Bad teacher's

I was born and went to school on an ‘overspill’ estate, 10 miles outside London ... it was the toughest of the tough environment. My eldest brother was an adopted mixed race boy... then another brother one year older then me.... with an older sister , born before war . One teachers at our school tormented my eldest brother near to death( he was only black child in school) and in consequence us other siblings got the butt end of jokes, insults and racism. All kids in school had to take turn in picking up litter from the playground... intended to teach us NOT to drop it, but from the day my brother started school it became his job!! He kept it up for a fortnight and became so miserable I told my mum what was going on.... she marched or should I say rampaged round to the school ... pushed her way to the teacher in question..... made sure she had the right man by asking his name... he said yes... she floored him with one punch to the jaw. She was 5ft 1” and he was about 6 feet. People say violence doesn’t work.... but I’m afraid it did that day. From that day to his leaving school he was always treated fairly and courteously . ! So Dee, I do know first hand about nasty teachers.... thankfully nowadays these events seem never to occur. Pity you didn’t tell my mum ... she would’ve sorted the nasty oik out!!!! Nobody ever crossed that 5ft virago.

I went through all my school life coming across good and caring teachers as well as the opposite. 1980 - When my daughter started to struggle with her teacher in her last year of primary I stepped in to help her with her studies. I was then a secretary by profession but with a love of maths. Two years later I decided to change career. I did a 4 years B.Ed. Hons degree. Then in 1986 I became a primary school teacher. I loved the profession. The reward from seeing children succeed was tremendous. I became an advanced skills teacher, advising other teachers, then became a Deputy but still taught. The profession has changed a lot since the 1980s Teaching is an extremely hard profession these days with a huge amount dropping out after their first year or less. Working up to 16 hours a day + part of your weekend and quite a good part of the school holidays! puts pressure on your life. Sorry for the long post but I wanted to sing the praises of the excellent teachers I came across in my career and those wanting the best for the children in their schools. There will still be teachers who need support but I hope school managers look out for those as they should do. Don't forget grans and parents, every school has a parent governor. Contact them for any concerns you have. It can make a difference. Even become a governor. I did when I retired.

Callistemon bad /andor difficult teachers, certainly didn't sap my confidence, on the contrary they made me more determined to succeed, just to prove them wrong.

However I was always a member of the awkward squad.


I think I am a member too, although one teacher did terrify the wits out of all of us. However, I did learn to stand up for myself although some others may have completely lost confidence in themselves.

Another one just told me I was useless at her subject which made me determined to succeed in it (and at A level too, but not at school). She was in a permanent state of anger with us all because she was useless at communicating her subject, I think.

I can sympathise with you. I had a stammer at school and one teacher would make a fool of me in class. Always wanted me to read and when I stammered would say, " I thought you were having speech lessons? Not working,are they? " As I got older I stammered far less but still annoyed me in certain situations like answering the phone. I went to a Dr who was a hypnotist. I have to say that teacher was no where in my head I didn't even think of her. When I was hypnotised Dr asked me about what it was like in school. I was straight back to that classroom with her ridiculing me. Dr said, " You are now not a child but the age you are now and you know teacher is wrong so tell her" And I did, all those feelings I didn't know existed came out I told the teacher exactly what I thought of her. When I came to I was in tears but it really helped me. We all want to go back and put these horrible people in their place and I felt I had done that. My stammer did improve after that,I think I gained more confidence. I still have lapses today but no one who knows me now would ever think I used to stammer a lot. Those teachers have a lot to answer to.

Callistemon bad /andor difficult teachers, certainly didn't sap my confidence, on the contrary they made me more determined to succeed, just to prove them wrong.

However I was always a member of the awkward squad. Not deliberately, I loved learning, wanted to do well and always worked well and really got on with the quieter teachers and those who had difficulty with discipline

But I had an unsqashable belief that were two sides to every dispute and both should be heard and I was always asking questions and wanting to know why everyone thought they way they did and in my generation you just did not challenge teachers to justify their views.

I was always in trouble for 'dumb insolence' Standing their with my lip buttoned, saying nothing and looking straight at the teacher. DH says I still do it confronted with authority.

My sisters and I all went to the same Infant/Junior School. One day, as adults, we were all chatting about who our favourite teachers were, and I was amazed to find that my 2yrs-younger-sister absolutely hated my two favourite teachers. She went on to tell me that our 1st Year Infant Teacher (ages 4/5) continually told her that she was nowhere near as clever as I was, which left her feeling very upset and inadequate - how awful to make such a young child feel like that and drive a resentful wedge between two siblings.

Our 2nd Year Infant Teacher (ages 5/6) used to hit her on the knuckles with a ruler for writing with her left hand and made her sit on her left hand for all lessons where pencils and crayons were needed - this was in the mid 1950s, and again absolutely disgusting behaviour!

Incidentally, my sister went on to become a Special Needs Teaching Assistant specialising in children with ADHD/ADD/Dyslexia - and took great delight in helping children who were left-handed.

It does make you wonder if certain persons become teachers so they can lord it over those who can't talk back. Bullies, in other words. I've never forgotten the teacher on my first day at school who hit me with a ruler because I used more than three colours to decorate my rough book. I hadn't heard the instruction. Miss Stone she was called, appropriately.

Or perhaps teaching turns them peculiar? I've known a few and they have been on the odd side!

I do sympathise Dee1012 I had a maths teacher who frightened me every time he appeared. He would knock the boy's heads together for any small misdemeanour and I spent most lessons waiting for him to do the same to my friend and I. Hopeless with figures to this day. I liked the English teacher so no excuses for my punctuation and grammar all my own work.

I just took the good with the bad and let things go over my head as I do now, it's the art of " shutting off " which I can do without a qualm.

I was always a 'good' girl at school, never really in trouble and would never dream of answering back. Towards the end of secondary school my geography teacher took a dislike to me, putting me down on every occasion and finally saying in front of the class that I wouldn't pass any of my exams as I was so lazy. First time I had been told that. I was so upset that I went to see her and asked why she had said it and she got quite embarrassed and said maybe she had been a little unfair. I proved her wrong anyway by passing my geography exam but dropped the subject at the first opportunity after that!

Dee I have mentioned on the other thread about the contrast between our teachers and so many of today's teachers - some of mine were terrifying even at primary level but the DGC's teachers seem to be lovely, enthusiastic and inspiring.

I did wonder if coming across teachers like that in early life can sap your confidence or whether it can give you a determination to succeed whatever the odds and help you learn to deal with difficult people.

On the whole, I think it is confidence-sapping although one of my senior school teachers in particular did make me determined to succeed despite her.

When I went to grammar school I thought I’d died and gone to Heaven. Not because all the teachers were brilliant (we’d one who just hauled her feet up onto her desk every lesson, shook out her newspaper and barked “Pages 100 to 160, chaps”), but because I no longer had to hold my breath waiting for the weaker, slower, smellier children to be shoved around, slapped and mocked by the three horrible women who were in charge of our village primary school. I think every child in the school must have had a taste of their nastiness and the ruler on the hand, but those poor children who were specifically and routinely targeted must have been scarred for life by those bullies.

My DGD 2 has just left primary school this week where she has had a year with a teacher she did not like . I think the feeling was mutual. Listening to the children’s happiness and disappointments about who they are “getting next year” says it all really . Groans and upset for some and pure joy for others.

I had a horrendous primary teacher - an unmarried older woman, who would yell and scream, take children by the scruff of the neck and throw them around, chuck blackboard rubbers at us, etc. Everyone was petrified of her.

All my mother ever said, when I told her any of this, was, 'Poor old thing, I expect she lost her boy (friend) in the war.'

And at a parents' evening, I saw her all pink in the face, smiling and positively simpering at my father, who was goodlooking and extremely personable and charming. I can still see her face now!

Despite all I'd ever told him, he said afterwards, 'Oh, I thought she seemed quite a nice old thing.'
I had never felt so betrayed!

But it was a good lesson in how easily people can present quite different faces to different people.

I'm glad to say that at my senior school there were some excellent teachers as well as the average - no bad ones at all.

Dee1012, I very well understand how teachers' comments can be so hurtful and last all your life. We are very vulnerable when children and teachers are supposed to be people we can trust. When they say hurtful things, it cuts deep. I had one teacher who had the same surname as I had and she was always much more curt and cold than she was with others. I learnt that she had a nervous breakdown shortly after I left. I met another rather mean teacher some years after I left school. She was lovely with me and explained that she had been going through a very bad time in her personal life. Maybe it was the same with your mean teacher, Dee. It just maybe, that she too was a victim in need of sympathy and support.

When I was a lecturer at a University which took a higher than average proportion of students who had not taken the traditional route from school, I lost count of the number of students who were told by teachers at school 'you're not university material', 'there's no point in going to university - you just haven't got what it takes' and loads of other variations of that same theme. Many of them struggled through the first year with this self-fulfilling burden, but with support at this critical time, most of them eventually flew, some doing extremely well.
A throw-away sentence from a thoughtless teacher can cut so deeply and have such profound effects.

Curse you predictive text ?

And BradfordLass72!

Well said Bridgeit!

Like BradfordLass I also guessed the pedants would pounce on the misplaced apostrophe. It made no difference to understanding the post so why mention it? I hope those people also pick up their grandchildren when they write in "text speak", miss out commas, question marks, etc. etc. etc.

I had some teachers who were boring and dreary and some who were immensely inspiring and who were crucial in the university choice I made. I never had one who was unkind or bullying, although I did have one in primary school who believed a bunch of bullies rather than me and I have to admit I have never forgiven her – but she doesn't haunt me.

The minute I saw the title of this thread I knew the harpies would descend with their arrogant comments, trying to prove how much 'better' they are. In fact it does the opposite.

Do you ever consider, especially in this specific case, just how utterly cruel you are being? Or is it that you do not care?

If your comments are not going to help the OP or add interest to the thread, then for goodness sake keep them to your egotistical selves - or go show off in Pedants Corner.

Dee1012, I know exactly what you're talking about. I had to change schools in my third year of infants because my sister who was just over a year younger than me, died very suddenly and my mum couldn't bear going back to our old school every day. The head teacher of the new school took us for handwriting practice and decided that my writing sloped backwards. She would announce this to the whole class and then add that people whose writing sloped backwards were sneaks. She did this every lesson knowing I had just lost the closest person to me. I decided that I would show her and succeed academically - I won school prizes for everything I could - the old boot had to smile when she gave them to me.

Teaching adults years later, I found, as other people say on this thread, that so many had been traumatised by sarcasm, nastiness and downright bullying.
I used to say to them that we can't do anything about what is past but we have the power to change what is now by making sure we lead by example and never treat anyone young or old the way those damaged individuals treated us! So there!

Opposite problem here. I had one teacher who seemed to think I was just amazing. She would always get me to read passages aloud to the class because nobody else could do it as well as me. She would bring me in tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden and all in all it was just a bit odd. Lucky never to have one that didn't like me thank goodness. I'd have taken that very badly I think. I was at a boarding school for a few years and all the teachers there were lovely. Apart from my gardening pal who was very nice, just overly friendly!

M0nica
I refrained from posting after seeing the headline.
Let's hope GNHQ are as hot on the offender as they were with me when I used to point those things out.
Everyone or no-one should get rapped knuckles. Not selective chastisement.

I had one horrid teacher who hated me with a vengeance- really spiteful! May she rot in hell lol