Strange things your teacher did? (MOD NOTE in op)

Pauliedragon

I was chatting to a fella today who I knew from school about 20 years ago and we were reminciscing about the old days. One thing we laughed about was our Irish leaving cert teacher used to basically show us father ted videos every class with no as gaeilge taught at all. Very strange so I was wondering anyone else have any weird stories?


Mod note - don't name or hint at the identity of teachers being referred to in this thread, share anecdotes but respect their privacy

Ubbquittious

A bunch of them attempted to get me expelled from secondary school, they even succeeded for a while but MeHole (minister for education at thr time) sent someone down from Dublin and forced them to let me back in, made them all grovel. In fairness I was a messer but didn't deserve this kind of treatment. Cnuts


Primary school principal used to give me an awful doing and used to hit me long after corporal punishment was banned

freshpopcorn

One teacher put sellotape on somebodies lips.

We also had the teacher who used watch the previous days Home and Away, Soaps, programs, etc and if anybody asked we were doing a review on it.

One day a girl who was in our year but in the Convent died and the next day the same teacher taught us how to write an obituary.

Another teacher used talk about how important it was for lads to shower down after sport and not just use deodorant. He used talk about how important it was to use a bar of soap and really lather it up.

Larbre34

Our Religion Teacher showed us 'The Lovers Guide' video series in the TV room in 3rd Year.

For those too young, it was a series of graphic sex videos thinly veiled as educational. In a time before the internet, we certainly got an education.

Somebody grassed and it ended up on the front page of the Sunday Indo, which gave my Dad no end of mirth as he arrived home from mass with the story under his arm.

The teacher, a man then in his early 50s from an unspecified County of Northern Ireland was suspended for a term, but took it upon himself not to return.

Good times.

o1s1n

Our sixth class teacher refused to use the blackboards.

She instead had reams and reams of paper that she'd stick to the blackboard and write on with really squeaky black markers. Such an absolute waste of paper. There'd be piles of it on the floor for the bin by the end of the day.

I'd an Irish teacher in secondary school who, at the start of each class, would walk around and hand everyone a tiny slip of paper about two inches high and five inches long -

I don't know how, but that tiny bit of paper would contain a colossal amount of work we'd have to go through while he sat at the top of the class doing **** all.

Ubbquittious

Primary school principal made a fella drink a carton of sour milk as a punishment for letting it go sour

KevRossi

Roscommon country secondary school back in the 1980's:

School starts at 9.00. Teacher rolls in at 9.15, gets one of the lads to go down to the shop and pick up 20 Carroll's and the Irish Press. Every single day.

Playing pool in the lounge of a pub at lunch, teacher in the bar. Shouts out "Do I have ye at 2.00?" "Yes, you do sir!" Then throws out 10p for another game of pool and he orders another pint.

School tour: Got the bus driver to leave before two female teachers could come out and join them. Just himself and another male teacher, nobody else to spoil it. Got to Bundoran, the two of them spent the day drinking in several pubs, students ran riot around town on a plssing wet mid-week day in October, place was a ghost town, so they stuck out. Stopped twice for pints on the way home, eventually got home around 10 p.m., was supposed to be home at 7.30 pm.

Loads more, was considered just slightly outside of normal back then.

Gregor Samsa

Teacher in primary school stripped a friend of mine down to his underwear in front of the class, then threw all his clothes out a second floor window into the schoolyard, then sent him down in his underwear in front of the whole school to collect them.

In second class, our teacher used to pick 2 kids out of the class and make them sit on a boiling radiator, in a competition to see who could sit on it the longest. If you tried to get off too quick, he’d hold you down on it. This wasn’t punishment, it was for “fun”.

Loads more of these types of stories.

Richmond Ultra

A secondary school maths teacher in my school, always taught fractions for Cheltenham week. We had an inspection one day during it, the inspector asked for tips, winning tip, thumbs up for the lesson.

sbs2010

My religion teacher around 3rd year (a priest) walked in one day and without a word, wrote in huge letters across the board:

M A S T U R B A T I O N


Then he proceeded to tell us what it meant, how the word came from Latin and how it was totally ok to be doing.

He gave a few examples of where its ok to do it. In the shower was one of his recommendations.

Larbre34

Surprised he didn't show ye how.

JJayoo

Had an elderly woman for french/english/history from 1-3 rd year, she hadn't a word of french and english and history consisted of us reading the textbook.

What a valuable education

Hangdogroad

We had a religion teacher who was always trying to convince us that the moving statue of Ballinspittle was real (this was a few years after the moving statues thing, so circa 1990). I dont think anyone was convinced.

NeuralNetwork

In junior infants we had a teacher who used to chase with a big broom shouting “I’ll brush your beard.”
This was in the 80s after corporal punishment was definitely gone.

At the time we thought she might be a witch. She looked a bit like that ITV character, Grottbags.

Gregor Samsa

Getting away from the abuse to just simple bad teaching for a minute: We’d a Physics/Chemistry teacher for the Leaving who wouldn’t let us do any experiments. But he made us copy them from the text book into a lab book as if we had done them, in case an inspector ever checked. He was very blatant about this being entirely for his benefit, at the expense of ours.

NeuralNetwork

We’d a guy in secondary school who used to just stop classes to watch horse racing if he’d money on something and taught us how to calculate betting odds...

Zebrag

I had a Geography teacher from 1st - 3rd year who I genuinely think didn't have a clue himself about Geography. In the 3 years that I had him, all he spoke about was golf to whoever would listen. The rest of the time the class was either spent just chatting away or messing about. I remember doing Geography for my JC and yes I will admit now that I could of been the clever one and studied it myself but jesus I didn't have a clue. Picked a different subject to study for the LC and who did I get landed with but the man who claimed to have been the next Rory McIlroy. Safe to say I ended up having to teach myself the subject I choosed....and still failed. I wouldn't even mind but he was my Year Head as well so no one could really go to him for anything important because he would literally talk sh*te about golf or just anything that wasn't in regards to what you needed. Found out about 2 years after I done the LC the school was moved to another location with a new principal. Oh and another teacher was stacked for punching a student because he didn't agree with a 14 year old ideas of why he should be simplifying the class work instead of writing a bunch of words on the blackboard hoping we retained some form of information. I would go back to school just for the simplicity and innocence of it really

endacl

Had a young English teacher in the late 80s for 2nd/3rd year. Think he might have been a student teacher when he arrived first. Saw a bit of worth in me and, after me causing him no end of frustration, convinced me he was right. Also introduced us to Peter Gabriel.

Thanks Mr D.

cj maxx

Had a science teacher who used to make his own poitin in the lab. He'd be completely bucked ar 4 o'clock !

poisonated

One teacher thought us the different names for masturbating...choking the chicken, beating the meat. Strange!

Ah yes, a long list of posts where the things didn’t happen.

Portlawslim

Back in the 80's had a female PE teacher who would walk into the male shower rooms to make sure there was no messing going on while all us 3rd years were showering. My son went to the same school and she was still there. Female english teacher used to have us perform a comedy sketches during her class and would have one of us sit on her lap(she was a looker as well).
Strange days

Eggs For Dinner

There's a definite pre and post 2000 difference in school experiences here and rightly so. For many, myself included, school was an horrific time, with little of the light relief described here. I'm genuinely happy for those who had a good time at school.

Wanderer78

Principal had a strange thing about lads with long hair, tried to make life hard for us, it backfired, father was called in, also had long hair, kinna, at the time. in a polite way, told the principal, he hadnt a clue about educating kids, recommended some books to him, was never bothered about it again. Have since met said principal, long retired now, he's getting very old, but he still remembers me, schools are damn weird places

barney shamrock

Eggs For Dinner wrote: »

There's a definite pre and post 2000 difference in school experiences here and rightly so. For many, myself included, school was an horrific time, with little of the light relief described here. I'm genuinely happy for those who had a good time at school.

That's very true.
We were terrorised through primary and secondary school.
Female teacher would trash you with a metre stick for not knowing the answer to a question (primary school!)
Then onwards to the wonderful Christian brothers (too stupid to be priests) one of whom would kick you on the shins and try and bite you instead of slapping you.
All of this has made me a very introverted person (protection mechanism) for which I am very resentful towards the education system I was put through.

razorblunt

freshpopcorn wrote: »

One teacher put sellotape on somebodies lips.

We also had the teacher who used watch the previous days Home and Away, Soaps, programs, etc and if anybody asked we were doing a review on it.

One day a girl who was in our year but in the Convent died and the next day the same teacher taught us how to write an obituary.

Another teacher used talk about how important it was for lads to shower down after sport and not just use deodorant. He used talk about how important it was to use a bar of soap and really lather it up.

I'd almost guarantee that one or a few of the class didn't have the best hygiene standards at all.




We had a Geography teacher who spent 2 years covering River, Sea, and Ice erosion and deposition. A new teacher arrived for 3rd year and thought we were taking the piss when she realised she had a whole syllabus (minus those) to catch us up on in a year.

KevRossi

We had a teacher in secondary school, young enough lad, friendly, good looking.

Came into class one Monday morning and put John Waite's 'Missing You' on the stereo (a proper ghetto blaster). Kept playing it louder on repeat with his feet on the desk looking up at the ceiling. We were in fits of giggles until one of the lads noticed the teacher was crying. Teacher next door (who was dead sound) and who was a mate of his came in to see what the noise was and took him outside.

He (teacher next door) came back with about 5 minutes left in the class. Just told us to pack our books up quietly, and then said something that has honestly stayed with me the past 35 years;

"Lads, we've no idea what kind of pain and issues some people are going through, but if ye can, go and speak to a friend about it, it really is the best thing to talk about stuff and get it off ye're chest. Also lads, I don't mean to be condescending, but ye have no idea what adult life is like, it's a lot harder than ye can ever imagine.

But remember lads; 'It's good to talk'* "

*It's good to talk was an advertising slogan for British Telecom at the time.

This is the song the teacher was playing, he was obviously going through some sort of a break up with a woman at the time. And yes, every time I hear this song I think of those two teachers and that morning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9e157Ner90

Mimon

One teacher in primary school (1980s) got three of us who were messing to kneel down and put our faces against the wall for an hour or so and threatened to cut off our fingers with a wood saw he had.

Remember not being scared and thought it was funny. We must have been very resilient, imagine the payout for trauma nowadays.

mloc123

I think most teachers fit into one of four categories...

-Good teachers
-Bad teachers that tried to teach
-Bad teachers that didn't care and would spend all class telling you stories/watching videos etc...
-Off the wall teachers

The last two were the best fun. We had a maths teacher, real old school strict guy. But we realised after a few months that he had a couple of topics of conversation that he loved... so all you had to do was get him going on one of them and he'd spend the whole class telling us some random story. Somehow I scraped through honors maths..

Romer

Had a high school math/physics teacher(in the States obviously) who had a special reward for whomever scored the highest on the final exams. He would treat the best score to a ride in his little 2 seater aero plane. That he built himself. You never saw a bunch of smart kids get so stupid so quick.

Icemancometh

On the hygiene thing, we were doing swimming for pe, and after we got changed, we were lined up separated into boys and girls. Think we were 2nd year. The teacher singled out the boys, told us we all smelled terrible and that teenagers needed to wash more. She then told us we were going to go back to the changing rooms to shower before the class started.

So she sends the first 10 or so lads back first. They come back, she announces the smell has now gone, and we continue on with the class.

landofthetree

A couple of incidents in a midlands secondary school in the 1980s. I was in primary school at the time but remember hearing about them.

First one was a whole class failed ordinary Irish on purpose as a protest against the teacher.

The second was a class covered the wrong history syllabus for Leaving Cert. They didnt discover it till March and the mocks.

banie01

A technical drawing teacher who was of a very nervous disposition, and often threatened to hand over our names to the Russians.
Even though the cold war was over a few years at this stage, was often convinced that planes flying over were actually Russian Paratroopers on their way to take over Shannon Airport.
Cue years of the "Russians are coming" chants from students with associated meltdowns on his part.

An English teacher who was fond of flowing language and very erudite. He was also a quite large framed man and a bully
He pulled me once for talking in class (For once it actually wasn't me) and flew into a rage.
I repeatedly told him I wasn't, he hauled me into the corridor and asked was I calling him a liar?
Me being a smart arsed 1st year with a Grandad who was fond of word play and excuses....
Said, "No, not a liar but you are guilty of a terminalogical inexactitude!"
Caught a fair clip on the ear for that before being marched to the office.

Also had an English and History teacher who reffed for the FAI.
I was playing at a tournament in Galway (Not school related) and said teacher was there as a ref.
Over the course of that weekend he was arrested for quite a violent sexual assault of a woman up there.
When I returned to school, I told my class what happened.
Had English shortly afterwards and he erupted at me in class, pulled me out of my desk and assaulted me.
Well tried to, because I lamped him, left him on the floor and walked myself down to the office to tell the Principal what I'd one and why!

Still though, had a great time in school and would definitely recommend the said school to others and have even sent my own son there

Hangdogroad

Deleted User wrote: »

Ah yes, a long list of posts where the things didn’t happen.

You clearly wernt around in the 80s.

thecretinhop

Ah christ where to start.

The greatest psychopath i will ever meet my geography teacher. This lad was not off the wall type he was genuinely scary, there was an air or presence which was not to be messed with.

He had a small room at the back of his class, if you were misbehaving he locked you in there for the day. One poor lad was terrified of mice. Every ten minutes or so he would get the class 40 plus to make mouse noises all at once the lad was begging to get out.

One kid stole a box of chalk, he opened the window 5 stories up and held him out until he gave it back. I think the kid needed therapy after it.

The day the inspector came he said "Yere the big boys now ye teach" walked out went to pub came back the week after.

Bizarrely I got a mini mars bar for naming all the moons of the planets in the solar system. Rlol he was saying how much class Mr cretin had not like Johnny over there who be on drugs by his 21st birthday (he was right)

I have truckloads more stories fk me thinking back my school was insane...

Mullaghteelin

mloc123 wrote: »

The last two were the best fun. We had a maths teacher, real old school strict guy. But we realised after a few months that he had a couple of topics of conversation that he loved... so all you had to do was get him going on one of them and he'd spend the whole class telling us some random story. Somehow I scraped through honors maths..

"Tell us the story about the Yorkie Bar Sir!"
...By Junior Cert we were well aware how much our business studies teacher enjoyed telling us a long winded story about the origin of Yorkie Bars. No homework would be corrected or given on such days.

NeuralNetwork

Eggs For Dinner wrote: »

There's a definite pre and post 2000 difference in school experiences here and rightly so. For many, myself included, school was an horrific time, with little of the light relief described here. I'm genuinely happy for those who had a good time at school.

I think you actually get several eras.

1. Pre early 1980s when corporal punishment was still permitted - grim times. More like prison camps in many cases.

2. 1980s when it was gone but still had rogue teachers who were violent and plenty of psychological nastiness.

3. 1990s progress but still very disciplinarian approaches - lots of shouting, roaring and humiliation of people and still a not a progressive system - tail end of the heavy religious influence was ending, but still there.

4. Post 2000s modern era - somewhat more likely to have seen the last of the old guard retired, but still fairly backwards by most comparable systems in EU, with things like floor length skirts being required by some schools and on going heavy religious ethos in many that isn’t reflected outside school anymore.

We’ve a fairly weird school system. We just tend not to realise it, as we’ve all been though it and think it’s normal.

I mean just as a few examples: in the 1990s I had a teacher who thought it was totally acceptable to behave like a rough 1970s stand up and make jokes about people’s mothers, implying they’re were hookers!

I had a lot of hearing issues (now resolved) and they used to just spend their time mocking me about not speaking loudly enough, or throwing things at me when I didn’t hear them.

I’d a guy who used to blow a referees whistle in my face if I didn’t hear him. To the point I just refused to go to his classes at one stage.

We’d an Irish teacher in the late 1990s who used to slap people across the back of the head and a maths teacher who threw a book though a glass window pane in a fit of rage over someone not having homework done.

Hated school and I’d agree it did me a lot of psychological damage for years. You’d think it was designed to knock any self confidence out of you.

Gregor Samsa

One teacher in primary school in the class beside me had a heart attack in front of the class. He was in the middle of giving out to them (he was known for his temper and roaring), grabbed onto one of the desks in the front row with both hands, then suddenly keeled over, still gripping the desk. The two lads in the desk were thrown to the ground. One of the kids came running into our class for help. Luckily, he survived.

Another teacher in the same school taught us for months with chronic laryngitis - basically he didn't speak for most of the year. He'd write everything on the blackboard - lessons, questions, comments, punishments and had a referee's whistle that he'd blow and then point at you to get your attention. It was bizarre when you think about it, but at the time we just adjusted to it.

Yet another teacher (English) in Secondary school refused to teach us 3 months before the Inter Cert. Every day, we'd have to sit in his class with our hands flat on the desk, feet flat on the floor, looking straight forward. He thought someone had thrown something at him one day in the class, and refused to teach us until someone owned up to it. Thing is, no-one threw anything at him. After a few days of this, the parents got involved, and there was a meeting with him, the Principal and some parents. At it, he flat out refused to teach us until the person owned up. Parents made threats of legal action, but he kept his protest up for a month, until he was suddenly replace with a sub and nothing more was said about him or it. My mother bumped into him years later, and he apologised, saying he'd had a mental breakdown and got out of teaching.

landofthetree

Corporal punishment wasn't illegal in the 80s.

In the law of the Republic of Ireland, corporal punishment was prohibited in 1982 by an administrative decision of John Boland, the Minister for Education, which applied to national schools (most primary schools) and to secondary schools receiving public funding (practically all of them).[113] Teachers were not liable to criminal prosecution until 1997, when the rule of law allowing "physical chastisement" was explicitly abolished.[114]

seamus

Gregor Samsa wrote: »

Getting away from the abuse to just simple bad teaching for a minute: We’d a Physics/Chemistry teacher for the Leaving who wouldn’t let us do any experiments. But he made us copy them from the text book into a lab book as if we had done them, in case an inspector ever checked. He was very blatant about this being entirely for his benefit, at the expense of ours.

Funny, that brings me back. Our leaving cert physics teacher did the same. Very, very rarely, we would do an experiment. Almost every time he would say that there wasn't enough time for everyone to do it, or that we didn't have enough equipment for everyone to do it, so he'd just do it at the top of the room while everyone watched.
Except we had a double class every week specifically to give enough time for practicals, and we could see the storeroom, there was a tonne of stuff in there. I think he was just lazy and would rather do it himself than have to watch the whole class doing it.

How I didn't fail that subject I don't know, I don't remember anything I learned.

NeuralNetwork

landofthetree wrote: »

Corporal punishment wasn't illegal in the 80s.

In the law of the Republic of Ireland, corporal punishment was prohibited in 1982 by an administrative decision of John Boland, the Minister for Education, which applied to national schools (most primary schools) and to secondary schools receiving public funding (practically all of them).[113] Teachers were not liable to criminal prosecution until 1997, when the rule of law allowing "physical chastisement" was explicitly abolished.[114]

The issues that stand out to me from that era were all about grown adults trying to be “cool” by engaging with and encouraging the bullying behaviour of teenagers. We had a few teachers who seemed to want to be “one of the lads” and would often do that by participating in mocking / bullying someone for the entertainment of the group.

So typically it encouraged a bullying atmosphere and they led by being the bully-in-chief and thinking they were stand up comedians.

In my experience of it, it was usually the inadequate and least professional teachers who behaved like that. They were often very poor at actually teaching anything but spent all their time engaging totally counterproductively with a bunch of teenagers.

Gregor Samsa

In my school anyway, they stopped "officially" using corporal punishment in 82, in that the teachers stopped carrying and using the leather to beat kids with as a punishment. I remember in second class, our teacher lamenting the fact that he wasn't supposed to hit us any more, and asking how was he supposed to teach kids if he couldn't belt them every now and then.

Teachers would still hit kids with their hands, and being belted across the knuckles or the head with the edge of a ruler was common. One had a special move where he's grab you by the jumper and repeatedly punch you in the chest while he held your jumper, pulling and pushing you into his fist, so you couldn't get away or fall down. This is 9 year old kids we're talking about.

To those reading this thinking "more made up stories that didn't happen", school then was an unimaginably different place to what it is now. I mean, the schools I went to were actually considered good ones, yet I can list at least 6 teachers who should have been jailed for assault on primary school children.

I've three kids in primary school now. It's unimaginable that they'd go though even a fraction of the stuff that went on - without an eyebrow being raised - in the 70, 80s and even somewhat in the 90s (although my secondary school was nowhere near as violent as primary school). Completely different world.

banie01

A collection of tales from my secondary school
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056121774

B.A._Baracus

This one is more arrogant (then a little strange)

When I was 13 in secondary school my P.E. teacher was just so arrogant. He was only 23 and looking back now he hadn't matured. Always chewing gum and all bravado out of him. You know the sort.
Brought me in to an empty class and locked the door one day. Put it up to me over me calling him by his first name. In my face full on putting it up to me. I was an extremely shy kid so he was picking his battle. Silly thing to do as if it were someone else they could have said he touched them up even if a fight did break out. I was shy so I took it and he knew it.

Later on he was subbing for one of the other teachers so he grabs the TV trolley and shows his "recorded video" of his trip to the states. His brother was a paramedic and allowed him to ride along recording things (don't ask me how he got away with that) but then goes on to say how later in the video a guy had a motorcycle accident and lost his leg. There was enjoyment in his voice like "I got it all on camera!" - he was gonna show a bunch of 13 year olds it but the class ended.

What a di*khead looking back.

mloc123

landofthetree wrote: »

The second was a class covered the wrong history syllabus for Leaving Cert. They didnt discover it till March and the mocks.

Mullingar?

hots

cj maxx wrote: »

Had a science teacher who used to make his own poitin in the lab. He'd be completely bucked ar 4 o'clock !

Had the same here, junior cert year when he let a few of the hardy bucks of the class try it and one threw up out the window. Good times.

fryup

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

What a di*khead looking back.

weirdo more like....did he try it on with other pupils?

landofthetree

mloc123 wrote: »

Mullingar?

Yes.

It actually happened again couple of years back in a south Dublin school.



https://www.thejournal.ie/leaving-cert-english-error-4232595-Sep2018/

Seve OB

we had a teacher back in the 80's who would kick a GAA ball off the back wall of the classroom.

He then shook it up a notch when he started to puck a sliotar over our heads against the wall :eek:

SeaFields

Had a French teacher who I am convinced to this day did not have a word of French. He lived by the school and for nearly every french class he would have to go home as "I forgot my specs". He also wanted the class to start at the basic level french and work our way up. This was in fifth year after coming from honours french in the junior cycle. When he did decide to teach us, he had his head in a french dictionary looking up words..... Just bizarre how he kept that uo for years.

GirlatdRockShow

landofthetree wrote: »

A couple of incidents in a midlands secondary school in the 1980s. I was in primary school at the time but remember hearing about them.

First one was a whole class failed ordinary Irish on purpose as a protest against the teacher.

The second was a class covered the wrong history syllabus for Leaving Cert. They didnt discover it till March and the mocks.

The history thing happened in our school too in the 00s. Must be a Midlands thing!