Picklebobble2 · 56-60, M
Lucky to have had several really good Teachers in an era of either Hippies or old school (cap; gown and cane swishers)
Two that stand out were Mr. File (Hippy) in Junior school (7-11) and Mr. Goddard in Senior school (cane swisher. Lethal with a bunsen burner tube with an impossible number of knots along it)
Forty years on and still in the memory
Two that stand out were Mr. File (Hippy) in Junior school (7-11) and Mr. Goddard in Senior school (cane swisher. Lethal with a bunsen burner tube with an impossible number of knots along it)
Forty years on and still in the memory
Gusman · 61-69, M
Mine was my Year 10 Science Teacher Mr Mcgee, He was always encouraging us to think about every aspect of the world around us. To question everything.
He was always coming out with Phrases such as, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny?
And he often quoted Professor Julius Sumner Miller, "Why is it so?"
One of my subjects in high school - years 7 - 10 - was woodwork.
My handyman skills were next to nothing. Sure I was only 14 years of age so no one came down too hard on me.
Our final project for the year was to make a bedside cabinet. Well, I struggled and was running out of time to complete my task. The name of my woodwork teacher is lost to me. I do remember him giving me so much of his time that the project was completed and I received a pass for woodwork.
Technical Drawing was another subject. Oh sh*t. My mind never worked that way. Technical Drawing, I struggled severely and if it was not for my teacher, Mr Rush I most definitely would have failed.
Mr Rush was a teacher who was aware of my struggles going on at home and he gave me so much of his time I came to like the man.
With his help, I passed Technical Drawing.
Three years after I had finished school, Mr Rush contacted me and asked if I would give a talk about the struggles of life and what is required to get through it.
Here I was, 18 years of age being asked to give a talk to year 10 students about adversity and how to deal with it.
My instinct was to immediately say no, and we left it at that.
I went home and thought a whole lot about what Mr Rush was asking me to do. I realised, even at an early stage in my life that I had put in coping strategies to try and keep some semblance of self.
I gave that speech to a small class of twelve students. Most of them were not interested but there were a couple who were listening intently. I surmised that they might be going through some bad stuff, so I talked a little about there are many children struggling and how difficult it is to talk to adults about the fears and anxiety afflicting young people.
One student approached me after and thanked me. He was grateful to know he was not alone, and he gained a little confidence from listening to me.
I done my first year Fitting and Turning apprenticeship training at the Mt Lyell Copper Mines on the west coast of Tasmania in 1977.
My instructor was MR STURGESS. He was a great trainer with an abundance of patience.
I was really hopeless at math and critical thinking. Mr Sturgess went out of his way to ensure I passed the first year of my training. He went as far as tutoring me at his home 3 evenings a week.
When the exam came around, I passed, but only just. Still, it was enough for me to progress to the next stage.
I am truly indebted to Mr Sturgess for all his help and encouragement.
Our training was held in a building on the mine site, and we shared that building with the Electrical trainees.
Their trainer was Mr Mcnair. He was from a military background and was far too strict on not only his students but also the fitter and turner students.
He ran things with military precision and standards. All apprentices disliked him, he was great at imparting his electrical knowledge, but his military attitude was a real downer.
Someone was writing graffiti on the toilet cubicle walls. His reaction? Remove the doors.
We had to take a welding screen to place in front of the door so as to have some privacy.
Mr Mcnair was let go two years later.
He was always coming out with Phrases such as, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny?
And he often quoted Professor Julius Sumner Miller, "Why is it so?"
One of my subjects in high school - years 7 - 10 - was woodwork.
My handyman skills were next to nothing. Sure I was only 14 years of age so no one came down too hard on me.
Our final project for the year was to make a bedside cabinet. Well, I struggled and was running out of time to complete my task. The name of my woodwork teacher is lost to me. I do remember him giving me so much of his time that the project was completed and I received a pass for woodwork.
Technical Drawing was another subject. Oh sh*t. My mind never worked that way. Technical Drawing, I struggled severely and if it was not for my teacher, Mr Rush I most definitely would have failed.
Mr Rush was a teacher who was aware of my struggles going on at home and he gave me so much of his time I came to like the man.
With his help, I passed Technical Drawing.
Three years after I had finished school, Mr Rush contacted me and asked if I would give a talk about the struggles of life and what is required to get through it.
Here I was, 18 years of age being asked to give a talk to year 10 students about adversity and how to deal with it.
My instinct was to immediately say no, and we left it at that.
I went home and thought a whole lot about what Mr Rush was asking me to do. I realised, even at an early stage in my life that I had put in coping strategies to try and keep some semblance of self.
I gave that speech to a small class of twelve students. Most of them were not interested but there were a couple who were listening intently. I surmised that they might be going through some bad stuff, so I talked a little about there are many children struggling and how difficult it is to talk to adults about the fears and anxiety afflicting young people.
One student approached me after and thanked me. He was grateful to know he was not alone, and he gained a little confidence from listening to me.
I done my first year Fitting and Turning apprenticeship training at the Mt Lyell Copper Mines on the west coast of Tasmania in 1977.
My instructor was MR STURGESS. He was a great trainer with an abundance of patience.
I was really hopeless at math and critical thinking. Mr Sturgess went out of his way to ensure I passed the first year of my training. He went as far as tutoring me at his home 3 evenings a week.
When the exam came around, I passed, but only just. Still, it was enough for me to progress to the next stage.
I am truly indebted to Mr Sturgess for all his help and encouragement.
Our training was held in a building on the mine site, and we shared that building with the Electrical trainees.
Their trainer was Mr Mcnair. He was from a military background and was far too strict on not only his students but also the fitter and turner students.
He ran things with military precision and standards. All apprentices disliked him, he was great at imparting his electrical knowledge, but his military attitude was a real downer.
Someone was writing graffiti on the toilet cubicle walls. His reaction? Remove the doors.
We had to take a welding screen to place in front of the door so as to have some privacy.
Mr Mcnair was let go two years later.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
For good:
My Infants' School teacher, Mrs. Porter, who greatly encouraged my reading - even sometimes lending me her daily newspaper. (I would not have understood the people and matters reported, but could easily cope with adult vocabulary even at that age. By "adult" of course, I mean "grown up" not immature pornography or swearing!)
When my Dad's work move forced us along with many other familes to move to a different county, my teacher's farewell gift to me was a copy of A.A. Milne's Winnie The Pooh, in which she signed the flyleaf with her name and "Keep on reading".
That was in the 1950s, and Mrs. Porter was very advanced in many ways, I recognised many years later.
One innovation of hers, which I have never seen anywhere else, was to arrange our tables (not traditional desks) in conference fashion, along the walls with a gap by the door. So we could all see not only the teacher and blackboard, but also most of the rest of the class; encouraging many of us really to inspire each other as well as be inspired by the teacher. The central area was left clear for less formal activities on the floor.
For bad:
Two successive Mathematics teachers in the state system, local education-authority grammar-school.
The first, teaching us in the Third Form (age 13-14) was in his last year before retiring. Probably worn out by years of trying to make motley collections of adolescents understand maths well below his own level, he was little better than a talking text-book. It mattered not the topic - algebra, trigonometry, mensuration, pure-geometry, proportions - he was unable to make any of it interesting. Nor suggest any real-life purposes for such calculations, routine in so many areas of work and even craft hobbies.
He would probably help anyone who asked, but otherwise he did little more than demonstrate the technicque on the board, then set us part of the exercise in the text-book. Of inspiration, there was none.
I forget his name, but anyone familiar with Carl Giles' newspaper cartoons will have a good idea if I say he reminded of the "Mr. Chalky" teacher character.
The second, for the Fourth and Fifth Years (ages 14 - 16) was, umm, let us be kind and say eccentric. Actually he was not a nice man at all. He was arrogant, even bombastic, and suffered no fools gladly: his definition of a fool including anyone who disliked and struggled to understand maths. We knew him as Mr. Hill, and "Sir", to his face but behind his back used his bizarre nick-name "Drasher", apparently bestowed by his fellow cricket-club members in years past.
The Fifth Year ended in the General Certificate of Education "Ordinary Level" examinations, and good passes in these could help you obtain good work including an apprenticeship for those leaving school at sixteen; or a place in the 2-year Sixth Form (16 -18) to study your three chosen subjects to GCE "Advanced Level" designed as entry qualifications to University.
So the Fifth Form particularly was a key year. This teacher though, was interested only in the bright, keen ones able to understand easily all of the many topics, and needing only some extra help here and there. He probably wanted high exam pass rates, to show his ability as a teacher, and basically disregarded we who struggled. *
"Drasher" could explain everything quite well, but assumed everyone could grasp it straight away, and had no patience with anyone who found it hard. He wrote on one of my Reports (my parents had kept them) that I had large gaps in basic understanding that needed attention; but he had never mentioned it to me, never offered help, and I felt unable to ask him for help.
...
There is a bizarre footnote to Drasher's life, revealed in a local history page in my local newspaper a few years ago. I wish I had kept it.
It recounted that as an athlete in his pre-War teens, Hill was in the England team for a prestigious European youth athletics event in the mid-1930s. Hitler had already assumed power and personally attended this event in London.
The story goes that when young Hill shook Hitler's hand in turn in the pre-play ceremonial, he managed to stand on Der Fuehrer's toe. No doubt accidentally, but I thought, "That's my 'Drasher' all over! "
-------
* The GCE O-Level Mathematics syllabus at Fifth Year level included Trigonometry, more advanced Mensuration, Algebra including linear and quadratic equations, simultaneous linear equations and graphs, Calculus (differentiation and integration), and Pure (or Euclidean) Geometry. We had to be able to use Logarithms and their Slide-rule relation as arithmetical tools, as this pre-dated readily-available, portable, electronic calculators - I still can!
I forget what else it held, but the 'Mathematics' syllabus was a coherent, single course. The curriculum did not treat each topic as an isolated, separate subject, as the American system seems to do. As far as know the UK's schools still keep this coherence although the contents and examinations are different from my 1960s era.
My Infants' School teacher, Mrs. Porter, who greatly encouraged my reading - even sometimes lending me her daily newspaper. (I would not have understood the people and matters reported, but could easily cope with adult vocabulary even at that age. By "adult" of course, I mean "grown up" not immature pornography or swearing!)
When my Dad's work move forced us along with many other familes to move to a different county, my teacher's farewell gift to me was a copy of A.A. Milne's Winnie The Pooh, in which she signed the flyleaf with her name and "Keep on reading".
That was in the 1950s, and Mrs. Porter was very advanced in many ways, I recognised many years later.
One innovation of hers, which I have never seen anywhere else, was to arrange our tables (not traditional desks) in conference fashion, along the walls with a gap by the door. So we could all see not only the teacher and blackboard, but also most of the rest of the class; encouraging many of us really to inspire each other as well as be inspired by the teacher. The central area was left clear for less formal activities on the floor.
For bad:
Two successive Mathematics teachers in the state system, local education-authority grammar-school.
The first, teaching us in the Third Form (age 13-14) was in his last year before retiring. Probably worn out by years of trying to make motley collections of adolescents understand maths well below his own level, he was little better than a talking text-book. It mattered not the topic - algebra, trigonometry, mensuration, pure-geometry, proportions - he was unable to make any of it interesting. Nor suggest any real-life purposes for such calculations, routine in so many areas of work and even craft hobbies.
He would probably help anyone who asked, but otherwise he did little more than demonstrate the technicque on the board, then set us part of the exercise in the text-book. Of inspiration, there was none.
I forget his name, but anyone familiar with Carl Giles' newspaper cartoons will have a good idea if I say he reminded of the "Mr. Chalky" teacher character.
The second, for the Fourth and Fifth Years (ages 14 - 16) was, umm, let us be kind and say eccentric. Actually he was not a nice man at all. He was arrogant, even bombastic, and suffered no fools gladly: his definition of a fool including anyone who disliked and struggled to understand maths. We knew him as Mr. Hill, and "Sir", to his face but behind his back used his bizarre nick-name "Drasher", apparently bestowed by his fellow cricket-club members in years past.
The Fifth Year ended in the General Certificate of Education "Ordinary Level" examinations, and good passes in these could help you obtain good work including an apprenticeship for those leaving school at sixteen; or a place in the 2-year Sixth Form (16 -18) to study your three chosen subjects to GCE "Advanced Level" designed as entry qualifications to University.
So the Fifth Form particularly was a key year. This teacher though, was interested only in the bright, keen ones able to understand easily all of the many topics, and needing only some extra help here and there. He probably wanted high exam pass rates, to show his ability as a teacher, and basically disregarded we who struggled. *
"Drasher" could explain everything quite well, but assumed everyone could grasp it straight away, and had no patience with anyone who found it hard. He wrote on one of my Reports (my parents had kept them) that I had large gaps in basic understanding that needed attention; but he had never mentioned it to me, never offered help, and I felt unable to ask him for help.
...
There is a bizarre footnote to Drasher's life, revealed in a local history page in my local newspaper a few years ago. I wish I had kept it.
It recounted that as an athlete in his pre-War teens, Hill was in the England team for a prestigious European youth athletics event in the mid-1930s. Hitler had already assumed power and personally attended this event in London.
The story goes that when young Hill shook Hitler's hand in turn in the pre-play ceremonial, he managed to stand on Der Fuehrer's toe. No doubt accidentally, but I thought, "That's my 'Drasher' all over! "
-------
* The GCE O-Level Mathematics syllabus at Fifth Year level included Trigonometry, more advanced Mensuration, Algebra including linear and quadratic equations, simultaneous linear equations and graphs, Calculus (differentiation and integration), and Pure (or Euclidean) Geometry. We had to be able to use Logarithms and their Slide-rule relation as arithmetical tools, as this pre-dated readily-available, portable, electronic calculators - I still can!
I forget what else it held, but the 'Mathematics' syllabus was a coherent, single course. The curriculum did not treat each topic as an isolated, separate subject, as the American system seems to do. As far as know the UK's schools still keep this coherence although the contents and examinations are different from my 1960s era.
ArishMell · 70-79, M
@FreddieUK I thought all maths was the Dark Arts! I find abstractions difficult to manage.
When for work reasons I took a standard school maths course as an evening-class student in my late-40s, most was revision to me. However, it introduced me to "Matrices": mysterious boxes of simple sums. I could "do" the sums and get the right answer, but could never understand what matrices are, what they do, what their own jargon means. I learnt later they are a largely 19C invention that eventually found uses in computer-graphics programming and certain areas of very high level engineering... hardly school-leaving stuff!
I've a friend who said of maths, "It's all squiggles, and I don't 'do' squiggles".
She was a surgical-nurse turned medical lecturer so 'did' what I would call "squidgies"... which I definitely don't do!
When for work reasons I took a standard school maths course as an evening-class student in my late-40s, most was revision to me. However, it introduced me to "Matrices": mysterious boxes of simple sums. I could "do" the sums and get the right answer, but could never understand what matrices are, what they do, what their own jargon means. I learnt later they are a largely 19C invention that eventually found uses in computer-graphics programming and certain areas of very high level engineering... hardly school-leaving stuff!
I've a friend who said of maths, "It's all squiggles, and I don't 'do' squiggles".
She was a surgical-nurse turned medical lecturer so 'did' what I would call "squidgies"... which I definitely don't do!
itsok · 31-35, F
My third grade teacher comes to mind first. She was very caring and made me feel safe.
At the very end of the year she read the first Harry Potter book to us, and then left her position.
I hadn’t known at the time that those books were banned in our school system.
A highschool tech teacher next. He was bullied for being gay. He was really nice to me. He pushed me to take difficult courses, tried to steer me in the right direction with friendships, and got me sponsored to go on trips. I wish I would’ve listened to him more.
I remember a couple bad ones, but they don’t seem as impactful.
At the very end of the year she read the first Harry Potter book to us, and then left her position.
I hadn’t known at the time that those books were banned in our school system.
A highschool tech teacher next. He was bullied for being gay. He was really nice to me. He pushed me to take difficult courses, tried to steer me in the right direction with friendships, and got me sponsored to go on trips. I wish I would’ve listened to him more.
I remember a couple bad ones, but they don’t seem as impactful.
MellyMel22 · F
Yes, a bunch actually. My fav passed at the start of Covid from it. She lived across the hall from my aunt. I ran into her after she moved there and we were so excited to see each other. She got to meet my oldest son. I posted our school pic on fb and everyone who knew thought I did b/c she had just passed. I had no idea 😞
Two other great ones are friends on FB lol.. Another passed and one used to call my uncle’s name on the school yard speaker and say will .. ‘s niece please get me an autograph. Several times a week 🤣 He was a huge baseball fan and my great uncle was a player in the old days.
Two other great ones are friends on FB lol.. Another passed and one used to call my uncle’s name on the school yard speaker and say will .. ‘s niece please get me an autograph. Several times a week 🤣 He was a huge baseball fan and my great uncle was a player in the old days.
WillaKissing · 56-60, M
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BrandNewMan · 61-69, M
violentred · 26-30, M
Yeah mrs.johnson my grade 6 math teacher she made me feel like an idiot many times. There was this special table in the front of the room students who needed extra help had to sit at and do extra work. Guess who was often called to sit there? Me. Felt like a humiliation ritual. She would also call you up to the board to solve problems and wouldn't let you sit down until you got it right. Another humiliation ritual for yours truly.
MaryJo1996 · 26-30, F
Absolutely. Quite a few of them pop in to the pub i work in for a drink every Friday.
SwampFlower · 31-35, F
Mountainlady16 · 22-25, F
Mountainlady16 · 22-25, F
@Mountainlady16 though in public school even 10 years ago when this happened admin prob brushed it of not in my christian school
Jenny1234 · 56-60, F
I remember most of my teachers fondly. There are only two that I actually did not like.
tenente · 36-40, M
good: my grade 10 math teacher who invested time to explain trig to me when i was struggling. we still message each other.
bad: my grade 11 bio teacher who went to prison for assaulting a classmate.
bad: my grade 11 bio teacher who went to prison for assaulting a classmate.
rinkydinkydoink · M
Grade 7 Geography - Mr. Lawrence. To this young kid he looked 100. He wore 2 suits. Both were the old-fashioned pinstriped, double breasted styles like gangsters wore in the movies of the forties. He wore the blue one every day in the first half of the year then he wore the brown in the second half of the year. The most boring teacher EVER.