• cmhickman358@thelemmy.club
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    9 months ago

    “I gave you a 98 because I don’t give out 100’s.” Even though I got everything right, I couldn’t get the grade I deserved because of some high school health teacher’s ego.

    • thoro@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      I had a university professor give me a 99 on a written exam because “only Jesus is perfect”.

      I didn’t really care but it’s also something I may never forget because of how bizarre I found it

  • Kalash@feddit.ch
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    9 months ago

    My primaryschool maths teacher taught us roman numerals and one of the tasks we got was to write out the current year in roman numerals.

    I came up with MCMXCVIII … to which he smugly replied that it’s wrong and the romans were a lot more clever and it’s just IIMM (take 2 off 2000).

    Years later I learned that he was quite wrong about that and my answer is in fact the only correct one.

    • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net
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      9 months ago

      TFW your school insists you learn something utterly pointless and then the teacher teaches it completely wrong.

    • radix@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      IIMM just looks so silly. If that were allowed, then why would the Super Bowl roman numerals be so long in the 1900s?

      (I don’t even watch football.)

    • blackbrook@mander.xyz
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      9 months ago

      There is a modern normative convention but there was never an official standard, and the Roman’s usage actually had a lot of variation. Your teacher may have been right that some Romans actually wrote IIMM, but he certainly wasn’t right to claim you were wrong.

  • penquin@lemmy.kde.social
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    9 months ago

    4th year in college in a 3rd world country. Final exams. Last exam. About to graduate after an agonizing year of microbiology. I don’t remember exactly what I did, but he saw me and thought I was cheating off of another student. I was not. Starts yelling at me. I start yelling back. Fails me on the last test on the very very very last day of the last year of college and I was about to go on with my life. I had to repeat the whole year because of him. College is different in my country. You fail one class, you fail the whole year. I still hate him to this day. When he dies, I’ll go shit on his grave.

  • Hazzia@discuss.tchncs.de
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    9 months ago

    Elementary school we has televised morning announcements where 2 different kids were randomly selected each week to read the script as the “hosts”. I got selected one week and while the camera was turned to the flag for the pledge of allegience, the other kid and i quietly, under the desk, started fighting with hand puppets that were on set. We stopped when the camera got back to us, but the music teacher, who was in charge of the whole schtick, decided afterwards to get angry and take me, specifically, off of morning announcements.

    That’s not even the part I’m still mad about though. When it was time for music class that day, since it was entirely floor seating, I positioned myself under the lip of the teacher’s desk to sulk, like is a normal response for a 6 year old who feels like they were unfairly singled out. The music teacher then proceded to pour a glass of water on my head, in front of the whole class.

    I can’t even remember his name but I hope he had a shit life afterwards. What kind of teacher does that to a child.

  • pixelscript@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    A middle school social studies teacher of mine gave me detention on numerous occasions because I refused to take notes in his class.

    Partway into the year during parent-teacher conferences, where parents met with teachers to discuss their children’s performance in class, the issue was brought up.

    “Pixelscript is having some difficulties in my class. He is not taking notes during lectures. I’ve given him detention several times.”

    “Well that’s strange, it says on his report card that he has an A in the class.”

    “Well, yes, he does extremely well on homework and tests, but you see, he doesn’t take notes…”

    “…Are you kidding me?!”

    The greatest irony of the situation was that on the few occasions he forced me to take notes, it lessened my comprehension, because focusing on writing in real time during the lecture actively harmed my understanding of the lecture. God forbid a student actually listens to what you have to say…

    • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      I think people learn differently. Most lectures I have to wait for the instructor to finish their slide or something and then begin copying notes. If they’re going really fast I don’t understand anything, at that point it’s just writing them down as fast as possible in order to study later instead of learning in class.

    • blackbrook@mander.xyz
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      9 months ago

      I had a similar experience with a high school biology teacher. I always took very scarce notes (just what i knew i needed to write down). She insisted we take thorough notes and later copy them over neatly into another notebook. I refused. Nevermind that my handwriting has always been abominable. She based some part of our final grade on turning in these copied over notes, and I consequently got a poor grade despite doing well on tests. I took great pleasure in telling her about my 5 on the AP test at the end of the year. (It was a national test, scored 1 to 5.)

    • Wolf_359@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      It’s a classroom management thing.

      I didn’t understand this until I was a teacher but unfortunately, “if I let you do it, I have to let everyone do it” ends up being pretty true. Kids will absolutely point to other kids and say, “but you let Joey put his head down and listen.”

      My response can’t be “but Joey is passing my class.” As much as I would like it to be.

      It’s also a respect thing and I don’t mean that like you might think. I don’t demand unearned respect from everyone like an asshole. But one thing that happens is, if you let kids skirt classroom expectations and let them avoid doing things you ask them to do, they learn that your rules/expectations are actually just suggestions. Everything becomes negotiable.

      Sorry dude, I would have made you take your notes too.

      • grayman@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I’m sorry but you’re wrong here. Kids need to learn that everyone is different and everyone is not treated the same. The oft liar is never trusted. The fat kid is probably the one that stole the candy. The nerdy kid probably did most of the group work. If you get good grades, the teacher gives you more slack in some areas.

        And your example sucks. Putting your head down and “listening” is not the same thing as sitting up and paying attention to a lecture but not taking notes.

        Don’t get me wrong. I see where you’re coming from and agree generally, but on academics, there’s too many different ways to learn. Whatever someone figures out that works best for them should be left to that if their marks are good every evaluation.

        • Dalek Thal@aussie.zone
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          9 months ago

          Much as I’d like to agree with you, you’re clearly talking out of your arse.

          Teachers are hamstrung by administration nowadays. If we could treat kids differently, we would. Alas, terrible admin+awful parents means differentiation isn’t even remotely possible.

      • pixelscript@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        Who said anything about putting heads down? I wasn’t pissing about reading a book or playing games on my laptop during lecture, I was paying attention. Head up, eyes locked, watching.

        “Classroom expectations”? The only reasonable expectation here is that I pass the class. Whether the teacher thinks patting my head, rubbing my belly, and jumping up and down whilst doing so is the ideal way to acheive it is irrelevant. Especially so if it is demonstrably to the contrary. Literal data for this exists in the form of grades displaying the trend.

        My response can’t be “but Joey is passing my class.” As much as I would like it to be.

        Maybe my anecdote is no longer reflective of modern institutions where teachers are increasingly restricted and scrutenized over dumb factors they don’t even control, but I find this quite a strange take, because a different middle school teacher of mine in the same school played this exact card to great effect. It is not immediately obvious to me why you couldn’t.

        EDIT: Sitting on that response for a moment, it seems that to some degree you read it as if I was being disruptive in class, or otherwise not paying attention and setting that example to my peers. In these cases I would take your side. You have a responsibility to teach students the soft skills of proper attention and listening comprehension.

        I was not violating this. My whole debacle was very specifically the putting pencil to paper part. In my view, notes are strictly an assistive tool. If I demonstrably did not require this tool to perform (evidenced by grades), and even moreso performed worse with it (further evidenced by grades), I do not agree that I should be forced to use it, specifically at a time where students are arguably old enough to start making choices like study strategy for themselves.

        And I am not sufficiently convinced that this specific kind of selectivity is sufficiently toxic to your teaching position that you have to cast aside your better judgement to not rock the boat. But perhaps things really are that dire now. If they are, well, I guess that’s just a bummer for both of us. :/

  • sensiblepuffin@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I was feeling saucy after having learned about the metric system, and for a lab report I deliberately wrote 125 mL as 1.25 dL. I lost half of a letter grade for that.

      • shasta@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        These mistakes happen when the teacher is not paying attention, or got their 12 year old child to help them grade papers. Should just talk to the teacher and get it fixed instead of holding a lifelong grudge.

        • sensiblepuffin@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I did go to her. This was at a religious school where I was lucky to be learning any science at all, and when I asked her what was wrong about it, she refused to explain besides that we hadn’t learned about deciliters yet.

  • MorrisonMotel6@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    My dad was in construction (ran an excavator, mostly) when I was a kid. He found a large megalodon tooth in amazing condition at work and gave it to me. I brought it to school and my teacher took it from me. I never saw it again.

    It’s especially infuriating now because I know the value of teeth in that condition and size

  • Big P@feddit.uk
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    9 months ago

    When I was about 13 I was spending a lot of my lunchtimes in the library working on programming a game. One day I logged on and saw all my code had been deleted. I assumed I’d done it by accident and pulled the latest copy from git. The next day I was called into the assistant head’s office because “games are not allowed on school computers”. He then for some reason told me that the graphics I’d made myself were bad and that my game was buggy and that if I continued to do that in school I would be suspended. He did, however, say that I could do it at the computer club which was on every Thursday night. Great, except there was no computer club.

  • remus989@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    Had a teacher tell me my father was in hell because he lost his battle with mental illness. Catholic school was scarring.

  • alokir@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I had an art teacher when I was around 12 years old who hated my guts. I wasn’t the most well behaved student but the things she did was sometimes petty other times aggressive.

    She once threw a water bottle at me because I had a chat with the guy next to me. She missed but the bottle damaged the wall next to me.

    She told my girlfriend to stay after class because she wants to talk to her. She spent 10 minutes trying to get her to break up with me.

    She never failed to tell me that I’m a good for nothing and I’ll probably end up as a homeless drunk and I’ll live beside the road.

    She always made fun of my drawings and paintings trying to humiliate me in front of the class.

    I wasn’t her only target, she had one in every class.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      9 months ago

      I had a teacher like that, who thought I was a bad influence on my other students. The worst part is that if you do turn out okay, they think that they did a good job by motivating you by being such a dick head. No, you aren’t motivating me by being a jerk to me. I motivated myself. You were just an asshole.

  • stinodes@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    3rd year in highschool a teacher pulled down my pants in the (very crowded) hallways to shame me

  • xkforce@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    School yard monitor used to punish me any time I fought back (verbally) against the students that tormented me for years. Apparently them pulling my pants down, surrounding and attacking me was fine though. Eventually had enough, waited until one of them got too close and decked them. No punishment and the bullying stopped. What a lesson to teach children Ms. Mcbride you evil removed.

  • im sorry i broke the code@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    It was my final exam. Everyone , including the president (or whatever it’s called), but one said I was great and all, and we were chilling talking about my future. I said I wanted to get a CS degree, to which my math teacher replied with “People like you can only be good as carpenters”

    EDIT: just to point out, I got the highest grade lol

    • PP_GIRL_@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      people like you can only be good as carpenters

      This reminds me of that meme like “teachers will tell you that yiu don’t want to end up collecting trash but won’t tell you that the trash collector makes more than they do.”

  • morriscox@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I got bullied in the locker room and used a padlock to try to defend myself. I got in trouble for using a “weapon” and had to apologize to my attackers.

    • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I had a similar incident, with similar results. One thing I noticed though, is that my parents wetent mad, and more importantly, a sweaty sock with a master lock in it will shut down a bully faster than anything the school ever did.

  • KᑌᔕᕼIᗩ@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    My classroom had this weird hidden “library” at the back of it and various teachers would randomly take students to the back of it under the pretext of performing “health checks” that really were them just taking us there and raping us. Mostly a few specific male teachers including the principal and my female teacher as well. One time I was selected to undergo a health check and refused and the teacher slapped me so hard across the face I fell out of my chair and hit the ground. This was in like second grade too so we were pretty young.

    That school has been shut down and the buildings leveled now. No idea if anyone was ever persecuted over it though.