Published by deborah.woehr on 15 Jan 2007 at 09:18 pm
Teachers from Hell
We’ve all had at least one during our school days. During the last week of school last year, my oldest son and I saw this parent picketing next to the parking lot entrance. I rolled my eyes as I drove into the entrance to drop him off. Because the parents do not know how to drive through a parking lot (I’m not kidding.), I got to actually read this guy’s sign as I was sitting there with my engine idling.
He had tacked a picture of the eighth grade science teacher, along with a short bar graph of the percentage of kids who failed her class that year. In hindsight, I wish I had parked my car on a side street and gone up to talk to him about this teacher. If I had, I would have marched into the administration office and changed my son’s school schedule right then because he got stuck with this woman.
I won’t go into the gory details except to say that the majority of the kids in her class, including my son, are failing or are barely passing. The school district knows this woman is a loser but can’t (or won’t) fire her. My son has been teetering on failing all semester.
His final is coming up on Wednesday. I’m hoping and praying that he passes this well enough to keep his D- grade. If he does, he’ll be rid of her and moving on to technical drafting class he signed up for. If he doesn’t, he may get stuck with another semester with her.
Keep your fingers crossed, send good vibes, etc. I’ll keep you posted.
michaelm on 16 Jan 2007 at 7:38 pm #
With three daughters in school, I can relate to this post.
I feel for you. It’s so damn difficult to fight with an administration that doesn’t want to rock the boat. Haven’t they all but done away with tenure at the HS level?
If I were you, I would get as many parents (and teachers) together and have this frickin’ boob of an educator ousted. How in God’s name can our kids learn with people like this?
Please keep us posted. Prayers are on the way…
~m
deborah.woehr on 16 Jan 2007 at 8:38 pm #
Thank you for your support, Michael. That means a lot. I’ll definitely let you know how things turn out.
Kids can’t learn from teachers who set them up for failure. As for the tenure, they haven’t done away with it out here. Any teacher who allows her ten year-old daughter to grade junior high school level papers should be ousted.
michaelm on 17 Jan 2007 at 6:21 am #
Hey Deb-
Just wanted to let you know that I posted a few comments last night on Supernatural.
Today they are nowhere to be found.
Any idea? I commented on the Russian UFO and the 162 (?) room haunted house.
I’m bamboozled.
Also, the last sentence in your comment to me…true?
God, the plot gets thicker. I can’t believe it.
Jeepers crow, what’s up with these people?
~m
deborah.woehr on 17 Jan 2007 at 7:01 am #
I approved and answered them just now.
We have to hold all comments in the cue because of those stupid spambots. I deleted up to fifty comments the weekend before.
As for the teacher, yes that is true. My son told me that last weekend. I couldn’t believe it, either. Last week he was doing a group lab project. The kids in his group each went up to her desk to see if they had done the assignment correctly. She marked off each wrong answer, threw the paper back at each kid, and said, “Go correct it, and bring it back.” The thing was, she never gave them the right answer, in the first place.
Then last week, she took their science books away from them and told them to study for their final, using their notes and homework papers. Well, if the majority of the notes and homework papers received F’s, how well do you think the kids are going to do on their finals??
Odile on 17 Jan 2007 at 11:23 am #
Hi from AAW,
I also have kids at school and it seems it’s the same as here in northern Europe. My son even stopped learning alltogether in “group 3″, that is when you learn how to read and write. I had a hard time teaching and motivating him and I even called the school inspector. This did help a bit. I forced them to test him and the test showed he was intelligent enough and this meant school was failing.
What I advise in your situation if you can afford it, is to let him take lessons with a tutor. You can keep on fighting the system, but generally, it takes more than one year to win. I tend to do both. Here the week teacher was asigned to another grade and was trained to work with another system. The results of the school here are improving, I had a modest part in it. I also imposed more or less a mathematics competition upon school. they were surprised at the results.
deborah.woehr on 17 Jan 2007 at 5:19 pm #
Bad teachers are tough to get rid of, I agree. Unless you have some serious clout within the school or the school district, you’re out of luck.
I’m fortunate that my mother-in-law can get through to him and motivate him. My husband and I tried, but failed miserably. We had thought about hiring a tutor when the problem began earlier this year.
I talked to him when I got home from work just now, and asked him if the answers came easy on the first part of that final. He said they did. Tomorrow, he takes the second half.
michaelm on 18 Jan 2007 at 2:22 am #
It’s a sad day when the abysmal state of the public school system mandates a tutor. The educational system has to stop this madness now because it’s spiralling out of control, and has been for sometime.
I’m both amazed and appalled at this situation, Deb.
Our poor kids…
This teacher should be ashamed of herself.
~m
deborah.woehr on 18 Jan 2007 at 7:18 pm #
Me, too, Michael. This teacher is so hated that the kids counted down the minutes to when the bell rang today. She retaliated by keeping them after for five minutes. We’ll find out how well my son did within two weeks. For now, no more science!
Odile on 20 Jan 2007 at 11:31 am #
It’s a pitty, science can be such fun. optical illusions, jacob’s ladder, fun to do electrical experiments: e.g. make your own doorbell with music (I’ve put some links on my blog, not only for myself). My children do these things at home. Mind you, my daughter hates a certain teacher, but this teacher actually is a very good teacher for her, improving her skills in a way that a kind teacher would not succeed. She insists on getting details right. And she is really much less nonchalant than she used to be.
I’m hoping your son did well on his tests. There are also fun things to do on internet with science, but I know mostly Dutch sites.
deborah.woehr on 21 Jan 2007 at 8:17 am #
Thank you, Odile.
The hard teachers are usually the best because they force you to do your best while teaching you what you need to know. My youngest son does very well with those kinds of teachers. I’ll check out your blog.