<p>DD had a varsity sport coach like that, one reason why the administration is more interested in little things like you mentioned is that they are provable and likely can be used in demoting him. When I complained about DDs coach, it was about April of the year in which the fall sport had been played. I complained not as related to my DD but based on the unprofessionalism- I never mentioned his terrorising some girls on the team, but gave proof of provable problems. He 'got quit" He lost his coaching position and moved to another school- that is about all you can hope for in the world of education</p>
<p>My Catholic school in NYC used a “first row, first seat” seating chart. We were graded every six weeks and then were seated, highest average to lowest average. Every report card for the 4 years I attended that school. I was lucky as I remained in the first row, first seat every marking period but one. I had added instead of subtracting on an arithmetic test and thus was placed in the middle until the next report card. Sister Rose Florence, grade 2a called me “Miss Smarty Pants.”</p>
<p>I’m not sure my story is as traumatic as some of these, but over 40 years later it still makes me cringe. </p>
<p>It was the first day of first grade. I was supposed to walk home for lunch, and my mother had instructed me to tell my teacher. One of the first orders of business was taking the hot lunch orders. Mrs. S asked for a show of hands from those purchasing lunch. She then asked those buying milk to raise their hands. I anxiously waited for her to ask about those going home. She never did. I was too shy to draw attention to myself by raising my hand without a question about it so I worried about it for a couple of hours as my mother’s instructions were clear. A couple of hours into the day we lined up for a brief recess. I saw it as the perfect time to “privately” tell the teacher I was walking home for lunch that day. It might seem silly but her stern response was, “It’s not lunch time. We’re going out for recess.” It made me feel dumb. I knew what recess was. I knew it wasn’t lunch time. I wasn’t that ignorant of first grade. My adult self still wishes I would have said very calmly, “I know that. You never asked if anyone was walking home. My mother said I should tell you.”</p>
<p>In second grade, I needed to go to the bathroom and asked my teacher if I could. Since it was only 5 minutes until it was time to go home, I was told to wait. As you can guess, I could not wait, and went all over the floor. Fortunately, I sat in the back row, so probably no one noticed. However, I refused to go back to school the next day. My mother had to take me back and told the teacher what happened. She was so nice about it and called me her “little petunia.” </p>
<p>I was in 4th grade during the cold war. My teacher must have been paranoid about the US being bombed. She would tell us stories all the time about how we would all turn to jelly. We had daily air raid drills down in the basement, kneeling with our handkerchiefs over our noses and mouths (as if that would help). It was a dark and scary basement, and the possibility of all this happening seemed very real. I was very afraid and would cry at home. My parents did not confront the school about this, though, and I always wondered why. My teacher was nice, but quite old, and probably very frightened herself. Maybe a little mentally ill.</p>
<p>I’ll play…in 3rd grade (1966), my mom remarried. She changed her last name, let’s say from Smith to Jones. The first day back to school after the wedding I wrote my name at the top of the page "just"aMom Jones. The teacher (Mrs. Dalton) asked me to stand up at the front of the class, and loudly berated me for using a “fake” name. "YOU are NOT "just"aMom Jones! You are “just"aMom SMITH! You have NOT been adopted!” I thought I would die on the spot. I loved my step-dad with all my heart (he was better to me and my brother than our own father) and all I wanted was to share his name. </p>
<p>Wow, I cannot believe it can still evoke the feelings it does.</p>
<p>Wow, justamom! That was terrible!</p>
<p>One day I was called to the principal’s office. I had no idea as to what it was about, but my adrenaline started to flow and my heart was just pounding! I was so scared because I did not know anyone who was ever called into the principal’s office unless they were in big trouble! He asked me if I would like to change classes and have a new teacher. I loved the teacher that I had because there was no pressure. He really taught very little because he believed that children should direct their own learning. I remember having story time, spending hours on hobbies that we could bring from home (ie: oil painting, making little crafty items). We did have spelling lessons and we had to switch classes for math. This was 5th grade! I did not know this, but after my mother went to open school night she called the principal and told him that she wanted me out of this man’s classroom (btw, my mother was a teacher too). Reluctantly, the principal agreed. I was put in another class, and the teacher was not a good match for me. Anyway, the teacher that I liked came to me during lunch and told me that my mother had me transferred! I came home and asked my mother if she did this, and she had to tell me the truth. She never discussed it with me beforehand, and I felt awful about the situation bc I really liked that teacher, and I felt that my mother nearly caused me to have a heart attack when I was sent to the principal. I felt that if I had time to think about my response to the principal, I could have told him my true feelings, but I was so scared that I just agreed with what was prearranged.</p>
<p>This stuff still goes on today - since he is no longer teaching, I will tell on my DS calculus teacher. </p>
<p>He developed a real animosity towards my son (and there was equal animosity going the other way) I think started because DS didn’t do his homework and still got A’s on the tests - learning the material via the problems worked in class. Since the class was supposedly taught like a college course, homework was not part of the grade - but it still infuriated the teacher that someone wasn’t doing the work. </p>
<p>Anyway, dear Son has an accident - and with a nasty infection that followed the surgery, he missed nearly a month of school. First day he walks in, teacher says - “it is about time you came back - here are two tests you missed - you have 60 minutes go”</p>
<p>DS got Cs on both tests - and a B+ in the class, missing an A by one point.</p>
<p>Great stories ! Keep em coming. Ive a horrid one and a funny one. When I was in first grade, at the beginning of December, we had to make little lambs out of paper, which were then placed on the right side of the wall. On the left was a paper replica of Christ in the manger. Each time we were good, we were moved a few inches towards the manger, each time we were naughty or gave wrong answers, we were moved back. Well, this was my first year of speaking French, and most of my answers must have been pretty weird, so when Xmas came around, there were 20 or do little lambs clustered around the crèche, and one which had now moved so far back that it as on the opposite wall. The principal came in and said: And who is the wicked lamb who will never see baby Jesus and will go to hell? She made me stand on a chair and all the other kids ran around me chanting Shell go to hell, shell go to hell! I think my agnosticism dates from that day!
On the much lighter side, I am now myself a teacher, and on a hot summer day, in the middle of my first class, I ripped my jeans on the sharp edge of the blackboard where the chalk is kept. Just at the level of my butt. No sweater or coat to cover my very unsexy underpants. You can imagine the state of utter joy in the classroom, and my own acute shame. After an hour, I managed to dash into the secretarys office and staple my jeans back together, but the story had leaked around the school, and the rest of the day was sheer horror. But very funny retrospectively.</p>
<p>My first grade teacher put me in the low-level reading group even though I already knew how to read. Maybe she wanted me to be there to help the other kids, I don’t know. But the high-level group did fun projects that the rest of the class envied, and we had to work on worksheets. This teacher also ignored me when I went up to her to say that the boy sitting next to me had cut my hair when I wasn’t looking. When she finally came over and saw all my hair on the floor and asked what the heck had happened, and I told her, she said, “Why didn’t you tell me before?! You have to tell me these things right away!”</p>
<p>In the fourth grade, I overheard my teacher telling my mom (in a parent-teacher conference) about who he thought the smartest kid in our class was. This was a kid whose parents basically did all his homework. I was ticked off about that one, that the teacher would be duped so easily and give so much credit to a kid who was just like the rest of us except for the possible exception that he’d cry whenever he couldn’t do something correctly. </p>
<p>My fifth grade science teacher would routinely berate children to the point of tears. He was obviously a rather lonely guy. Every day, the first fifteen minutes of science class would be him telling us every detail of all the shows he’d watched the night before.</p>
<p>AH–P.E.</p>
<p>In 11th grade one of the P.E. teachers was a goon. On Mondays mornings he always smelled like a still. If he was hung over enough he’d make us do gymnastics inside to stay out of the weather. He’d have us do some tumbling that included doing a handspring over a rolled up mat. He’d sit on the floor and pull the rolled up mat toward the gym’s brick wall so he could rest his back on the wall. Then he would announce that we would do this exercise until all of us did it right in one run through. Yeah, right, 25 guys in public high school – there wasn’t ever going to be a time when everyone made that handspring. So, we’d have to do it over and over with the arms getting weaker and weaker until he’d start calling everyone “sissies” (it was 1967) and then go on to the next “exercise.”</p>
<p>Well, one Monday morning (2nd period P.E.) on about the third or fourth round through this torture, I managed to flub the handspring, come down on my ankle (which snapped so loud one of the other coaches came over to see what happened) and pitched sideways with my head smacking the brick wall. Turned out I had broken the ankle and splintered a bone in my leg. The cretin scooted on his behind over to where I lay and actually rotated my ankle. When I yelled he said go down into the gym basement and have one of the injured football guys ice it since “it was just a sprain.” </p>
<p>I managed to get down stairs into the basement with the help of another student and AGAINST ALL RULES used the coaches’ office phone to call my parents; Mom at home and Dad at his office. The only time I can ever remember that I couldn’t reach either one (remember 1967–no cell phones). I called a college age family friend who was home from college early for Xmas and had him come get me. </p>
<p>There is an O Henry twist. My Dad was an attorney. The school wanted me (I was 17) and my father to sign a release. We did but the goon was “history.” He went to TCU as a football coach and was fired shortly thereafter [brutality].</p>
<p>My first “bad school memory” is from kindergarten - the field trip to the zoo. The kindergarten teacher split the kids up into groups and each group was to go with a parent chaperone. Somehow I wasn’t assigned to a group. Being an extremely shy 5 year old, I said nothing, just watched the groups walk away and leave me, totally alone, just inside the zoo entrance. I continued to stand there until someone returned for me. Since I wasn’t on the teacher’s group list, I’m not sure how they even realized I was missing. I don’t know how long I stood there (it was probably somewhere between 15 minutes and an hour), but it seemed like all day to me. 44 years later, this is one of very few kindergarten memories I still have.</p>
<p>I also vividly remember the nun I had in third grade, who would drag me around the classroom by the ponytail because she didn’t like the way my hair was fixed (a side ponytail that sometimes flipped into my face). I was scared to death of her and I’d ask my mother to fix my hair a different way, but she didn’t. When I told her about it years later she told me if she’d known why I wanted my hair fixed another way she would have done it, but I was afraid to tell her I was getting in trouble at school (to me, getting dragged around by the hair was “getting in trouble,” even though I’d really done nothing wrong). Some of those nuns were just vicious.</p>
<p>My D’s kindergarten teacher berated another mother (so loudly that I could hear it) because that woman’s child came to school with messy hair. While I can understand the point (the long curly hair was rather wild), and it was not the hair per se that could not be managed, I can only think of the mortification that the mother felt. She had two other kids and was a single mother. One of the other kids was a special needs kid who really required alot of work. I’m sure that getting out each day with perfect hair was just not a priority. This mother was an outspoken woman, but she basically just took it. She took her daughter out of that school after first grade (as did we with our D.)</p>
<p>Here is a different twist . Not a bad experience, per se , but had a little impact on all of the kids of my oldest’s class. They were lucky enough to have a fabulous teacher who went above and beyond the norm with his class. It started right in th first month of school. He had a camping night for students and parents ( if they could come ) It was right at the school and he planned it around some sort of celestial event and had telescopes for gazing.
He did so many awesome projects and events with his class. He also had the same students for boh 4th and 5h grade. The bond that was formed with the classmates was very unique…most of them remain friends still to this day, and they even have little reunions. Many of the students turned out to be some of the best and brightest of heir graduating class .
The bad part was the resentment from the other classes whose teachers never did anything even close to what their teacher did…they were a very hated bunch because of it. It has grown into a joke , sort of with her non-Mr J’s classmates. They always admit how they loathed his kids !</p>
<p>mdoc- my DD has a similar memory and it was my fault 
In middle school the coach asked me to get all the team assigned to parent drivers who would meet him at the school an hour away for the event. I had the list of 30+ kids and was absorbed in assigning and checking groups off- DD came up and asked to drive with a friend’s mom and i agreed. The two parking lots backed up to each other with side walks between.</p>
<p>DD ran to the friend’s car at the far end of one parking lot just as they drove away; as she ran back to the other parking lot where I was, she watched a ripple of cars closing their doors and driving away- all leaving her behind.</p>
<p>She was in tears and 10-15 years ago cells were not so common and most of the drive would have been in a cellular dead zone. About halfway there I realised I did not make sure she got into her friend’s car and stopped to call the school from a pay phone, she was in the office crying. Her Dad left work (nearby) and drove her halfway whilst I drove back to meet them. I felt horrible.</p>
<p>Then after all that, a sport that was usually run by grade level (cross country) with 100 or more kids per grade, was run in a huge NYC marathon pack, she was pushed down and had footprints on her back And she was #1 in her grade (of 100+) so expected a medal, they way it was usually done, but this school only awarded the overall winners, so it was a sad and shocking day.</p>
<p>Calculus- what is it about teachers being offended when kids learn easily.</p>
<p>In college, I took calculus, I averaged 98% on exams and in the first class we were told exams were all that counted so since it was a stand alone night class I skipped many classes, no problem, until I got a B- I went back to that prof on more than one occasion, even years later when I went back to finish my degree and he would never budge and had such a nasty snotty attitude.</p>
<p>He had decided to give some really easy pop quizzes and count attendance to help the kids doing poorly, but he then took that 10% away from me to give me an 88%- that would have been fine if that was the way the syllabus outlined it, but it said only exams counted. Grrr- I know what I earned so that is all that really matters, but what a tool he was!</p>
<p>In high school we had a creepy band director with greasy hair who was always making inappropriate comments. I remember telling my mom about it, and she said, “Oh, he’s just trying to fit in.” Well, the next summer he was arrested for exposing himself at a nearby mall. We said to the parents, “We TOLD you he was creepy!” Nowadays, I think kids complaints about stuff like that are taken a lot more seriously.</p>
<p>Also, my kids’ school had a 5th grade teacher who was just awful, and everyone knew it. On the “open house” day the night before school opens, the kids could come in to see their classrooms. All of the rooms were decorated, with books & supplies piled neatly on each child’s desk - except evil teacher’s room, whose walls were bare. Books, etc were still in boxes next to her desk. If she had set foot in the room, it wasn’t apparent. She was known for yelling and berating kids, and for boring lessons that did not prepare kids for middle school. My friend’s daughter, who had always loved school, began having stomach aches every Sunday night and begging to stay home sick when she had her for a teacher. For years, we were told that nothing could be done because she was on the union negotiating team. The year we re-districted, all the new kids in our school’s 5th grade were put into her room, because the parents wouldn’t know to complain and try to transfer their kid until it was “too late.” Finally, we got a new principal. One day a parent was in the room and heard the teacher call one kid a an effing a-hole. The principal got the teacher suspended and swore that she would never be in that classroom again. After the monthlong suspension, the school board said the teacher had to be returned to the classroom. The principal said, “You will have to fire me first. I promised those kids and parents that she would not be in that classroom and I will not break that promise.” The school ended up buying her off.</p>
<p>And a coaching story - recently our school’s girls cross-country coach was unhappy with the results of a meet. He yelled at the girls until they cried, then told them they couldn’t ride the bus back to our high school, instead they’d have to run home (6 miles on a fairly busy road, parts of which have no sidewalk). The girls took off running, and he sent the bus a mile or so down the road to wait for them and pick them up. Parents were ballistic, and the principal was livid. But the next day, there were parents and runners saying the story was overblown, and they didn’t want the coach fired. I think he was suspended for a week, and told he can’t come back the next year. But I’m not sure.</p>
<p>Ah coaches… </p>
<p>DS had a position coach that gave him conflicting advice from day to day - “do it this way” - “Why are you doing it that way, do it this other way” - seemingly forgetting what he had said the day before. </p>
<p>Many other nasty incidents where the two of them were at loggerheads. My son claimed he was crazy - and we just kinda said well the season is over, let’s move on…</p>
<p>So what do we read in the paper over the summer - he was fired from his day job as a writer for plagarism and lying about sources. His excuse - he was having mental problems and needed was going on medication. Needless to say he was not invited back as a coach.</p>
<p>I remember being struck with a ruler, day after day, by a beautiful nun when I was in about the fourth grade. She would hit several of us in front of class, sometimes until she raised welts. Finally enough parents complained…and she was sent to another school.</p>
<p>Another nun died when I was in kindergarden. We all were paraded around her body in it’s casket… I don’t think we had to touch her or kiss her or anything, but it still seemed pretty traumatic.</p>
<p>And then there was the “spanking machine”, supposedly in the closet…</p>
<p>Catholic school, NYC, late 60’s</p>
<p>OK, to balance out, here’s a story about my favorite teacher. He helped give us back my son’s joy of learning–he is a lifelong family friend that I had known from my middle school days and one of the most caring & motivating people I’ve ever known. He knew that I & the kids had had trouble finding them a good school environment and actually transferred to his school in the hopes that he might teach my son. My son was overjoyed to be in his 6th grade class. There were over 30 students in the class and it ranged from the exceptionally gifted (kids that could probably have done college level work without much difficulty) to one child that needed an assistant around 24/7 and everything in between.
He was able to keep all of the kids engaged and learning but more importantly help kindle and re-kindle the joy of learning in all of them. It was wonderful to behold–the 1st week of class, he had all the students make planetariums to take home & observe the heavens. He also had the kids all building models of the human body with popsicle sticks, rubber bands & string. My son & his geeky friends refused to go out for recess until they each completed working models of the entire hand & knew all the muscles, bones & tendons. They also had an afterschool basketball team & were allowed to compete with the other schools. They also created the school yearbook & S was in charge of all the photographs and training everyone on how to use the scanner. That class also did an art project to make cement stepping stones for the school. It was such an amazing year and son so dearly enjoyed it!<br>
I was sad that after that year, the teacher chose to become the tech teacher (it was good for the school & he does an amazing job at it and they really needed him for that position, but he was one of the best teachers S ever had at a time when he really needed it–truly a magical time & year). I was sad for D that she never got to have that teacher for 6th grade & has never the same relationship with a teacher (tho she & everyone did have him for tech). Her art teacher in community college continues to rave about her to anyone who will listen & she has had some others who have enjoyed her but it wasn’t that depth of a relationship that I sensed with S & his mentor (I think part of it was that S reminded him in ways of his own son who was a friend of S).</p>
<p>These sad stories are heartbreaking! I’ve subbed as a teacher’s aide in special ed classes (& as an aide in a few regular/mixed classes) this year. Some teachers are phenomenal – others (& some of the aides) are mean/angry (probably frustrated, but handling it very badly). Especially in the autistic classes – I would try to read books to the (mainly unresponsive) kids and the other (grumpy) aide would get mad and make them watch television. The rough aides would bark at the kids and scowl a lot. They’d yell at the kids when they fidgeted while watching a movie (one they’ve seen 5 times already). When I’ve commented on this situation (to a variety of people/parents) most look at me as if I’m being unduly negative and other teachers say: “you don’t know what they go through every day, etc. etc.”</p>
<p>Btw, we are a district widely-known for our special ed program (& it’s good in that there are only 5-6 kids per class, lots of one-one aides, etc.). However, I haven’t subbed in a while, in part because seeing how the autistic kids were treated (& how the higher functioning ones were not challenged) was a real downer.</p>