Revenge on disliked teachers

[marylander1940]

I had a friend who put sand on the gas tank of his teacher, at that time they had no safety key.

[Rudynate]

It was not very common when I was in junior high....in 1956-57. My aunt knew the principal who was received the appointment at the last minute when the previous principal left unexpectedly. He had to use the plan already set up which left the building in chaos. The new principal have been the head of a six-room school, which included only a few 5th and 6th grades. So he had to make what to us (the students) was a radical change. I am glad to know it is now commonplace.

 

My first three years of high school I went to a cushy suburban high school, where they had the energy and resources to play around with innovative practices and programming. My second year of high school, they implemented a type of scheduling called modular flexible scheduling. Instead of periods, the day was divided into 20 20-minute time modules. You've never seen such a clusterfuck. The idea behind it was that different academic fields required different amounts of class time and different types of exposure. Some things, like history, lent themselves to a lecture format. Other things, like foreign languages required intense exposure. On paper it all sounded very exciting. But what a disaster!! They abandoned it after three or four years and went back to the normal school day of seven periods.

[+ José Soplanucas]

My first three years of high school I went to a cushy suburban high school, where they had the energy and resources to play around with innovative practices and programming. My second year of high school, they implemented a type of scheduling called modular flexible scheduling. Instead of periods, the day was divided into 20 20-minute time modules. You've never seen such a clusterfuck. The idea behind it was that different academic fields required different amounts of class time and different types of exposure. Some things, like history, lent themselves to a lecture format. Other things, like foreign languages required intense exposure. On paper it all sounded very exciting. But what a disaster!! They abandoned it after three or four years and went back to the normal school day of seven periods.

 

I commend them for trying it for three years. New trends in education nowadays have often a much shorter life.

[AdamSmith]

Several years later when my high school principal retired this teacher applied for the principal's job, not knowing that his old department head was on the selection committee. Among school administrators and staff there was one notorious interview ending with a chair-slinging, that was laughed about for years.

BRAVO!!!

 

My high school's principal wasn't quite that bad, but he was habitually and needlessly confrontational and hectoring toward the poor faculty, who did nothing to deserve it. He saw that as what he had to do to preserve his authority with them. Which of course was nil, as they had no respect for him, the basis of real authority.

 

And he was continually trying to pull the same crap on the student body, who, this being the 1970s, dealt with him by ignoring him. "BOYS WILL NO LONGER BE PERMITTED TO WEAR TANK TOPS." So of course what did EVERY boy wear the next day and all that week? Ditto for girls and hot pants. Etc., etc.

 

In senior year, I was managing editor of the school newspaper, and one of my beats was to cover and report on the monthly school board meetings. Attending the first one of the year, I discovered these were 98% endless tedium that dragged on far into the night, perpetrated by the pompous gasbag mediocrities who made up the board, and who only ever discussed trivia because that was all their pinheads could encompass.

 

One group of staff who always attended these meetings, to contribute if called on, were the school system's so-called Area Directors. Each of these oversaw a certain number of the district's schools, and reported to the county school superintendent. Seeking some desperate way to get out of attending this horrid spectacle every month, I remembered that a classmate's mother was office secretary to the Area Director for our school.

 

So I got the mother to introduce me to this Director, whom I delightedly found to be one of those shrewd Southern women of understated high wit who read people and situations at a glance, and missed very little. (She reminded me a little bit of how I imagined Eudora Welty to be. With even a tinge of F. O'Connor thrown in.) Exactly who you want actually directing operations, not just sitting on some lard-ass governing committee.

 

She liked me, and was happy to have me phone her the day after each board meeting to get her rundown of what had gone on, so I could report it without suffering through the thing itself.

 

As I gained her confidence, I began whispering into her sharp ear a restrained but steady stream of reports on all the bizarre behavioral tics and worse of Our Dear Principal. I kept this up the whole year. She was all ears for it, right from the get-go. I got the sense it confirmed everything she had long suspected about him.

 

The next year he was transferred to head a small elementary school out in the boondocks.

 

Mission Accomplished.

[Epigonos]

As a retired high school teacher who taught for thirty-six years many of the stories presented here are, UNFORTUNATELY, right on. I was lucky enough that during those years I had only two principals both of whom were outstanding. I was also extremely fortunate to have had the privilege of working with wonderful parents and great students. On the other hand some of my teaching colleagues were lazy, stupid, fucking assholes.

 

My first year teaching I got into a sustained argument with a very bright student when I pontificated that teachers liked and enjoyed teenagers or they wouldn’t be teaching. The students strongly disagreed. When I ran across the young man several years later I had to admit that he had indeed been correct.

 

One of my colleagues was a vindictive son-of-a-bitch. On the first day of school each year he would identify two or three students in each of his classes and then go after them with a vengeance. On a Saturday evening, one year, his room was broken into and vandalized. His fancy high back swivel leather chair was slashed to pieces and his files were all ram sacked and many were destroyed. He was certain one of the kids he had harassed had been the perpetrator but he could not prove it. A couple of years later the kid he suspected happened to join the gym where I worked out and we became casual gym friends. One day he asked if I remembered the above incident and I responded of course. He then readily admitted that he had indeed been the perpetrator. I asked if he wasn’t afraid that I would repeat his story and he immediately responded NO asserting that he was convinced I hated the asshole as much as he did – damn he had that one right.

[+ Kufrol]

The principal of the high school in suburban Portland, Oregon where I student taught in 1976 was disliked equally by the students and faculty. He had no sense of humor, was confrontational, mean, and tried to inflict his religious views onto the ethos of the school. He had earned the nickname, Norman the Mormon (he was indeed a LDS). Fast-forward to June, the senior class gift to the school was presented to him at graduation, a one-way plane ticket to Salt Lake City. The class sponsors received a mild reprimand from the Board, and Norman found a job at another school the following year.

[+ WilliamM]

As a retired high school teacher who taught for thirty-six years many of the stories presented here are, UNFORTUNATELY, right on. I was lucky enough that during those thirty-six years I had only two principals both of whom were outstanding. I was also extremely fortunate to have had the privilege of working with wonderful parents and great students. On the other hand some of my teaching colleagues were lazy, stupid, fucking assholes.

 

I have an excellent memory of my teachers and principals from second grade through senior year in high school. But, I believe I was only able to accurately evaluate them after spending two years in the U.S. military and a few years of working as a civilian back in the states For example, I learned by accident that my then current 5th grade teacher and her husband had skipped town without paying many months rent. A few years later, her husband committed suicide. She was an excellent teacher, but I know I always under rate her because of what I heard directly from her former landlord.

 

Yes, one of my teachers whom I rated more highly said in class exactly what the "bright student" maintained in his conversations with you. Her comment, again to the entire class, "I do not know why people who dislike children and teens become teachers." That was my sixth grade teacher, who was married and had a six-year only child herself.

 

That leads me to ask @AdamSmith if he too changed his opinion about his teachers as he aged himself.

[sincitymix]

This makes me also remember a science teacher i had. The first day i walked in to her class, she looked at me and said ... Ms. Krause "hmm *last name* You are *my sisters name* brother?"

Me: "Yes. That would be Me."

Ms. Krause "Oh. your sister was a horrible student. I am pretty sure you will be no exception. Go sit down"

Me: *thinking what the hell. what did *my sisters name* do to make this teacher such a bitch*"

I had a horrible year of hell with this science teacher. I seriously wanted to throw acid on her.

My sister did verify that Ms. Krause was a horrible tyrannical lesbian bitch of the highest order.

At the end of the school year, she did say that I wasnt the horrible under achiever that she had assumed i was.. but she still didnt like me. :eek: preconceived impression of me because of my sister.

[AdamSmith]

That leads me to ask @AdamSmith if he too changed his opinion about his teachers as he aged himself.

Actually not. (To quote Skiles when Sully asked him, a few seconds above the Hudson, 'Got any ideas?')

 

My habit was always to idealize them, and to look to them for what I could learn, not only in the subject matter, but in how to think and live.

 

So when I saw shortfall, I was not projecting. I was seeing something in them that was real, and that deeply disappointed me.

 

So no, I never found occasion to revise my judgment of them, the good and bad alike.

[+ WilliamM]

So no, I never found occasion to revise my judgment of them, the good and bad alike.

 

I understand. Until the 7th grade math was my favorite subject, but I had a math teacher in the 7th grade who thought she was the vice principal and was

often out of her room talking to the principal instead of teaching. The same thing happened in the 8th grade, only the teacher was actually the vice principal.

 

In the 5th and 6th grade and in high school, I loved math. My solution was to concentrate on the courses I liked. I also had the vice principal for American history, so I was getting low grades from him in math and A+ from him in American history.

[+ WilliamM]

WOW! Some of you seem really over the line, carrying out truly evil revenge plots! It's quite funny, yet I have to be truthful and admit, I'm a bit shocked!!!

.

Yes, I am surprised as well. I was far more focused on college. I always had part-time jobs in high school. My father died when I was relatively young, before we could talk about college. And my mom did not finish high school. Perhaps I had an unrealistic view of college acceptance, but I was far more concerned about attending an elite college than getting back at a teacher.

 

Footnote: My mom grew up in Boston and was far more street smart than my dad, who did graduate college. My mother always made it a point to know all my teachers, a wonderful strategy for excellent recommendations.

[AdamSmith]

.I was far more concerned about attending an elite college than getting back at a teacher.

The two goals never seemed to me to be in conflict.

 

Indeed, my successful project to rid our high school of its principal struck me as good practice for Professional Real Life.

[Epigonos]

Some of these replies are really interesting. I ALWAYS used to tell my students that if they hated my guts and wanted to jump up on a chair and cuss me out with every four letter word know to man they should go for it IF they were willing to face the consequences. They needed to understand that they would be thrown out of my class and possibly the school and if doing so was worth those consequences they should definitely "go for it". If, HOWEVER, after cussing me out and being thrown out of my class and possibly transferred to another school they were appalled at those consequences and didn't think they deserved them they were stupid and deserved no further consideration. I always "preached" - consider carefully the possible consequences of yours actions before implementing them and thus you will NEVER be surprised or unhappy with those consequences

[+ WilliamM]

The two goals never seemed to me to be in conflict.

 

I had a lot to protect. I was the first person in my mom's very large family to attend college, let alone an elite college. She sacrificed a lot after my dad died.

 

Even more to the point, I had no interest at all in getting back at a teacher, or anyone else.

 

I am older than you. I attended a good public school, but only a few people went to college back in 1960-61.

[+ WilliamM]

Indeed, my successful project to rid our high school of its principal struck me as good practice for Professional Real Life

 

After grad school, I was drafted and served at Fort Dix in New Jersey for a year and in Vietnam in an infantry brigade for a year.

 

I have no idea what you mean by practice

 

Footnote: I do not enjoy playing the Vietnam card. To be honest, I use it because there have to be other people here who served in Vietnam or Iraq, but never mentioned it. Do not worry, just my example of a bogus justification.

[AdamSmith]

I had a lot to protect. I was the first person in my mom's very large family to attend college, let alone an elite college.

Same here. My mother went to secretarial school; father went to work for the Post Office directly out of the Army.

[AdamSmith]

I have no idea what you mean by practice

Practice for handling the politics and political battles that infest both university faculty life and the business world.

[+ WilliamM]

Practice for handling the politics and political battles that infest both university faculty life and the business world.

 

If I could survive in Vietnam in an infantry brigade (and not at a desk job) without practice, you were going to survive and prosper in both the jobs you mentioned. I am also interested to understand why you started this thread.

[AdamSmith]

If I could survive in Vietnam in an infantry brigade (and not at a desk job) without practice, you were going to survive and prosper in both the jobs you mentioned. I am also interested to understand why you started this thread.

Surely you went through basic training before they put you in the field?

 

I suppose I started the thread because the topic seemed interesting to me.

 

No deep dark motive, I promise!

[+ WilliamM]

Surely you went through basic training before they put you in the field?

 

Yes, I went through 8 weeks of basic training and 8 weeks of advanced infantry training. All that training back in 1967 was more appropriate for World War Two than Vietnam. a different kind of battle. You have to rely on your instincts, judgment of other people, luck. Nobody is really ready for the first week in Vietnam.

 

However, it was easy to make life-long friends. And I am very grateful for a VA pension for Agent Orange problems. And it has helped me connect with college students by knowing someone who is willing to talk about Vietnam. People who had much more difficult experiences are usually unwilling to talk about Vietnam, even to me occasionally.

[AdamSmith]

I had a friend who put sand on the gas tank of his teacher, at that time they had no safety key.

My father had a schoolmate who put sugar in the principal's gas tank. Fucked up the engine beyond belief. The poor man had to tear it down and clean all the affected parts with gallons of solvent before it would run again. (This was toward the end of the Depression, so no $$$ to pay a mechanic.)

[AdamSmith]

I was editor of my high school newspaper. I was* a petty queen and had this hitlist of faculty who were just awful people in general. The type that were "untouchable" by tenure or relationship to other staff.

You were born a little bit too late. In the '70s, nothing was "untouchable" to us running the school paper. Mainly because our journalism teacher who guided us in the venture made us all go out into the community and sell businesses print ads that would run in the paper, so that we were self-funded and thus independent of any need to curry favor with the school administration for any kind of support. (Each of us actually had a sales quota we had to meet, and how well we met it counted as part of our grade in her Journalism class. Real World, kids.)

 

And then we always loudly claimed First Amendment freedom from any right the admin believed it held to censor us, and they would go away impotently, muttering darkly to themselves.

 

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." A.J. Liebling

[Rudynate]

My father had a schoolmate who put sugar in the principal's gas tank. Fucked up the engine beyond belief. The poor man had to tear it down and clean all the affected parts with gallons of solvent before it would run again. (This was toward the end of the Depression, so no $$$ to pay a mechanic.)

 

 

When I was a kid, somebody, as a Halloween prank, put sugar in our gas tank. The engine had to be rebuilt.

[+ Axiom2001]

I might as well be candid! As a retired teacher who was highly respected for the most part-- I had difficulty reading many of the posts. A few years back when I decided to substitute selectively, one of my former students, now a teacher himself, asked me if I remembered how certain students in his particular class gave me "trouble." I didn't answer his question but did have to smile and reflect when I read his guidelines/rules which he'd left for his youngsters when I eagerly and proudly substituted for him!

 

One class had its 10th or 15th reunion; I can't remember but was surprised how I had been perceived when I read the stuff some had written about me on the net (in their response section.) I chose NOT to go to their reunion, but three of the four that I've attended-- the class treated me with the utmost respect. One of my former students, now a true adult, cried because he stated that he had always had troubles learning vocabulary words. I tried to reassure him that he was a fine young man when he was a freshman in my class.

 

Well, guys, I just thought I had to respond but from a different angle. I disliked youngsters who failed to use "ALL" of their skills and talents, for I wanted them to achieve to the highest of standards since they intiially could have...!

[+ WilliamM]

I disliked youngsters who failed to use "ALL" of their skills and talents, for I wanted them to achieve to the highest of standards since they intiially could have...!

 

Maybe that dislike was obvious to the students, thus the negative comments years later. To be fair, I doubt that you expected the word "dislike" to ruin your entire post.