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.