Have you gotten the "OMG, my kid got Such-and-Such Teacher, and I hear she's just awful" call from a friend yet? Just wait. Bad teacher stories are as much a tradition as big fish tales, and there's a chorus of them every year during back-to-school season.
Moms! Dads! Allow me to be the little voice of reason whispering in your ear. It won't be that bad. Really.
My daughter is headed into second grade this year, and we've already had two incredible women who came into our lives and helped us mold her little mind. I can't help but have high hopes for the year to come. Thinking anything less is just shooting myself in the foot.
Yes, there's always one or two bad apples that spoils the bunch, but teachers these days are mostly hardworking professionals who got into the gig because they actually like kids ... and education. The scary stuff that used to fly back in the day won't.
So just for a little perspective, The Stir asked around for some adults' worst teacher stories from the "olden days" ...
1. My homeroom teacher slapped me in the face in 10th grade.
2. Does being told in class that my parents are "poor dirt farmers" count? Sixth grade history teacher, class full of students, and all of my friends and I were so shocked we're still not sure what the context was ... just that he said it!
3. We had a teacher who literally yelled at the students in class, telling them they are stupid each time a student asks a question. Fast forward to test, everyone fails, then the teacher proceeds to literally yell at all the students calling them stupid because they didn't ask questions!
4. My fourth grade teacher smoked in class. True story.
5. My history teacher/homeroom teacher (later became superintendent) made us squat down, put our thumbs under our armpits, and walk from his desk to the lockers across the hall and back again for as many times as he saw fit for doing something he didn't see fit. He also made us stand in a garbage pail in the hall outside of his room and added books to the top of our head to hold on to!
6. We had an ancient math teacher, who was in her 47th year of teaching, who wore the SAME dress every single day and threw pieces of chalk at kids' heads when they didn't have the right answer.
7. I was slapped in the face and yanked up by my arm by one of my teachers when I was younger for trying to help another kid pick up his crayons that fell on the ground!
8. One male teacher told me in front of the class that the only way I would ever be rich is if I won the lotto or married rich.
9. My fifth grade teacher announced in front of the entire class that I'd failed a test because she didn't like smart girls, and I usually had all As.
Really, do any of the stories about your kid's teacher measure up to these? I didn't think so!
Do you feel better about the silly stories you've heard about your kid's teacher? Do you have a bad "back in the day" story to add?
Image via cogdogblog/Flickr
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Comments 58
i am not saying that every teacher is perfect, but the majority of today's teachers take a lot of crap from parents and children today. almost all parents today think their children are close to perfect , and believe everything that their child says. teachers do their best to control a group of 20-30 children a day, and needs parents who are supportive. the stuff that is stated her does not happen anymore, and if u think it does then i dont know what to tell you.
I think bad teachers are as wide spread today as they ever have been. 3 years ago, in my town, a teacher sent a kindergarden student home with a bag of his own poop. Poor kid had pooped in his pants and she thought it would be a good lesson to have him carry it home to humiliate him.
i had a teacher accuse me of cheating on a test, before school and for a different class. she wasnt even my teacher or the teacher of the class she thought i was cheating on a test for. and then she didnt understand what she did wrong and flat out refused to appologize. she was the only health teacher at the jr high i went to. i ended up doing health through independent studies and reported directly to the principal.
When I was in the 6th grade, I walked up to the (male) teacher's desk and whispered to him that I had an accident and needed to go to the bathroom for a feminine problem. I had started my period and blood had gotten on the back of my pants. (Thankfully, I was wearing a long tshirt that day). He proceeds to ask the entire class out loud what it meant to have a feminine problem. OMG I was so embarrassed!
In high school, at 16, while sitting in my choir class listening to the teacher talk, he suddenly stopped talking, looks directly at me and asks "do you have bad gas rite now?" OMG, the whole class stares at me and starts laughing, I was sooo embarrased that all i could say was "NO" and started laughing too, I guess i was squinting, which has always been a problem for me all my life, im almost always squinting and have no idea why i do it and I dont need glasses or anything, but what a terrible way to be teased about it in front of 30 other teenage girls, I hated that teacher after that and didnt sign up for choir ever again!! :(
I had a teacher in second grade that kept me after school for no reason at all. She claimed it was for talking. I was the only minority student in the class and we were the only minority family in our neighborhood (1960s) therefore NO ONE talked to me. I had no friends at all. She knew that my parents would punish me any time that I had to stay after school which was almost every day. My parents assumed that I was doing something bad or else the teacher would not be doing this to me. They never asked what the problem was or had any kind of conference with the school. I kept telling them that this teacher did not like me but they didn't believe me until the end of the year when a classmate got her hair pulled by this teacher. The teacher pulled some of her hair out. The reason the teacher did this to her was that this girl's mother was half Apache Indian and the teacher called the girl "white trash". The teacher's punishment was that she got sent to teach at a school that had more ethnicity in it.
Catholic school in the 60's. Teachers loved me, was a pet but did all kinds of terrible things to the boys. In 1st grade, the nun, who I thought was nice, taped a boy's mouth shut and taped his hand to the desk. Boys were spanked and stood in trash cans and worse dunce caps. I only saw a girl hit once and this was from and old senile mean nun who was only there one year and we were all scared of. In PUBLIC high school in the 70's kids were spanked. In the 40's my mother was knocked into a desk by a nun and hurt her back. Another nun sent out her in the hall and left her there all day. She didn't have lunch lunch. A few years ago at Conrad Weiser Middle School my son was taken on a field trip but not allowed to participate for some stupid reason and had to sit for three hours on a bench in 50 degree weather wearting only his shorts and tshirt.