I've never had any "really" bad teachers, but I've had a few crap ones in my day.
The earliest instance of this was in Year 7 Maths. Our teacher kept on complaining about our work, gave us loads of homework on stuff we hadn't done and kept on talking about how great other schools were. One time (no joke), he actually punched me in the stomach because my handwriting wasn't neat enough... If you can read it (he was able to read it), that's going too far. I can't believe they made him Head of Maths. Thank god he's left and been replaced by a good teacher.
The next instance of bad teaching came in Year 9 Science. Our regular Science teacher had been in a car accident, broken her leg and couldn't teach for a term, so we had a substitute for a whole term. God she was awful. We could hardly understand her because of her accent (not to sound racist, but Indian accents can be very hard to understand when it's that thick), hardly learned a thing and ignored questions. I can't remember the exact question (it was something to do with light refracting through different surfaces), but I asked this question and she just yelled at me for wasting everyone's time (it was a prac lesson, and she was the only one I asked). Our regular teacher came back for the rest of the year and was great. She repaired every mistake our substitute made and got the Science staff to give us extra marks in our assessment because our substitute gave us the wrong information.
Year 10 Maths was a very memorable year, as it was the year of having five Maths teachers. We started off with the brilliant new Head of Maths, but then she got too stressed with being Head of Maths and having to take all her usual classes, so we got another teacher who was alright. The next term we got this terrible, terrible teacher. I thought my Year 7 teacher was bad. You know how you can tell if a teacher's going to be good or bad by looking at them? Just to give you an idea, this was a short, fat bucktoothed woman who we called the "Hamster-Cow" (face of a hamster, body of a cow). We hardly learned anything. She would waffle on about a topic and no-one would understand what she's trying to say because she made it too complicated (we're Year 10 Honours, not Extension 2 Maths), then she would give us ten minutes to do every question in the chapter and then set the stuff we didn't do in class (a lot) for homework. She never checked the homework... I think it was the day before the half-yearly when she realised what a crap teacher she was because she was doing revision with us and we didn't know anything about what we were tested (she lied to us about the topics covered), and I barely passed (55%). A few weeks later, she "quit" because the rest of the Maths staff didn't like her (and that's saying something) and left us with two casual teachers who are excellent. Seriously. They taught us stuff in one lesson it would have taken that other teacher a month to teach.
Actually, I take back my opening statement. This teacher was a horrible, horrible teacher. Did I mention that she was also mean, picking on people because they preferred to teach each other instead of listening to her trite (always the Indians). She messed up everyone's half-yearly exam. She (no joke) flipped every second page horizontally on the Advanced papers. We were so desperate to get rid of her that we would move the clock forward by ten minutes so that we can get the hell out of there early. When she was leaving, we literally had a party. We heard that we needed an average of 80% to get into Extension Maths the next year, so we were all thinking of suing her for ruining our chances at getting a decent career. Fortunately when I didn't have her I was getting 85's and 90's, so I pulled through in the end. After she left, I actually started enjoying Maths instead of avoiding it like the plague.
The earliest instance of this was in Year 7 Maths. Our teacher kept on complaining about our work, gave us loads of homework on stuff we hadn't done and kept on talking about how great other schools were. One time (no joke), he actually punched me in the stomach because my handwriting wasn't neat enough... If you can read it (he was able to read it), that's going too far. I can't believe they made him Head of Maths. Thank god he's left and been replaced by a good teacher.
The next instance of bad teaching came in Year 9 Science. Our regular Science teacher had been in a car accident, broken her leg and couldn't teach for a term, so we had a substitute for a whole term. God she was awful. We could hardly understand her because of her accent (not to sound racist, but Indian accents can be very hard to understand when it's that thick), hardly learned a thing and ignored questions. I can't remember the exact question (it was something to do with light refracting through different surfaces), but I asked this question and she just yelled at me for wasting everyone's time (it was a prac lesson, and she was the only one I asked). Our regular teacher came back for the rest of the year and was great. She repaired every mistake our substitute made and got the Science staff to give us extra marks in our assessment because our substitute gave us the wrong information.
Year 10 Maths was a very memorable year, as it was the year of having five Maths teachers. We started off with the brilliant new Head of Maths, but then she got too stressed with being Head of Maths and having to take all her usual classes, so we got another teacher who was alright. The next term we got this terrible, terrible teacher. I thought my Year 7 teacher was bad. You know how you can tell if a teacher's going to be good or bad by looking at them? Just to give you an idea, this was a short, fat bucktoothed woman who we called the "Hamster-Cow" (face of a hamster, body of a cow). We hardly learned anything. She would waffle on about a topic and no-one would understand what she's trying to say because she made it too complicated (we're Year 10 Honours, not Extension 2 Maths), then she would give us ten minutes to do every question in the chapter and then set the stuff we didn't do in class (a lot) for homework. She never checked the homework... I think it was the day before the half-yearly when she realised what a crap teacher she was because she was doing revision with us and we didn't know anything about what we were tested (she lied to us about the topics covered), and I barely passed (55%). A few weeks later, she "quit" because the rest of the Maths staff didn't like her (and that's saying something) and left us with two casual teachers who are excellent. Seriously. They taught us stuff in one lesson it would have taken that other teacher a month to teach.
Actually, I take back my opening statement. This teacher was a horrible, horrible teacher. Did I mention that she was also mean, picking on people because they preferred to teach each other instead of listening to her trite (always the Indians). She messed up everyone's half-yearly exam. She (no joke) flipped every second page horizontally on the Advanced papers. We were so desperate to get rid of her that we would move the clock forward by ten minutes so that we can get the hell out of there early. When she was leaving, we literally had a party. We heard that we needed an average of 80% to get into Extension Maths the next year, so we were all thinking of suing her for ruining our chances at getting a decent career. Fortunately when I didn't have her I was getting 85's and 90's, so I pulled through in the end. After she left, I actually started enjoying Maths instead of avoiding it like the plague.
