Teachers You Had Who Were Just Checked Out

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

I watched My Friend Dahmer (2017) today. I appreciate that it captured how checked out some high school teachers can be. I’ve heard before that Dahmer would straight up drink vodka in class and I’m sure that would seem unimaginable at some schools. My high school you definitely couldn’t get away with that. I remember though one time one of the more troublesome kids threw a huge cardboard box of books out of the window in a room a teacher was napping in.

[ERON]

I had the same Spanish teacher three years in a row. She would try for the first six weeks or so and then give up and let us play cards and watch TV for the rest of the year. I didn't learn a lick of Spanish, but I did learn how to play Spades.

[BlackoutCreature]

I had this college professor that taught a Computer Science/Mathematics class that just plain did not care anymore. He would just come in and start talking and writing on the whiteboard, just regurgitating what was in the text book, and not stop, and just expected you to sit there and copy it into your notebook. God help you if you weren't following or needed to ask a question because he did not want to hear it. Best case scenario he would simply tell you "can't you read what's on the board?". Worst case scenario he would just tear into you for being an idiot. But he never gave homework and had this crazy curve on his tests that, while he was stingy with the A's, the only way you could actually fail was to just leave every answer blank.

[Instant Classic]

My 12th grade English teacher. We read Beowulf and did nothing the rest of the year.

[OGBoardPoster2005]

My 10th Grade Algebra teacher was suffering from early onset dimentia and taught 4 years after til they realized something was wrong.

My History teacher and mentor would get pissed if the class next door was loud and would cuss openly about not caring anymore.

I'm pretty sure I was destined the same.

[Ultimo Gallos]

I got a pile. DIdn't help that I went to public schools in a state that pays jackcrap to teachers.

9th grade,my English teacher had been teaching for 50 years and had a pile of vacation time built up. So for the first 2 months of school we had a sub. This teacher showed up maybe 10 days the entire school year. When he did show up he attempted to teach us but by then the class was use to goofing off that peroid.

10th grade Algebra II Teacher got pregnant that summer. By early October she was bed ridden. So they found an old retired teacher to be the sub. After 4 weeks he quit. So we got another sub that would show up give everybody a 95 for the day then she would sleep.

12th grade Algebra II,yea cause of some weird rules even though I passed the subject each year I was stuck in this math class for 3 years,got a teacher who told us first day of class "Show up and dont cause problems and I will give you a 88 for the year." So most of the class showed up and slept or whatever and got that 88.

12th grade Accounting class. First half of the year had a teacher I had had 2 years prior for typing. She hated that I already knew how to type and would finish my work and sit there rreading while chewing my nails. Well the last day of school before xmas break a class before mine pulled a prank on her and she quit. What happened was 4th peroid every day she would goto the bathroom and be gone for 15 minutes. This is right when they took the chalkboards out and put in those marker boards. A few of the guys in the class had went to the health center in town gotten the brown paper bags full of free condoms. So Ms Holly goes to the bathroom. When she comes back every inch of the marker board is covered with condoms,that are slowly sliding down the board. She freaks out grabs her purse walks out to her car and leaves. Called the Principal once she was home telling her she quit.

So we get a sub. Who can only be there on Mondays. Which meant the other 2 days a week I had accounting we had a sub for the sub. All we did was watch whatever movies the sub recorded off HBO the night before and play spades. Oh and go smoke in the bathroom.

Sad thing is at the time this was considered the best high school on the MS coast. Now it is a hell hole. And most of my friends that still live in the area either home school their kids or send them to private school.

Thinking back I had some horrible teachers. Had a music teacher from 3rd grade till 6th grade that would spent most of hte class preaching at us. Reported her to the principal and nothing was done.

Also in 9th grade my government teacher was the football coach. So if you played any sport you automatically got a 94 on your work. That was my first year playing basketball so I would sleep through that class.

[YAKMAN is ICHIBAN]

I had more strange teachers than checked out ones.

One of the weirdest was Dr. Patyk. Thick Polish accent. He taught literature, I think I took his class in 11th grade.

He organized the seating in the class into rows, with each person in the front of the row being the captain. You moved forwards or backwards depending on answering questions, behavior, or totally arbitrary reasons.

He hated that he had to teach The Odyssey. So much so, he literally taught from the cliff notes, and told us to only bother reading the cliff notes.

He wasn't that checked out about all the assigned reading, just The Odyssey.

[Feyrhausen]

Senior year I had a world history class. A couple weeks in the teacher disappeared. Rumors were a health issue or messing around with a student. They stuck a coach in there to basically babysit. He taught nothing, never took roll, never even said anything to any of the students he didnt know or coach.

[Fade is a CodyCryBaby]

Apr 21, 2022 8:06:14 GMT -5 Instant Classic said:

My 12th grade English teacher. We read Beowulf and did nothing the rest of the year.

That sounds like torture.

I always have a go-to answer for this : Mr. f***ing Rucker. Imagine an ornery Colonel Sanders and that’s him. Yelled in that thick accent. Would make biting comments back to students. Used racial epithets for students for crying out loud. Strangely it all seemed to come from a good place. He was a substitute teacher so everyone knew it’d be a hell of a day when he was there. Aww. This makes me realize he’s most likely no longer around but god bless that man. Not sure if he was madly checked out or incredibly checked in.

[Natural Born Farmer]

Computer sciences teacher sophomore year of HS.

Older guy who I don't think really knew how to put a lesson plan together, and figured out pretty quick that most of the students actually knew computers better than he did and could finish any assignment he gave in about 10 minutes.

For some reason Quake was on the school computers and that class pretty quickly became a de facto study hall/ gaming session.

Felt awful for the guy as every day he just looked incredibly defeated knowing that he wasn't really teaching us anything, but it was really the administration's fault for putting him so far out of his depth.

[legendkiller1985]

I had a professor for US History 101 in college who would just leave the room during a lecture for 20-30 minutes during each class and made us sign in for attendance but left the book open so you could theoretically sign yourself in for the week and get credit for the course and skip the other part of the lecture. Ended up getting a B in the course and always suspected he either was doing drugs or had horrible IBS or something.

Another professor I had for European History was this older Russian gentleman who had intro level course and was teaching it like it was a Masters level course at a community college mind you. would expect you to give a full 90 minute lecture as your group project and that increased that high as more students dropped the course. Was really smart but was so hyperfocused on his work he couldn't realte to people and would almost kind of belittle you if you didn't understand.

[Cyno]

Didn't really have any checked out teachers until college. Some of the adjunct professors I had really didn't give a shit.

[Dr. T is an alien]

I had a math and science teacher who just checked out all of the girls in my class. Is that what you meant?

Heck, there was even an English teacher who was actively banging one of my classmates. At the time I was merely irritated that he took a pretty girl off of the market (not that I had a shot with her, but I digress), especially since he had an absolutely gorgeous wife at home. I then completely forgot about it until years later when his wife found out that he was carrying on with a different girl and reported him for it that I had the proper revulsion for his behavior (which he apparently did with a different girl each year).

[Deleted]

My 6th grade teacher was a looker in her 20's.

She was very checked out by 12 year old boys.

[Sephiroth]

In high school I had a particular life science class. The first half of the year we pretty much taught ourselves; the teacher gave us the material and he even made us grade each other’s work while he spent all his time fiddling on a computer. Which made it even weirder when he had to take a week off for surgery and ended up never coming back so we got another teacher who was more hands on.

Also I recall one math class where we had a substitute who spent the whole day telling us about his experiences as a prison guard.when our regular teacher was back I told him “That was sone great substitute you had for us. I haven’t slept that good in weeks.”

[msc]

Probably a fair few but I find they drop out of my memory after 20+ years. I do remember the (first) French teacher at primary school, who took to drinking wine in class teaching 10 year olds. She got fired.

[Jaws the Shark]

I went to a pretty sizeable state comp here in the UK with about 1,700 kids in it. The facilities couldn't cope with this many so there was a staggered day, the first three years started an hour earlier than everyone else, and everyone else finished an hour later than the first three years. What this meant was that all the teachers were working an extra hour a day than they otherwise would have done, and apart from that were having to compete with a load of disruptive idiots, and kids like me who were capable but who had given up for whatever reason. So this meant that probably 90% of my teachers just couldn't be bothered anymore, the staff turnover was pretty high.

There were a few standouts though. My form tutor was so lazy that he would spend our registration hiding in his office, my final year or so at school one of the blokes in my class did the register and notices. I also had a history teacher for a couple of years who probably told us more about the various jobs he'd had before he was a teacher than about history; he was a nice bloke, but a f***ing useless teacher. And my music teacher used to just give everyone a C if he couldn't be arsed to grade everyone's work, and when we had our A-level introduction day he palmed it off on a student whose sage advice was "if you don't smoke now you will by the end of this, and if you already smoke you'll be on something stronger."

[Instant Classic]

Apr 21, 2022 11:57:47 GMT -5 Fade is a CodyCryBaby said:

Apr 21, 2022 8:06:14 GMT -5 Instant Classic said:

My 12th grade English teacher. We read Beowulf and did nothing the rest of the year.

That sounds like torture.

I always have a go-to answer for this : Mr. f***ing Rucker. Imagine an ornery Colonel Sanders and that’s him. Yelled in that thick accent. Would make biting comments back to students. Used racial epithets for students for crying out loud. Strangely it all seemed to come from a good place. He was a substitute teacher so everyone knew it’d be a hell of a day when he was there. Aww. This makes me realize he’s most likely no longer around but god bless that man. Not sure if he was madly checked out or incredibly checked in.

I loved it, it was my chill period.

[Dr. T is an alien]

Apr 21, 2022 12:16:33 GMT -5 legendkiller1985 said:

I had a professor for US History 101 in college who would just leave the room during a lecture for 20-30 minutes during each class and made us sign in for attendance but left the book open so you could theoretically sign yourself in for the week and get credit for the course and skip the other part of the lecture. Ended up getting a B in the course and always suspected he either was doing drugs or had horrible IBS or something.

Another professor I had for European History was this older Russian gentleman who had intro level course and was teaching it like it was a Masters level course at a community college mind you. would expect you to give a full 90 minute lecture as your group project and that increased that high as more students dropped the course. Was really smart but was so hyperfocused on his work he couldn't realte to people and would almost kind of belittle you if you didn't understand.

Regarding the first one, I do have to ask what the class schedule was like. I've taught two different types of schedules at college: The first is your typical 50 lectures on M-W-F and 1hr15min lectures on T-R (though I mainly taught lab courses which completely tosses that out the window anyways). The other, and more recent, is at a local community college where you get all of the week's lecture in a single block. That means that if the class is a 2 credit hour course, it is a 2 hour lecture (well, 1hr50min lecture, but who's counting?). I frequently taught 3 or 4 credit hour courses which meant that it was a full 3-4 lecture each time we met. While I almost never jetted off early except on the days of exams, I could see some lesser experienced lecturers struggling to fill the entire block without losing the entire class 75% of the way through.

Regarding the second example, I do wonder if it was truly as bad as you think it was. The reality is that so many students expect entry level courses to be easier than they are, but the reality is that in order to retain accreditation for the course they cannot be that easy. I always shot for a class average being 80%, which meant that the class average would be in the B- to C+ range. After I taught for a while I even got good at getting the averages to that point, but there were always students who thought that I was being too hard. I assure you that my boss never thought that.

[jimmyjackezekiel]

I had a teacher with muscular dystrophy who was all but immobile and confined to an electric wheelchair. You could tell she was just not in the mood for our sh**.