Well, we've got the Teachers or Parents thread, so why not a thread to rant about some of the worst teachers you've had? I've been thinking about this considering that while I've had overall good experiences with a teacher, this semester I got landed with one of the first absolutely awful ones I've had since probably middle school. On the other side of the coin, what are some of the best you've had, who inspired you, encouraged genuine appreciation of the subject matter, or improved your life for having taken their class?

When I was in 12th Grade, a combination of laziness and apathy landed me in a remedial course for the first time: English. Which is weird, because English was always my strongest course, but I was placed in remedial for 12th grade. The students were what you'd expect, a bunch of lazy twits picking their nose or reading nudie mags in the back of the class. This is the sort of class that you'd expect the teacher to give zero [censored]s about, to skate through the semester and forget about it. But our teacher was having none of that. From having classroom readings of Othello where students competed for the roles of Iago or Othello, to coming into class dressed as Alex from A Clockwork Orange, to using film to make otherwise impenetrable or boring books more appealing, this guy pulled out every trick in the book to get his students interested. His enthusiasm rubbed off on the class, and eventually the magazines went away, fingers were extracted from nostrils, and a class of failures became one of the most dynamic and engaged classrooms I've ever had the honor to be in. Furthermore, as a few of us began to stand out, he actually hauled us up to guidance to demand why they had placed us in remedial, and insisted we be allowed to take the AP exam. It had no real effect, but what it did was show a few of us burnouts that someone had faith in us, that he was willing to go to bat for us, and that we might actually be good for something. That guy was a bloody hero.

On the other hand: I'm an Anthropology major, aiming to focus in on Cultural Anthropology. This semester, there was a dearth of Cultural classes being offered, particularly since I'm still a sophomore, so I ended up taking a class in Skeletal Biology. It's classified Anthropology, so it would contribute to my major, even if it's Physical rather than Cultural. The class was structured so that the first hour would be lecture, and the other hour and a half lab. The lectures were fairly interesting, if a bit irrelevant to the lab and dry as bone (hurr hurr). The problem was that through the first half of the class, there was zero direction to the lab. We were essentially set loose on a bunch of bones and told to learn the features. There were no quizzes, no homework, no graded assignments or anything to give us a sense of our progress in the course or encourage engagement. Midterms rolled around, covering literally ever feature of every bone in the skeleton, Haversian systems, Histology, pretty much the kitchen sink of physical anthropology. We had a month and a half to learn this, with no direction, and the results were brutal. He posted the grades, and the highest grade in the course was a mid-B for the written and a mid-C for the practical, with a full half the class failing. Every minor mistake was a full point off, which was made worse by unclear instructions. The next class he proceeded to tell us to question whether or not we ought to even be in college, and so on. The rest of the class had graded lab projects, which helped with some organization, but while most students went into the labs with gusto, there were problems there, too. Much of the material required for the labwork was not included in the assigned texts, but in books brought in for class which weakened the opportunity for outside studying. The professor was absent for the duration of the lab. He left the building as soon as the lecture was over. The TA was nice and as helpful as possible, but she was less than familiar with the subject matter, often answering our questions by reading directly out of the textbook, when what we wanted was clarification of that textbook, a second opinion. The icing on the cake was the final practical: One station was to do with determining stature mathematically: Measure the tibia, the fibula, etc., do formulas, convert to imperial, then do more formulas to interpret the stature. A calculator was provided, and we had five minutes. After cycling through the stations, we had ten minutes to revisit the ones we hadn't finished. Everyone dogpiled that station. It turned into a free-for-all for the calculator, nobody finished, and all the other stations were neglected because we were too busy fighting over that nonsense. It was the worst proctored exam I have ever seen. Overall, the class felt like it was designed to brutalize the students' morale and GPA. I can't think of a worse educational experience I've ever had.

So that's me. What about you? Have you had teachers who really helped you or really hurt your prospects? What stands out?

When I was fourteen I had a teacher called Miss Duckworth, who taught English and drama. She instilled (or perhaps awoke) in me an unquenchable passion for literature, for which I will be eternally grateful. She introduced me to dikeens and Terry Pratchett, who to this day are my all-time favourite novelists. She also taught me to properly read and appreciate Shakespreare, Kit Marlowe etc, which I had previously thought to be a complete waste of time. It didn't hurt that she was very good looking and just a tad flirtatious, either. Good times.

If I went into my negative experiences of teachers I would be here all day.

My BD teacher.

Yes, Behavior Disorder. And in there because of my ADHD. It is not a class for "crazy students" as it is often misunderstood as. It was a class, students with personalities not "the norm" were thrown into. Like some lashing out at students who bully them. That sort of thing.

Anyway, he was abusive, to all of us, and in different ways(non sixual). Though the more defiant students he would get physical with, and we were all afraid to tell someone, owning to the fact that he was also a sheriff. Most often he would provoke some of us, so he can have a reason to invoke the ability to put us in a restraining hold, if the parents signed the agreement. My mom refused to sign this and she would often get really angry with him, each time he has tried to get her to sign it. She doesn't know though that he tricked me one day and used me as an "example" to show new students what the hold looks like. I don't need to tell her though, because he would later pay for his crimes against us.

It wasn't until one day he was beating the hell out of this one student and I just couldn't stand it anymore. I ran out of the class and told the principle. The next day he got fired. Marcia Clanton became the greatest principle in elementary history as far as I'm concerned LOL.

Jesus. I was in one of those classes in 11th grade (ADHD and generally being a hardcoe loner). The worst our teacher ever did was disavow this one kid of his heartfelt belief that Kirby (The video game character) was an angel and a representation of the Messiah. It wouldn't have been an issue, but this kid insisted on praying publicly to the Holy Kirby. No lie. I just played Jenga with this autistic kid the whole time.

Never imagined a teacher of those could get violent. That's terrible.

All my science teachers been pretty darn awesome, especially my chemistry teachers (sometimes I regret not doing chemistry at the university). Well, my physics teacher got pretty upset once when a classmate of mine was fooling around a lot, but not too bad.

The only really bad teacher I had was my civics teacher who pretty much started every lesson by starting a VHS tape and left, and then came back right before the lesson ended.

Oh yeah, my last swedish teacher could be a bit annoying when you wrote about a subject she didn't agree with, so you had to be politically correct But she also had a lot of great moments so I don't really want to push her down for it

My high school physical education teacher was an absolute [censored].
One day the principal held a meeting with the class to find out why so many of us ditching class. The overwhelming consensus was because no one like her.

EDIT: WAIT NO! It was definitely the "teacher" who flat out abused me in front of my grade 3 class for no reason and it took her 5 years to apologise.

She was nearly fired over that incident.

I had a history professor in college. The class was US History from 1945 to the present. The present at that time being 1987. Well this particular professor had started teaching in 1954, so his lectures for the entire class covered a period of 1945-1954. No joke, he skipped the entire period between 1954-1987. It was not covered in the lecture, not tested on the exam. Not like anything important happened in the US during that time.

One day during class, he was going on about something when he paused and said "incidentally" and then went on a tangent for a few minutes before going back to the main subject. Later, after class I went up to talk with him about something and noticed his notes. They were written on old faded yellow legal paper from 1954. An there halfway down the page there was an indented section with an asterisk and the word "incidentally" scrawled in all caps at the beginning of the paragraph. There was nothing incidental about it.

Talk about a history professor being stuck in the past -- and doomed to repeat it.

I went to a crap highschool so my good moments are few there. Uni has been mostly bland with some good teachers but nothing really worth noting.

Of course, naturally the negative experiences stand out more. I will post one positive one from High school before delving into the negative.

I had a World History teacher who was very enthusiastic and well traveled. She taught us a range of things about different places and showed us pictures of her in various places throughout the world. From Angkor Wat to Machu Picchu. This left an indelible mark on me, as I have always wanted to see these places, and places like them, ever since. She always pressured me to transfer into the AP History class but I never did. Unfortunately, the rest of my high school education bored me right out of caring about any of it. Never studied for anything from the end of Middle School till the beginning of Community College. Too bad, might have better study habits now if I had lol. Cared more about getting laid, partying, surfing and playing video games.

Now for the negatives.

My first would be in middle school. I had this teacher who would cry every day in my social studies class. He got lost in Koke'e for two days and apparently it left him emotionally damaged. Need I point out that this was on Kaua'i? You can get lost, but to get lost for two days in Koke'e takes special skill. You can pick a direction and walk. You can usually see someone or something to guide you back to anywhere that has some degree of population. Seriously, two days walking gets you pretty much anywhere on the island... But of course, this left him in state where he could not teach for 4 years. Yeah, 4 years later, I am in his class and he is blubbering everyday in front of his students. So much for learning right? Pissed me off because I genuinely like Social Studies classes as they touched on History.

Another teacher that comes to mind was a History professor that didn't know two [censored] about history back in High School. I already had a bit of a history with this professor though, as she subbed for an English class when I was a freshman and left a SIX minute long message on my home answering machine. She was crying the whole time and blamed everything that was going wrong with the class on me. Looks bad on my part right? Well, I hadn't done anything except complain once that her anolyzing our writing styles and making claims about our personalities was bat[censored]. She would see some messy handwriting and make snarky comments at the expense of many of her students, particularly myself, as I have pretty messy handwriting. And she wonders why she caught so much flak? I mean a SIX minute message for my Mom, crying the whole time? My Mom asked me incredulously, "What did you do to this lady?!" So I told her. She facepalmed. Then fast forward. This was in my senior year. I get this teacher's ONLY class that she is allowed to teach. I tried to transfer out, but so did everyone else. It ended up with myself and about 12 other students in the class out of a starting 25. She kicked me out of class nearly every damn day. Why? Because she kept teaching the wrong material to my classmates and I would correct her as politely as I could. She challenged me on every account and was wrong every time. She said Istanbul and Constantinople were not the same city, and existed in different locations. She claimed the Ottomans hated all Christians and subjugated them mercilessly, making them a part of their slave class. She claimed the Crusades were sparked by Muslim aggression, the Roman EMPIRE began in 400 BC (which isn't right for either Republic or Empire), ...and so on and so forth, this list would get pretty long. She double checked every time I corrected her and would then proceed like nothing she had said was incorrect. I called her out on it. So she then asked me if I wanted to teach the class. So I did just that for two days, successfully, at least as far as a high school history student can teach. After that brief two day success, I would spend 90% of the rest of the year booted out of the class within the first ten minutes or so. Any excuse would get me booted. I [censored] sighed once and got booted out of the class. I complained, but our school was too broke to afford a different teacher. I got sent to the principal by her, but he couldn't do anything except tell me to be quiet. I didn't want my classmates to learn [censored] history, guess that was a mistake. Brah, screw that lady.

Some might actually recall me talking about this next bit. I posted here to bounce ideas off you guys a couple years back iirc. I was kind of playing Devil's Advocate to better understand the opposing position. At my Uni, I got a teacher who was teaching Ethnic Studies. He started really laying into the White Guilt trip. He wasn't white. This takes place in Hawai'i, and 90% of the class was not white. He then proceeded to say that Racism, as he would define it, can only be applied to white males. His definition: Racism is a system of advantages that benefits one group over another. Needless to say, as the very specific target of this definition, I took issue, throughout the entire semester. So, as I am trying to curb the growing anti-white male sentiment in the class by using logically constructed arguments to debunk his curriculum, he tells me that I simply cannot understand my advantage as a white male. I ask him to bring up examples, then point out that these examples can apply to multiple groups, not just white males. He brings up more examples, I counter those the next day. I point out that most of these supposed advantages don't apply outside of the United States and Europe even if they do apply, he ignores that point. So this continues, and then he left the class to some of his other teachers because he had a kid and needed to take time off. The class settles down a bit, I feel like I did a good job of stopping some [censored] new age ideology from sinking into young minds. Throughout this I had been getting pretty good grades, despite having very obviously harsh and unfair scrutiny placed upon each of my papers. Then the Final Paper, which is 40% of our grade, is due. I feel like I write a great paper, cite all my sources and everything. I get back an F. Because ONE of my sources was not a scholarly source. This is a [censored] 100 level Ethnic Studies course and that source wasn't exactly pulled from the Huffington Post or anything. I take it up with the head of the department, they do [censored] nothing.

Id be here all day talking about all the bad teachers, but one of my good teachers during secondary school, taught us social science, he was dutch and the oldest teacher in the school he was extremely well educated and spoke multiple languages. All the teachers hated him because he made them all look like the uneducated trash they were, and the student hated him because he took the time to teach and that he was older and and any other reason they could think of, but id say i was the only one that liked him because he took the time to teach, and enjoyed his work and he knew each subject back the front, he was the only teacher to give me an A but not only an A but an A++ and a page of comments on my work, and it meant more coming from him, and he was probably the one that made me hate so many of my teachers because none of them could come close to how good a teacher he was and what he knew.

Secondary school as well we had an English teacher, other than the fact that she was a very attractive woman, she used to wear jeans she'd spray on, and she'd sit on a table with her feet up on it with her legs open, with a camel toe that would split someone in half, other than that i have no idea why she was there, she couldnt spell, no grammar to speak of, every class she,d write passages from a book on the board or read from a book and all we'd do was dictation, later on she went to another school i ended up in, did the same thing, all the students talked about her, but everyone one them hated her classes, strangely enough even the guys because she was just plain dumb, wasted my time in secondary school doing years of dictation and then in my next school they wondered why i hadnt learnt anything.

Secondary school as well amazingly enough a sports teacher, i know way to many people with horror stories about sports teachers some really bad ones, this one came from England, they should have been locked in a padded room, they terrorised everyone, if you didnt bring the correct sports clothes, they would beat you with an orange plastic cricket bat or beat you around the body with a volley sports shoe, back then nobody cared, or the early morning swim in the school swimming pool, which was actually a muddy dam used as a water supply for fire fighters, it'd be 0 degrees celsius and they would throw you into the muddy water freezing water, or the second swimming pool which was a muddy puddle on the side of a bush road, all i ended up was sick and stressed, years after id left school i saw them in the street and told them i didnt want to see their face ever again, never did.

I had a really [censored] teacher in my Norwegian classes in high school. She was a [censored]. One time I got bad grades because I wrote an article that was too good and was accused of cheating, and another day she'd flip because my friends and I were making noises in the back of the room so she came up and started shaking our table while cursing for some reason; I was expecting her to flip the table but it never got that far. Other episodes involve her having mental breakdowns and crying over nothing, like when someone accidentally broke her coffee mug.

I was a student who was more busy fooling around than actually studying, so I didn't get along with many teachers, except for my history teacher. What a nice old guy. I'd often stay after school and discuss various topics with him for fun. I think he's one of the few teachers who actually respected me for who I was.

Probably the worst teacher I ever had was some [censored] who kept me in after class, asked if I had aboriginal heritage and when I said yes cussed me out in a bizarre rant about scamming his taxpayer dollars involving everything from his time in the marines to space travel. Incidentally he was also fired for 'inappropriate behaviour' with female students. Specifically pervy behaviour.

Worst Teachers: Kindergarden , 2nd grade, 7th grade math

She sent me to the Principals office for farting, She was one of the teachers that blamed everyone for one guy doing one thing. Couldn't explain a single thing. Maybe thats why Im bad at math.

Best Teachers: Pre-K, 4th grade

Probably one of my favorites. One of the nicest ones I've ever had. I could stay after school and play the games I wanted to. (Even though that would be boring now)

Probably the best one ive ever had.. It's too bad He had to take a break during January - March..

You were basically taking an anatomy and physiology class, but with emphasis on the bones. I retook an A&P I 3 years ago in a community college because undergrad A&P class was too old for a nursing program I wanted to attend. It was taught by a difficult to understand African cardiologist who I knew from the start was a pain-in-the-ass. But, he taught well. Every other mofo in the class struggled to keep up, and some just gave up. I was the only one who got an A in the class. Same thing with general chemistry II last year. I retook the class in a community college for the same nursing program, and none of the 13th graders knew what the professor was talking about. That class is hard, but I got an A also.

Looking back, I personally had a great education overall. I went to an all boys Catholic school, and had teaches like your English teacher all the time. My French teacher was a nut, but he was organized and demanded discipline from my class. I had one math teacher who taught me algebra and pre-calculus very well. But, I barely bothered with calculus, which is funny since my best math class was calculus I in college. I had amazing chemistry teachers, especially organic chemistry. My physics class was taught by a high school professor with an anger management problem. I learned, but it was very basic. Yet, I still remember half of that [censored] today, but that's because I wanted to take the MCATs at the time.

The worst educational experience I've had though happens to be my nursing classes. The professors I doubted knew what they were talking about. All they did was read off slides or made us watch videos on how to perform techniques. My professor in Health Assessment cared more about her tan from the Bahamas than our education. She refused to post slides for the class also. Two people failed because of her incompetence. Then, my pathophysiology professor didn't know how to teach that class, and she made it way too easy. She basically told us to read the book, which was ~2000 pages on the driest reading material known to man. The research class was taught by the same professor who taught pathophysiology, and I was annoyed that she didn't know basic statistical principles. Another bad class was pharmacology. I have to learn how many drugs within 6 weeks?! The amount was so short we didn't go over antibiotics. Although the professor was extremely intelligent (nursing and cell biology background), her voice is monotone and her lectures started from 3pm to 8pm.

I understood we were crunched for time because it was basically a 4 years of undergrad nursing in a bachelors level squeezed into 1 year. But, none of the professors cared that we learn, only that we passed our state boards. Even then, they were doing it in the most incompetent way possible.

When I was in 9th grade I had a female teacher that always talked about how she hated men. And being a guy, that was the longest semester I ever had.

I had one teacher in my freshman year of College, Mr. Harris. Great math teacher. In one class, he explained factoring that just made the whole thing trivial. Factoring to me was always an issue, as middle school and High school teachers don't really teach it, but give you busy work. Being the kind of person I am, Meaningless repetition of Trial-and-error got boring, so I decided to goof off like the rest of the class.

Here comes Mr. Harris in College and says "Two Factors of 'C' whose sum is 'B'." If I knew it was that easy, I might have actually put more effort into grade school homework. He also put other things in common perspective as well, Like taking a really complex topic and equating the process to something we knew how to do very well already. The man was smart, and knew how to teach. He's now the Dean of the Student Resource Center.

Might not be the longest story here, but He needed to be Name Dropped.

I had a history teacher by that name too, seems like a popular teacher name!

I never really liked school all that much. I hated the approach of " sit down, shut up, put your hand up if you want to talk" seems so oppressive as if the was no room to actually let us, as children, grow. It was all about giving the right answers to questions and learning things that are, lets face it, rather pointless. I've never once needed to know the ins and outs of the pythagoras theorem...

Ah but maths, I've had lots of maths teachers. I used to have a brilliant maths teacher in middle school, Welsh fella who really loved rugby. We all liked him but god, you didn't want to get on his bad side. I remember forgetting to do my homework a couple times and i got a right rollocking. Literally shouted until he was red in the face. But, then the was the other side of him that was funny, witty and caring to the pupils.

Eventually he had to leave because of health i think.(I'm guessing high blood pressure ) That's when maths went down hill.

The next maths teacher was a nut case. He had all these toys in his desk draw. Like a bubble machine, fake chewing gum and a plastic kitchen knife. When we got an answer right he would give us the bubble machine to use, when we got an answer wrong he would 'stab' us with the kitchen knife and I'm still not really sure what the gum was for.....like i said, nut case. So, yeah he wasn't very helpful in teaching us maths, in fact he was just patronising. Although to be fair, the students in that group weren't interested at all.

Anyway, next maths teacher was so laid back he wouldn't get involved in the lesson at all. At the start of the lesson he would give us all a maths book with loads of sums and what not, he'd tell us to pick a page and complete it, then he's put his feet up and fall asleep.

Ah, school, it's funny how i love knowledge and learning new skills, but hated school so much.

I got along with most of my teachers. I even straight up asked one out on a date, once. I got lunch bought for me that day, but sadly we didn't go out together like I had wanted.

There was a science teacher I had who my friend kinda liked and sometimes we'd come in during lunch hour and chat her up, compliment her, etc. I liked her because she had sass. She would often turn comments back on students and she came up with several good burns. I love a woman that can fight back.

I had a punny lawyer for a teacher who I adored, despite the fact I hated being a student of his. His jokes were...bad. But we got along like peas and carrots.

I had another law teacher who also taught history,philosophy, and sociology and I did the best in his class. We just meshed. I understood everything he said the first time, and for once, academics and the art of learning was made exciting. I really hope he is doing okay. One time the class got talking to him about TES

The "punny" lawyer, is that a typo, or did he make puns? I had a funny teacher that was one of my best, and I mentioned the bad history teacher above, so I thought I shuold add a good teacher. He was a mathematics professor at the local community college, where I took a few classes while in high school and then ended up attending for two years before transferring to a 4 year college. Anyway, I was used tpo our high school math teacher, who used a yardstick to draw his x/y axis. The guy was very fussy about neatness and always had an immaculate chalkboard and he didn't really have much humor about him.

So, when I took this math class over the summer, and the teacher came in with no yard sticks but a heap of enthusiasm, started drawing x/y axis freehand that was so sloppy you could hardly read it but his explanations made it all make sense. When he would draw on the chalk board the chalk would fly and the dust was rising in a cloud by the time he was done, all the while he was telling humerous but relevant antecdotes about Archemedes, Pythagoras and even Monty Python. Great teacher.

Chalkboard? What year is it?

Most of my teachers were pretty generic, but I will always remember this utter buffoon that I had for DT for about 2 months. Incorrect information, inappropriate, favoured a kid in class because they were from the same place, did stupid things and was just a general idiot. I remember he pulled a cord that was hanging from the ceiling and lightly wrapped it round his neck, saying he could end it all now if he wanted. There was also that time he slammed a piece of wood on his desk to try and intimidate everyone, then he couldn't pick it back up then dropped it and looked like a fumbling idiot. The fact that he looked like Humpty Dumpty didn't help matters.