn't trying hard enough, my mother directed her to my first, second, third and fourth grade teachers, whom each validated my mother's claims of my math difficulty. Due to being proved wrong, this woman needed revenge. The next day we were having a math quiz that was given orally. I vividly recall her speaking so quickly that I missed a crucial part of the word problem and therefore, flunked miserably. She called me up to her desk in front of the entire class and said "Did you not hear what I said?" I was so frightened of this woman that instead of defying her and telling her she was wrong," I answered "Yes." No shit, she grabbed me by my earlobe hard and yanked me right next to her mouth and whispered "You better start using these instead of putting earrings in them." I walked back to my desk, turning scarlet in embarassment and fighting back tears. The entire class was stunned. In between frequent bathroom breaks due to anxiety shits and curling up in a ball under my bed, I told my mother what had occurred. I'll never forget the expression on her face - for once in my life, the woman would not stand for someone fucking with her child. I was in public school two days later. I have a feeling there is a special place in hell for nuns that do shit like that to children.
Oh man, This thread is bringing back so many memories that I thought I had repressed, and that are making me furious just thinking about it. Sorry it's so long but there was a lot of fucked up shit at my high school. I went to Boarding school, where not only do you have to deal with teachers all day long, but most of them live on campus...in the dorms with you. -My freshman year I almost fought my teacher because he kept holding my girlfriend after class and all but molesting her. She used to come to me very upset pretty regularly because of how uncomfortable he made her feel in these after class conferences. To my knowledge nobody else in the class was ever asked to stay after for any reason. I tried talking to other faculty and my coaches about it, but nobody really did anything about it. Two years later he was openly dating students, later getting engaged to one, and he was not the only teacher at my school who was doing so. I think during my four years there there were at least five teachers who had issues with female students, from peeping tom type issues to inviting students over their house late at night, to straight having female students spend the night at their house for various reasons. I shit you not. -My junior year in high school my (female) biology teacher was super into martial arts. She wasn't into martial arts in that she had advanced belts and was talented at them, she was into martial arts in the sense that she would go to classes with little kids, and then her and her husband (both of them disgusting and fat) would dress in spandex and wrestle around on the quad, subjecting everyone to things that nobody should ever see. Well one day we're in class with her and it's a sunny friday afternoon and the kids were all pretty tuned out, not listening to her talk about osmosis or whatever until she asks me... Bitch-Nick, why don't any of you respect me? me-I don't understand the question Bitch-When I'm in class with my sensei, and he says something, we all snap to attention. We all respect and listen to his every word. me- well...I guess cause that's because he can hurt you, you listen to him so he doesn't beat you up. (or something like that, clearly joking) Bitch-I can hurt you. Me-...um...what? She then proceeded to try and goad me into coming to the front of the class and doing a little martial arts demonstration with her. When I continually declined she told me that if I ever disrespected her again she'd make me do detention with her at her apartment, where she would "show me her collection of swords, and prove to me that she could hurt me if she wanted too." so yeah, my teacher threatened me with a sword. I also had teachers go out of there way to get me in trouble for whatever reason they could make up, pretty much constantly cause I was a real rebel without a cause type (drank once in a while, smoked pot on occasion, hooked up with girls, that kind of thing.) -I went right before curfew one night to check my weight before a wrestling match, and a teacher accused me of being out past curfew. when I pointed directly at a clock (which he couldn't see because he was behind glass in a different room and the clock was above the glass) he eyed me suspiciously, and then came to my room later to inform me that I was going to see the disciplinary committee for being AWOL. I ended up getting out of it because my coach was the head of the disciplinary committee. -My senior year the teacher who lived on my hall tried to expel me constantly. He'd sneak into my room when I wasn't there and go through my stuff looking for contraband. if he found anything he would call the dean, then make up reasons for why he was in my room in the first place. one time he found a spitter in my room and when the dean came he told her that he'd gone in there to turn my music down, and saw it there. The spitter was behind my couch and my computer speakers were in my friend's room at the time. He also pointed out that I had a playstation in my room, which techinically wasn't allowed, but the dean just rolled his eyes at the guy. -The same teacher used to come out of his apartment occasionally and come into my and my friend's rooms at like 3am, just to "check on us". To this day I don't know if it was a pervy thing or a "try and catch you doing something you shouldn't be doing" thing, but either way it was fucked. -One time it was about 2 or 3 am and we played a prank on one of the kids in our hall (I'm not going to go into the details, it's a long story) which involved me hopping out of my window and tossing something in his window then hopping back in my window before he knew what happened. five minutes later the guy came swaggering into my room telling me and my friends how he could get us into serious trouble for going AWOL if he wanted too, and that if he told the dean we would surely be suspended if not expelled. The funniest part is that he made a deal that if we just calmed down and didn't fuck around anymore then he wouldn't say anything, playing the cool guy card I guess. The next day I got a visit from the dean who game me one days detention, and told me that I should chill out cause she was tired of hearing this cheese whine to her every day about me. and that's not even all the stuff I could mention, I feel like I could go on and on. Come to think of it, I have a reunion coming up that I wasn't gonna go to, but maybe I should now that those fucks can no longer expel me.