NOT THE BEES
My multivariable calc and elementary analysis professor quoted C.S. Lewis a lot and delegated oversight and grading of tests to his stuffed puffin. He'd talk to her during class sometimes. As this puffin is a vain bird, we'd get 1-2 points of extra credit on tests for sketching a puffin on the back page. During the analysis class, our test on set theory replaced this task with a request to draw an "empty puffin."
Think I'm joking? The puffin has a Facebook page.
And a MyLife (apparently she's aged quite gracefully). And email correspondence.
God I loved that class.
edited 13th Jan '11 9:07:01 PM by Pykrete
what
My Literature teacher last semester lost the super big major project endgame 3000000 point grade assignment for everyone in the class, she was forced to exempt everyone in the gradebook. She also constantly told us that she is a loser and has no friends, and speaks Spanish in class all the time even though I can't understand a word of it. I once asked her if she could please say it in English and she said she was "Talking to herself." And she insisted I was a slacker and did no work even though the whole semester I never dropped below a high A.
I see the Awesomeness.
I had a physics teacher who made a flash animation of the Olympics done by stick figures and Bloody Hilarious.
Fight smart, not fair.
Hello Ladies
My 8th grade algebra teacher was pretty crazy. One time, she put her foot up on the overhead projector so she could show us how long one of her toes was. She also invited us to do yoga with her this one morning before a big test, and proceeded to do a handstand up against the wall.
Oh, and she made us dance while flicking the light switch on and off to some disco song. Apparently it helped us learn.
Chances are, I'm not actually wearing any pants right now.
My english teachers always seem to be odd characters. In ninth grade, my teacher was this incredibly tiny lady, a new mother of twins, but when she wasn't talking about them she was going on and on about her conspiracy theories. My eleventh grade honors english teacher is a Scottish immigrant with an obsession for comic books and Star Trek, that would quote/mock Miley Cyrus lyrics in a complete deadpan voice to be faux-motivational (although apparently this year he does Avril Lavigne) who also pushes the line on how much of a faux-pedo he can possibly pretend to be without getting in trouble for it (one of our prompts to grammatically analyze was "I used to enjoy watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but I felt awkward watching a teenage girl skimp around in barely more than her underwear all episode" followed immediately by a deadpan, 'I still watch it'). My tenth grade and current AP teacher is a heavily-accented Kentucky woman who always seems to have an awkward moment story for any situation, which are immensely amusing to her dismay, and an eerie fondness for decapitations (and I quote: "I think if I had been born during the French Revolution I would have laughed at the guillotine").
My psychology teacher apparently smuggled bibles into the Soviet Union while she was there teaching English for the CIA or something.
edited 13th Jan '11 9:23:15 PM by sparkpoint
This post is called, "We hate you, please die."
My SCIE 1000 (maths of science class) lecturer, Peter. He never, ever wore shoes anywhere. He was very fond, if you know what I mean, of mathematics. He claimed that he got together with his wife when she asked him over to her house to look at some interesting matrices. Once I complained that I'd recently dreamed about maths, we'd done so much of it, and he told me to keep my kinky dreams to myself. A couple of times he would put an extremely complex equation on the overhead projector and declare "Isn't that beautiful! If that doesn't turn you on, you're too damn fussy!"
Be not afraid...
defiance
My Latin teacher in seventh grade would take time off teaching to camp out in line to get into Star Wars movies. He also had a habit of tossing whiteboard markers at misbehaving students, and was deadly accurate with them; once, he managed to, without turning around, bean a student on the forehead with one, which them fell into the little tray at the bottom of the board.
My Latin teacher in eighth grade used to regularly step out of class to take calls from his bookie.
Really says something about the people who decide to become middle school Latin teachers. (namely that they're awesome)
Also, my old high school has a bash.org-style quotes database, much of which is populated with teacher lunacies. It's a fun read.
Exitus Acta Probat
A lot of my highschool teachers were pretty weird.
- Our history teacher was a woman with bright orange ahir who was always ridiculosuly cheerful (exept that one time when somebody did something really stupid in class and she completely snapped at him). We used to joke she was using prozac or something, and that actually turned out to be true.
- Our physics teacher (who was also our class supervisor) had done a lot of things before becoming a teacher, including being a bouncer at a nightclub and a boiler aperator on a steamboat. He liked telling about the stuff he had done and we occasionally provoked him to do so if we couldn't be arsed to listen to the lecture. Once he spent the entire two-hour lecture telling about his time on the steamboat. He also remarked once that he wanted to become a border guard in the north so he could live somewhere where there are no other people and drive around in a motorsled.
- Our math teacher was't all that strange, but he had a very obvious verbal tic (he seemed to end nearly every sentence with "eh"), and there was this one time when after an exam he wrote up some wrong answers on the blackboard and explained why they were wrong. Turns out that all of them were taken from his daughter's exam paper (she was quite embarassed about that). Generally he was pretty cool tho. He even gave us donuts once (we were learning how to use differentiation to measure the volume of a donut-shaped object). He was also married to our chemistry teacher, who didn't have anything unusual about here other than the fact that she was missing a nail on her left hand.
- Our Finnish teacher was generally considered a bitch, but me and the other students that were good at writing knew she had more of a tsundere type of personality. She was very dismissive to most students, but if you proved that you were good at writing she was actually quite friendly. But God help you if you did somethign that was below you'r usualy standard.
- Our German teacher wasn't all that unusual, exept she threw chalk at people who did something stupid in class. She was also very strict and insisted students referred as "Frau [name]" at all times.
- Our psychology teacher was a bit odd. I could never place exactly how, but all the girls found him to be really creepy. He let us take our own notes to the exam, and promised that on our second year he'd teach us how to controll seemingly involuntary bodily functions. However, he got fired before that. We never learned why, but he did have a lot of arguments with our physics teacher so maybe it was because of that. There were a lot of crazy rumous going on about him and the circumstances of his firing, tho.
- Our art teacher didn't really teach much. Most of the time he just showed us some slides of buildings and monumens he had taken, or gave us some vaque assigment and left. Once when I came to the class I found him drinking booze in the art suplies room. My brother, who started higschool after he retired, was rather annoyed when he got an art teacher that actually made them work for their grades.
- Our headmaster was extraordinarily...Boring. He was among the dullest people I've ever met, and we always dreaded his bi-annual speeches because they were incredibly long and dull. He did have an amusing habit of standing on his toes when talking to appear taller, tho. His speech when we graduated was about how the economy is going into the crapper and we probably won't find a job (complete with one student's boyfriend who was a musician singign a very cheerful-sounding song about the same subject).
A flamboyantly gay teacher of German who gave us colouring pictures during recess and sang along out loud with the schläger he brought out for listening exercises.
A history teacher who had a penchant for inserting his students into historical anecdotes to make them come alive and as a framing device for questions(which worked wonders).
On the negative side, a natural science teacher who was like Dr. Evil in the ssssttt-scene in Austin Powers(we turfed over the course of two weeks, he sstt'd 27 times per lesson on average), whose classes were nothing but one long note-taking session. Plus he had sweatmarks under his armpits the size of lakes.
Plus an economics teacher who later turned out to be a pedo(or ephebo, to be more accurate), but he was kinda shy about it so he never really got that far and we all had a good laugh about it(except him, but he found a job as a schoolteacher again after he was fired from our school, so I suppose it worked out for him).
I know what you said, sugar, but 'platonic' still entails a world of ideas.
A couple of years ago, I made a post on the Sadist Teacher Troper Tales about mine. Just Ctrl+F the word "poxy".
edited 14th Jan '11 7:41:27 AM by Civanfan
DUMB
My first grade teacher left for an asylum halfway through the year.
...
[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.
State-sponsored username
MY 6-9 grade headmaster knew the name and basic interest of all 400+ students well enough to have a spontaneuos conversation with them and could also do with us a few years after we left as well. My highschool * swedish/english teacher was an anglophile sherlock holmes fan so every reading assignment always inculded a Sherlock Holmes story if it would fit the theme. My Math/Physics teacher always illustrated everything with toys and PET-Rockets were a recurring theme, he was also the teacher responsible for the school's Rocket project.
In the quiet of the night, the Neocount of Merentha mused: How long does evolution take, among the damned?
Rabbit Season
I miss my old English teacher. He was just hilarious, and he did some very weird rants on tangential subjects, like how he doesn't see the point of Mondrian and how stupid the hats people wear at weddings are.
You're an ad hominem attack!
Oh my god thank you for that link Merton
My 10th grade History teacher was pretty crazy. The most famous part about him was his quotes, the best of which was:
"You've got to pick the low hanging fruits (makes clicking noises with his tongue, grabs invisible fruit) and make them into a pie. Or a cake. Scratch that, I hate fruitcake."
On, and my 11th grade Physics teacher was a black belt and Aikido. One day he left to Russia and never came back.
edited 14th Jan '11 9:21:10 AM by Magus
Collector Of Fine Oddities
My biology professor is a bit of an odd one. Before he became a teacher he was a nuclear engineer at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. He doesn't discuss much about what he did there; his usual response is "That's still classified".
He could probably be the poster-child for Absent-Minded Professor. During class he has the odd habit of walking out of the room while he's giving his lecture, and comes back ten minutes later, continuing right where he left off as he comes in the door. Some rather unscrupulous students will wait around for him to leave the room after he's called the roll and sneak off. One girl went for half of a semester doing thisthough I'm almost positive she failed. Why she payed hundreds of dollars for a class that she never even intended to complete is beyond me... and he never noticed, or at least pretended to not notice.
He's also rather odd about his Trademark Favorite Food, iced coffee products. During the middle of one class he announced to everyone "FIELDTRIP!", loaded everyone onto the bus, and went to Mc Donalds to grab a few of their coffee drinks. To justify the whole trip he took us by the local park and told us to find bugs for an hour.
Hell, now that I think about it I could fill an entire page full of tropes about the fellow. All in all he's certainly an interesting person to be around.
edited 14th Jan '11 9:52:51 AM by carbon-mantis
Thou errant flap-dragon!
My eight grade physics teacher was pretty funny but at other times scared the crap out of us or was just plain awkward. He had no qualms about cussing in front of us, but one time another teacher walked in and he ended up saying "Fuuuuuu-dang." Also, if you forgot your homework or said something that irritated him for some reason, he would stare at you over his glasses for a full 30 seconds and then continue as if nothing happened. He and my English teacher were Happily Married. It was hard to imagine a grump like him with such a bright, cheerful person, but they really were crazy about each other. Sometimes, though, he would have a breakdown, run out of the room, come back after five minutes with his hair in a mess, and drink coffee and take Risperidone. Most people thought it was a mint. He was also really, really snarky. Finally, at the end of the year, he announced that he was going to teach at UC Berkeley from now on. I heard that the English teacher/his wife is now pregnant, by the way. Also, I've asked around, and no one's seen him at Berkeley. A popular theory is that he has been institutionalized.
edited 2nd Feb '11 8:59:56 PM by snowfoxofdeath
Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey Bitchfest
I used to have an English Teacher who was known for being horribly strict.
She was in a Catholic school.
Yes, you read that correctly. She was horribly strict by Catholic school standards. -shudder-
"Who wants to hear about good stuff when the bottom of the abyss of human failure that you know doesn't exist is so much greater?"-Wraith
The Wanderer
My music teacher back in elementary and middle school was probably the most mean-spirited teacher I've ever had.
Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.
PARTY HARD!!!!
This thread would not be complete without a mention of my strangest teacher, Ms. Fran (no, not that one).
She was liberal leaning politically, and was happy to share those beliefs... constantly. And she didn't really just "lean" to the left like a reasonable person though; no, she was SUPER HIPPY!
Class would start out with everyone doing yoga and a rendition where everyone would talk about things that cause them trouble (no names were allowed to be mentioned) in IJBM fashion. After this we would light a candle, get in a circle, and read poetry (I swear this looked like a satanic ritual).
She would fret over the strangest things, like an argument on whether or not it's safe to clean your ears. The climax of this was her sending me into the hallway and shouting "Don't listen to him!". ...oookay. I was likely the only conservative in the entire class, and SUPER HIPPY was highly revered, which led to an armada of in-class flame wars.
She once didn't let me outside because my boots weren't quite boots but "boot-shoes" (as I now affectionately call them), and it took a call from my mother to confirm for Fran that my shoes were indeed for the purpose of snow ventures. During winter, you were not allowed to pick up snow no exceptions.
Lunch time was where it got weirdest, however. Everyone in the class had to go to the bathroom, one by one, no exceptions. If you didn't go, she made you. This became most troublesome when I had the misfortune of being in there as the pipes broke. Great. Apparently this was my fault, so for the rest of the year I was forcefully accompanied/escorted by other students and made to go to the bathroom. I'm pretty sure this is where I became unable to feel shame.
If you had anything like chips or candy, you had to share it.
This is where our saga comes to an end, as while I wasn't there to witness it (sadly), she was fired because she brought a child to tears by making him throw away his food because they didn't want to share it with the entire class.
...
Crazy.
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! ~ GOD
Jesus Christ I've had some strange teachers...
Well, let's take a trip back to 2000 when I started high school and work from there...
- Mrs. Froman, Freshman Algebra — On the first day of class, we're introduced to this short, 50-ish, petite brunette. We've all heard the stories, we all know — she's supposedly crazier than a shithouse rat. She introduces us to the material, gives us a syllabus explaining all the ins and outs of the coming semester of work. So far, she's as plain as vanilla ice cream. I was disappointed with this unassuming, quiet little woman. 45 minutes later, concluding her lecture, she says: "Oh, and regarding calculator use in my classroom — I personally love calculators. You punch maths in and you get correct answers out. They are lovely devices. So many centuries of math, culminating in such a fine instrument... lovely" she says, stroking her classic TI-84 calculator. Then, she hurls it the full length of the room, where it made a dent in our wall heater, letting the calculator skitter across the tile floor and come to a rest near the leg of my desk. "But you will not use them in this class...", she hissed, "DISMISSED!" I walked out, shell shocked.
- Mrs. Bryant, Freshman Composition — Not a whole lot to mention here, she watched a lot of Fear Factor and wold talk about it in class. I remember her spending a lot of time discussing the episode where contestants ate raw bull testicles. She thought it was horrid and strangely intriguing, I guess, because she spent most of the period talking about it. At one point, I jokingly said, "I'd have to know where the testicles came from before I ate them." To which she responded, "Let's say I gave them to you, would you eat MY balls?" I laughed, she laughed (after realizing what she said) and the whole class laughed. She also mentioned opening a restaurant around the bull testes concept that she would call "Buffalo Wings and Dings".
- Mr. Ludwig, Sophomore Chemistry — He was a very large man with a good sense of humor. He would frequently sneak up behind sleeping students while still lecturing, carrying a metal meterstick, would then throw it as hard as he could on the tiled floor by their desk, making the most insane clanging sound in the world. Many students fell on their asses after such attacks. He also, while discussing photoexcitation, he explained it thus: "I am a photon. And you all are electrons. Now, when exposed to the photon — big sexy photon <he then does a little awkward hip-shimmying dance here> — they are put into a high-energy excited state. <He then looks at a nearby student and says in his best Isaac Hayes voice> Are you excited?"
- Mr. and Mrs. Wade, Junior Trigonometry/Analytic Geometry and Honors English, respectively — To start, Mr. Wade was a genius. He had a hard time explaining anything to anyone. He was also a Scrabble national championship contender. He claimed to have memorized every single four-letter word in the Scrabble dictionary. He would frequently pass things down to his wife, who had the classroom on the first floor directly below his, by tying a teddy bear to a rope, bulldog clipping whatever it was he had to take down there ONTO the bear, and then, thowing the bear out the window to slam loudly on her window in the middle of class.
- Mr. Barricklow, Senior Physics — Would wear rainbow colored suspenders and too-tight pants all the time. Physics projects included building 15 foot tall trebuchets. He would interrupt class when the middle school kids would get too loud during P.E. across the street by saying "WAAAAUUGH, BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD, POTATOES FOR THE POTATO THRONE!" and then shoot his shoulder-mounted potato gun out the window, across the street at them children. I never got his reference until 5 years later when I started playing Warhammer. Funnier in retrospect.
I could go on to college and explain all the crazies that taught me there, but my hands are getting tired... Haha
edited 14th Jan '11 12:18:36 PM by AJesterOnly
Laugh it off, everybody
I've had a few.
- Sr. Bonita Good; don't let the name fool you. This is the most sadistic nun you will ever meet, but that's not why she's on this list. She's here because of her fascination with letter openers. She has a collection of hundreds of them. And woe upon you if you should ever comment on it.
in high school—
- Mrs. Corby; crazy in the good way. Made The History of Film Class into the best class I've ever had, as we literally had no assignments aside from exactly four quizzes and a final. Obsessed with Citizen Kane, firm believer in the Dark Side of the Rainbow theory.
- Ms. Lawrence; can best be described as "Osaka, except not Japanese, and a school teacher." Went off on tangents about her life, her boyfriend, and her dog pretty often. Naturally, she got made fun of for this by her students, and last I heard, she'd suffered an emotional breakdown and resigned.
- Mr. Klansek; obsessed with spicy things. Ate a bagel topped with a spread he made from chili peppers every morning.
- Mrs. Parumbo; Mythology, Philosophy and Psychology teacher. Hardcore World Of Warcraft player, 'nuff said.
edited 14th Jan '11 1:38:18 PM by SpainSun
I spread my wings and I learn how to fly....
Rabbit Season
Wait, your teacher got made fun of for going off on tangents to the point where she had a breakdown? Tangents are some of the most enjoyable parts of classes!
You're an ad hominem attack!
Laugh it off, everybody
Perhaps "tangents" isn't the best way to describe them.
She was spacey enough that she could rarely effectively give out assignments, and getting her to grade anything was a nightmare. I nearly failed her class. Not to mention, she was very sensitive, even by my standards, to the point where she once banned talking in her class entirely because she was convinced people were "talking about her and saying bad things".
I spread my wings and I learn how to fly....
NOT THE BEES
One of my physics profs made a laser-sighted blowgun that shot exacto-knives.
Share your stories about the funniest, meanest, or the plain old weirdest teachers.
edited 13th Jan '11 9:02:44 PM by snowfoxofdeath
Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey Bitchfest