Crazy things my teacher did (s/o bringing placenta to class)

[stripe]

I'll get it started with a few....

 

I had a teacher advise us that a curved bladed sword is better for beheading. 8th grade.

 

I had a (white) gym teacher line us up by race ("blacks, whites, orientals"). Not sure if it was supposed to be coordinated with perceived athletic prowess. 6th grade. (The black principal was not amused.)

 

 

[kewb]

One of my high school social studies teachers kept a meatball maker in her desk drawer. She told the class it was an ancient torture device and when the boys got out of hand she would pick it up and open and close it at the front of the room. They stopped right away.

[Melissa in Australia]

:lol:

[Chava_Raizel]

My 11th grade Chemistry teacher (male) wore a pink shirt every single Thursday, starting a trend of Pink Shirt Thursdays among many of the high school boys. He also had a running list of vocabulary on the board - not chemistry related, just big words he wanted us to learn. He would also randomly talk about his marriage and home life.

 

I had a biology teacher that played a video of a natural childbirth and it showed EVERYTHING. It scared the heck out of a lot of the girls and the boys wouldn't even look anyone in the eye for the rest of the class period.

 

My 9th grade English teacher had a tally of how many car accident's she'd been in - she would tell us stories about roadkill and such.

[snowbeltmom]

My married history teacher was having an affair with one of my classmates (she was 16 at the time). The teacher was married to the daughter of my classmate's next door neighbor. Once my classmate graduated, the history teacher left his wife and two kids and married my classmate. I lost touch after high school. I am not sure if they are still together. I never understood the attraction; he was creepy.

 

The high school's truant officer was dealing drugs. Someone finally reported him a few years after I graduated, and he served jail time.

 

While I had an excellent Latin teacher, she had retired by the time my brother entered high school. He was stuck with a "teacher" who came to school drunk every day and drank "coffee" all day long. The Latin class was off-site from the main campus, and the Latin teacher would let the kids go to the nearby McDonalds during class. My brother didn't learn any Latin, but everyone in the class got A's.

 

Neither my brother or I mentioned any of this to our parents.

[kiwik]

Our woodwork teacher (when I was 11) told us all girls were natural thrives and liars and if he had his way none of them (girls) would ever be allowed in his workshop.

 

Our highs hook French teacher used to take us to do our work on the field so he could look up our skirts.

[melissad2]

I vaguely remember a 1st grade teacher making us rub her feet. I had an English teacher in the 6th grade that I'm sure was a hoarder. Her entire classroom was filled with junk, we had to squeeze through to our desks. There was a science teacher I had in the 9th grade who let us watch Bill Nye the Science Guy almost daily...he was pretty cool except he took points off for using an eraser. Then there was the history professor I had my freshman year in college who would sit in the edge of his desk and rock...which caused the desk to squeak...I had to drop that class so I could keep my sanity!

[Melissa in Australia]

My youngest brothers (grade 3) had a teacher who had his pants fall down repeatedly in class. He had no underclothes on. My mother was so unimpressed that she not only went straight up to the school and chewed the principle out, she also rang the education department and the district supervisor and chewed them out as well. the teacher was dismissed from the school, lost his teaching license and his wife divorced him.

 

 

At a high school my DH worked at there was a teacher who was running a class for troubled boys in year 7. It was running fro quite some time until a staff member walked in and found out that the teacher had introduced all the students in his class to p**n. Not one of the students notified anyone what was happening in the class. This was early in the use of Internet in Aus, and school filters were not yet in place. The teacher was not only dismissed from the school but left the country ( he was English)

[Melissa in Australia]

I Had a teacher in grade 3 that would chain smoke all day right over us students. I remember her having us all sitting on the floor in front of her as she read us a story, she kept flicking the ash over her shoulder.

[melissad2]

I almost forgot about the band teacher I had that would throw chairs and music stands across the room if we messed up. He was also known to make us write sentences like a thousand times. He is now a funeral director :lol:

[Melissa in Australia]

we had chalkboards when I was at school. In the science class the science teachers had the duster tied to the wall by a long string. if someone in the class was not behaving or paying attention the teacher would hurl the duster at them and then reel it in again. All the science teachers did this.

[Tiramisu]

I had a teacher for higher math who was in charge of one of the girls sports teams. I remember he would ride around with a jeep full of high school girls. Years later, I heard he was finally caught in the most intimate of relations IN THE SCHOOL, with a student. I just don't know why the school let it go that far. It was very obvious inappropriate things were going on for a very long time. I don't know how that was dealt with, but I did hear he was still teaching high school somewhere not too far away.

[Cinder]

Wow, I thought my teachers were pretty normal but after reading these I *know* my teachers were normal. Probably the "craziest" thing that happened was our 9th grade World Cultures teacher had an optional night-time field trip that included restaurant, ballet, and piano bar. That's it for crazy. Although many of us suspected the 7th grade art teacher was making out with the 8th grade industrial arts teacher during breaks.

 

The craziest thing actually happened in college. The fluid mechanics professor set off a large firecracker in class during a lesson on waves. A huge cloud of smoke filled the room, the alarm went off and the fire dept showed up. He was a full professor and dept head so he got off with a "Please don't do that again." He seemed to enjoy the whole incident.

[stripe]

Oh, my Latin teacher in seventh grade used to challenge students to calculate with a calculator faster than she could in her head. I never saw her lose. She also gave me a safety pin when the button broke on my pants. I am sure that would be illegal now.

 

And my sixth grade math teacher, well, we were his only math class. He made us read Casey at the Bat during class and (as his other job was being an accountant) practice filling out tax forms in April.

 

I had a horrible seventh grade English teacher, about whom I posted once, who is now supposedly some semi-famous author or something, who used to scream insults at us during every class and drank diet cokes all through class, while sucking on a vicks mentholated lozenge. He had slimy skin. One day some boys put gum on his seat and he came in screaming the next day that his $20 pants were ruined. It was hard not to howl.

 

I had a PE teacher in high school show me his favorite Playmate when I went to ask him something in his office. Strangely enough, I didn't tell my mother, I don't think. I must have been pretty jaded.

[Katy]

I had some sort of strange experience with at least a third of my high school teachers - the others may have been okay or even great, but the weird ones with strange personal agendas are half the reason I started investigating homeschooling in the first place!

 

Sometimes the weirdness worked out to our advantage - the ancient science teacher whose homework never corresponded to exam questions thought girls were too feeble-brained to understand science, so he would come around and give us the right answers during exams, then go sit in the corner, turn off his hearing aide, and then the girls would tell the boys all the right answers.

 

A high school health & gym teacher, a female, read Playboy in class one day while we were taking a written CPR exam. She said she read the magazine for the articles. All of my friends talked about how we couldn't believe how innappropriate that was, but I don't think anyone ever told on her.

 

One of my math teachers was incapable of teaching math. Nothing she said made any sense to anyone, so we ended up asking parents at home, learning from the book, and teaching each other. My mother flat-out didn't believe me until one parent's night when she observed the teacher's inability to respond to a very simple question without gettting extremely defensive and reffering to her master's degree multiple times. I don't think anyone went to the principle about her either.

 

All the younger age english and language arts teachers in middle and high school seemed more interested in reliving high school than in teaching it. Gossping about kids with kids, flirting with football players, it was disgusting.

 

A history teacher failed an AP student for writing that religion increased during times of war on a final. She said religion decreased due to people killing each other. Student in question was from a Southern Baptist family who immediately appealed to the school board with the clear intention of filing a lawsuit for religious discriminaton if the grade wasn't fixed. It was.

 

A teacher at a friend's high school consistently had affairs with 18 year old students for 20 years. Everyone knew but no one said a word until one year he couldn't help himself and ended up with a 16 year old. He's still in jail I think.

[Katy]

 

I had a horrible seventh grade English teacher, about whom I posted once, who is now supposedly some semi-famous author or something, who used to scream insults at us during every class and drank diet cokes all through class, while sucking on a vicks mentholated lozenge. He had slimy skin. One day some boys put gum on his seat and he came in screaming the next day that his $20 pants were ruined. It was hard not to howl.

 

 

I am dying to know who this is.

[Sisyphus]

My 5th grade teacher had a nervous breakdown the year I had her. She would play her dulcimer (yes, a dulcimer) and sing to us, she would just sit and cry at her desk, she would yell and throw things. It was an interesting year, but landing in a new school in 6th grade with no 5th grade math was a bummer.

[sparrow]

Our geometry and calculus teacher threw temper tantrums. He would throw the garbage can across the room or clear his desk with a sweeping arm movement so he could jump up and down on top of it. I remember being stunned, and a little scared, that an adult was behaving this way. Overall, he was a decent teacher and well respected in our small community. I always wondered if the administration, or the other teachers, knew.

[NicksMama-Zack's Mama Too]

My vocational arts teacher read a story from a Paul Harvey paperback at the beginning of class each day ("and that's the rest of the story"). Although it seemed strange, he had our full attention from the beginning of class due to our curiosity about "the rest of the story" -- I think it was pure genius! Somehow, we'd confiscated the book and took it over to wood shop and drilled a hole in it,, looped a rope through the hole and hung it from the ceiling in some sort of rebellion. He just cut it down from the ceiling and proceeding to read it to us without blinking an eye. At the end of the school year he had pizza delivered to our class and we watched Mad Max. He was my favorite teacher and really seemed to "get" kids.

 

My geometry teacher was a witch. She would call you out in class and ask you about some theorem and if you said the wrong one, she yell out "Liar!" and then call on an underclassmen ("Let's see if Jan, the FRESHMAN, can give me the correct answer"). Needless to say, I was very discouraged about my math skills and only recovered when I went through Singapore Math as a parent.

 

I had lots of female teachers that seemed to just be reliving their high school years. They overtly flirted with every cute boy in the class!

[stripe]

I am dying to know who this is.

 

I am pretty sure he's not actually famous.

 

I have never read a post on here where anyone mentions him, let's put it that way.

 

Eta: I searched. No one has ever mentioned him on here. Therefore, not famous. ;)

[Ann.without.an.e]

My AP US History teacher would come in every morning, take roll, lay his head on his desk, and then sleep until the bell rang. Can we say tenure? :001_huh:

[BarbecueMom]

I almost forgot about the band teacher I had that would throw chairs and music stands across the room if we messed up. He was also known to make us write sentences like a thousand times. He is now a funeral director :lol:

 

 

I majored in music education in college. I'm pretty sure we covered Proper Chair Throwing Technique and Stand Launching in my band literature class. I think band directing is 50% teaching music and 50% managing your anger issues without getting fired.

 

One of my favorite teachers was my 5th grade teacher. She had her gallbladder removed sometime early in the school year. She brought the removed body part in a jar to class and left it on her desk. It made a great threat to the noisy class clowns - stop talking to each other or I'll put my gallbladder on your desk.

[hmvaughan4]

My fourth grade teacher was hilarious. If a student's desk was messy, she would drag it into the hall, throw the papers in the air, and yell, "Happy New Year!" We had one particularly gassy classmate and she hung a sign above his desk that said, "Toxic Area, Wear Gas Mask." Lastly, there was a student being paddled in the principal's office. Somehow, the intercom throughout the entire school was turned on and we could hear the entire incident over the intercom. One of the kids asked if we should go tell the office and she says, "No, this is too good to turn off."

 

My ninth grade literature teacher was convinced there are too many good books to read, so we just watched all of the movies instead of reading any books.

[Supertechmom]

My 11th grade English teacher would breeze in, write SAT voc on the board and leave. She was having an affair with the Valedictorian from the year before. He would come to school, pick her up during our class and they would stay together (sometimes in the parking lot ) thru her planning period and lunch. Then she would teach the afternoon. Next year our AP English teacher strode in and said you are all some smart cookies so we are gonna learn in 4 weeks all the crap you should have learned last year while so and so was $@&$ her boy toy in the parking lot. AP English turned out to be a very cool year. Apparently they had been together a couple of years. I know she left her husband and kids but I don't know what ever happened. There was at least 20 years between them.

[Alexigail]

I have a recent story. The head of maintenance at our local high school is now a convicted terrorist. He was a union leader who used his powers to bully and intimidate people. He planted bombs in their cars if they didn't do what he wanted. He is now serving life in prison. The superintendent at that time tipped him off that the police were investigating him and he probably knew some of what was going on but did nothing. He quit after so he wouldn't be fired. Then he got a job in another state and shortly quit after because he got caught hiring a person into a principle position who was not properly licensed and credentialed.

 

I'll take a weirdo quirky teacher any day over that.

 

Was this the story they had on This American Life awhile ago? That was messed up!

 

My sister had a teacher who kept a jar of chewed gum on her desk. If you were caught chewing gum in class you had to put it in the jar and then she gave you one out of the jar to chew instead.

[craftyerin]

I had a high school chemistry teacher who refused to distinguish between me (Erin) and the boy named Aaron in my class. He insisted that he said them differently enough, and that if I were listening carefully, I'd know who he was talking to. That was a long year. :glare:

[HRAAB]

Not a funny story, but my geometry teacher should have been behind bars. We all thought he looked like a Nazi (meaning he just looked evil), and he was. He disliked girls and would humiliate any girl that was brave enough to ask a question out loud. After the first month, I would even approach his desk to ask a question. If it hadn't been for my friend's uncle who was a math teacher, I would have failed that class. There was a gay boy in our class (not out publicly but we all knew) and he tormented him no end. One day he (teacher) was staring at him (student) and out of the blue told him to get out of his classroom - just get out. He did and didn't come back.

 

Looking back it's hard to believe that happened, but it did. The teacher retired after too many years of inflicting emotional pain on his students.

[RoughCollie]

My 5th grade teacher (back in 1966) brought chocolate covered ants and fried grasshoppers to class. They were in cans, I think. She and her husband had gotten them during a trip to another country. They were a delicacy. We were allowed to try them if we wanted to. I don't think any of the girls did, and I don't remember if any boys ate them. We were all fascinated that there were people in the world who would eat insects on purpose.

[happyhomemaker]

I had one teacher who had a huge confederate flag on his wall (this was in CT).

 

This made me think of the time an angry parent burst into my English teacher's room accusing her of being a racist because of the Confederate flag on her wall. The situation was taken to the principal's office where he explained to the distraught parent that the teacher taught British literature, and the flag was actually the Union Jack, lol.

 

My 11th grade chem teacher calculated in class the amount of ice chips you should consume to lower your internal body temperature so that your body would burn calories to get back up to the correct temperature. Basically, he taught us the best way to be anorexic.

 

Same teacher made us stand behind the door while he taped a lit match to a yardstick, stuck it out of the crack in the door and created some kind of explosion. He was always complaining about various flame-throwing devices that the school had taken away from him.

[Momof3littles]

My AP BIo and human anatomy and physiology teacher was awesome. He really taught us how to learn; how to link things we were learning to things we already knew so we could remember them. He was just an incredible teacher, and that went beyond the content of his class.

 

Crazy things he did, however:

-would pick up fresh roadkill for us to autopsy in class

-he had a ton of preserved specimens, including a human fetus in a large glass jar. Yes. It was handed down to him by some old country doctor. I am quite sure the existence of such an item would result in his dismissal these days, but we did find it truly fascinating. He explained the backstory in advance, and basically let us know if we complained to our parents, he was going to be in trouble. That sounds terrible in retrospect, guess. He was truly a huge influence on my academic career. He had a highly gifted son and was also a great resource in connecting us with more info on what enrollment in the gifted program entitled us to legally. THat was something our SD was not always forthcoming about.

 

We had a Latin and Spanish middle school teacher who made us answer flash cards to get in the door. If you couldn't get in within a few rounds, you were stuck in the hall without a pass and had to deal with whatever consequences befell you. He also made us stand up and apologize in Latin (or Spanish) when we dropped our pencil or anything like that. You had to apologize *to* the pencil, many times. Looking back, that teacher should have been a professor as he was incredibly talented and intelligent, but definitely beat his own drum. I imagine he couldn't get away with a lot of what he did these days.

 

The gifted education program supervising teacher(no program at that level, just the regular AP and honors classes and then a lot of fieldtrips you got to go on if you were in the gifted program. We did have gIEPs in my stae) in middle and high school was a drunk. He also supervised in-school suspension when he wasn't taking the gifted classes on fieldtrips. He regularly smelled like a bottle of alcohol.

 

We had multiple teachers who dated students or were inappropriate.

 

We had an incredibly good physics and chem teacher. He was young, and wouldn't join the union (neither would AP Bio guy listed above). This made them a target, from what I can understand. THe administration hated him because he felt a C was average, no grade inflation. But you know, he was one of the teachers who actually prepared me for college. I had the same text in college as I did in high school for non-AP chem. He always said he'd rather have a good book and water down as needed than having a weak text. He was eventually fired because he wore goggles and a lab coat for lunch duty the day the seniors were going to have a food fight. He was "inciting" it by wearing it. What a joke. The guy was one of about 4-5 teachers i had who could teach, and who actually prepared me for rigorous college courses. He was fired over the goggles and lab coat.

 

My high school calc teacher took every sick and personal day he had ever accumulated prior to his retirement year. He was out of class 2-3 days a week or more, leaving us with subs who had never taken calc, let alone taught it. I then self labeled as dumb at math because I couldn't self teach out of a bad textbook. I took calc in college and thought, wow, it is amazing that it isn't so bad when you have a teacher present!

 

My high school had a disproportionately huge # of students die in accidents and suicides.

[Lang Syne Boardie]

My fourth grade teacher was hilarious. If a student's desk was messy, she would drag it into the hall, throw the papers in the air, and yell, "Happy New Year!" We had one particularly gassy classmate and she hung a sign above his desk that said, "Toxic Area, Wear Gas Mask." Lastly, there was a student being paddled in the principal's office. Somehow, the intercom throughout the entire school was turned on and we could hear the entire incident over the intercom. One of the kids asked if we should go tell the office and she says, "No, this is too good to turn off."

 

My ninth grade literature teacher was convinced there are too many good books to read, so we just watched all of the movies instead of reading any books.

 

 

Your fourth grade teacher was not hilarious, she was mean. How do you not see that? "Toxic Area, Wear Gas Mask?" Teaching kids to enjoy listening to corporal punishment of a child? Yuck.

[Momof3littles]

]He disliked girls and would humiliate any girl that was brave enough to ask a question out loud. After the first month, I would even approach his desk to ask a question.

 

I had one of those, too. If a girl asked a question, it was because she was "talking and not paying attention." However, this was applied to all girls, all of the time, and they were usually not talking. And this was the top level of math students taking algebra 2 in 9th grade, which was the top group at the time.

 

My 8th grade math teacher was a woman and did the same thing, oddly enough. I played sports but also cheered for a year. Again, top math section. When my friend and I asked a question one day, she told us we were "frizzy haired ditzy cheerleaders" and that's why we didn't know the answer (???). Nevermind we were in the top math group, I was participating under her mentorship in the Johns Hopkins CTY program and taking my SATs in 7th grade or whatever it was. Because we cheered and had curly hair and a social life we were "ditzy." Nice. She also told another student she was a "whale" (she was a bigger boned girl). That girl told her "at least I'm not an old goat." Teacher did sort of resemble a goat and well, she deserved it.

[Dmmetler]

My most memorable teacher was the elderly art teacher who was a concentration camp survivor, who started yelling about Hitler and the gas chambers and death to a classroom of terrified 7th graders because one of the students had drawn a swastika on his backpack (the kid was one of those would-be tough guy types), and wouldn't let us leave. It took 30 minutes into the next class before someone from administration made it there, and she never returned to the school. I think she had truly had a break with reality, and at that time, was seeing this class of scared kids as concentration camp guards or something. Poor thing.

 

My 3rd grade teacher was horrid-basically, she taught by humiliating any kid who fell short in any way, while handing out piles of work and providing little direct instruction. It was a bad fit for any kid (get a bunch of people together who went to my elementary school, and almost everyone will have "Mrs. B" stories-either things that they experienced in her room, or things they saw in the cafeteria and playground that made them GLAD she wasn't their teacher), but for me, as a highly asynchronous 2e kid with severe speech issues made much worse under stress, it was a nightmare. At least she retired at the end of the year.

[kitten18]

This made me think of the time an angry parent burst into my English teacher's room accusing her of being a racist because of the Confederate flag on her wall. The situation was taken to the principal's office where he explained to the distraught parent that the teacher taught British literature, and the flag was actually the Union Jack, lol.

 

 

:lol: :lol: :lol:

[Jean in Newcastle]

I had a teacher in elementary school who boxed people's ears. That really really hurt. She would also slap our hands with rulers. She came to our one-room school house from having taught the Amish. I have wondered as an adult if those punishments were borrowed from that culture.

 

My art teacher in American high school dealt drugs in her storeroom. I happened to walk in on her dealing one day when I needed a new paintbrush. I was threatened to never tell anyone and I never did - until over 30 years later.

 

I had an English teacher in that same American high school who came to school more than once when she was drunk. I think she was fired because one day she didn't show up and we had a sub for the rest of the year.

 

All my teachers in boarding school were top notch teachers. Some were quirky but none inappropriately so.

[Joker]

All of my high school history classes were taught by coaches. Everyday we all just sat around drinking soda, eating candy, and talking. Sometimes we'd watch a movie.

 

Our spanish teacher was fired for smoking pot with students.

 

One of our teachers was known for sleeping with athletes.

[maddykate]

I had a high school chemistry teacher who refused to distinguish between me (Erin) and the boy named Aaron in my class. He insisted that he said them differently enough, and that if I were listening carefully, I'd know who he was talking to. That was a long year. :glare:

 

 

 

Are they pronounced differently? I always thought they sounded the same, just spelled differently.

[Parrothead]

I did not have any weird or inappropriate teachers at all. The biggest scandal I can think of was that the unmarried English teacher for senior English was pregnant. But nobody knew because she was rather heavy to begin with. She had the baby in late April, and we has a sub the last 7weeks of school.

[Lisa R.]

My third grade teacher became so upset at my classmate because he wouldn't "obey" her and stop sucking his thumb. She taped his thumb with masking tape. He still sucked his thumb with the masking tape on. She got so angry one day she put masking tape around his mouth and around the back of his head. Around and around a couple of times so his mouth would be completely covered. This was in the mid 70s. Hopefully any teacher that would try this today would go to jail.

 

Third grade was not much fun.

 

I'm still sad when I think about this little boy.

[prairiewindmomma]

My 7th grade life science teacher showed HER birth video in class.....all bits of her were shown.

 

My 8th grade social studies teacher let the boys in the class corner and se*lly harass all of us girls, including inappropriate touching.

 

Our band director was also a chalk, eraser, and stand thrower. He was short and had red hair and looked like a rooster.

 

One of the male high school English teachers played pocket poker in class while leering at us girls.

 

One of the male math teachers asked us girls to get him coffee, and wouldn't call on us in class as we weren't "capable" of doing higher math.

 

The drama teacher came to our podunk school only because he'd been chased out of a cushy teaching position after impregnating a 17 year old (whom he married). He looked and sounded like Dick van Dyke. Somehow our high school missed that portion of the background check.

 

Many of my high school teachers were hired for their ability to coach sports. They didn't know the material they were "teaching". My gifted teacher talked to my parents and my parents complained to the principal and I spent most of my junior and senior years studying alone in the library so that I could take AP and CLEP exams.

 

We had several classes where teachers showed Disney movies and left the room entirely.

 

----I also had some truly amazing teachers, but they were few and far between.

[Koerarmoca]

Oh man I got a bunch...lol

 

Worst was a student stabbing a teacher (and it was not the first time he was stabbed at school over his 30 so etching year career) it was middle school and it was during class switching so we walked in and saw blood (I can't remember if it was 7th or 8th grade)

 

My Senior year one of the new gym coaches had a heart attack and turned BLUE it was terrifying (and before cell phones) it was insane he was sitting against the door and just turned blue and we had to send someone out the back exit and run clear across campus to call 911. (The gym teachers always sat against the door because the lunch room was right outside and people who had lunch would sneak in to the gym to play basketball)

 

In 10th grade my history teacher threw a book at me (for forgetting my book) and he once threw a desk at the wall.

 

Our softball coach (also a gym teacher) had an affair with a student and was inappropriate towards most of the team and was later fired.

 

The coolest science teacher in high school had an affair with someone who worked in the school office. AND his daughter was my brothers girlfriend and he knocked her up it was such a mess.

 

In middle school my gifted teacher who was such a hippy used to smoke pot in his office, he always wore Birkenstocks and had a car with a million environmental stickers on it. He was by far my favorite teacher ever I was sad to find out he passed away not long ago.

 

I also had a female science teacher in 9th who was a professional body builder...it was just creepy lol.

[flyingiguana]

Had a health teacher who helpfully told us the best ways to commit suicide. In detail. It still all sticks in my head.

 

Both band teachers were screamers.

[Lucy]

When I did my student teaching they placed me in a 6th grade classroom with a teacher who didn't believe in rules. The class was run by majority vote. Kids made all the rules: pop popcorn in the micro whenever they want - middle of the lesson. These kids ran the place! It was total chaos - and the kids were so cruel to each other. For a while they switched me with the other 6th grade teacher. She spent every monday morning telling the kids her drinking, dating, and "tea-time with strangers" stories. She wore the most innappropriate clothing and had given every kid a nasty nick-name. Fatty, Stupid, Frizzy, Ugly, etc. Broke my heart. The third 6th grade teacher was exccentric and had a million snakes in his room - one at the middle of each grouping of three desks. His rooom stunk from all the reptiles and kids regularlly cried in his room. You could hear him yell at the kids throughout the hallways.

 

I had a teacher who would put random craft supplies in the center of groups of tables and do/say nothing to us. We were supposed to be self-guided and figure out what the lesson was about. Onoe table would be making alien sculptures, another a house of cards, another just sits and talks, another just leaves. We all got A's for this science class.

[Jean in Newcastle]

Are they pronounced differently? I always thought they sounded the same, just spelled differently.

 

This is a matter of accent. I also pronounce them the same. I know the difference between the names and their spelling.

[hmvaughan4]

 

 

Your 4th grade teacher sounds horrible, not hilarious. :confused1:

 

She did it all in a teasing matter. Looking back, I can definitely see how her behavior would affect the kids she was teasing. At the time, it was funny.

[Momof3littles]

I am back to add more LOL. I went to a small high school too, fwiw.

 

One earth science teacher would have students bring in chewing tobacco and they would spit and then test the pH. This was in the early 90s so pretty inappropriate for the times.

 

We had a kid bring a beebee (sp?) gun to school. She and her mother got into a rolling on the ground fist fight narrated by the Latin teacher with his very drone-y voice. I can still remember it.

 

We had a murderer hanging out in the wooded area around our school. THe recent events in Boston brought back the whole experience. THey had a heat-seeking helicopter out looking for him, but he was trained in the military and was evading a heavy police presence. He hid under the school's high jump mats and my husband (then just a friend and classmate) is the one who found him and called 911. He eventually killed himself before police could take him into custody.

 

Again, small town high school in a pretty rural area. 130 kids or so in my graduating class, but we had a lot of craziness!

 

We had a murdere

[craftyerin]

Are they pronounced differently? I always thought they sounded the same, just spelled differently.

I pronounce them the same!

 

He insisted that my name should be pronounced Air-in (which is pretty much how I personally would say both versions) and that the boy would be a-ron, with a short a and an obviously vowel difference in the 2nd syllable. In theory, I see his point, but when he was calling on kids to answer questions and said one of those two, there was no way to distinguish which one he had said! He disagreed.

[Susan in TN]

My 7th grade English teacher, Mr. Peltzman, had a "pet" rubber chicken. When the class was being particularly bone-headed, he would circle the class asking questions and when a student got an answer wrong, they got whapped on the head by the chicken. We all loved it. Sadly, the school board eventually made him get rid of the chicken - they didn't want anyone to get hurt. :nopity:

 

 

My calculus teacher, Mr. Hanson, was also the football coach. He spoke very softly (you had to lean in to hear him) and every Friday gave us a lesson in football plays. For our last day of class, he gathered us around and read "Where the Wild Things Are" to us. He was an incredible teacher and we loved him.

[NicksMama-Zack's Mama Too]

 

I don't know what This American Life is. Is that a newspaper or magazine? It could very well be possible that was the story. I mean hopefully this isn't something that happens often!

 

 

WendyK,

 

Was this the guy?

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/419/transcript

[stripe]

My sister had a teacher who kept a jar of chewed gum on her desk. If you were caught chewing gum in class you had to put it in the jar and then she gave you one out of the jar to chew instead.

 

Ah, the joys of life before HIV...

 

My 5th grade teacher (back in 1966) brought chocolate covered ants and fried grasshoppers to class. They were in cans, I think. She and her husband had gotten them during a trip to another country. They were a delicacy. We were allowed to try them if we wanted to. I don't think any of the girls did, and I don't remember if any boys ate them. We were all fascinated that there were people in the world who would eat insects on purpose.

 

That's hilarious, but I doubt they normally eat them chocolate covered. I remember seeing bugs inside lollipops at the science museum when I was about ten years old.