Things that teachers do that annoy you most

Pre-College Topics High School Life
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<p>1) Don’t trust us (the students). I understand that some students can’t be trusted, but I believe that teachers should trust their students unless given a reason not to. For example, on a recent math test, I had the right answer but the teacher didn’t see how I got it, so she took points off. I did the right work, but when I asked her to give me the point back she said “how do I know you didn’t just write in the correct work now?”</p>

<p>2) Don’t clearly state when an assignment is due or when there is a test or quiz. It’s really not that hard to do, but a few of my teachers this year don’t have the homework written online or on the board, and I am constantly worried that I will walk into the class and have an assignment due that I was unaware of.</p>

<p>3) Are brilliant, but aren’t capable of communicating what they know to us students. Honestly I have some teachers who know so much and are so passionate about their subjects, but sometimes they just can’t teach.</p>

<p>4) Not being enthusiastic about their subjects. I think this is the most important quality in a teacher, so if a teacher obviously doesn’t want to be teaching, it really affects the students.</p>

<p>5) Cares more about being “cool” than being a good teacher.</p>

<p>6) Gives us too much information about what will be on our tests. I know this sounds like a good thing, but one of my classes has such memorizable information on the tests that anyone could do really well if he/she really wanted to. It’s a language class, so what bothers me is that those of us who have a good knowledge of the language often get slightly lower grades than those who don’t have a good knowledge but memorize everything. I think language classes should emphasize knowing the language more than memorizing meaningless information.</p>

22

<ol>
<li><p>When a teacher reads off of a PowerPoint and calls it “teaching.” And yes, the teacher is an AP teacher.</p></li>
<li><p>When grading systems are arbitrary.</p></li>
<li><p>Giving homework over a break. If all six of my teachers give us “a little work” to do over the break, its no longer “a little work,” and it’s no longer a break.</p></li>
</ol>

23

<ol>
<li><p>In an AP Lit class, reading every poem/short story/novel OUT LOUD in class. (We’ve been reading Hamlet out loud for going on 3 weeks now… it’s an AP class, I’m pretty sure we can all read on our own and make better use of class time for analysis/discussion)</p></li>
<li><p>Teachers who cater to the laziness of students and let the motivated students suffer as a result (AKA my French 1 class with a million lazy freshman and 1 senior (me) who actually cares = we are still on chapter 2 and the first semester is almost over)</p></li>
<li><p>Playing movies in class. I don’t care if it’s relevant, and yes sometimes it can actually be useful/applicable, but when I come to school and watch movies in 3/4 classes, I feel like I could have just stayed home and missed absolutely nothing important.</p></li>
</ol>

24

<ol>
<li><p>taking up grades on things like crossword puzzles, if you’re going to to assign homework please make it worthwhile! </p></li>
<li><p>Assigning pointless work in general. My AP lang teacher constantly assigns things like making imovies or. Thats not what we got iPads for! Or doing skits. ugh.</p></li>
<li><p>Telling us the wrong information for what’s on quizzes. In spanish she gives us a paper with two columns of vocabulary words to do. she’ll give us 20-30 of what we need to know for the next days quiz, but its never the same words. We then have to spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to count out the words she told us we didn’t need.</p></li>
</ol>

25

<p>when teachers grade you based on how well you “present.” i mean, if i’m not looking at the ground, and you can understand what i’m saying, then just grade me on the merits of my actual work. i didn’t take public speaking for a reason. the class has nothing to do with public speaking. i can understand taking off points if the presentation is absolutely horrible, but i hate when teachers get nitpicky.</p>

26

<p>Some other things I thought of, and I like some of the things people have posted.</p>

<p>1)This is kinda aimed at history teachers, getting really mad when they find out kids were splitting work with each other on the 300+ vocab words given over 2 weeks, like seriously get over it, people don’t want to spend 4 hours making 300 flash cards.</p>

<p>2)When teachers don’t allow food in class even when they eat in the class themselves and make you put your food away even if you are being quiet and not making a mess.</p>

<p>3)Teachers who make you go up on the board to do a math problem even though you tell them you have no idea how to even start it, then get frustrated when you get the problem completely wrong.</p>

<p>4)Teachers who tell you to get something out that is 2 months old because you need it for something and you probably threw it away because it takes up binder space.</p>

<p>5)Somebody says this, but teachers who tell you to act like college students, even though you are 3 years away from college, and then hand you out a worksheet that consists of a crossword puzzle and coloring a map.</p>

<p>6)Teachers who get mad when you look up a word on your phone over a dictionary, especially if you don’t know how to spell it. If I don’t know how to spell a freaking word, then it’s going to take me forever to find it in the dictionary, because the dictionary is alphabetical order, especially if I don’t know what the first letter of the word is. (IE Student: teacher how do you spell accelerate? Teacher: look it up in the dictionary. Student:Looks at Ex section and can’t figure out why they can’t find it.)
But seriously, I know how to use a dictionary, but It is 10 times faster if I Google it.</p>

<p>7)Teachers who make you redo a paper because you used a colored pen, but never specified that you couldn’t use that color to begin with, even if it is a blue or green pen.</p>

<p>8)Teachers who hold the class in at the bell, and don’t give you a pass when you are late for your next class.</p>

<p>9)Teachers who get mad if you leave when the bell rings, and say how the bell doesn’t dismiss you, just so they can boost there ego of having that authority.</p>

<p>10)Teachers who give you a ton of homework that’s useless, then complain about all the grading they have to do for it. YOU assigned the stupid homework.</p>

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<p>when they are inaudible because they mumble but they think it is because of their accent so they just apologize for their accent instead of speaking up</p>

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<p>A gross thing they do is when handing out papers and they put their finger in their mouth to get the paper and then hand it to you like no I don’t want a collection of your spit. </p>

<p>Another thing is when the teacher, not the course itself, makes the material ten times harder than it needs to be, teaching the course like they’re a college professor at Harvard, still in high school, pipe down.</p>

29

<p>Dream my math teacher does that, only good thing about it is that his students go off to college and get A’s in math classes like it’s a piece of cake. And often these students got C’s in his class. But it sucks so bad right now, he gave us a 75 problem assignment to do over break. Some of the problems have a part a, b, c and D so it’s like 100+ problems in reality.</p>

30

<p>1) When they talk about personal problems the whole class period; honestly I don’t care that you think your husband is cheating on you…</p>

<p>2) When they take phones from some kids / send people out for being out of uniform and don’t do ANYTHING when the students they like use their phones / wear out of uniform stuff right in from of them.</p>

<p>3) When they take forever to grade and hand back assignments, tests, etc. My chem teacher gave us back our graded test from the first week AFTER the midterm… ???</p>

<p>4) When teachers make fun of other students and say a bunch of inappropriate stuff. The same chem teacher basically makes a bunch of racist jokes about Asians and ghetto people (like one day, a student made a crack about the school being ghetto and she said no, just go a bit further down the street, which is this kind of sketchy neighbor hood, but still). She also said something about milkshakes bringing boys to the yard and about the place where the milk comes from… shaking. Didn’t need that image in my head when we were learning about moles.</p>

31

<ol>
<li><p>Reading comprehension questions in AP Language are the devil. We’re all in AP Lang. I think we know what’s going on in the passages that you’re showing us.</p></li>
<li><p>Similarly, whenever my AP Lang teacher grades our timed writes, she doesn’t write helpful comments on our papers. I’d at the very least like to know why I got the grade that I got on my timed write. I have the same problem in French; I love my teacher, but I wish she would explain why I get the grade I got on certain assignments.</p></li>
<li><p>Teachers that get annoyed when you do other homework in their classes are annoying. I only do it when we’re not doing anything in class, but still.</p></li>
<li><p>I have multiple teachers that just assign repetitive bookwork as homework. I especially hate it when it happens in French because it’s just repetitive grammar exercises that involve copying down an entire sentence and changing one verb within said sentence. Ugh.</p></li>
<li><p>Teachers who pile on the homework on the week of a debate tournament are the equivalent of the devil. I’m not even exaggerating either. They always do it. Do they not realize that I also have to fix cases, memorize my OO, and prep for Congress?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Sorry if this seems like a rant, it’s just that I’m super stressed right now.</p>

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<p>@akacesfan: For #2, if your English/French teacher is a good teacher, you should go to their room at lunch/ free time and ask for feedback on your essay. I did that in 11th grade and it helped a bunch :)</p>

<p>Anyway, for me…</p>

<p>1) GEEZ, TEACHERS, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HOLE-PUNCH YOUR HANDOUTS URRRGGGHHH</p>

<p>2) Anyone that requires double-spacing. I guess this is more of a pet peeve, but seriously, do these teachers take “read between the lines” literally, or something?</p>

<p>3) Teachers who slow down an AP Class for laggers. I guess this is directed both at teachers and the laggers themselves. C’mon, this is supposed to be AP. “Hello, you are all AP Chem students. Good job! Let’s start by spending 5 weeks on what you should’ve learned in regular chemistry.” “Aw, gee, thanks Mister!”</p>

<p>4) Art teachers who make their class super-easy. Again, some of the blame is directed at kids looking for easy-A classes. “Hello Advanced Orchestra, I’m sure you’re all wonderful musicians! Let’s warm-up with a C harmonic minor scale!” <em>cacophony of shrieking strings and a clarinet that sounds like a dying cow</em></p>

<p>5) When teachers demand that work be done in pen. WHY WHY WHY WHY LOOK AT LIQUID. IS SPILLING EVERYWHERE. BP OIL SPILL AIN’T NOTHING COMPARED TO THIS. GOODBYE ERASER IT WAS NICE KNOWING YOU.</p>

33

<p>@Stormcloud - To be fair, I actually did that once with my AP Lang teacher and it helped a ton. Plus, she bumped my grade up because I went in and talked to her. :)</p>

34

<p>1) When teachers call out individual students to work problems in the middle of their lecture. I understand that they are trying to engage students, but I have an anxiety attack every time this happens. </p>

<p>2) When teachers are completely against taking notes or reading the textbook, specifically in any AP class (i.e. APES class often consists of us going to the river and playing with different water tests or making posters for weeks at a time, then we get a review sheet and cram all the information in the day before the exam). </p>

<p>3) When the teacher makes the class way more difficult than it needs to be. It’s an AP class, but it’s still just an introductory level college class, not a place for extensive theory-based discussions. </p>

<p>4) When teachers write exams that are so difficult they have to be graded on a massive curve. I’m not actually learning anything if my raw score is a 36% and my curved score is a 91%, because I guessed on nearly every question. </p>

<p>5)When AP teachers assign excessive amounts of homework in late April and early May. I’m trying to study for the AP exam on my own, and after I finish all my required schoolwork, I have almost no individual review time.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Part of the purpose is to get you to follow MLA/APA guidelines, but it’s also so they can write comments between the lines. Then again, a lot of teachers don’t bother to write comments between the lines.</p>

36

<p>^ That reminds me… Before break I had an essay due and I had forgot to double space it… I was *<em>**ed because I normally don’t double space Final Pieces so I was like </em><em>, that’s ■■■■■■■■. Meanwhile everyone is like, “Haha, my story is longer than yours! Mine is two pages long”.
My friend was like, “So is his.”
And mine wasn’t even double spaced so it obviously would’ve had more pages. Things like that </em> me off. Double spacing? Really? I’d better not get 5 points taken off of it because of that.</p>

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<p>^ikr! I hate teachers who are so obsessed with formatting or presentation that it just drags down your grade…double spacing, their favorite font, lines that aren’t straight…I remember once I had a teacher who told me my poster was great except it didn’t “pop” enough because I didn’t have cutesy colored paper behind my text. Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that was a rule in social studies poster-making.</p>

<p>Like everyone else on here, other peeves include busywork, art projects that aren’t for art class, and not being able to teach. and lol @dreamz I thought I was the only one who got totally grossed out when teachers lick their fingers while passing out papers!</p>

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<p>Formatting is important, actually.</p>

39

<p>I absolutely LOATHE passing athletes so they can be eligible. Yeah, sure you’re busy, but my friend who is marching band drum major AND in yearbook number three in our class, so I’m pretty sure you can scrape a 70 in all level classes. If you can’t, then that’s your bad.</p>

<p>I also hate the AP curve. I think it’s stupid that a kid who doesn’t study and gets a 50 gets 20 POINTS added to his grade, but you studied and got a 91 and get 0 points added.</p>

40

<p>I once had a teacher and we had to write essays for that class and formatting was worth 60-70% of the grade while content was 30-40% when you added up the points. Only no one did well because the formatting things were ridiculous things that no one could do.</p>

<p>I hate when teachers don’t ask for volunteers. My English teacher ONLY uses cards to call on us.
Teachers who assume you’re stupid or don’t try hard based on one thing.
Teachers who ALWAYS let us choose our own groups. I’m always left with no one.</p>