Your worst professors

[Keith]

And I mean in terms of whether you learned anything, not whether they were nice to you.

One of my Spanish professors in high school, while being very nice to me, was seldom helpful in helping me learn conjugations. I'm lucky I passed the class. (Another contributor might've been my tendency to only memorize nouns.)

 

[The Penguin]

I have to say my French teacher in elementary school. There was some assignment I worked on had many spelling errors. She read it to the whole class and everyone laughed. Even though she didn't told the class it was my writing, the teacher should have never done that.

 

[Ylva]

Primary school teacher who kept assuming I couldn't read.

 

[The Penguin]

Primary school teacher who kept assuming I couldn't read.

I wonder why the teach assumed that? On the other hand, I didn't know how to read well when I was in school.

 

[Lukas]

He wasn't a professor, but rather a middle school teacher I suffered....

After about months of working on an 8th grade science project... "How to calculate the depth of a crater on the Moon".... Instead of creating a model, I used diagrams and formulas drawn on the blackboard... The blackboard looked pretty cool with all the formulas I had created drawn all over it.

The presentation was to take about 25 minutes and the teacher didn't call on me till about 5 minutes before the bell.... he said he would listen to my report after class (it was the last class in the day). Ok fine.... well my classmates had all left leaving just the teacher, myself and the blackboard.... he just walked out about 5 minutes into my report without so much as a gesture, leaving me alone in the classroom. I just kept going and presented the remainder of my report to an roomful of empty desks. I finished my report, packed up my belongings and just went home. I did get an "A" on my report, but the incident probably kept me from a nice career in astrophysics. That is when I learned "Why should I care if no one else does?". I know I bore some people with long-winded technicalities and details, but really??

Much later in life, during university, I showed my old report to a Harvard credentialed physics professor just to see what he thought, He informed me that my formula was not totally accurate but was very creative and that I had inadvertently discovered a tangent using the Pythagorean Theorem and angles. Not too bad for a 12 year old. Something a decent, present and awake 8th grade science teacher would love to see in one of their students.

I hereby nominate my old 8th grade science teacher for "worst teacher of the 20 century".

 

[zurb]

At high school, there was one Maths teacher that really had it in for members of my family for some unknown reason.
My run in with her started when I was incorrectly placed in a classical literature class instead of an accelerated Maths class. I wasn't allowed to attend the correct class until the administration muck up was fixed, so I was on a bad foot from the start.
The next year I didn't have her until my final statistics exam. As soon as I walked into the exam room she said "What are you doing here? You can't do statistics!" She then stood over me for the whole exam. Talk about performance anxiety!

Relief teacher took us for an oral test prepared by our usual teacher. He systemically went through the test sheet reading the question and then the answer. I think everyone passed that one!

High school PE teacher was busy making a softball diamond so just sent us off to play while he worked.

At uni, we had scrolling blackboards. One 'lecturer' simply wrote tons of notes on the board, and we had to try to keep up before it disappeared off the top. Don't try to understand - just write!

 

[AsheSkyler]

My third grade teacher. She was obsessed with the high school cheer leaders, so she'd often leave us in the classroom to watch movies while she scurried about. I was one of three or five kids who learned their times tables 1 through 12 in the final math assignment. She refused to teach math and only made us do it when the same three annoying kids would get too loud so she'd punish all of us with math. I often was up until 11PM doing homework because she didn't teach us anything during the day and would make our parents do it. I would have had the second worse teacher in elementary school the next year, but because the administration refused my mom's request to transfer me to a different class, she yanked me and my sister both out and homeschooled us.

In college, during one of the many Microsoft Office and resume classes they put you through, I had this airhead that was obsessed with racism and sexism, often bemoaning how she felt mistreated by the class, and didn't focus on any of the useful aspects of the office programs and instead got stuck on "file, open, file, save / save as" over and over. We all gave her bad marks.

And then one of my other bad teachers was supposed to teach us MySQL and databases. Her accent was rather fascinating, she was an Iranian women who learned English in Eastern Europe. Whether through translation issues or what, I dunno, but she wasn't the best teacher and horribly narrow-minded on her approach to database queries. And she didn't always explain what way she wanted things done, so I wasn't too happy with getting a C on one of my assignments for no good reason, and she would argue incessantly that any other way than her's was wrong. So I started turning in all my assignments with two answers per problem: her way first, and then my way to show her she needed to be more open minded.

 

[pushpin]

My HS Geometry teacher. I'm pretty sure she was a pedophile. She flirted with all the boys (everyone was 14-15 years old) and talked to them about her nipple rings. She hated me and any other female who was not your standard "popular girl". I mean, she would make fun of me in class. I learned nothing from that foolish woman. Regarding the possible pedophilia, at 15, I didn't realize just how young 15 really was and now I wish that I had mentioned something to an authority. My younger brother also had her for geometry and confirmed that, yes, she flirted heavily with the young boys. Fortunately, she is no longer teaching at my high school (I checked).

 

[Flinty]

Worst professor? In first-year Physics I had a Distinguished Professor who was probably counting the days to his retirement. He constantly reminded us that plus zero equals minus zero.

But I had some doozies in school. The worst was probably my first (yeah, first) sixth-grade French teacher. For some reason the province believes that elementary-school students should take French classes. This is a terrible idea because you can literally count the students of that age who actually want to learn French on fingers and toes - for the entire province. So...learn French or colour? Which do you think eleven-year-olds would choose? Also, he was from the then-Yugoslavia. French was his second language and English was his fourth or fifth. Also, he and my fifth-grade French teacher were not afraid to flick us on the back of the head if we acted up. Also, (more!) he decided to live with literally the worst family in the entire town; the boy who failed first grade was the smartest person in that family. Needless to say, this guy disappeared at Christmas.

Runners-up:

Grade 10/11 math: this guy was trained as a gym teacher - he was competent (no better or worse) at that. As a high school math teacher? My brothers (6-7 years ahead of me) had to teach him the material.

Grade 7-11 French: the best thing to say about her is she was not one to give up. The worst thing to say about her is she was not one to give up.

Grade 9 science: compared to Mr. Hand from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Barely made it to year-end.

Grade 12 biology: possibly a Nazi. Definitely German.

Grade 7 geography/English: one good thing to say about Canada: in secondary school, the athletes don't get the breaks the way they do in the USA. Well, except for this woman.

 

[Judge]

Hmm. I once had an American foreign policy professor who was blunt in her prejudice of those from a specific European nation. Enough that one student immediately withdrew from the class on the first day.

I also had a Chinese foreign policy professor (a North Korean Feminist) who once implied to our entire class that our gender likely determined the probability between getting a "B" as opposed to an "A" in her class. And she wasn't joking. A somewhat humbling experience about gender bias.

In my first year of college I had to take a physical education course, and took a jogging class on the recommendation that the instructor would often be a "no-show". Which panned out exactly as suggested.

Oh...I learned plenty from all of them. Just in different ways.

 

[Grumpy Cat]

He wasn't a professor, but rather a middle school teacher I suffered....

After about months of working on an 8th grade science project... "How to calculate the depth of a crater on the Moon".... Instead of creating a model, I used diagrams and formulas drawn on the blackboard... The blackboard looked pretty cool with all the formulas I had created drawn all over it.

The presentation was to take about 25 minutes and the teacher didn't call on me till about 5 minutes before the bell.... he said he would listen to my report after class (it was the last class in the day). Ok fine.... well my classmates had all left leaving just the teacher, myself and the blackboard.... he just walked out about 5 minutes into my report without so much as a gesture, leaving me alone in the classroom. I just kept going and presented the remainder of my report to an roomful of empty desks. I finished my report, packed up my belongings and just went home. I did get an "A" on my report, but the incident probably kept me from a nice career in astrophysics. That is when I learned "Why should I care if no one else does?". I know I bore some people with long-winded technicalities and details, but really??

Much later in life, during university, I showed my old report to a Harvard credentialed physics professor just to see what he thought, He informed me that my formula was not totally accurate but was very creative and that I had inadvertently discovered a tangent using the Pythagorean Theorem and angles. Not too bad for a 12 year old. Something a decent, present and awake 8th grade science teacher would love to see in one of their students.

I hereby nominate my old 8th grade science teacher for "worst teacher of the 20 century".

That was totally rude!

 

[Grumpy Cat]

My HS Geometry teacher. I'm pretty sure she was a pedophile. She flirted with all the boys (everyone was 14-15 years old) and talked to them about her nipple rings. She hated me and any other female who was not your standard "popular girl". I mean, she would make fun of me in class. I learned nothing from that foolish woman. Regarding the possible pedophilia, at 15, I didn't realize just how young 15 really was and now I wish that I had mentioned something to an authority. My younger brother also had her for geometry and confirmed that, yes, she flirted heavily with the young boys. Fortunately, she is no longer teaching at my high school (I checked).

Oh my.

 

[Balkan1996]

School system in my country is very bad. I haven't learned anything new (useful) in school for several years.

Now, since everybody is writing about their worst professor, read this:
My Latin teacher gives us homework EVERY time, and we have that subject 3 times a week. If you don't have 3 homeworks - you get an F. So, one day, I explained her politely that mathematics are just not on her side. We have almost 100 hours of this subject a year, so if you don't have 3 out of 90 homeworks, you get an F!? That's less than 5% of the homeworks! Did I really deserve that!? Shouldn't it be 50% like on tests (in my country, if you don't have 50% on the test, you failed it)!? So, she just stood, looked at me for a few seconds in complete silence and just continued with her 'work'. Stupid control freak...


P.S. 'work' because I'm not sure she qualifies as a worker, since she does almost nothing.

 

[Balkan1996]

My HS Geometry teacher. I'm pretty sure she was a pedophile. She flirted with all the boys (everyone was 14-15 years old) and talked to them about her nipple rings. She hated me and any other female who was not your standard "popular girl". I mean, she would make fun of me in class. I learned nothing from that foolish woman. Regarding the possible pedophilia, at 15, I didn't realize just how young 15 really was and now I wish that I had mentioned something to an authority. My younger brother also had her for geometry and confirmed that, yes, she flirted heavily with the young boys. Fortunately, she is no longer teaching at my high school (I checked).

I laughed so hard at this although it's a pretty serious matter. How do those people get a job!?

 

[pushpin]

I laughed so hard at this although it's a pretty serious matter. How do those people get a job!?

Well-placed lies, charm, a degree from a reputable university, and an uncanny ability to deceive is my guess.

Edit to add: The thing is, she was so ridiculously unattractive (genuinely). I remember wondering if she just thought she couldn't get guys her own age or something. It was so weird.

 

[Judge]

I laughed so hard at this although it's a pretty serious matter. How do those people get a job!?

It's probably not so much how they got the job as how they are able to keep it.

In essence, "tenure".

 

[paloftoon]

I had an Econ professor who I think noticed I didn't like his teaching style, and just found ways to purposely grade me hard and make me drop the class before I would fail it. He was the only one that taught it. I didn't do well in that major anyway, but that was a frustrating time. I can think of a few more pretty bad ones, but he was the worst for me. . .

 

[paloftoon]

I wonder why the teach assumed that? On the other hand, I didn't know how to read well when I was in school.

In the US, I know that primary school teachers have to teach all the main subjects, which I don't think is a good setup. I totally get the relationship building with a small number of kids, but I think kids could still build good relationships working with 2 teachers- one for math/science and one for English/history for instance rather than one for math/science/English/history. Maybe that teacher had strong math skills, but not strong reading skills. In Primary school, they look at the whole of a person because most teachers can't truly be natural enough for every topic. So even though they can teach it, they don't necessarily have that sixth sense to analyze certain material with a person properly. Part of it could also depend on what that student is revealing too.

 

[Balkan1996]

It's probably not so much how they got the job as how they are able to keep it.

In essence, "tenure".

I've heard stories about professors in USA. From what I've heard, if a lot of people complain about one particular professor - he gets fired. That doesn't happen in my school...

 

[Judge]

I've heard stories about professors in USA. From what I've heard, if a lot of people complain about one particular professor - he gets fired.

It's possible, but it doesn't happen regularly. Tenure is right of due process...usually favoring the instructor over their accusors. Of course if they don't have tenure, then it's another matter. Above all, it can depend on whatever infraction they are accused of.