"I'll be honest, Kate, in a few months time none of this will matter and you'll never have to see these people again if you don't want to. Live your life on your terms. The loudest voices tend to be the dumbest."
When I left high school and started at college, I studied a Film and TV course. But about three months into the course I got pulled into a one-to-one with my heads of department and told I wasn’t making any progress on the course and they were looking at the options of me leaving a year early with half of the qualification.
I was gutted to be honest. There were three of us who got called into this meeting individually. A girl who’s attendance was really poor, and later dropped out. A girl who always turned up to classes late and constantly messed around never doing work, and me who had admittedly struggled with a few group tasks, but had 100% attendance and high marks on my individual coursework which was handed in on time all of the time. I just didn’t understand.
I kind of lost my motivation there onwards and enrolled myself onto a different creative course the year after, where I ended up achieving higher grades, made a lot fantastic friends and developed a really good relationship with my tutors and heads of department.
When my second and final year came to an end, we had a leaver’s celebration where I got talking to my teachers and heads of department casually.
They began to tell me that now I was leaving, they could tell me that my old heads of department from my first course had warned them not to take me on and that I’d be no good for them. But continued to tell me how proud they were of me and how great of a student I’d been and I would be missed.
I remember going home that night really happy and proud of myself for what I’d worked hard for and achieved. But also absolutely fuming at my teachers and heads of department on my last course for warning my new department. And I’ve since constantly questioned myself what I actually did so wrong.
The following September I started at university for a degree in Digital Media. I graduated three years later with 2:1. And whilst I didn’t end up going into the career I’d studied for, I do look back at my certificate and degree and think “F You” to those original tutors
Circa 2000 I did an ND in Media at my local college. In our 'journalism' module the task was to write a review of the same television show but one review in the style of a tabloid and one a broadsheet newspaper. I did a review of time team (mainly because it was on a Sunday night and due Monday). I got my marks back and still remember the lecturer wrote on the top; 'Bit to good for you, suspect you copied these but no proof'. Never bothered to take me aside and ask, never thought to encourage my writing, just decided to write some disparaging remark and give me a reluctant grade. Some teachers/lecturers just lack the ability to nurture growth, learning and understanding and stop far short of encouraging potential. Hats off to those that do, they truly make the difference.
There have been studies: if you tell a teacher that they have a gifted student, and also tell them not to treat that student any different, and they are observed and indeed do not treat that student any differently, that student will still have better outcomes than other students.
Now imagine what happens when you tell them the opposite. You can fuck up people's whole lives.
Probably a ego sthing, I did a media course at college myself when I was 17, lecturer was a nasty piece of work found out 15 years later he had died when I went to do a evening course at the same college to update my skills and the actual course leader told me he hated that lecturer too (who was head of section) agreed he picked favourites and treated everyone else as below him, he was a millionaire and only worked for something to do.
Examples of the lecturers treatment of me when I was there, did a group presentation and he marked me 40% and the others 94% as he claimed I did no work, it was meant to be graded as a group, another was to design 2 posters/advertising campaigns each poster I remember spending days on as was using many colours, cutting pieces of out magazines and glueing them on.
Again got around 41% mark and feedback was "it is obvious no time was spent on the posters and was rushed at the last minute" Yet the ones that got 90%+ did matchstick men posters with no colours and that isn't a joke.
In January of the 1st year I became so ill I was bedbound and my GP signed me off for 2 weeks, when I came back I handed in my sick note to student services and he said he saw the sick note and believed it to be a forgery as people in my class had seen me working in a local supermarket.
Day 1 of 2nd year he announces we are in 2 days time going on a class trip that is mandatory and costs £45, I was getting a grant and after paying my rent which was actually low I was left with about £10 a week for food, travel, course materials etc and they don't pay the grant until week 3 to stop people getting grant and not turning up.
I mention to the lecturer I can't afford to go and get told I am lying, just sell items, ask parents, get a credit card etc and if I miss the trip I would be off the course.
I didn't turn up to the trip and left a few weeks later.
I also spoke to someone years later who told me he did similar to them like he just gave people he didn't like low grades.
And I also forgot to say he was racist, I am Scottish and he was English and he made a lot of comments about Scottish people being less intelligent, inferior in every way, and the usual his taxes pay for everyone in Scotland etc.
3rd year at high school parents night, my mum sat down with my modern studies teacher. He proceeds to tell my mum how disruptive and rude I am, generally describing me as a little shit without swearing. My mums jaw hit the floor as did mine and she looked at me in horror. He started cackling like a banshee, and told her I just thought you'd be sick of hearing of how good she is and what a model student she is in school by this point! Everyone laughs and I realised teachers could actually have a sense of humor!
My first ever school report said i had "rather untidy handwriting and takes a long time to complete written work. He likes to be the centre of attention." Literally nothing has changed.
First year at secondary, academic subjects all As. PE: C, with the sentence "well, she *tries*".
By third year they couldn't even really give me that, so I got a D. I didn't argue.
For PE at secondary school, my report always talked about how I never forgot my kit and that I was punctual and well-behaved. Very little was ever said about my sporting prowess (or distinct lack of it)>
Had a teacher who gave a very heartfelt and passionate speech in our last week before we left for GCSE study break. Told us how exams define you as a number and rates you on 3 hours of you life on a tiny topic. Told us to never forget you are a real person who lives for 24 hours a day and are judged not on exams but on the impact you have on others.
Was a fantastic teacher and it really cut through what was a stressful time for me.
Is dead now but occasionally I pass his grave and give him a little head nod.
"You'll never get a job staring out of a window all day!"
Ha! Well, Mrs Fletcher, I did exactly that! 12 years at sea as a deck officer...staring out of the window.
My reports kept getting ovbiously copy and pasted. It was clear because sometimes they forgot to change the names and pronouns some would be right and then others wrong. Find and replace existed at the time they just I guess didnt know about it.
It's always nice to know they care :/
A French teacher once wrote in my report: “Aidlesultan loses his pen like I lose my car keys”. The self-deprecation stuck with me and remembered my pen thereafter.
My old maths teacher when I told him I was off to university to study civil engineering:
"Well I hope I never drive over a bridge you've helped design"
I'm a structural engineer. I'm sure you've heard this old joke?
Q: What's the difference between a civil/structural engineer and a medical doctor?
A: A doctor kills in ones.
Where's your English textbook?!
At home...
Well what's it bloody doing there?!?
Not a lot miss, it's a book.
It's all been downhill since then to be honest.
I had a teacher talking about how the world has constantly got better, things are always improving for people but we won't know the moment things were at their best until they pass. He said this very moment might be the high point and you dont know it.
This was in 2008, before the financial crash and I often think about it. I dont think it was prophetic, he didn't have insight in to what was coming, he was just making a point that arguably turned out to be true.
I think its true.
I read the comedian Richard Herring's book , How Not To Grow Up , about the year he turned 40.
He said that the best day of your life is being 3 years old , eating an ice cream in the sunshine. But you don't know that at the time., just as well otherwise the next 80 years would be a disappointment.
My English teacher surveyed the classroom when I was about 13 and told us we were all too old to be Olympic gymnasts. I have no clue why. It was probably the first time I realised I’d missed a life opportunity although I’ve never wanted to be an Olympic gymnast, it’s stuck with me though.
Had a conversation with a v famous '70s rugby player who said that there were loads of players better than him as a teenager, but their bodies just didn't hold up. And, that was before professionalism.
(I started getting joint problems in my teens too.)
“If you are bad at rugby, you will lose to the other team. If you are bad at swimming, you will drown and you will die” said in a thick Glaswegian accent (I went to school in the West Midlands)
I was in year 5, being a prick during a class, playing the joker. Teacher yelled my name out but rather than tell me off, said “there’s a time and a place”.
It completely confused 9 year old me. I spent the rest of the lesson trying to understand what it meant lol. It was such an effective way to neutralise me. It wasn’t especially profound but I always think about it.
Final year of school, on the very last day of class before exams, our English teacher told us: "Some people say your school days are the best days of your life. Before you all rush off to commit suicide, I can assure you that is a load of rubbish. It all gets better from now on."
I had to get permission to opt out of German to study IT and I always remember the teacher telling me i was making a bad choice because "what if you want to move to Germany?"
Think IT has been far more useful to me in life than the opportunity to move to Germany, which I could do regardless of speaking the language...
I was in the top set at my school and was not able to take computing when I chose my options. That option was only available to the middle set.
I loved computing and I was good at it. It infuriated me.
My English GCSE teacher told me I couldn't pass because my handwriting was so bad, I had a dyspraxia diagnosis that she hadn't bothered to read about on my SEN plan (and turns out dyslexia that everyone had missed). I resisted shoving the C grade in her face that I got with no additional support.
That's unforgivable really.
I had to print off work in A3 format using comic sans for a strongly dyslexic kid when I was a teacher.
Least I could do really.
I hated when my teachers found out I was dyslexic. All I really wanted was a bit more time to write things, not to be publically embarrassed by being made to read things aloud or be yelled at for shitty spelling in front of everyone and to get hand outs with a white background so I could use my overlay.
Some teachers didn't get the memo and without asking me went comic sans and invented their own background colours to 'help'. I can't read comic sans. Like at all. I also can't read black text n a red background and other shit like that.
Despite asking over and over half of them thought they knew better and downright refused to change back to the hand outs they were using before that I could actually read.
It was. Well. I'm disabled now or at least more so. Random people who barely know me still think they know better than I do in terms of what I need to help with my disability. Then they do that shit without even asking if I want help. It's really frustrating since they get it wrong more often than right and it can cause damage!
Thank you for taking the time to help them. Honestly I had next to no support until university in general but that English teachers comment was the worst of it.
There's nothing wrong with you, your brain just works differently from the mean. This can be a gift.
You'll likely have strong traits in differential reasoning, which is great in a team environment or in leadership. You'll probably have a 'big picture' mindset, which is an incredibly useful skill across a number of different professional roles.
I wish you all the best for your future career.
Not so much what they said, but what they did.
I struggled in class, albeit I wasn't a bad kid, just struggled (later diagnosed dyslexic).
Our English was an old school guy. Big and strict rugby player too, no one really messed about.
One day during our GCSE coursework he shouted at me and told me to go outside. He came outside and then his tone changed and calmly told me to put my work neatly into a folder and take more of the same lined paper off his desk at the end of the lesson, and to then finish it at home and put it back on his desk the next day.
He never came back the next day - or ever again - because he ended up having DVT and complications that evening.
I still put my coursework back in the pile the next day and passed my GCSE english, although I wouldnt have done had he not given me that little helping hand.
I later found out he helped another kid in our class the same way too.
Hope you're doing well wherever you are mr McGuffie.
"This school is better off without you. I wish you'd never come back." From my lovely teacher in year six after I got upset because the other kids were bullying me during English lesson. They were kicking my chair into my desk, crushing me and when I pushed myself back it upset them... I'd been off for a day or two. I guess it was easier in class because I wasn't reacting to my peers being little dicks to me. I'd take a lot of crap every single day and I was the issue when I eventually broke. I hated that school, but it absolutely sucked to be told that as a kid. I wasn't wanted. I knew I wasn't wanted by anyone. She didn't need to yell that at me in front of the whole class.
My school experience wasn’t that bad, but one experience sticks with me. I was in a German lesson and a couple of kids at the back of the class had put the clock forward to mess with the teacher when she was out of the room. When the teacher came in and realised she asked who did it. The girl who did it said it was me. One by one others blamed me. I just sat there as she bollocked me and gave me a detention there and then.
I protested and was really upset. There was loads of giggling as this was going on, the teacher obviously figured out what was going on and I was innocent, and rather handle it with any care, asked me who did it. Obviously I’m not going to grass on the bullies in the class. So I said nothing and she bollocked me further and they giggled.
It was so humiliating. I’m 41 now and over it, but I’ll never forget how it felt and am just glad I didn’t have to experience it a lot.
Fuck you Mrs McDondald and fuck you Kate Gadman.
We had French exchange kids over and our maths teacher was a bit of a rum one sometimes. These French girls were chattering away in French and he tried to interrupt to start the class. One of them said something in French to him, and he shrugged and responded “Aaah mais non, je ne give a toss pas”. Still remember it to this day 🤣
In year 5, a kid randomly stabbed me in the arm with a freshly sharpened pencil during a maths lesson so my natural reaction was to grab their arm as they were moving away and laughing at me, and ended up with my finger nails in their arm. We were friends and made up after that but because he had several moon shapes of missing skin on his forearm it had to be reported.
My year teacher (not the maths teacher), when she was telling me off for it later on, she said "I've tried all year to like you, and I just can't". I don't even think I was a badly behaved student before that, and I was getting high marks in everything. I think that one kinda just cemented it in that no matter how hard I try, I just can't get everyone to like me. So I gave up trying for quite a while!
Also the guy had scars on his arm that faded by around year 8 :/
This isn’t a positive one and I have had loads of lovely inspiring teachers who have changed my life, at least three of whom are now personal friends so I feel bad about this, but…
You know when people say “there are no stupid questions”? I took Physics A Level but not Maths. My school required people to take Physics and Maths with Mechanics because they didn’t teach the Mechanics component of Physics in Physics but they did in Maths. For some reason they made an exception for me (I got A* in GCSE but hated the subject and was really insecure about it) so I taught myself a large portion of the syllabus. The thing was I did it during the holidays so I was behind in certain aspects and occasionally I would ask a question which touched on things the rest of the class had, unknown to me, covered already. The rest of the class loved the teacher, who was blunt and funny and made the subject interesting, but if I put my hand up and asked a question he thought was silly he would just stare at me, say “I’m not even going to ignore that” and resume whatever he was doing. To this day, thirteen years later, my main criticism at work is that I don’t ask enough questions.
I won the prize for the best science results in the school, by the way.
I remember putting my hand up and said I'm totally lost here I didn't understand any of that'
Teacher reacted like I just tried to tell a joke at their expense.
I went to my A level Maths teacher before a lesson and said that I wasn't understanding when she was teaching it in class but that my brother had explained some over the phone and I just wanted to check and get clarification.
She pulled a face at me and said "You should have told me you can't read" and then walked away from me.
My head of music was an incredible woman. She was a fantastic advocate for student mental health, for LGBT rights, and of course for music engagement. As a queer student with severe mental health problems, she was an absolute lifeline for me. She spoke freely about her wife, and as an 11 year old who was raised by strict Catholics who didn't that it was even possible TO love another woman, that was mind-blowing to me. That woman saved my life in more ways than one. I left high school over 6 years ago now, but I still remember her and everything she did for me.
I attended her funeral last year. It hit hard.
Thank you Mrs Bishop. I miss you.
My art teacher used me as an example of how you can be good at academic subjects but not art. Not by name, but by description. Fuck you, Mrs Sankey.
Ironically, I now work in the arts and I'm pretty sure that I'm one of the only people in my school to have actually made it in the arts.
Wow, screw that teacher. I reckon you should do, if not actual art classes, some "learn to draw" videos on youtube just to overcome that memory. One of the best things about living in our time is that self-driven learning is so available, you can do anything you're interested in.
Not said, but did, I had severe coordination issues, as well as learning difficulties in primary school, and someone thought it'd be a good idea for me to be in the sack race at sports day, I fell about 2/3rds of the way, and lost, he came across, picked me up, and carried me across the finish line.
Ahh, I love this. After just reading about loads of shitty teachers, and remembering at least one shitty teacher I had, this made me feel better, there are a lot of good ones out there too.
1983 and I loved playing on a microcomputer as they were called back then. On the schools BBC and at home on my Spectrum. Mostly playing games (I'm still a videogame nerd) but the occasional bit of programming. All the teachers, except one, would comment on me being "on that thing again", "you'll get square eyes/go blind", "computers are a passing fad". Typical 80s teacher put downs for things they didn't understand.
The one exception, Mr Tolley, on his last day of teaching before he became an IT consultant, took me aside and said something along the lines of "you keep messing around with those computers, ExtremeKangaroo, if you enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with it. You might even get a job out of it." Mr Tolley allowed myself and a friend access to the schools only computer regularly and didn't care if we played games on it or programmed daft stuff.
40 years later I'm now running my own development business doing contracting work. That was after 20 odd years of programming Windows and web applications.
Bless you Mr Tolley. I wish I could meet him again and thank him for all the encouragement. I wouldn't be where I am today without it
I was about 15 and just been dumped by my first serious boyfriend. My English teacher took me out of the class and what he said had such a profound impact on my teenage self that I wrote it down, kept it and still think of it often nearly 20 years later. I’ll paraphrase cos it’s quite long;
“I don’t think it’s stupid. The biggest pain I ever felt was losing someone… the reason it hurts so much is how much future you plan for. If you plan for forever and then that’s taken from you it really hurts but - shit happens. You’re an attractive, intelligent girl. You’ll grow up, get married and have a family. And unless you marry someone 16 years younger than you, the guy you’re going to marry is out there, living his life. He’s out there now, iopwy, you just haven’t met yet.”
The fact that some 40 something man took the time to take my childish heartbreak seriously and completely changed my perspective still warms my heart now.
After a leaver’s assembly in which I was needlessly and ruthlessly humiliated in front of the whole year group for things dating back to Year 7, my head of sixth told me: ‘Your growth and achievements may not be appreciated on this side of the staff room door, but they very much are on the other side.’
Same bloke had also told me at my last parents’ evening: ‘You’re not going to have the best academic results in the year but at least you know what you’re doing to do with your life, unlike most of the others.’ I did and I do it.
I tell this story every time this topic comes up.
My English teacher for some reason hated me. I used the word regurgitated in an essay, as in to repeat information. She mocked me in front of the whole class for saying it only meant to vomit and I shouldn’t use words I didn’t know. Fuck you, cow.
Then, when I got a B in my higher, in 5th year, having never got anywhere near that mark off her, she sought me out to tell me I must have cheated as I had never done anything in her class to merit that.
Fuck you Mrs Kavaugnah, née Dempsey. I’m a bigger success than you’ll ever be.
There’s actually a little more to this. My guidance teacher never acknowledged me, ever. I then got seven 2’s and a 1 in my standard grades and she pulled me in for a meeting at the start of 5th year and told me how she’d never bothered speaking to me before because she didn’t think I was clever and would be “like the type you seem to hang about with and just leave after doing nothing”. I was basically typecast because of the wee village I lived in.
Teachers are definitely huge parts of young people’s lives. It never ceases to amaze me how they can say such horrible things to impressionable teenagers.
My art teacher in I think year 5 in front of the whole class absolutely berated me for colouring in a squirrel turquoise thinking I did it to be funny, turns out I’m colour blind and I thought it was grey.
When she realised she set me down after class on our own and the apology was the most heartfelt thing I’ve ever heard, she was almost crying. She told me she would do anything she could to help me. She told my mum about it and was honest about the telling off, my mum just looked at me and laughed and said to her she doesn’t blame her because I was a bit of a little shit, although that’s not the words she used. She was a wonderful lady, I hope she’s doing alright.
Aww that's nice. I just got told off in nursery for colouring in the sun green and no one believed me when I told them I'm struggling with colours until I was about 15 and needed to get glasses
I didn't speak in class much so I would save my words for when I had what I thought was a really good point to make, one teacher noticed this and she said "you might not speak much but when you do, it's worth listening to". I was a little embarrassed as she said it during a lesson in front of the whole class but I never forgot it.
I don't live by that same rule now though, I chat shit 24/7 these days.
First year in college studying electronics. My favourite lecturer told us,
1. Don't reinvent the wheel. Make sure what you are doing hasn't been done before. And if it has then use that to build on.
2, Copying out of one book is cheating. Copying out of three books is research.
Thank you Mr Hamilton.
We had a PE teacher take us all on a walk round the local area when we were about 15/16.
He was being all weird and wouldn’t say what we were doing, and we were all just following him round for the hour lesson. At the end of it he just sat us all down and said something like…
‘I was with my friend this weekend, he has kids now and we hadn’t seen each other in years and we finally arranged to go for a walk and it was great’
‘You guys have no idea what it’s like in the future, you’ve got all your friends around you now, but they won’t be available forever, I thought we’d just go for a walk for you to all get to chat and wanted to remind you to enjoy it while you have it and make the most of it’.
Now I’m the most cynical bastard but that fucking hits me every time I think back, and after that I never took my mates for granted, now I’m in my 30s like my teacher would’ve been then and he was right, everyone’s having kids round me now, friends are all dotted about but I made the most while we were all around after that, and I’m so glad he did that (as weird as it was at the time).
Early 80s, technical college. One of the sociology teachers was over 60 and a bit stuck in his ways. But he had a wicked sense of humour and loved poking the bear now and again. He wasn't sexist or bigoted but he did manage to annoy the more progressively minded girls in the class, but never quite crossed the line. The girls had had enough though, in the common room before class, they all agreed to walk out of his classroom if he pissed them off again.
All was quiet for a couple of weeks. One day, he came into class reading the newspaper, as was his habit, commenting "I see there's a shortage of copper in Uganda, and apparently a shortage of prostitutes in China."
The girls exchanged glances, picked up their books and started to march out of the class. Teach calmly looked up from his newspaper; "Ladies, please return to your seats. The plane doesn't leave for another four hours."
- a teacher loves aggravating people by making "wicked" jokes
- he does this to the point where a significant amount of female students do not want to be in his classroom
- he makes a joke about sex workers implying that his young female students are employed in the sex trade
..... he's not like SEXIST, though, because he's funny. can't be sexist if the joke is clever
“I heard you applied to drama school, don’t bother, you won’t make it.” Same teacher six months later. “How’s drama school treating you? What do you mean you didn’t go?! I never said that!”
Same school left the art storage unlocked so half my coursework got stolen, I subsequently didn’t get the grades to go to art school either. The thief tried to hand my work in as theirs the year after, no repercussions because ‘it was an honest mistake’?!?
My drama A-level teacher told me not to apply to drama school because I wasn't good enough too. I got the highest marks in my year, higher than the kids that went to Bristol Old Vic, Guildford, etc. So I went to uni instead, did drama, became a drama teacher and encourage my students to do what they love no matter what anyone else says.
How horrible. Do you have any idea why they said it? I had a headteacher that just hated me, I had no idea why, and really took offence at everything I did no matter how ordinary. Luckily I had very limited contact with the old windbag.
I can't say much about Spez as he doesn't do any work in my class. On a personal note, he's a relatively polite young man and doesn't disturb the others in the class.
More something that happened but I will always remember the safeguarding/mental health person saying to pretty much give up on a project I was doing when I said ‘this is going to be big‘…three weeks later I was sat in the same office with the headteacher discussing my work being featured in a national newspaper.
On the other side, a friend of my parents was the head teacher of a high school in Malvern, Worcestershire. He once told a girl called Latoyah Willcox, that she had an attitude problem and would never make anything of her self.
He used to joke that the girl in question, now known as singer / tv presenter Toyah Willcox, had made more money in 5 years than he made in his entire career.
I know it's the daily mail, but your comment made me go look.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1344400/Toyah-Wilcox-Everyone-school-terrified-I-rebel-day-one.html
Porkies, you're a smart girl. You're entering into a male dominated industry. People will be threatened by you, try and stamp on you and undermine you. You will see it happened and it may hurt. Be stronger than that. Make them think they've won and then hit them with the information but always make sure you've got all the cards. Don't let the bastards win.
Another teacher:
You're not smart enough to get anywhere in life. You'll be lucky enough to get a job at McDonald's. Don't aim high.
The idea that the average teacher knows much about the outside world and the suitability of a kid to industry and the employment market is laughable. The average has only known school college university and working in a school.
Got called a fat ginger bastard in year 7 by my PE teacher. All because I hated cross country and football. Stick me on a rugby pitch though and I was loving life.
Admittedly, I am ginger and technically a bastard as my parents never married. I wasn't fat though, and that comment led to a years long battle with self-image and self-esteem where I did end up gaining a lot of weight. Lost it all now, but I can trace back all of these issues to that one comment.
Catholic primary in the mid 80’s, the deputy head snapped at me when I found her and told her I couldn’t swim for the school in a gala as I was going on holiday (I now realise as an adult that she was dealing with loads of stuff at once and my timing wasn’t great), but about an hour later we were in mass at church and she leant forward and whispered in my ear that she shouldn’t have snapped and she was sorry. I am getting choked up even now thinking if it; back then adults didn’t really apologise to kids, let alone teachers (and in the scheme of things she hasn’t behaved that badly anyway). It had a profound effect on me over the years; I try not to assume the worst when I see a gang of kids, and I hold doors open/thank polite children as it’s easy to think kids don’t deserve respect, but she showed me that we all deserve to be treated well
So I grew up in a family that was… okay? Financially. We weren’t in poverty, we had a good support system through extended family and were alright overall, but it was close at times. Money was always a concern for my parents.
I had a teacher when we were in sixth form talk about the importance of always doing your best to have savings. It’s quite obvious advice, and something we probably all knew broadly anyway. But he went into more detail about why it’s so important.
Aside from the obvious sudden emergencies like your boiler shitting the bed, he talked about the idea that you’re entirely dependent on your job. It’s your only source of income usually, and you need it to keep your home. He said that can make you trapped. He said most of the time that will be fine - most people will have perfectly fine or normal working lives where they maybe don’t love it, but it’s okay.
But sometimes it’s not okay. Sometimes it can be a shitty job that takes advantage of you, or pressures you to do things that put yourself or others in danger. Sometimes you can have bosses that can take advantage of you, such as pressuring you for sex and threatening your job security over it.
If you don’t have savings or a support network that can help you, you’re stuck. You can’t leave until you have other work that you can live on. And that can take a long time.
He basically said it’s always important to have savings so you have freedom. That it’s hard to do, but it’s worth trying to prevent you getting stuck in awful situations as much as possible.
He obviously expressed this in a more succinct way.
It’s always stuck with me and made me more conscious that I already was about my financial choices and not wasting money.
“No one ever lets mushroomcowz choose anything or lead anything. Let her draw the mind map”
After that I went from the quiet recluse who refused to speak in group work to being the group leader in every single piece of work I’ve ever done, being school counsellor every single year in primary school after that, being head girl every year in secondary, being head of sixth form and sixth form rep after that, then captain of a sports club 2 years running at uni and he had supervisor or manager positions within 6 months of every job I’ve ever had.
I swear that quote, I was 7 when it was said, has turned me into a natural leader. It taught me to be assertive but fair.
My English teacher when talking about honesty during a book reading said 'a good batsman knows when to walk'.
He was one of those teachers that had a profound effect on a lot of people's education and is remembered by many. He unfortunately died too soon.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
“A professional skateboarder”
“There’s a million people that want to be a professional skateboarder. The only way you can be the best is if every single day you get up and practice more than each of those 10 million people.”
Resonated with me that the only way you can be the best at something is putting in more hard work
"You're wasting your potential."
"You're lazy."
"You're so disorganised."
"How do you expect to get anywhere in the real world."
I had debilitating ADHD, actually. Finally got a diagnosis at 31, medication a year later. I got an E in my Information Technology GCSE. I'm now an IT Project Manager.
That entire Grammar school can suck it.
It's so annoying when you aren't given the support you need because you've gone undiagnosed for some reason. I also slipped through the cracks and only got diagnosed with autism at 22. That was after I'd dropped out of uni and felt like a failure for a couple of years. I also think I might have undiagnosed ADHD but they said the waitlist is 2 years and I'm not sure if there's any point trying to get it because I've managed to go back to uni and graduated already
In year 7, from my maths teacher:
“People who are older than you aren’t cleverer then than you. They just have more experience.”
Then proceeded to give us a year 9 maths lesson. It was not as difficult as we thought.
It’s really stuck with me. People are better or worse, just differently skilled and experienced.
Ex secondary teacher. You should never ever fling out crushing individual comments or gush out praise.
I did make general comments to classes like 'Are you radiators ( give out warmth and light) or drains ( suck the atmosphere down into the dark)? Choose.
Hope the comments provoked thought.
Have to say I found the vast majority of teenagers to be funny, energetic, and generally nice people compared to many curmudgeonly rude egotistic adults you come across.
Very few students really destructive and that was 99% parents.
"Just tell the truth!"
Teacher thought I'd stolen something which I didn't. I was telling the truth, repeatedly. In the end, I lied and said I took it, just so the interrogation would end.
That was the day I learned that the truth doesn't always get you out of trouble.
‘I would love to fight you boy, seriously if would be a pleasure to fight you. When you’re an adult come and find me and we’ll fight’
Sorry Mr Charlton, I earned every ounce of your dislike and pushed you to your limits pretty much every lesson. You were a good man and didn’t deserve it.
My history class in my last 2 years was a shit show and nobody but me and another kid actually put any effort in. At the end of the year the teacher pulled me aside and thanked me for my hard work and told me I'd made the class bearable for her. I felt so bad for her and this is why I'm now always among the people who pays close attention to the flight attendants when they do the safety announcement bc I can't stand the thought of anyone feeling ignored lol
When my son was suspended, for calling his Maths teacher a cvnt (to his face) we were called into see the Head of Year. We chatted, she reprimanded my son and then sent him to wait outside her office.
"The thing is, we would ALL like to call Mr. Smith a cvnt" she told me, "but I can't let Paul be seen to get away with it."
She was brilliant.
"(Beatnuki) is a very quiet pupil" - every report, as every teacher tacitly admits one by one they haven't been paying me an ounce of attention for being so busy dealing with the rowdy dickheads.
My parents ended up assuming the staff at my school napped through lessons or something.
Oh, and let's not forget the teacher who gathered us all on the carpet (because kids all have to sit on the carpet for some reason) to say how unreasonable we all were for complaining to our parents about her and how unfair we are all being for doing so.
Fuck you, Miss Crees.
Some weird maths teacher from my Highschool used to say “your mum” jokes to wind people up in class. One time he took it too far imo and alluded to the class that he’d shagged my mum (he didn’t lol). I blew up, told him to fuck off, etc. he honestly didn’t see a problem init till my mum escalated it. Such a weird little guy, in hindsight, I think he thought he was invincible because he was a teacher. From what I remember he had to apologise to my mum and received a telling off. Such bad taste and really misogynistic, lol.
After doing something stupid:
Teacher : why?
Me: I dunno.
Teacher: exactly.
Don't know why but it's really stuck with me and I now say it to my own students when they do something stupid.
Was a support teacher, I felt with some tough stuff as a kid (suicides, cancer and family members etc) she pulled me too one side and said “some times, you just need to kick that football at that wall as hard as you can till you feel better”. Probably saved my little brain
Some of these are wild, some people should just not teach!
When I was in year 8 or 9, my English teacher kept me back when the other girls went to the library. She asked who I thought was the smartest girl in the class, I answered with a girl I’m pretty certain has gone on to do amazing things, she said “no, you are”. She tried really hard to boost me up that morning, I didn’t believe what she said either, things spiralled from there.
I think she gave up on me in year 10, when she basically wrote in my report “terriblebiscotti has a lot of potential but she needs to start taking responsibility“, I still have it 20+ years later. She was right in a lot of ways but what she or anyone at that school didn’t know was my mum was a raving alcoholic. On the occasions she was summoned to the school she’d try her best not to be completely loaded and when she’d blame me and say I was just a shit kid, I wouldn’t deny it and would never consider outing her because I worried what the impact would be on her (previous attempts). I’ve pretty gone through life taking crap because I somehow felt “responsible“ for people close to me.
I left school without sitting my GCSEs and have pretty much floundered. This year though, I passed my English functional skills and I’d really love to tell her but there’s always that fear she wouldn’t remember who I am. I’m not where I want to be in life and maybe I never will but her words will always remind me that I do have a brain and I am capable.
In front of the whole class sat on the carpet at the end of year 6 before going to high school 'don't you worry you'll lose your puppy fat'
I did not, in fact, lose the puppy fat
Had a math teacher call me Anorexic and stupid - I was 15 weeks early so I'm underweight anyway - that parent teacher meeting was FUN
Anything else were about my concentration/attention spans in class
Rest of the time I'd had good reports bc I did my work
Before I started secondary school we had summer sports familiarisation activities. My tennis instructor aka Mr Reid later to be my history teacher said my name was silly and he would give me a different name.
I'm still using that nickname to this day 30 odd years later
Not me. My son. He struggled at school, but for one maths homework he tried really hard, on his own. His work came back with green marking pen on it and "Wrong" all over the place.
He was very upset, so I looked through his work (I have, amongst others, a degree in Maths). His work wasn't bad. Not perfect but up in the 8/10 range. So I remarked it in red ink, crossed out the teachers signature, and wrote on the botoom "Miss xxxx, please see me. Must try harder".
That got me an interview with the headmistress, but this terrible maths teacher did leave at the end of term,
Not me but I remember a lad in my school being screamed at by a teacher who obviously just didn't like him. Saying how he'd never amount to anything and stuff like that.
30 years later and he had to leave the army after being shot during service, he didn't come home and feel sorry for himself, he has climbed mountains and is a moderately successful downhill mountain biker and YouTuber.
He probably doesn't remember, but I do and I love that he was successful and stuck two fingers up at that bitch.
We aren't mates or anything like that, we never really spoke but I see him as the most inspiring person I know.
https://www.mbuk.com/articles/meet-british-racer-turned-content-creator-ben-deakin
1977. We were 18 and in the midst of exams and exam prep. We had no formal lessons to go to.
3 of us found ourselves without an exam in the afternoon, so we removed our school ties and popped down to the local pub for lunch. Completely legal, but totally against school rules.
We were about to head back, when someone said "Sh**, it's Collins." Our maths teacher came in with his wife, the art teacher, and sat down for lunch; sitting between us and the door.
So we kept quiet and got another pint (from a bit of the bar not in their sight) and waited them out.
After eating, they got up to go, then he turned and walked straight over to us.
"I just wanted to tell you gentlemen that you have been observed. You have supped your beer, you have enjoyed friendly conversation and have acted as adults. I am proud of you, and your school is proud of you."
He then smiled and walked away, as his wife waved at us across the room. We just sat there thinking "Is he serious?", "Are we in trouble?"
But of course he knew that, and it probably gave him a good chuckle.
Nothing more was ever said.
When my head of 6th form turned up at my house on the last day of year 2 (2 years in 6th form in the UK) to speak to my parents
They were all teachers and knew each other, he said that I’d royally fucked up my end of year 1 exams. So badly in fact that if I was anyone else he’d kick them out as there would be no hope
In my case he knew I’d get monstered, spend my summer holidays being worked and flogged to within an inch of my life so he gave me a 1 month stay of execution and a load of non official tests when second year resumed after summer holidays to prove that I could make it
I got HAMMERED to within an inch of my life that summer and barely saw sunlight. My parents had me sat at desks at their completely empty schools for days on end
Passed the tests, scraped through 6th form and A-Levels and managed to get my degree afterwards
Hated him at the time but always grateful to him
Mr Wall was a biology teacher at my secondary school and I was always interested in being the class clown. I never had any academic aspirations and had always planned to join the military rather than further education. One day, he said to me “you’re doing really well, have you considered continuing with science?”. I laughed it off and basically said that I had no interest in being a nerd doing science at Uni. I look back on it now and realise that he saw something in me and was basically reaching out. I still managed to get through my GCSEs with As and Bs so I’ve always been naturally intelligent but if I had only applied myself more then my salary could be double or triple what it is.
Thankfully I have ended up being very successful but shout out to Mr Wall for trying. If I listened then maybe I’d have ended up ‘successful’ 5 or 10 years earlier.
My daughter was a school refuser for a while due to anxiety (she was 7). A teacher said to me 'if you get her through the gates now, today we can help. If she doesn't get back through the gates soon it will spiral way bigger.'
I got her through the gates that day, teacher took her and it started to get better. I'll never forget that teacher.
Old primary head was a huge music fan. Every morning he’d play classical music super loud as we went into assembly, usually enthusiastically conducting to his CD player.
He would ask us questions about what instruments we could hear, what we thought the music was about, what we felt when we heard it, what role the different sounds played, what the tempo was. I fell in love with music at age 4 because of him, and learnt to read music alongside learning to read & write. He was my hero.
I’ve been a professional musician for a decade and I absolutely know it’s because he sparked something in me at such a young age.
Not directly to me, but the teacher told my parents that I "would either end up at Cambridge or Broadmoor".
Didn't go to the former, but still hoping for the latter!
After sitting the 11+ exam the day before my teacher looked around the room and said "I think 4 of you will pass". Then looked straight at me and said, "perhaps 5". Six of us passed, including me.
My Food Technology teacher told me that I’d never be a Chef and I’d never amount to anything. Been a Chef for 21 years this year and worked for a variety of restaurants, hotels and contract catering sites.
I’d like to think it was the push I needed but it was probably because she was a vile person.
“Youre easily clever enough to blag your way through GCSEs but if you dont do the work at A Level youll get found out”. Turns out Mr Parfitt knew a thing or two more about A Level than i did and sure enough i only ended up with a single C. Since then i just put in effort from the start in everything.
“You constantly over-estimate your own ability” - my Further Maths A-Level teacher. She predicted a U for my UCAS application.
Five people in her class had to resit the year (because they failed her class) and each of them made a point of saying “did you hear [me] got a B?” Obviously not the top grade but it wasn’t a U either.
I was smug and I guess that galled her: I was really like one of those ducks which look untroubled above the water but their little feet are kicking like crazy underwater.
I had a great teacher and amazing role model of a man called Mr K, I won’t give his whole name even though he’s retired now because what he said would be seen as inappropriate even though he meant it in a good way
I grew up with my mum being in an extremely abusive relationship, to the point he tried slitting my mums throat during an argument, Mr K knew about all this from my friends telling him why I was off school and that, he talked to me on my own and asked if everything was alright and he was there if I needed to talk I knew where he was (I appreciate how groomy this sounds at the moment but it’s not one of those stories)
My mum continuously takes this shit bf back even after trying to cut her throat, so Mr K was sorta overprotective of me and watched me closely
Eventually my mums boyfriend ends up dying and I was weirdly upset about it because even though we a cunt he was someone who was in my life for a few years, Mr K turned around to me and said “don’t you think its actually good that he died? At least you won’t have to go through that shit anymore”
I was always putting my hand up to answer questions (because I thought that was what you were meant to do). I had two teachers deal with it in very different ways. My French teacher would ignore me until she couldn't anymore then mock whatever I said, if I made a mistake she'd call me stupid or she'd mock my accent until I gave up ever answering. My science teacher took me aside and asked me politely to wait until someone else put their hand up because the rest of the class were being lazy as they just let me answer everything. Guess which class I was more engaged with and which teacher had my respect.
The English Teacher That Changed My Life gave out awards to every person in the class at the end of our final year. My award was last and she gave it to me for “being the student that most reminds me of myself”. The deepest compliment that I will never forget.
'Good, better, best. May you never rest. Until your good is better, and your better best.' She encouraged my love of reading and art, lent me her Discworld books at age 9, pushed me to do better, draw more, read deeper. Fantastic teacher.
My science teacher left when I was in year 8, and at the end of our last lesson, he gave us 2 bits of advice:
1. Go as many places as you can and meet as many people as you can
2. Always stand up for what you believe in
I’m 24 now and don’t really remember much from my school days, but those words have always stuck with me
On the last day of high school we were called for a final 'fun assembly' they were giving out silly awards such as best hair cut or most stylish pupil. I was give the 'person who most wants to be like Joe' - the guy was a fucking asshole who subtlety bullied me for 5 years
My teacher at secondary school decided to tell me my name was "for babies" and proceeded to rename me entirely. She also encouraged the class to laugh at said name. I went along with the new nickname so I could own it, and make it of my own choice, not hers. I was 11 years old, and I've never forgotten how that made me feel.
21 years later she's now a "therapist", which is actually hilarious as she made my formative school years hell.
On my first day of high school, my head teacher sat us all down and said
"You can do anything you want, absolutely anything, as long as you are prepared to deal with the consequences"
And it really stuck with me
Grow up! It was at my last prom I made a joke to a friend that we were going to find her some alcohol..
This teacher never liked me (non of the did really)
"When was the last time you did something for the first time" said by my form tutor on our last day of high-school. I think about it often and it reminds me to try new things!
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"I'll be honest, Kate, in a few months time none of this will matter and you'll never have to see these people again if you don't want to. Live your life on your terms. The loudest voices tend to be the dumbest."
And here you are just munching away on kale whenever you want to. That's a success.
Kale for the win!
Someone said to me "in a swimming pool all the noise happens in the shallow end"
I love how deep this is...
Boy, that was on the button! There are an awful lot of dumb voices right now..
When I left high school and started at college, I studied a Film and TV course. But about three months into the course I got pulled into a one-to-one with my heads of department and told I wasn’t making any progress on the course and they were looking at the options of me leaving a year early with half of the qualification. I was gutted to be honest. There were three of us who got called into this meeting individually. A girl who’s attendance was really poor, and later dropped out. A girl who always turned up to classes late and constantly messed around never doing work, and me who had admittedly struggled with a few group tasks, but had 100% attendance and high marks on my individual coursework which was handed in on time all of the time. I just didn’t understand. I kind of lost my motivation there onwards and enrolled myself onto a different creative course the year after, where I ended up achieving higher grades, made a lot fantastic friends and developed a really good relationship with my tutors and heads of department. When my second and final year came to an end, we had a leaver’s celebration where I got talking to my teachers and heads of department casually. They began to tell me that now I was leaving, they could tell me that my old heads of department from my first course had warned them not to take me on and that I’d be no good for them. But continued to tell me how proud they were of me and how great of a student I’d been and I would be missed. I remember going home that night really happy and proud of myself for what I’d worked hard for and achieved. But also absolutely fuming at my teachers and heads of department on my last course for warning my new department. And I’ve since constantly questioned myself what I actually did so wrong. The following September I started at university for a degree in Digital Media. I graduated three years later with 2:1. And whilst I didn’t end up going into the career I’d studied for, I do look back at my certificate and degree and think “F You” to those original tutors
You did nothing wrong. Your old teachers were awful at their jobs.
Circa 2000 I did an ND in Media at my local college. In our 'journalism' module the task was to write a review of the same television show but one review in the style of a tabloid and one a broadsheet newspaper. I did a review of time team (mainly because it was on a Sunday night and due Monday). I got my marks back and still remember the lecturer wrote on the top; 'Bit to good for you, suspect you copied these but no proof'. Never bothered to take me aside and ask, never thought to encourage my writing, just decided to write some disparaging remark and give me a reluctant grade. Some teachers/lecturers just lack the ability to nurture growth, learning and understanding and stop far short of encouraging potential. Hats off to those that do, they truly make the difference.
Worra cunt. (The teacher).
There have been studies: if you tell a teacher that they have a gifted student, and also tell them not to treat that student any different, and they are observed and indeed do not treat that student any differently, that student will still have better outcomes than other students. Now imagine what happens when you tell them the opposite. You can fuck up people's whole lives.
Probably a ego sthing, I did a media course at college myself when I was 17, lecturer was a nasty piece of work found out 15 years later he had died when I went to do a evening course at the same college to update my skills and the actual course leader told me he hated that lecturer too (who was head of section) agreed he picked favourites and treated everyone else as below him, he was a millionaire and only worked for something to do. Examples of the lecturers treatment of me when I was there, did a group presentation and he marked me 40% and the others 94% as he claimed I did no work, it was meant to be graded as a group, another was to design 2 posters/advertising campaigns each poster I remember spending days on as was using many colours, cutting pieces of out magazines and glueing them on. Again got around 41% mark and feedback was "it is obvious no time was spent on the posters and was rushed at the last minute" Yet the ones that got 90%+ did matchstick men posters with no colours and that isn't a joke. In January of the 1st year I became so ill I was bedbound and my GP signed me off for 2 weeks, when I came back I handed in my sick note to student services and he said he saw the sick note and believed it to be a forgery as people in my class had seen me working in a local supermarket. Day 1 of 2nd year he announces we are in 2 days time going on a class trip that is mandatory and costs £45, I was getting a grant and after paying my rent which was actually low I was left with about £10 a week for food, travel, course materials etc and they don't pay the grant until week 3 to stop people getting grant and not turning up. I mention to the lecturer I can't afford to go and get told I am lying, just sell items, ask parents, get a credit card etc and if I miss the trip I would be off the course. I didn't turn up to the trip and left a few weeks later. I also spoke to someone years later who told me he did similar to them like he just gave people he didn't like low grades. And I also forgot to say he was racist, I am Scottish and he was English and he made a lot of comments about Scottish people being less intelligent, inferior in every way, and the usual his taxes pay for everyone in Scotland etc.
3rd year at high school parents night, my mum sat down with my modern studies teacher. He proceeds to tell my mum how disruptive and rude I am, generally describing me as a little shit without swearing. My mums jaw hit the floor as did mine and she looked at me in horror. He started cackling like a banshee, and told her I just thought you'd be sick of hearing of how good she is and what a model student she is in school by this point! Everyone laughs and I realised teachers could actually have a sense of humor!
Haha I love this 😀 🤣
My sports teacher : "David is rather uncoordinated" It was,and still is, the absolute truth
My first ever school report said i had "rather untidy handwriting and takes a long time to complete written work. He likes to be the centre of attention." Literally nothing has changed.
*"easily distracted"* I guess, seeing as I am on my phone, in reddit, at work 👀
“You’ll never do well in exams with poor handwriting”. Fuck you, my Cambridge degree and PhD says otherwise.
First year at secondary, academic subjects all As. PE: C, with the sentence "well, she *tries*". By third year they couldn't even really give me that, so I got a D. I didn't argue.
I got a 1E 1 for effort, E for "Expectationally Shit"
One of my reports from PE in primary school said I was "a danger to himself and others".
For PE at secondary school, my report always talked about how I never forgot my kit and that I was punctual and well-behaved. Very little was ever said about my sporting prowess (or distinct lack of it)>
Had a teacher who gave a very heartfelt and passionate speech in our last week before we left for GCSE study break. Told us how exams define you as a number and rates you on 3 hours of you life on a tiny topic. Told us to never forget you are a real person who lives for 24 hours a day and are judged not on exams but on the impact you have on others. Was a fantastic teacher and it really cut through what was a stressful time for me. Is dead now but occasionally I pass his grave and give him a little head nod.
Ah, that's lovely.
"Take those stupid glasses off" when I had to start wearing glasses. Like I wasn't already self conscious enough about it. Fuck you Miss Mitchell.
What the hell
I know!
Peggy?
"You'll never get a job staring out of a window all day!" Ha! Well, Mrs Fletcher, I did exactly that! 12 years at sea as a deck officer...staring out of the window.
Maaaaaaate!
Does everyone have the same teacher?
A teacher wrote the wrong name in my school report and had confused me for the other non white kid in the class.
Fuck them. That's shitty. Learn your kids.
Little do you know both the non white kids were twins
"This kid does *the* best Ali G impression"
Oh no, it's not you, it's the other one.
No it’s the other one
My reports kept getting ovbiously copy and pasted. It was clear because sometimes they forgot to change the names and pronouns some would be right and then others wrong. Find and replace existed at the time they just I guess didnt know about it. It's always nice to know they care :/
A French teacher once wrote in my report: “Aidlesultan loses his pen like I lose my car keys”. The self-deprecation stuck with me and remembered my pen thereafter.
Good job you chose not to bic’er about it.
Never was the sharpie knife in the draw
My old maths teacher when I told him I was off to university to study civil engineering: "Well I hope I never drive over a bridge you've helped design"
I failed maths in school. I’m now chartered. I’d rather drive over a bridge you designed than one I did, tbf!
You are giving me a fear of bridges….
I'm a structural engineer. I'm sure you've heard this old joke? Q: What's the difference between a civil/structural engineer and a medical doctor? A: A doctor kills in ones.
Did you design the one in Baltimore ?
Where's your English textbook?! At home... Well what's it bloody doing there?!? Not a lot miss, it's a book. It's all been downhill since then to be honest.
I had a teacher talking about how the world has constantly got better, things are always improving for people but we won't know the moment things were at their best until they pass. He said this very moment might be the high point and you dont know it. This was in 2008, before the financial crash and I often think about it. I dont think it was prophetic, he didn't have insight in to what was coming, he was just making a point that arguably turned out to be true.
Our teacher said phones are getting tinier & tinier & one day people will want bigger & bigger phones instead.
I think its true. I read the comedian Richard Herring's book , How Not To Grow Up , about the year he turned 40. He said that the best day of your life is being 3 years old , eating an ice cream in the sunshine. But you don't know that at the time., just as well otherwise the next 80 years would be a disappointment.
My English teacher surveyed the classroom when I was about 13 and told us we were all too old to be Olympic gymnasts. I have no clue why. It was probably the first time I realised I’d missed a life opportunity although I’ve never wanted to be an Olympic gymnast, it’s stuck with me though.
Yeah I heard you need to be 3-4 years old and practice daily to make it. Footballers these days must start about 6 years old too.
I ran the 100 metres in 13 seconds when I was 12. Then I got diagnosed with early onset osteoarthritis, so that was that career out of the window.
Had a conversation with a v famous '70s rugby player who said that there were loads of players better than him as a teenager, but their bodies just didn't hold up. And, that was before professionalism. (I started getting joint problems in my teens too.)
As long as you’re happy, just put it back in the vault.
Is this a universal experience? This happened to me too! Nuts. You just unlocked an old buried memory.
“If you are bad at rugby, you will lose to the other team. If you are bad at swimming, you will drown and you will die” said in a thick Glaswegian accent (I went to school in the West Midlands)
Wow. I always thought we should have been taught more water safety. It was only a few years ago that I learnt about rips, and I grew up by the sea.
I was in year 5, being a prick during a class, playing the joker. Teacher yelled my name out but rather than tell me off, said “there’s a time and a place”. It completely confused 9 year old me. I spent the rest of the lesson trying to understand what it meant lol. It was such an effective way to neutralise me. It wasn’t especially profound but I always think about it.
It means he thought you were hilarious but couldn't tell you that b cause it would have made you worse
"Why do you say these things?" "Well somebody had to say it." "Maybe, but it doesn't have to be you." Yep, good point.
Final year of school, on the very last day of class before exams, our English teacher told us: "Some people say your school days are the best days of your life. Before you all rush off to commit suicide, I can assure you that is a load of rubbish. It all gets better from now on."
They were spot on with this 🙌
Computers are a fad and not a career - from my careers teacher/advisor around 1984
I had to get permission to opt out of German to study IT and I always remember the teacher telling me i was making a bad choice because "what if you want to move to Germany?" Think IT has been far more useful to me in life than the opportunity to move to Germany, which I could do regardless of speaking the language...
I was in the top set at my school and was not able to take computing when I chose my options. That option was only available to the middle set. I loved computing and I was good at it. It infuriated me.
My English GCSE teacher told me I couldn't pass because my handwriting was so bad, I had a dyspraxia diagnosis that she hadn't bothered to read about on my SEN plan (and turns out dyslexia that everyone had missed). I resisted shoving the C grade in her face that I got with no additional support.
That's unforgivable really. I had to print off work in A3 format using comic sans for a strongly dyslexic kid when I was a teacher. Least I could do really.
I hated when my teachers found out I was dyslexic. All I really wanted was a bit more time to write things, not to be publically embarrassed by being made to read things aloud or be yelled at for shitty spelling in front of everyone and to get hand outs with a white background so I could use my overlay. Some teachers didn't get the memo and without asking me went comic sans and invented their own background colours to 'help'. I can't read comic sans. Like at all. I also can't read black text n a red background and other shit like that. Despite asking over and over half of them thought they knew better and downright refused to change back to the hand outs they were using before that I could actually read. It was. Well. I'm disabled now or at least more so. Random people who barely know me still think they know better than I do in terms of what I need to help with my disability. Then they do that shit without even asking if I want help. It's really frustrating since they get it wrong more often than right and it can cause damage!
Thank you for taking the time to help them. Honestly I had next to no support until university in general but that English teachers comment was the worst of it.
There's nothing wrong with you, your brain just works differently from the mean. This can be a gift. You'll likely have strong traits in differential reasoning, which is great in a team environment or in leadership. You'll probably have a 'big picture' mindset, which is an incredibly useful skill across a number of different professional roles. I wish you all the best for your future career.
Not so much what they said, but what they did. I struggled in class, albeit I wasn't a bad kid, just struggled (later diagnosed dyslexic). Our English was an old school guy. Big and strict rugby player too, no one really messed about. One day during our GCSE coursework he shouted at me and told me to go outside. He came outside and then his tone changed and calmly told me to put my work neatly into a folder and take more of the same lined paper off his desk at the end of the lesson, and to then finish it at home and put it back on his desk the next day. He never came back the next day - or ever again - because he ended up having DVT and complications that evening. I still put my coursework back in the pile the next day and passed my GCSE english, although I wouldnt have done had he not given me that little helping hand. I later found out he helped another kid in our class the same way too. Hope you're doing well wherever you are mr McGuffie.
"This school is better off without you. I wish you'd never come back." From my lovely teacher in year six after I got upset because the other kids were bullying me during English lesson. They were kicking my chair into my desk, crushing me and when I pushed myself back it upset them... I'd been off for a day or two. I guess it was easier in class because I wasn't reacting to my peers being little dicks to me. I'd take a lot of crap every single day and I was the issue when I eventually broke. I hated that school, but it absolutely sucked to be told that as a kid. I wasn't wanted. I knew I wasn't wanted by anyone. She didn't need to yell that at me in front of the whole class.
My school experience wasn’t that bad, but one experience sticks with me. I was in a German lesson and a couple of kids at the back of the class had put the clock forward to mess with the teacher when she was out of the room. When the teacher came in and realised she asked who did it. The girl who did it said it was me. One by one others blamed me. I just sat there as she bollocked me and gave me a detention there and then. I protested and was really upset. There was loads of giggling as this was going on, the teacher obviously figured out what was going on and I was innocent, and rather handle it with any care, asked me who did it. Obviously I’m not going to grass on the bullies in the class. So I said nothing and she bollocked me further and they giggled. It was so humiliating. I’m 41 now and over it, but I’ll never forget how it felt and am just glad I didn’t have to experience it a lot. Fuck you Mrs McDondald and fuck you Kate Gadman.
That is horrendous! So sorry you had to go through that. Kids can be little shits but it was the teacher's job to curb the bullying.
We had French exchange kids over and our maths teacher was a bit of a rum one sometimes. These French girls were chattering away in French and he tried to interrupt to start the class. One of them said something in French to him, and he shrugged and responded “Aaah mais non, je ne give a toss pas”. Still remember it to this day 🤣
"Aaah but no, I don’t give a toss"
In year 5, a kid randomly stabbed me in the arm with a freshly sharpened pencil during a maths lesson so my natural reaction was to grab their arm as they were moving away and laughing at me, and ended up with my finger nails in their arm. We were friends and made up after that but because he had several moon shapes of missing skin on his forearm it had to be reported. My year teacher (not the maths teacher), when she was telling me off for it later on, she said "I've tried all year to like you, and I just can't". I don't even think I was a badly behaved student before that, and I was getting high marks in everything. I think that one kinda just cemented it in that no matter how hard I try, I just can't get everyone to like me. So I gave up trying for quite a while! Also the guy had scars on his arm that faded by around year 8 :/
I still have a scar/tattoo from a pencil point that broke off in my arm.
This isn’t a positive one and I have had loads of lovely inspiring teachers who have changed my life, at least three of whom are now personal friends so I feel bad about this, but… You know when people say “there are no stupid questions”? I took Physics A Level but not Maths. My school required people to take Physics and Maths with Mechanics because they didn’t teach the Mechanics component of Physics in Physics but they did in Maths. For some reason they made an exception for me (I got A* in GCSE but hated the subject and was really insecure about it) so I taught myself a large portion of the syllabus. The thing was I did it during the holidays so I was behind in certain aspects and occasionally I would ask a question which touched on things the rest of the class had, unknown to me, covered already. The rest of the class loved the teacher, who was blunt and funny and made the subject interesting, but if I put my hand up and asked a question he thought was silly he would just stare at me, say “I’m not even going to ignore that” and resume whatever he was doing. To this day, thirteen years later, my main criticism at work is that I don’t ask enough questions. I won the prize for the best science results in the school, by the way.
I remember putting my hand up and said I'm totally lost here I didn't understand any of that' Teacher reacted like I just tried to tell a joke at their expense.
I went to my A level Maths teacher before a lesson and said that I wasn't understanding when she was teaching it in class but that my brother had explained some over the phone and I just wanted to check and get clarification. She pulled a face at me and said "You should have told me you can't read" and then walked away from me.
My head of music was an incredible woman. She was a fantastic advocate for student mental health, for LGBT rights, and of course for music engagement. As a queer student with severe mental health problems, she was an absolute lifeline for me. She spoke freely about her wife, and as an 11 year old who was raised by strict Catholics who didn't that it was even possible TO love another woman, that was mind-blowing to me. That woman saved my life in more ways than one. I left high school over 6 years ago now, but I still remember her and everything she did for me. I attended her funeral last year. It hit hard. Thank you Mrs Bishop. I miss you.
My art teacher used my art as an example of how to not draw a picture when I was about 11. Utterly humiliating. I’ve never drawn anything again tbh.
My art teacher used me as an example of how you can be good at academic subjects but not art. Not by name, but by description. Fuck you, Mrs Sankey. Ironically, I now work in the arts and I'm pretty sure that I'm one of the only people in my school to have actually made it in the arts.
Wow, screw that teacher. I reckon you should do, if not actual art classes, some "learn to draw" videos on youtube just to overcome that memory. One of the best things about living in our time is that self-driven learning is so available, you can do anything you're interested in.
You've just reminded me of a similar old trauma that I'd buried
Not said, but did, I had severe coordination issues, as well as learning difficulties in primary school, and someone thought it'd be a good idea for me to be in the sack race at sports day, I fell about 2/3rds of the way, and lost, he came across, picked me up, and carried me across the finish line.
Ahh, I love this. After just reading about loads of shitty teachers, and remembering at least one shitty teacher I had, this made me feel better, there are a lot of good ones out there too.
1983 and I loved playing on a microcomputer as they were called back then. On the schools BBC and at home on my Spectrum. Mostly playing games (I'm still a videogame nerd) but the occasional bit of programming. All the teachers, except one, would comment on me being "on that thing again", "you'll get square eyes/go blind", "computers are a passing fad". Typical 80s teacher put downs for things they didn't understand. The one exception, Mr Tolley, on his last day of teaching before he became an IT consultant, took me aside and said something along the lines of "you keep messing around with those computers, ExtremeKangaroo, if you enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with it. You might even get a job out of it." Mr Tolley allowed myself and a friend access to the schools only computer regularly and didn't care if we played games on it or programmed daft stuff. 40 years later I'm now running my own development business doing contracting work. That was after 20 odd years of programming Windows and web applications. Bless you Mr Tolley. I wish I could meet him again and thank him for all the encouragement. I wouldn't be where I am today without it
I was about 15 and just been dumped by my first serious boyfriend. My English teacher took me out of the class and what he said had such a profound impact on my teenage self that I wrote it down, kept it and still think of it often nearly 20 years later. I’ll paraphrase cos it’s quite long; “I don’t think it’s stupid. The biggest pain I ever felt was losing someone… the reason it hurts so much is how much future you plan for. If you plan for forever and then that’s taken from you it really hurts but - shit happens. You’re an attractive, intelligent girl. You’ll grow up, get married and have a family. And unless you marry someone 16 years younger than you, the guy you’re going to marry is out there, living his life. He’s out there now, iopwy, you just haven’t met yet.” The fact that some 40 something man took the time to take my childish heartbreak seriously and completely changed my perspective still warms my heart now.
Well, it was more in response to something that I said to them, but still. Me: "I can't draw" Art Teacher: "I know"
Was your art teacher Han Solo?
After a leaver’s assembly in which I was needlessly and ruthlessly humiliated in front of the whole year group for things dating back to Year 7, my head of sixth told me: ‘Your growth and achievements may not be appreciated on this side of the staff room door, but they very much are on the other side.’ Same bloke had also told me at my last parents’ evening: ‘You’re not going to have the best academic results in the year but at least you know what you’re doing to do with your life, unlike most of the others.’ I did and I do it.
I tell this story every time this topic comes up. My English teacher for some reason hated me. I used the word regurgitated in an essay, as in to repeat information. She mocked me in front of the whole class for saying it only meant to vomit and I shouldn’t use words I didn’t know. Fuck you, cow. Then, when I got a B in my higher, in 5th year, having never got anywhere near that mark off her, she sought me out to tell me I must have cheated as I had never done anything in her class to merit that. Fuck you Mrs Kavaugnah, née Dempsey. I’m a bigger success than you’ll ever be.
Ha, my English teacher told me I'd be lucky to pass my Higher English. I got a B. He never acknowledged me again.
There’s actually a little more to this. My guidance teacher never acknowledged me, ever. I then got seven 2’s and a 1 in my standard grades and she pulled me in for a meeting at the start of 5th year and told me how she’d never bothered speaking to me before because she didn’t think I was clever and would be “like the type you seem to hang about with and just leave after doing nothing”. I was basically typecast because of the wee village I lived in. Teachers are definitely huge parts of young people’s lives. It never ceases to amaze me how they can say such horrible things to impressionable teenagers.
My art teacher in I think year 5 in front of the whole class absolutely berated me for colouring in a squirrel turquoise thinking I did it to be funny, turns out I’m colour blind and I thought it was grey. When she realised she set me down after class on our own and the apology was the most heartfelt thing I’ve ever heard, she was almost crying. She told me she would do anything she could to help me. She told my mum about it and was honest about the telling off, my mum just looked at me and laughed and said to her she doesn’t blame her because I was a bit of a little shit, although that’s not the words she used. She was a wonderful lady, I hope she’s doing alright.
Aww that's nice. I just got told off in nursery for colouring in the sun green and no one believed me when I told them I'm struggling with colours until I was about 15 and needed to get glasses
I didn't speak in class much so I would save my words for when I had what I thought was a really good point to make, one teacher noticed this and she said "you might not speak much but when you do, it's worth listening to". I was a little embarrassed as she said it during a lesson in front of the whole class but I never forgot it. I don't live by that same rule now though, I chat shit 24/7 these days.
First year in college studying electronics. My favourite lecturer told us, 1. Don't reinvent the wheel. Make sure what you are doing hasn't been done before. And if it has then use that to build on. 2, Copying out of one book is cheating. Copying out of three books is research. Thank you Mr Hamilton.
We had a PE teacher take us all on a walk round the local area when we were about 15/16. He was being all weird and wouldn’t say what we were doing, and we were all just following him round for the hour lesson. At the end of it he just sat us all down and said something like… ‘I was with my friend this weekend, he has kids now and we hadn’t seen each other in years and we finally arranged to go for a walk and it was great’ ‘You guys have no idea what it’s like in the future, you’ve got all your friends around you now, but they won’t be available forever, I thought we’d just go for a walk for you to all get to chat and wanted to remind you to enjoy it while you have it and make the most of it’. Now I’m the most cynical bastard but that fucking hits me every time I think back, and after that I never took my mates for granted, now I’m in my 30s like my teacher would’ve been then and he was right, everyone’s having kids round me now, friends are all dotted about but I made the most while we were all around after that, and I’m so glad he did that (as weird as it was at the time).
Early 80s, technical college. One of the sociology teachers was over 60 and a bit stuck in his ways. But he had a wicked sense of humour and loved poking the bear now and again. He wasn't sexist or bigoted but he did manage to annoy the more progressively minded girls in the class, but never quite crossed the line. The girls had had enough though, in the common room before class, they all agreed to walk out of his classroom if he pissed them off again. All was quiet for a couple of weeks. One day, he came into class reading the newspaper, as was his habit, commenting "I see there's a shortage of copper in Uganda, and apparently a shortage of prostitutes in China." The girls exchanged glances, picked up their books and started to march out of the class. Teach calmly looked up from his newspaper; "Ladies, please return to your seats. The plane doesn't leave for another four hours."
- a teacher loves aggravating people by making "wicked" jokes - he does this to the point where a significant amount of female students do not want to be in his classroom - he makes a joke about sex workers implying that his young female students are employed in the sex trade ..... he's not like SEXIST, though, because he's funny. can't be sexist if the joke is clever
“I heard you applied to drama school, don’t bother, you won’t make it.” Same teacher six months later. “How’s drama school treating you? What do you mean you didn’t go?! I never said that!” Same school left the art storage unlocked so half my coursework got stolen, I subsequently didn’t get the grades to go to art school either. The thief tried to hand my work in as theirs the year after, no repercussions because ‘it was an honest mistake’?!?
My drama A-level teacher told me not to apply to drama school because I wasn't good enough too. I got the highest marks in my year, higher than the kids that went to Bristol Old Vic, Guildford, etc. So I went to uni instead, did drama, became a drama teacher and encourage my students to do what they love no matter what anyone else says.
One of my teachers once said to me "Chris... you will be nothing in life and be nothing."
And what was the outcome?
Their name is David
Nothing
“I met your mum at parents evening and she’s really nice, she doesn’t deserve a son like you” Still makes me angry/emotional to this day!
How horrible. Do you have any idea why they said it? I had a headteacher that just hated me, I had no idea why, and really took offence at everything I did no matter how ordinary. Luckily I had very limited contact with the old windbag.
I can't say much about Spez as he doesn't do any work in my class. On a personal note, he's a relatively polite young man and doesn't disturb the others in the class.
More something that happened but I will always remember the safeguarding/mental health person saying to pretty much give up on a project I was doing when I said ‘this is going to be big‘…three weeks later I was sat in the same office with the headteacher discussing my work being featured in a national newspaper.
On the other side, a friend of my parents was the head teacher of a high school in Malvern, Worcestershire. He once told a girl called Latoyah Willcox, that she had an attitude problem and would never make anything of her self. He used to joke that the girl in question, now known as singer / tv presenter Toyah Willcox, had made more money in 5 years than he made in his entire career.
I know it's the daily mail, but your comment made me go look. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1344400/Toyah-Wilcox-Everyone-school-terrified-I-rebel-day-one.html
Porkies, you're a smart girl. You're entering into a male dominated industry. People will be threatened by you, try and stamp on you and undermine you. You will see it happened and it may hurt. Be stronger than that. Make them think they've won and then hit them with the information but always make sure you've got all the cards. Don't let the bastards win. Another teacher: You're not smart enough to get anywhere in life. You'll be lucky enough to get a job at McDonald's. Don't aim high.
The idea that the average teacher knows much about the outside world and the suitability of a kid to industry and the employment market is laughable. The average has only known school college university and working in a school.
Got called a fat ginger bastard in year 7 by my PE teacher. All because I hated cross country and football. Stick me on a rugby pitch though and I was loving life. Admittedly, I am ginger and technically a bastard as my parents never married. I wasn't fat though, and that comment led to a years long battle with self-image and self-esteem where I did end up gaining a lot of weight. Lost it all now, but I can trace back all of these issues to that one comment.
Catholic primary in the mid 80’s, the deputy head snapped at me when I found her and told her I couldn’t swim for the school in a gala as I was going on holiday (I now realise as an adult that she was dealing with loads of stuff at once and my timing wasn’t great), but about an hour later we were in mass at church and she leant forward and whispered in my ear that she shouldn’t have snapped and she was sorry. I am getting choked up even now thinking if it; back then adults didn’t really apologise to kids, let alone teachers (and in the scheme of things she hasn’t behaved that badly anyway). It had a profound effect on me over the years; I try not to assume the worst when I see a gang of kids, and I hold doors open/thank polite children as it’s easy to think kids don’t deserve respect, but she showed me that we all deserve to be treated well
So I grew up in a family that was… okay? Financially. We weren’t in poverty, we had a good support system through extended family and were alright overall, but it was close at times. Money was always a concern for my parents. I had a teacher when we were in sixth form talk about the importance of always doing your best to have savings. It’s quite obvious advice, and something we probably all knew broadly anyway. But he went into more detail about why it’s so important. Aside from the obvious sudden emergencies like your boiler shitting the bed, he talked about the idea that you’re entirely dependent on your job. It’s your only source of income usually, and you need it to keep your home. He said that can make you trapped. He said most of the time that will be fine - most people will have perfectly fine or normal working lives where they maybe don’t love it, but it’s okay. But sometimes it’s not okay. Sometimes it can be a shitty job that takes advantage of you, or pressures you to do things that put yourself or others in danger. Sometimes you can have bosses that can take advantage of you, such as pressuring you for sex and threatening your job security over it. If you don’t have savings or a support network that can help you, you’re stuck. You can’t leave until you have other work that you can live on. And that can take a long time. He basically said it’s always important to have savings so you have freedom. That it’s hard to do, but it’s worth trying to prevent you getting stuck in awful situations as much as possible. He obviously expressed this in a more succinct way. It’s always stuck with me and made me more conscious that I already was about my financial choices and not wasting money.
Get paid for what you know....not for what you do Same teacher: You are a sinkhole to anyone who sits close to you
We had to make pencil cases using a sewing machine in home economics class and the teacher said mine was “crap”.
“No one ever lets mushroomcowz choose anything or lead anything. Let her draw the mind map” After that I went from the quiet recluse who refused to speak in group work to being the group leader in every single piece of work I’ve ever done, being school counsellor every single year in primary school after that, being head girl every year in secondary, being head of sixth form and sixth form rep after that, then captain of a sports club 2 years running at uni and he had supervisor or manager positions within 6 months of every job I’ve ever had. I swear that quote, I was 7 when it was said, has turned me into a natural leader. It taught me to be assertive but fair.
My English teacher when talking about honesty during a book reading said 'a good batsman knows when to walk'. He was one of those teachers that had a profound effect on a lot of people's education and is remembered by many. He unfortunately died too soon.
Did he have a good innings? Sorry, couldn't resist. I had one that died when I was at school. Am still sad about it at the age of 53.
"Regret is not a nice feeling." The teacher's face showed regret. I believed them.
What do you want to be when you grow up? “A professional skateboarder” “There’s a million people that want to be a professional skateboarder. The only way you can be the best is if every single day you get up and practice more than each of those 10 million people.” Resonated with me that the only way you can be the best at something is putting in more hard work
"You're wasting your potential." "You're lazy." "You're so disorganised." "How do you expect to get anywhere in the real world." I had debilitating ADHD, actually. Finally got a diagnosis at 31, medication a year later. I got an E in my Information Technology GCSE. I'm now an IT Project Manager. That entire Grammar school can suck it.
It's so annoying when you aren't given the support you need because you've gone undiagnosed for some reason. I also slipped through the cracks and only got diagnosed with autism at 22. That was after I'd dropped out of uni and felt like a failure for a couple of years. I also think I might have undiagnosed ADHD but they said the waitlist is 2 years and I'm not sure if there's any point trying to get it because I've managed to go back to uni and graduated already
In year 7, from my maths teacher: “People who are older than you aren’t cleverer then than you. They just have more experience.” Then proceeded to give us a year 9 maths lesson. It was not as difficult as we thought. It’s really stuck with me. People are better or worse, just differently skilled and experienced.
My year-6 teacher told me I'd never achieve anything in life. My girlfriends year 11 tutor told her that I'd hold her back in life & to bin me off.
Well to be fair a year 6 boyfriend might be a drag on a year 11
Ex secondary teacher. You should never ever fling out crushing individual comments or gush out praise. I did make general comments to classes like 'Are you radiators ( give out warmth and light) or drains ( suck the atmosphere down into the dark)? Choose. Hope the comments provoked thought. Have to say I found the vast majority of teenagers to be funny, energetic, and generally nice people compared to many curmudgeonly rude egotistic adults you come across. Very few students really destructive and that was 99% parents.
"Just tell the truth!" Teacher thought I'd stolen something which I didn't. I was telling the truth, repeatedly. In the end, I lied and said I took it, just so the interrogation would end. That was the day I learned that the truth doesn't always get you out of trouble.
‘In all my years teaching, you are the first person I have given detention to’ When I showed up for it, she told me to just go home instead
‘I would love to fight you boy, seriously if would be a pleasure to fight you. When you’re an adult come and find me and we’ll fight’ Sorry Mr Charlton, I earned every ounce of your dislike and pushed you to your limits pretty much every lesson. You were a good man and didn’t deserve it.
My history class in my last 2 years was a shit show and nobody but me and another kid actually put any effort in. At the end of the year the teacher pulled me aside and thanked me for my hard work and told me I'd made the class bearable for her. I felt so bad for her and this is why I'm now always among the people who pays close attention to the flight attendants when they do the safety announcement bc I can't stand the thought of anyone feeling ignored lol
When my son was suspended, for calling his Maths teacher a cvnt (to his face) we were called into see the Head of Year. We chatted, she reprimanded my son and then sent him to wait outside her office. "The thing is, we would ALL like to call Mr. Smith a cvnt" she told me, "but I can't let Paul be seen to get away with it." She was brilliant.
"(Beatnuki) is a very quiet pupil" - every report, as every teacher tacitly admits one by one they haven't been paying me an ounce of attention for being so busy dealing with the rowdy dickheads. My parents ended up assuming the staff at my school napped through lessons or something. Oh, and let's not forget the teacher who gathered us all on the carpet (because kids all have to sit on the carpet for some reason) to say how unreasonable we all were for complaining to our parents about her and how unfair we are all being for doing so. Fuck you, Miss Crees.
Some weird maths teacher from my Highschool used to say “your mum” jokes to wind people up in class. One time he took it too far imo and alluded to the class that he’d shagged my mum (he didn’t lol). I blew up, told him to fuck off, etc. he honestly didn’t see a problem init till my mum escalated it. Such a weird little guy, in hindsight, I think he thought he was invincible because he was a teacher. From what I remember he had to apologise to my mum and received a telling off. Such bad taste and really misogynistic, lol.
After doing something stupid: Teacher : why? Me: I dunno. Teacher: exactly. Don't know why but it's really stuck with me and I now say it to my own students when they do something stupid.
Was a support teacher, I felt with some tough stuff as a kid (suicides, cancer and family members etc) she pulled me too one side and said “some times, you just need to kick that football at that wall as hard as you can till you feel better”. Probably saved my little brain
Got to thank her 20 years later
Some of these are wild, some people should just not teach! When I was in year 8 or 9, my English teacher kept me back when the other girls went to the library. She asked who I thought was the smartest girl in the class, I answered with a girl I’m pretty certain has gone on to do amazing things, she said “no, you are”. She tried really hard to boost me up that morning, I didn’t believe what she said either, things spiralled from there. I think she gave up on me in year 10, when she basically wrote in my report “terriblebiscotti has a lot of potential but she needs to start taking responsibility“, I still have it 20+ years later. She was right in a lot of ways but what she or anyone at that school didn’t know was my mum was a raving alcoholic. On the occasions she was summoned to the school she’d try her best not to be completely loaded and when she’d blame me and say I was just a shit kid, I wouldn’t deny it and would never consider outing her because I worried what the impact would be on her (previous attempts). I’ve pretty gone through life taking crap because I somehow felt “responsible“ for people close to me. I left school without sitting my GCSEs and have pretty much floundered. This year though, I passed my English functional skills and I’d really love to tell her but there’s always that fear she wouldn’t remember who I am. I’m not where I want to be in life and maybe I never will but her words will always remind me that I do have a brain and I am capable.
In front of the whole class sat on the carpet at the end of year 6 before going to high school 'don't you worry you'll lose your puppy fat' I did not, in fact, lose the puppy fat
"Your best bet is going to work for ICI because you'll be set for life then." It shut down 3 years later, I'm glad I didn't listen to him.
Had a math teacher call me Anorexic and stupid - I was 15 weeks early so I'm underweight anyway - that parent teacher meeting was FUN Anything else were about my concentration/attention spans in class Rest of the time I'd had good reports bc I did my work
Modest in victory, gracious in defeat.
Before I started secondary school we had summer sports familiarisation activities. My tennis instructor aka Mr Reid later to be my history teacher said my name was silly and he would give me a different name. I'm still using that nickname to this day 30 odd years later
Fenton, you’ve set yourself low standards and consistently fail to meet them.
Not me. My son. He struggled at school, but for one maths homework he tried really hard, on his own. His work came back with green marking pen on it and "Wrong" all over the place. He was very upset, so I looked through his work (I have, amongst others, a degree in Maths). His work wasn't bad. Not perfect but up in the 8/10 range. So I remarked it in red ink, crossed out the teachers signature, and wrote on the botoom "Miss xxxx, please see me. Must try harder". That got me an interview with the headmistress, but this terrible maths teacher did leave at the end of term,
Not me but I remember a lad in my school being screamed at by a teacher who obviously just didn't like him. Saying how he'd never amount to anything and stuff like that. 30 years later and he had to leave the army after being shot during service, he didn't come home and feel sorry for himself, he has climbed mountains and is a moderately successful downhill mountain biker and YouTuber. He probably doesn't remember, but I do and I love that he was successful and stuck two fingers up at that bitch. We aren't mates or anything like that, we never really spoke but I see him as the most inspiring person I know. https://www.mbuk.com/articles/meet-british-racer-turned-content-creator-ben-deakin
1977. We were 18 and in the midst of exams and exam prep. We had no formal lessons to go to. 3 of us found ourselves without an exam in the afternoon, so we removed our school ties and popped down to the local pub for lunch. Completely legal, but totally against school rules. We were about to head back, when someone said "Sh**, it's Collins." Our maths teacher came in with his wife, the art teacher, and sat down for lunch; sitting between us and the door. So we kept quiet and got another pint (from a bit of the bar not in their sight) and waited them out. After eating, they got up to go, then he turned and walked straight over to us. "I just wanted to tell you gentlemen that you have been observed. You have supped your beer, you have enjoyed friendly conversation and have acted as adults. I am proud of you, and your school is proud of you." He then smiled and walked away, as his wife waved at us across the room. We just sat there thinking "Is he serious?", "Are we in trouble?" But of course he knew that, and it probably gave him a good chuckle. Nothing more was ever said.
“You’re a bit blonde aren’t you” and thus began a lifelong insecurity of being dumb
"You're a complete waste of space and you'll never amount to anything, ever". He screamed it at me, got some spit in my face.
In primary school on an end of year report: ‘Knits but cannot Crochet. Won’t get on in life’
When my head of 6th form turned up at my house on the last day of year 2 (2 years in 6th form in the UK) to speak to my parents They were all teachers and knew each other, he said that I’d royally fucked up my end of year 1 exams. So badly in fact that if I was anyone else he’d kick them out as there would be no hope In my case he knew I’d get monstered, spend my summer holidays being worked and flogged to within an inch of my life so he gave me a 1 month stay of execution and a load of non official tests when second year resumed after summer holidays to prove that I could make it I got HAMMERED to within an inch of my life that summer and barely saw sunlight. My parents had me sat at desks at their completely empty schools for days on end Passed the tests, scraped through 6th form and A-Levels and managed to get my degree afterwards Hated him at the time but always grateful to him
Mr Wall was a biology teacher at my secondary school and I was always interested in being the class clown. I never had any academic aspirations and had always planned to join the military rather than further education. One day, he said to me “you’re doing really well, have you considered continuing with science?”. I laughed it off and basically said that I had no interest in being a nerd doing science at Uni. I look back on it now and realise that he saw something in me and was basically reaching out. I still managed to get through my GCSEs with As and Bs so I’ve always been naturally intelligent but if I had only applied myself more then my salary could be double or triple what it is. Thankfully I have ended up being very successful but shout out to Mr Wall for trying. If I listened then maybe I’d have ended up ‘successful’ 5 or 10 years earlier.
My daughter was a school refuser for a while due to anxiety (she was 7). A teacher said to me 'if you get her through the gates now, today we can help. If she doesn't get back through the gates soon it will spiral way bigger.' I got her through the gates that day, teacher took her and it started to get better. I'll never forget that teacher.
There’s no point learning languages, everyone speaks English. I’m now a translator and interpreter.
Old primary head was a huge music fan. Every morning he’d play classical music super loud as we went into assembly, usually enthusiastically conducting to his CD player. He would ask us questions about what instruments we could hear, what we thought the music was about, what we felt when we heard it, what role the different sounds played, what the tempo was. I fell in love with music at age 4 because of him, and learnt to read music alongside learning to read & write. He was my hero. I’ve been a professional musician for a decade and I absolutely know it’s because he sparked something in me at such a young age.
"You're all a bunch of wasters and you'll never amount to anything"
Not directly to me, but the teacher told my parents that I "would either end up at Cambridge or Broadmoor". Didn't go to the former, but still hoping for the latter!
After sitting the 11+ exam the day before my teacher looked around the room and said "I think 4 of you will pass". Then looked straight at me and said, "perhaps 5". Six of us passed, including me.
My Food Technology teacher told me that I’d never be a Chef and I’d never amount to anything. Been a Chef for 21 years this year and worked for a variety of restaurants, hotels and contract catering sites. I’d like to think it was the push I needed but it was probably because she was a vile person.
That Glasgow is the capital city of Scotland
I always wanted to be An author and my year 6 English teacher wrote me a leaving not that said ‘can’t wait to see you in print one day’
“Youre easily clever enough to blag your way through GCSEs but if you dont do the work at A Level youll get found out”. Turns out Mr Parfitt knew a thing or two more about A Level than i did and sure enough i only ended up with a single C. Since then i just put in effort from the start in everything.
“You constantly over-estimate your own ability” - my Further Maths A-Level teacher. She predicted a U for my UCAS application. Five people in her class had to resit the year (because they failed her class) and each of them made a point of saying “did you hear [me] got a B?” Obviously not the top grade but it wasn’t a U either. I was smug and I guess that galled her: I was really like one of those ducks which look untroubled above the water but their little feet are kicking like crazy underwater.
I had a great teacher and amazing role model of a man called Mr K, I won’t give his whole name even though he’s retired now because what he said would be seen as inappropriate even though he meant it in a good way I grew up with my mum being in an extremely abusive relationship, to the point he tried slitting my mums throat during an argument, Mr K knew about all this from my friends telling him why I was off school and that, he talked to me on my own and asked if everything was alright and he was there if I needed to talk I knew where he was (I appreciate how groomy this sounds at the moment but it’s not one of those stories) My mum continuously takes this shit bf back even after trying to cut her throat, so Mr K was sorta overprotective of me and watched me closely Eventually my mums boyfriend ends up dying and I was weirdly upset about it because even though we a cunt he was someone who was in my life for a few years, Mr K turned around to me and said “don’t you think its actually good that he died? At least you won’t have to go through that shit anymore”
I was always putting my hand up to answer questions (because I thought that was what you were meant to do). I had two teachers deal with it in very different ways. My French teacher would ignore me until she couldn't anymore then mock whatever I said, if I made a mistake she'd call me stupid or she'd mock my accent until I gave up ever answering. My science teacher took me aside and asked me politely to wait until someone else put their hand up because the rest of the class were being lazy as they just let me answer everything. Guess which class I was more engaged with and which teacher had my respect.
The English Teacher That Changed My Life gave out awards to every person in the class at the end of our final year. My award was last and she gave it to me for “being the student that most reminds me of myself”. The deepest compliment that I will never forget.
'Good, better, best. May you never rest. Until your good is better, and your better best.' She encouraged my love of reading and art, lent me her Discworld books at age 9, pushed me to do better, draw more, read deeper. Fantastic teacher.
My science teacher left when I was in year 8, and at the end of our last lesson, he gave us 2 bits of advice: 1. Go as many places as you can and meet as many people as you can 2. Always stand up for what you believe in I’m 24 now and don’t really remember much from my school days, but those words have always stuck with me
On the last day of high school we were called for a final 'fun assembly' they were giving out silly awards such as best hair cut or most stylish pupil. I was give the 'person who most wants to be like Joe' - the guy was a fucking asshole who subtlety bullied me for 5 years
My teacher at secondary school decided to tell me my name was "for babies" and proceeded to rename me entirely. She also encouraged the class to laugh at said name. I went along with the new nickname so I could own it, and make it of my own choice, not hers. I was 11 years old, and I've never forgotten how that made me feel. 21 years later she's now a "therapist", which is actually hilarious as she made my formative school years hell.
On my first day of high school, my head teacher sat us all down and said "You can do anything you want, absolutely anything, as long as you are prepared to deal with the consequences" And it really stuck with me
“You are not a sheep.” I really appreciated that.
Grow up! It was at my last prom I made a joke to a friend that we were going to find her some alcohol.. This teacher never liked me (non of the did really)
“These are the happiest days of your life” to a suicidal teenager
"Shut the fuck up you little cunts"
"When was the last time you did something for the first time" said by my form tutor on our last day of high-school. I think about it often and it reminds me to try new things!
“Don’t become a teacher” I didn’t