Teachers who cant Teach

ZorbaTehZ

Well, my physics teacher a few weeks ago taught us about capacitors.
According to her, the way they work is through point discharge between the plates, i.e. that a current flows between the plates through the dielectric. After a while a girl raised a point in class that "it's different in the book" to which she said something along the lines of "Welllllll, I've seen it this way in one book, and that way in another book" and left it at that.
Last year when she was explaining how a cathode-ray tube works, she put the anode at the wrong end of the tube for almost an entire week before the same girl in the class noticed (not trying to be obnoxious, but physics isnt really the forte of many of my classmates - which has in part contributed to her inability to teach not being taken as seriously as it should).

She comes to the lab with no books. She uses students books entirely to teach the class. She averages about 10 minutes late for classes - once she missed 25 minutes of a class, as we waited outside the classroom.

Sometimes she goes off at a tangent for incredibily long lengths of time - to my great annoyance, since I love the subject. In her opinion 75% of the class are only in there because they got a bad subject choice. With the mocks coming up, it's made me realise that (like the JC - when she was my science teacher) im going to have to do a bollox load of extra work to get my A1 in the LC.

So im wondering how many people have had to suffer at the hands of terrible teachers, and what's the most stupid think they've said? (I still laugh when I think of the capacitors)

md99

You think you've got it bad...

The maths/physics teacher at our school got a B3/B2 in her leaving cert in these subjects, did an Arts degree and now she's teaching us. The horrible thing is most of the students know more about maths and physics than she does.

She has never been late or missing a day in her life, unlike your teacher, but this isn't to our advantage. I don't have her for physics, but she's meant to be dire.

In maths, she frequently struggles to answer part (b)'s, the exam paper solution is her Bible and she oft relies on the students to guide her through the sums.

JC 2K3

Pfft.... women teaching maths and physics....

Mysteron

I had the worst honours maths teacher ever for the J.C He was soooo slow and couldn't explain anything properly. By the time the exam came around he had only managed to cover about half of the course. He realised he was in trouble and started scheduling extra classes at lunch time and after school in a desperate bid to rectify 3 years of crap teaching. This was an honours class but 90% of us ended up having to do ordinary level, through no fault of our own. The only ones who were able to do honours were the ones who got extensive grinds. He hasn't been given a maths class since. He was trusted with an ordinary level physics class though and made a complete mess of that too. Last i heard he was teaching Ag science and most of them were failing too!

WORST TEACHER EVER!

Pure Cork

My french teacher..............you wouldn't believe me if I told you what he's like.

Haven't a Clue

First year's always a laugh for crap teachers. I'd a teacher for Maths who couldn't say parallelogram properly, and when we tried to correct her she said "I'm the teacher here, I think I know what I'm talking about." She's been demoted to being a sub teacher since.

English was also bad in first year as she gave us a novel to read, which we found out the next year was the wrong one. Wasted 2 months reading something irrelevant.

Now we're just limited to have awful teachers for French, LCVP and any free classes.

Sully

We still have this in College, never mind secondary school! Tho, I can understand peoples frustrations. Iv had terrible German and Maths Teachers (in fairness to the German, she knew her stuff but couldnt teach) which affected me in my college days

Rozabeez

My Home-Ec teacher makes us sit in presses.

Her opening line on vegetables was, "carrots is orange."

She hurts my brain, however I'm refusing to go to her class anymore as she flies through the book and then tells us endless stories of people who beat their wives and throw their dinners at the wall.

Also, one day, we might fall in love with our brothers and then where will we be?

I'm just not going anymore. I'm going to sit in the hall with Home-ec revision books and do some DIY.

She's against state benefits, she thinks that homeless people are that way because they simply got up one day and chose to be.

Rozabeez

Haven't a Clue wrote:

First year's always a laugh for crap teachers. I'd a teacher for Maths who couldn't say parallelogram properly, and when we tried to correct her she said "I'm the teacher here, I think I know what I'm talking about." She's been demoted to being a sub teacher since.

I had a Maths teacher that smelled constantly of whiskey, wore the same clothes for 6 months at a time (he only had 2 outfits) and looked like Elton John.

That wasn't the worse of it. He used to conveniently drop pens under tables where girls were sitting and rub up against our backs.

His teaching methods consisted of, "Open page 30 and do it."

My year got rid of him.

md99

Rozabeez wrote:

I had a Maths teacher that smelled constantly of whiskey, wore the same clothes for 6 months at a time (he only had 2 outfits) and looked like Elton John.

That wasn't the worse of it. He used to conveniently drop pens under tables where girls were sitting and rub up against our backs.

His teaching methods consisted of, "Open page 30 and do it."

My year got rid of him.

lol, we had a major alcoholic too who did similar things, it's too bad they got rid of him because he was still a more effective maths/physics teacher than the one we have now!

Spank

My German teacher is a clueless old bat, I don't think she's even fluent in the language and she's been teaching at my school for probably about 30 years or so. Most years have complained about her but nothing gets done, she has no control over the class, teaches us irrelevant grammar, and thinks you are starting an arguement with her if you ask a question.

I had a terrible French teacher last year, like she really hadn't a clue, my school isn't the best at choosing language teachers. This year however we've a ray of hope in a new teacher, much younger, in touch, and knows her stuff. Basically I think the older a teacher, the worse they are at getting through to us, a generalisation but still, I find with my younger teachers that they are much easier to get on with, pay attention to, and generally there is more respect there.

md99

It's good to see that such teaching is not exclusive to the Waterford region..

fonpokno

my french teacher's like that... i purposely chose french instead of german so i wouldnt have her but it backfired and now im stuck with her for the leaving! she is always a least 10mins late for class and she doesnt actually teach us french! she always tells us stories about how back in her day you could only be a teacher or a nurse or a secretary, or how she lived whn she lived in germany for years and then lectures us about how we're late for class (wtf??) and how we dont have the right attitude and that we spend too much time socialising and shoppin and drinking when we should be studyin all the time! mad woman! cant remember the last time i actually learnt somethin from her!

Corruptedmorals

Rozabeez wrote:

I had a Maths teacher that smelled constantly of whiskey, wore the same clothes for 6 months at a time (he only had 2 outfits) and looked like Elton John.

That wasn't the worse of it. He used to conveniently drop pens under tables where girls were sitting and rub up against our backs.

His teaching methods consisted of, "Open page 30 and do it."

My year got rid of him.

Pfft, you only had him for a while! We had him for all of first year...destroyed any maths abilities I may have had.

yurmothrintites

Having a crap teacher is certainly a disadvantage in school and can reflect badly on your results. But at the end of the day it's upto you to do the work and complaining about teachers does nothing!

Believe me, I've done enough of it!

shanethemofo

md99 wrote:

It's good to see that such teaching is not exclusive to the Waterford region..

maybe not but jaysus we have some bad cases

Mushy

My English teacher. Eugh, he's boring and awful.

One day, about two weeks ago, he goes "Have you heard of the play Death of a Salesman?" Everyone in the class goes silent and just looks at him. So he asks again. Then someone kindly points out that this is the book we've been studying for the last year and a half for our LC. Then when the inspectors came in, he gave us loads of notes on Macbeth that he'd never thought of doing before. I'd love the inspectors to see what he's really like.

Gossip_girl

Theres been so many over the years.......

There was my 1st year maths teacher who wore the same black suit everyday with a red shirt, looked like a vampire and had a serious drug problem and spent the whole class shaking from withdrawl symptoms. Needless to say he's not still teaching!

Theres my current french teacher who lectures us about not handing up work and how bad our attitude is while refusing to take up homework!

Theres my current english teacher who spent 4 classes telling us a metaphore was a simile and ignored us when we pointed out that the book said otherwise! She also can't pronounce the letter "r" and has a terrible fake english accent even though she comes from lucan! And scarily we are the top honours class!

But the absolute worst has to be my physics teacher! He's never there, i've literally had about 12 classes all year with him and when he is in class he spends the whole time trying to set up the joules law experiment in vain! We've done no experiments, we never read from the book and we've barley started the course! His tangents are legendary throughout the school and he failed ohysics when he did it! His only degree is in philosophy! Theres 12 of us in the class and 11 of us are doing grinds and we're only barley passing as he manages to mess up anything we actually know! The one person who isnt doing grinds is doing pass!

ninty9er

Like Sully said you'll get this in college or university or any job, there'll always be some tit more "important" than you...

I had a brutal maths teacher for most of leaving cert...we were last year of old course JC mixed with the first group of new JC and I got put in the top honours class...teacher was ok, I cuoldn't keep up...moved to middle honours about 3 weeks into 5th year and the only topic the woman explained well was probability until mid 6th year...she was an engineer who became a teacher...no ability to pass knowledge..."miss how did you get that"- "I JUST DID OK"

So I wanted to move to lower honours...she had lost so many people to pass maths that it looked so bad that she suggested pass if I couln't keep up with her class...made up excuses.."no room in lower honours"..there were 8 people...spoke to the other teacher...spoke to year head...told her I *was* moved and left...next day the principal came and spoke to me..about how I shouldn't have done that blah di blah...

The lower teacher was much better...explained it to us like we were 4 year olds...revised the whole course...did every paper from 1994 on *twice* and stayed in at lunch and after school with the class to make sure we made it!!

I got a C3...Results were better and more people did the honours paper from the lower class

Moral of the story: If you have a crap teacher...move and tell them afterwards.

Best thing I ever did for my maths

ninebeanrows

Well some of you are lucky, my physics teacher actually just doesnt know what he's doing..

We were doing any experiment.. decided for the fun of it to ask him what experiement we were doing...

He comes over and looks at the experiment for a while... "its the........." "it's emmm you have it on your sheet" " emmmmmmm (walks up to his desk) picks up his magic sheets.... yea it's Jourles Law"

Just an example of his absolute inability its almost criminal... god help us like, it just isn't fair. I learn most of what i do in class and that's just impossible with this guy.

lilmizzme

I soo know the feeling....had an unreal French teacher from 1st-3rd year...the woman just hated her job to death...our classes from 2nd year on used to consist of translating sentences from the board, the most common one being "Ann and Jim went to the cinema"

I blame my poor written French on her.

In third year, she tripped and fell ass first into the bin. Funniest moment in my life.....:D

JC 2K3

ninty9er wrote:

Like Sully said you'll get this in college or university or any job, there'll always be some tit more "important" than you...

I had a brutal maths teacher for most of leaving cert...we were last year of old course JC mixed with the first group of new JC and I got put in the top honours class...teacher was ok, I cuoldn't keep up...moved to middle honours about 3 weeks into 5th year and the only topic the woman explained well was probability until mid 6th year...she was an engineer who became a teacher...no ability to pass knowledge..."miss how did you get that"- "I JUST DID OK"

So I wanted to move to lower honours...she had lost so many people to pass maths that it looked so bad that she suggested pass if I couln't keep up with her class...made up excuses.."no room in lower honours"..there were 8 people...spoke to the other teacher...spoke to year head...told her I *was* moved and left...next day the principal came and spoke to me..about how I shouldn't have done that blah di blah...

The lower teacher was much better...explained it to us like we were 4 year olds...revised the whole course...did every paper from 1994 on *twice* and stayed in at lunch and after school with the class to make sure we made it!!

I got a C3...Results were better and more people did the honours paper from the lower class

Moral of the story: If you have a crap teacher...move and tell them afterwards.

Best thing I ever did for my maths

Most schools don't have streamed classes.

ninty9er

JC 2K3 wrote:

Most schools don't have streamed classes.

Seriously:eek: :eek: :eek:

Most if not all people I know were streamed. Individual at leaving cert and group at junior cert

JC 2K3

In my experience large private schools stream their pupils, smaller and public ones don't usually.

Lia_lia

The LC honours maths teacher in our school is hopeless. I had him for pass in the JC and I don't know the honours class this year are gettung through the course.

Our French teacher is awful. She know her stuf...she just can't teach. She constantly goes off topic.

My Home-EC teacher is the biggest joke ever.

Rest are alright I guess...

ninty9er

JC 2K3 wrote:

In my experience large private schools stream their pupils, smaller and public ones don't usually.

There were 99 students in me LC year...we had 6 maths classes, 5 English, 6 Irish, 2 of popular science and business...one of small subjects like App. Maths and Music

PurpleFistMixer

Jaysus. There's about 45-50 in my year (well another 15 in LCA but they don't affect our classes) and we only have three maths classes. 7 in honours, 30.. or more, in pass, and the rest in low pass/foundation.
Can't imagine a school that doesn't stream...

spurious

If the numbers and staffing levels allow it, then most schools will band rather than stream.
It gives greater timetable flexibility.

JC 2K3

Out of the 60 or so in our year we have 3 maths classes, 2 pass and one honours, all with about 20 in each. There's a pass French class, but apart from that there's no seperation of people of different abilities.

Mushy

From the roughly 25 people in my year, 2 Maths, Irish, English. Then one of everything else. As ya can guess, VERY small class size

Naikon

One of my Mates has told me that he knows a guy In the Institute and that Geography classes for instance have 200 people in one sitting:eek:
And with the media hailing the place as the best thing since sliced bread, I would well believe him.

the_syco

yurmothrintites wrote:

Having a crap teacher is certainly a disadvantage in school and can reflect badly on your results. But at the end of the day it's upto you to do the work and complaining about teachers does nothing!

If they only show you the examples in the books, and due to the crapness of the tests you don't know if your going forwards or backwards... you won't know how far gone useless he is, untill you get a good teacher! We had him for 1st year, and I was put into honours for 2nd year, before going into ordinary (I asked: hadn't a clue, as I had done NONE of the stuff before). I regret not doing more grinds. The f**ker was a useless sandle wearing dope.

Naikon

I agree, If this was any other profession like Accounting etc, unsatisfactory practice means you would be out on your ass in no time, whereas the "protection" in Government/civil service jobs means that these fools can still warrant the title of a "Teacher" and practice in an unsatisfactory manner.

Diarmsquid

A teacher in my school (I don't have her anymore thanks God) gave the class "lines" as if it were a theatre performance, for when the inspectors came in. They spent about a week "rehearsing" for when the inspectors came in.
Some teachers are a joke.

ZorbaTehZ

Diarmsquid wrote:

A teacher in my school (I don't have her anymore thanks God) gave the class "lines" as if it were a theatre performance, for when the inspectors came in. They spent about a week "rehearsing" for when the inspectors came in.

That is absolutely scandalous.

spurious

ZorbaTehZ wrote:

That is absolutely scandalous.

I would imagine it's also quite a while ago.

Under the modern 'inspection' process it could not happen. The team arrive in a school and stay for up to two weeks. They visit classes at random, study all policies,development plans etc., IEPs and associated paperwork, interview kids, parents, members of the BOM, teaching and ancillary staff.

It would be quite an achievement for something like what was described to slip through.

PurpleFistMixer

We've had inspectors before who came in on one day and there was none of that whole-school stuff... they were just inspecting one subject.
And this was this year, like.

eZe^

For physics in 4th year there was no streams, had the WORST teacher of all time. He did the measurement of gravity by free fall with a piece of chalk, a metre stick and the stopwatch on a nokia 3310!! Absolutely ridiculous, luckely the classes were streamed according to the 4th year summer results and now I have the best teacher in the school. I had a terrible math teacher for the J.C iswell, at L.C we have one of the best in the country, so thank god for streaming classes!!!

JC 2K3

eZe^ wrote:

For physics in 4th year there was no streams, had the WORST teacher of all time. He did the measurement of gravity by free fall with a piece of chalk, a metre stick and the stopwatch on a nokia 3310!! Absolutely ridiculous, luckely the classes were streamed according to the 4th year summer results and now I have the best teacher in the school. I had a terrible math teacher for the J.C iswell, at L.C we have one of the best in the country, so thank god for streaming classes!!!

What is wrong with the way he did that experiment? He's teaching you a concept of physics, you're not in a second level Physics class to get accurate measurements of g, you're there to learn scientific and experimental principles.

And as for streaming classes, I don't like the idea. Class would be so boring with people all of my ability level, I like the mix of people in my classes. And those put into the lower ability classes suffer as they're surrounded by a load of low achievers like themselves, it's not a good vibe. Besides, the low achievers should logically have the best teachers.....

:|

Haven't a Clue wrote:

English was also bad in first year as she gave us a novel to read, which we found out the next year was the wrong one. Wasted 2 months reading something irrelevant.

QUOTE]
In most schools they do a different novel in first year, just for practice doing questions etc

Naikon

Diarmsquid wrote:

A teacher in my school (I don't have her anymore thanks God) gave the class "lines" as if it were a theatre performance, for when the inspectors came in. They spent about a week "rehearsing" for when the inspectors came in.
Some teachers are a joke.

LOL, thats Gas:)

JBoyle4eva

We have a new english teacher this year, and for the last 4 years we had a brilliant teacher. Luckily, we got through Macbeth and the whole OL course (Except Comparative) with the good teacher.

However, our new teacher is for the pits. She first quickly revised Macbeth for a week and a half at first, then went on to comprative to which the entire HL class kept getting confused, because we were with some OL students in our class and we kept thinking up wrong things.

Then, we did the HL poetry course. (OK, I'll give her credit for staying in after school with the HL crowd) but nonetheless, she couldn't make poetry more boring. I really understand only 3 poets out of 5 and feel that she's too far up her own a*^e o even understand our difficulty with her new teaching methods.

She should realise that we're going into a difficut year with a new teacher and try to help the HL crowd more than just thinking we know the entire course without trying.

madgal

lol! No-one has had seriously bad teachers like I have.

Teaching is the worst subject when it comes to praise or demotion. Who ever checks up on old teachers to see if their methods are correct? Who ever gives teacher a slap on the back and says keep it up? yeah, no-one.


I had a history teacher who brought in his collection of old books that were completely off course, and he use to spend the entire class running after students who robbed his books
My business teacher brought in his phone bills to show us what phone bills looked like.
My English teacher was out for most of the year.
My Geography teacher retired 4/5 times and is still teaching. We spent more times up the mountains that in the classroom.
Need I continue?

ninty9er

madgal wrote:

Need I continue?

please do:D

jaydigity

Need to make my own contribution!
My home.ec teacher (for jnr. cert,thankfully) was the absolute pits.
She's approaching retirement age so's been in the school since it started.
- one month before our junior cert she decided that we were going to clean the floor instead of the finish the course during our double class. We were al assigned 4 tiles which we scrubbed.What a profitable day!
On a similar thread, she also pulled all the pans with burned on dirt out of the cupboard and told us to scrape off all the dirt before we could resume classs again (I can't even laugh about this one yet)

-She once told us to avert our gaze while she stuck a knife in a wall socket
She doesn't wash her hands before cooking and used to leave us on our own during cooking classes, sometimes up to half an hour

-She told me not to start my cross-stitich project until she showed me how to do something or other. 5 days before deadline decides to show me some absolutely useless stitiches. I had to learn how to do it from the net, spent about 10hours trying to finish it

-This year she accidently lost half the sixth years home.ec journals (For the uninitiated this is like throwing out around 20% of your marks)

Arrrrgh!!:mad: rant over (for now anyway!)

md99

jaydigity wrote:

-This year she accidently lost half the sixth years home.ec journals (For the uninitiated this is like throwing out around 20% of your marks) (for now anyway!)

Good Lord... She is lucky she's not my teacher..

JC 2K3

jaydigity wrote:

- one month before our junior cert she decided that we were going to clean the floor instead of the finish the course during our double class. We were al assigned 4 tiles which we scrubbed.What a profitable day!

Well perhaps she thought your time would be better spent practicing for the practical?

Selphie

My Biology teacher is a hypochondriac - spends half the year out sick and the rest complaining to us, LC class, about her symptoms.
Seems like she can't read cause she never says whats in the book, and spends the classes telling us stories relating to what we're doing instead of actually teaching it to us.
When we were doing DNA and paternity testing, she couldn't understand the sentence, "If some of the lines on the child's profile match the mother's, but the rest don't match the father's, this is not the father of the child," and tried to explain it to us her own way.
She explained photosynthesis to us by saying, "Imagine you're in Penneys and you see something you want, then you steal it really quickly. This is similar to the process of photosynthesis - a phosphorus (or something) is stolen." When we finished the photosynthesis section, after three weeks, she asked us if we understood. When there was a resounding, "no," she said, "oh well, we have to move on anyway. Too bad."
Our class is so poor that she had to tell us what was going to be on the Pre so we'd pass. When we studied, it was like reading it for the first time, and half of what she told us didn't come up.
If any of us pass that exam, it'll be miraculous.