Teachers / School

[carefreeluke]

A thread to talk about your school life. 

How do you look back on your time at school?

Any stories?

What were you like?

And mainly out of interest for me, as I'm a teacher myself, what made a good teacher in your opinion? Who were your favourite teachers and why?

[Toinho]

1 minute ago, carefreeluke said:

A thread to talk about your school life. 

How do you look back on your time at school?

Any stories?

What were you like?

And mainly out of interest for me, as I'm a teacher myself, what made a good teacher in your opinion? Who were your favourite teachers and why?

What do you teach mate? What qualifications do you need in England to become a teacher?

[carefreeluke]

Just now, Toinho said:

What do you teach mate? What qualifications do you need in England to become a teacher?

I teach English as a second language mate in Spain. So not quite the same.

[Toinho]

7 minutes ago, carefreeluke said:

I teach English as a second language mate in Spain. So not quite the same.

Still requires a lot of the same attributes needed to make a good or effective teacher, I would imagine.

Good communication skills, patience, fun, caring, someone who listens... differentiates

 

My school life was fairly unremarkable, I was very shy, quite and until about year 10, nerdy.  I did well throughout until my last couple of years but still got the grades needed to make it to university, despite going to an interesting high school... fortunately we had a football academy so each day my timetable included football as a lesson...

I got in trouble very rarely and only ever got in one “fight” when I was about 11 I had a kid in a headlock during a soccer match because he started trying to punch me. My only detention ever (I think but I’ve drank heavily this past 12 years) came from that. 

I feel I only recall good or bad teachers - none in between. The good ones to me were the ones who showed a genuine interest in you. They were also fun or funny. 

 

[nudge+]

I wasn't very fond of school as I felt a lot of it was just a waste of time, so once I turned 14 or 15, I started attending only those classes that I cared for and found useful. That said, I'm very thankful for the high quality of education that I've been given as most of the teachers in my school were great; very knowledgeable, approachable and had the ability to explain things well. The curriculum was well balanced as well and covered a broad scope of subjects as a lot of attention was given to general knowledge; something that I later learned was not self-evident and nowhere near the same level in many other countries. 

As already mentioned, I really appreciate most of the teachers I had with a very few exceptions, but my two favourites were my Language & Literature teacher from Year 8 to Year 10 and my History teacher from Year 5 to Year 10, both for somewhat different reasons though. The former had an extremely unorthodox style of teaching, was very fun, and her role was more like that of an older friend than a figure of authority but she kept the balance well there. In fact, she and her family helped me quite a bit when life at home was a bit rough and we became good friends later and still are up until this day. The latter was widely known as a strict, demanding teacher, but it was more of a facade to keep silly teenagers in check and she treated everyone fairly. I credit her with helping me develop my critical thinking and analysing skills as she more than encouraged us to think for ourselves and take any claims and "facts" (including those in the textbook) with a grain of salt and look for the bigger picture, patterns and different perspectives when evaluating sources of information etc. So for me that's exactly what a good teacher is - someone who is knowledgeable, truly loves the subject they are teaching and manages to keep students interested, prioritises understanding of the subject material instead of memorising it,  and actually cares about their students and wants them to become well-rounded persons.

[Smiley Culture]

Had a trainee teacher that killed his sister-in-law because she called him “stupid”. 

[tlr]

I think I was indifferent at the time, I was academically good and enjoyed certain subjects and had a few good mates, but there were also some classes, teachers and students who made it hell; college was worse, two years of utter wankers I hope I never see again.

As for what makes a good teacher, it depends on the circumstances: we had a History teacher, stereotypical Scotsman (a massive Hibs fan) who was a laugh a minute, but because he was so engaging he had the class exactly how he wanted us, always asking questions, taking notes and all that. Never a dull moment and you could tell he genuinely went for the rapport. We also had a Music teacher who you could tell literally lived for what he was teaching and that dedication was really infectious, but he was an awful, manipulative teacher in general.

[Danny]

Didn’t do that well at school. Half deaf so had a lot of concentration issues in big classrooms at Primary and Secondary, lost interest by the end of it. Spent bits of year 11 bunking off and spent most of first year sixth form bunking off so left with one GCSE.

Had I of consistently been in small classrooms I’d probably have done well as once I applied myself consistently I generally performed well in class, but as it was I’d not have done well in further education.

Now it’s a different story and I’d do well in further education, but you’re bound to when you choose to do it for your careers sake.

[Berserker]

5 hours ago, nudge said:

I wasn't very fond of school as I felt a lot of it was just a waste of time, so once I turned 14 or 15, I started attending only those classes that I cared for and found useful. That said, I'm very thankful for the high quality of education that I've been given as most of the teachers in my school were great; very knowledgeable, approachable and had the ability to explain things well. The curriculum was well balanced as well and covered a broad scope of subjects as a lot of attention was given to general knowledge; something that I later learned was not self-evident and nowhere near the same level in many other countries. 

As already mentioned, I really appreciate most of the teachers I had with a very few exceptions, but my two favourites were my Language & Literature teacher from Year 8 to Year 10 and my History teacher from Year 5 to Year 10, both for somewhat different reasons though. The former had an extremely unorthodox style of teaching, was very fun, and her role was more like that of an older friend than a figure of authority but she kept the balance well there. In fact, she and her family helped me quite a bit when life at home was a bit rough and we became good friends later and still are up until this day. The latter was widely known as a strict, demanding teacher, but it was more of a facade to keep silly teenagers in check and she treated everyone fairly. I credit her with helping me develop my critical thinking and analysing skills as she more than encouraged us to think for ourselves and take any claims and "facts" (including those in the textbook) with a grain of salt and look for the bigger picture, patterns and different perspectives when evaluating sources of information etc. So for me that's exactly what a good teacher is - someone who is knowledgeable, truly loves the subject they are teaching and manages to keep students interested, prioritises understanding of the subject material instead of memorising it,  and actually cares about their students and wants them to become well-rounded persons.

And you were allowed to do that by the school?

[nudge+]

1 minute ago, Berserker said:

And you were allowed to do that by the school?

I didn't ask for their permission  Nah, I kind of found a loophole and exploited it... I always excelled academically, submitted all necessary papers on time, made sure I attended the class on test days, etc. On top of that I also took part in various national competitions for various subjects (math, physics, chemistry etc) as well as sports for years whenever I was asked to represent my school. Didn't have any significant behavioural problems either, so basically there was absolutely nothing they could do but accept it after a while  I ended up acing the exams nationwide and graduating on top of the class despite missing roughly 60-70% of the classes in my last two years; they even gave me a nice watch along with my diploma to acknowledge that  

[Smiley Culture]

Didn’t mind school but couldn’t be arsed with it all. It just all felt false and forced really. Like the whole spiel you’d get about how serious our Year 9 SAT’s were and how they’d have a knock-on effect on us and how monumentally huge GCSE’s were to our lives when in fact it was just the teachers and the school wanting the best possible results for the school to rank highly and be rated by Ofsted. 

Found school easier but I was probably quite frustrating to teach looking back, not because I was an arsehole or anything, I liked a laugh and a joke as much as the next person, but if I could be bothered and actually bothered to revise, I’d have got top marks. 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

I bunked school in Australia when I was 14 and run away from home for 1 and a half days but eventually ended up back home, long story really.

But it's when I was around 19 years old I suddenly realized what I had missed at school and started to read a lot and when I joined the army I ended up as a clerk in RHQ in Dortmund, Germany, left the army then I did a lot of clerical work because of my good army discharge report, I even went to college down South for 6 months and got myself a diploma, I used this as a blackmail tool to our then young son & daughter who had left high school and started college.

I came in one day with the diploma and showed our son & daughter the dip and said "Look at this, I am bloody 30 odd years old and have a diploma before you two..." they ended up better than me and when they finished college they ended up with 4 diplomas each, oh what a life.   

[IgnisExcubitor]

I was fairly mischievous. Even a bully at one point, until one incident. I believed my bullying was just harmless teasing, until that friend opened up to me. How hard it was for him at home, because he was not bright like his elder brother and his parents always compared the siblings and never spoke nicely of him. He felt unvalued by everyone and contemplated suicide. It changed me completely - from thinking my jokes didn't affect anyone to being careful about others. 

I was decent in studies and sports. Not spectacular. Even represented the school in chess and kho-kho. 

Most of my teachers were really nice, often going out of their way to help the students. My favourite was my history teacher who knew that a bunch of us liked to read and so she would lend us novels from her collection. 

And then, there was the algebra teacher, that most of the lads in school had a crush on. And I think she knew it and handled it well. 

Looking back it was the best time of my life (even though back then all of us just couldn't wait to get to college) and I would to love to go back in time if given a chance. 

[Berserker]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

I didn't ask for their permission  Nah, I kind of found a loophole and exploited it... I always excelled academically, submitted all necessary papers on time, made sure I attended the class on test days, etc. On top of that I also took part in various national competitions for various subjects (math, physics, chemistry etc) as well as sports for years whenever I was asked to represent my school. Didn't have any significant behavioural problems either, so basically there was absolutely nothing they could do but accept it after a while  I ended up acing the exams nationwide and graduating on top of the class despite missing roughly 60-70% of the classes in my last two years; they even gave me a nice watch along with my diploma to acknowledge that  

That sounds great, your school were also very ahead of times. I also aced exams and without ever studying, just from what i picked up from class and i used to skip school for the maximum allowed days which was 30 per year i think haha. About 10 years ago they made changes here so you could not attend school, study online if you wanted and only go to take the exams for those that preferred it, which is cool.

[Guest]

School was horrible for me me. I was relentlessly bullied and accidemacally really bad. I don't really think teachers do are allowed to do enough to tackle bullying. 

[Devil-Dick Willie]

Fuckin hated school. Went to public schools, teachers didn't give a fuck, I didn't give a fuck. Got expelled from highschool, went to a new one, then fucked that up too. Fucking hate schools and teachers alike. 

[True Blue]

Things i recall from school is that i hated bullies. Personally i was never bullied since i fought back and showed i wasn't the victim. However if someone else was bullied i always settled things with the bully either with reason or with fists, preferably the first since i dislike fighting if not necessary. My middle school teachers were okay i guess, disliked my high school teachers since they were mostly cunts.

[Stan]

20 hours ago, carefreeluke said:

A thread to talk about your school life. 

How do you look back on your time at school?

Any stories?

What were you like?

And mainly out of interest for me, as I'm a teacher myself, what made a good teacher in your opinion? Who were your favourite teachers and why?

 

16 hours ago, Smiley Culture said:

Had a trainee teacher that killed his sister-in-law because she called him “stupid”. 

[MUFC]

School years were immense, I left Primary school in the summer of 1990. Was born in England but parents and rest of family came from Pakistan, being in the minority was great, was such an adventure. Primary school was such a buzz, as was high school. Mum having to come in as me and our posse were pissing about so much. 

Bit off topic but college was a great laugh, nobody likes education but when you have such a laugh, it compensates for it. Uni started off great till my final year, got moved to another building which was full of sobs with fake posh voices. 

Never had a problem with teachers, any who were harsh and strict we just gave them a hard time.

[nudge+]

11 hours ago, Berserker said:

That sounds great, your school were also very ahead of times. I also aced exams and without ever studying, just from what i picked up from class and i used to skip school for the maximum allowed days which was 30 per year i think haha. About 10 years ago they made changes here so you could not attend school, study online if you wanted and only go to take the exams for those that preferred it, which is cool.

That sounds good and I absolutely agree that older pupils should be able to make such decision for themselves and study online instead of in-class. Is it applicable to all ages though? As I think that it wouldn't necessarily be beneficial for young kids; I think in-class education is also important in terms of learning social skills, self-regulation, conflict solving skills, discipline, etc. For modern kids and teens even more so, as they seem to be well versed in using technology but lack interpersonal face to face interactions, social skills and resilience extremely. 

[Berserker]

16 minutes ago, nudge said:

That sounds good and I absolutely agree that older pupils should be able to make such decision for themselves and study online instead of in-class. Is it applicable to all ages though? As I think that it wouldn't necessarily be beneficial for young kids; I think in-class education is also important in terms of learning social skills, self-regulation, conflict solving skills, discipline, etc. For modern kids and teens even more so, as they seem to be well versed in using technology but lack interpersonal face to face interactions, social skills and resilience extremely. 

It's for highschool, 12+. And i do agree that to actually attend school is important, and not only because of what you actually learn in the classes but because of the interactions, socialising, making friends, etc.

[Carnivore Chris]

A few of them(such as my English teacher and History teacher) were brilliant and the type who I wouldn't mind bumping into one day to see how they are doing. Some were obviously strict as fuck, although they are just doing their job. You have to be strict in order to control a class, or the little bastards will walk all over you.

There was one teacher who sticks in the back of my mind for being a bellend though and it was nothing to do with him "doing his job" when you look back now:-

My form tutor(well in year 7 and 8 before I moved to a different form) was a cock who thought it was hilarious to send people to isolation, give them detentions or generally humiliate them in front of a class. He was pretty much a bully and around 6 years ago, I was doing a job at a house and it turned out being an old wood-work teacher of mine. She left in year 8 due to having a mental break down and at the time, the pupils thought it was due to them. It turns out that she was actually being bullied by this clown and it's the reason she left. I always had run ins with him at school, but years later I found out a lot about him and how he used to bully women teachers. An absolute rotten cunt. He even grabbed me by the scruff of the neck when I was about 11/12.

The English teacher was the best, not just because she was a young blonde(in her 20s then probably) with big tits, but because she was sound and was genuinely there for the pupils individually if they required it.. There was even a girl at school who lived in a children's home and she took her in. She was great and I did in fact used to see her in the pub and have a few games of pool with her when I was about 16/17.

[Azeem]

One odd thing from my school years from 9th-12th grade was that every year one of my female teachers got pregnant and a substitute teacher had to come.

[RandoEFC+]

It's interesting reading how many people didn't think much of their teachers. Obviously I'm biased but the expectations that people have of what their teachers should be capable of is mad when you compare it to other fields.

Take football management. Top managers get worshipped for being able to motivate players who are already earning six figures a week and organising these already incredibly talented individuals to play as a cohesive unit, and people think that's a difficult job. 

Replace the highly paid and talented footballers with hormonal, distracted teenagers that are having to learn everything from scratch. Do you really expect there to be thousands of individuals up and down the country who are capable of making these great connections with all 30 individuals in every class they teach and inspiring them to great things in their subject? Talk about unrealistic.

At least in the UK, for what teachers are paid, the type of publicity they get and the fact that they are constantly battling waves of paperwork, disruptive children and unhelpful parents to boot, it's a minor miracle that the majority of the time, most kids in the country have somebody teaching them who's committed to their job, supportive and knows what they're talking about. You just aren't going to get the Oh Captain My Captain moment from every single teacher who's brave enough to try and teach 30 teenagers about trigonometry. Teachers are only normal people too who spend most of their time shattered and mildly annoyed about how much work they have to do, just like everyone else.

[Inverted]

I really liked high school for the most part. When I first moved up from primary school when I was 12, I was extremely shy and struggled to make new friends, which made the first few years a bit tough socially. But I eventually came out of my shell and became quite well liked (I think) and  eventually had a great social life for the last couple of years of high school.

Academically, for some reason high-school level just clicked for me. I think if you're a fast reader/writer and can retain information reasonably well, then you're basically playing high school on easy mode. I got straight As (apart from 1 B in final year, when I already had my offer for uni) without really doing a huge amount of work, and most teachers ended up liking me because they felt I had some kind of talent for whatever their particular subject was, or was extremely dedicated to it, when to me it was just another subject I needed to get a good grade in.

The only classes I really enjoyed were Music, History, and English, but all of my teachers were good I'd say. Our school seemed to have a weird trend of teachers being moved for disciplinary reasons (and our head music teacher was apparently known for sleeping with senior pupils) but I never experienced that obviously.

I also think that I had a good experience because when the time came to sort the classes for English and Maths, I was always in the top class with other students who generally gave a shit. And obviously, because it's worth more to the school to get students from a B to an A, as opposed to from a fail to a D, we were always given the best teachers in the school.