Bungle.
My chemistry teacher, looking back, was a pretty awesome guy. He was one of those teachers that, when you're there, you think is a bit soft but basically ok, but don't realise til later that you'd probably like to have a pint with him if you ever meet him again.

Bungle was that man. Gaining his nickname from his beard (which was just an ordinary beard, really) and penchant for pink shirts, he did all the awesome chemistry teacher things, blowing up a bag of helium and scaring the shite out of us and the like, but the man had an amazing capacity to take shit off pupils and not lose his temper. He wasn't soft, he'd deal with trouble, but he'd never go off his head. My class were pretty tame, but my best mate's class weren't and they had him for registration. His tolerance for the shit they threw his way is still something I marvelled at, as another science teacher was driven almost mental by the same class and needed time off.

They once gummed up the lock on his room by jamming jelly sweets into it. When he saw it, he just sighed and whipped out a pair of tweezers from his pocket, and was visibly chortling at all the "What did you have them for in the bathroom?" comments. The next time they went further and the tweezers wouldn't work, so he scaled the wall outside and climbed in the window, briefly turning him into "spider-bungle". The best one, though, was when he mentioned he had a daughter. "You've got a daughter, sir?" someone shouted. "Yeth, I have" he said (oh, he had a lisp as well which caused no end of inane juvenile taunting). "Oooooooooh!" shouted the heckler, "you've had sex! Oh! Bungles had sex! Bungle's had sex!" The whole class started chanting as his face reddened and he creased up with laughter. Most teachers would have went mental, but he just had a laugh, said "alright, settle down" and got on with it.

Wish we'd appreciated it at the time, some of our teachers were shits!
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Wed 23 Mar 2011, 15:06, 7 replies)

One at a time, my teachers in rhyme
The Christian chemistry teacher
was gentle and placid and kind
He took our mild misbehaviour
and never really seemed to mind
until the day he erupted,
he raged and spluttered and spat
just because I pointed out
he looked a lot like a postman named pat.

The French mistress was a sexy cliche,
busty and pretty and French
With her tight blouses and short skirts
creating the look of a fine serving wench
I remember the day she made my friend
Steve stand outside of the class
just because he had the cheek
to say that she had a nice arse.

Mr Candross was the fierce PE teacher
who left us all shaking in fear
but not as much as the other one who,
while I showered, stared at my rear
And even he was an improvement on the
supply teacher with the tracksuit bright red
who got irrationally angry at his silly nickname
which was just simply, old Onion Head

The Stormtrooper who taught me physics
I know I have mentioned before
He was the first one shot dead in Star Wars,
not the one clunking his head on the door
The last science teacher was old Mr White,
all old and frail and short
we used to draw cocks on his blackboard,
he was too slow, so we never were caught.

One art teacher had a beehive,
one other only wore black
another wore hemp and hessian
and looked like she was wearing a sack
The final one I only knew briefly,
one day she was there, then was not
She left in a hurry after getting knocked up
by a hair sixth former named Scott
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Wed 23 Mar 2011, 14:52, 8 replies)

Mrs Emmerson
... had a great sense of justice.

Thomas was an annoying little scrote, not just to teachers but to pupils also. He would have been the class clown except he wasn't funny, just a distraction. Terry was a mild mannered lad who Thomas would try unsuccessfully to goad into a reaction.

One rainy morning the school doors were opened to let us wait in our classrooms for registration. Thomas was on his usual form but made the mistake of trying to get Terry to fight, assuming he wouldn't react as usual. Thomas took a step too far in trying to administer a playful slap. Terry picked Thomas up and threw him head first into a desk halfway across the room. (Thomas was probably too thick to either notice or comprehend that at the age we were beginning to sprout a few lonely pubes, Terry had the full set of armpit carpets, muscles -and presumably everything else- of an early developed young man)
With a small cut in his eyebrow Thomas tried to make the scene as dramatic as possible by spreading drips of blood as far as possible.

Mrs Emmerson came in, told Thomas to get some paper towels and clean up his mess, then looking at Terry asked "Did you dae that?" (yes, she was glaswegian)
"Yes Miss"
"Well done son, that wee eejit had it comin'"
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Wed 23 Mar 2011, 13:31, 14 replies)

Drums
I have been playing drums for well over 16 years.
My obsession with percussion began in the first year of secondary school, after listening to the school's jazz band for the first time during one of the many long and boring assemblies. My immediate thoughts were; "Wow" we have a Jazz band?" and seeing as the drummer was more of the rock ilk, those drums are loud, I want to learn how to play like that! So after the assembly, I went to the music department and spoke to Mr. Ward, who is coincidentally one of the best music teachers on the planet in my humble opinion!
I stated my intention to learn drums and asked how to go about getting lessons.
I was told that lessons were extra curricular and they had an outside teacher that would visit once a week to teach pupils privately that wanted to learn how to play. He suggested that I go and speak to him. I did and he explained that my parents would have to pay for lessons, so I asked them, fortunately for me, they said yes.

The day of my first lesson arrives, I head up to the classroom and I am asked what I know about drums. My shaky reply; "Nothing, sir".
The teacher laughs and says "That's ok, please, call me Ric."
So he takes the snare drum and the floor tom and moves them away from the rest of the drums and starts to teach me the basic rudiments that make up drumming. He explains how to hold the sticks, what each drum and cymbal is called and how its used. He pops a sheet of music in front of me and explains what the differences between quavers, semi-quavers and the basics of drum notation, what the different lines on the staff represent and so on...

This continues and after a Term, I am playing grade one pieces of music. This takes hours and hours of practise, me constantly dropping sticks and missing beats, I was not a natural by any stretch of the imagination, but Ric was awesome, patient and never got huffy when something didn't go right.
The time comes for payment and Ric says that a cheque from my Mum would be fine. So I pop home with the invoice and give it to my Mum. She then opens the letter and calls me into the front room where she said to me rather excitedly, "Do you know who your drum teacher is?"
I reply, "Sure, he's Ric".
Mum: "He's actually quite famous. I'm not sure if you realise but he used to play in a band called Ten Years After. Your drum teacher is Ric Lee!"

So in essence I was tought my craft by one of the best and most underrated drummers on the planet: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ocSbQlDUK4
If only I knew who he was at the tender age of 11, maybe I'd have paid more attention and been able to play better than I do now!


Apologies for length, approx 16", one in each hand...
(tehmattmonster Board Sig, Board Sig? I'll give you a Board Sig!, Wed 23 Mar 2011, 10:26, 17 replies)

The South African chap who gave "The Speech" below had a cracking wife - she was an absolutely gorgeous girl in her mid-20s.
She worked in the infirmary as a nurse, where the couple were also dormitoried.

Rumour quickly circulated that one of the older lads had broken in to their flat once and reported back that they had a nude portait of her on the wall and that's totally true that is because they'd told their brother who was in the same year.

In the first month that she'd started, I think the entirety of the rugby I XV paid a visit complaining of "groin strain".

For which, sadly for them, Dr Whelton was generally on hand to diagnose.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 23 Mar 2011, 9:53, Reply)

A Tom Jones look -alike
In about 1969, We had a new English teacher arrive at our school. The other kids had told us that he was a dead ringer for Tom Jones. The first time we had him for a lesson we lined up outside the classroom as usual then he called us in, we stood behind our desks whispering and giggling at each other and then he just looked up and said "Yes I know, I DO look like him don't I? but funny thing is, I bloody can't stand him myself!" He did!, even down to the tight curly hair, he could have been his twin brother. I thought to myself straight away "I'm going to like you, you seem like a nice guy!" He was indeed! everybody liked him, he was lovely chap, a terrific mimic ( he could 'do' any accent he wanted , Scots, Irish Brummie Liverpool, you name it! He often told us stories about his uncle in the RAF and then he would go into a wonderful Terry-Thomas type voice which had us all in fits of laughter. )Everyone looked forward to his lessons and quite honestly we were all sad when the bell went as nobody wanted to leave his classroom. Many of the other teachers used to complain that they found my handwriting difficult to read, I remember the first time I nervously handed a piece of work him to mark he looked at me and said "Oh I have heard about you!" ( 'Oh no, here we go again' I thought , 'what is he going to say? Yikes!' ) Then he said after reading a few lines "Well I can read it, bugger what the others say and its all bloody good stuff. Anyway, when you get to uni you can use a typewriter can't you?" ( by the way This was just before computers came onto the scene ). He was always making fun of the other teachers, especially the headmaster, who was a keen sailor. I was talking to him in the school hall one day and I noticed the ventilation fans which were mounted at the top of the walls, near the roof, seemed to be going unusually fast. I pointed this fact out to him and he said bluntly "Oh don't tell the head, he will want to turn the bugger upside down and sail away in it!"
He later became deputy head then sadly he left because he was offered a headmaster's Job somewhere else. We were really broken hearted when he went.
(Mackeson_drinker, Wed 23 Mar 2011, 7:05, 3 replies)

Most teachers are useless wankers
I think they should be used as fuel in British power stations.
(umbongotime meh.........., Wed 23 Mar 2011, 5:41, 4 replies)

My mate
is head of music technology at a sixth form college. He has two main features; his love of Scotch and his most condescending, patronising manner.

Anyway, I once bought him a bottle for his birthday. Not knowing anything about his favourite drink, I picked up the first brand I recognised. Later that week, I presented it to him, and his reaction?

"Awww, some Teachers"
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 21:47, 6 replies)

Best Chemistry Lesson Ever
Best Chemistry Lesson Ever

Our chemistry teacher, likened to a certain German dictator from the 20th century, once provided me with the best lesson at school ever.

In the days when you could conduct experiments with proper chemicals and without safety gear, and setting alight your fellow pupils did not result in a lawsuit, our class gathered for an hour’s lesson where our teacher was to demonstrate example of exothermic reactions. So a few pops and bangs might have been expected. We all sat on the curved benches set in front of the main desk – no safety glass – and the closest were only three feet from the action.

Experiment 1. Just for starters – to show a reaction using iodine solution. Teacher had to draw the iodine up into a teat pipette. Teat pipette had hole at top – teacher got iodine solution burning his hand. ‘Cripes!’ and other non abusive exclamations came forth as he hopped about with hand under the tap. Well that was fun we thought as self inflicted pain on a not so popular teacher provided us with mild amusement.

Experiment 2. A bit more adventurous stuff here. Teacher dons overalls, rubber gloves and a full-face visor to demonstrate the exothermic effect of pouring an acid onto some other material. Class wide eyed and excited – but unlike teacher, with no protection. Could we witness something more dramatic?

Crackle, loud bang and puff of smoke as the chemicals did what they were meant to. But the real focus of attention was teacher jumping about in pain clutching his ear shouting ‘Crikey!’ His ear being the only part of his body exposed – thus the hot acid had only one course of direction and hit his lug. This was good, and we didn’t hold back on the laughter.

After the clear up and class settling down, we moved on. Surely it couldn’t get any better than this.

Experiment 3. Theory. Take a small bit of sodium metal and drop it into a tank of water. If you don’t know what happens, it will immediately react with water, violently give of hydrogen, which will ignite with a few sparks & flame. Result – mild entertainment for a few seconds, as the amount of sodium used is always small and the tank of water has a lid avoiding anything flying out. Well that is what should happen.

Experiment 3. Actual. In our experiment, teacher forgot that he can’t teach and think at the same time. Whilst ensuring the class were taught the theory, he tried to carry out the practical experiment simultaneously:
Step one – take the jar of sodium metal with protective oil to stop the sodium reacting with air.
Step two – carefully drain all the oil out of the jar, leaving just the sodium metal inside.
Step three – walk over to the built-in tap & sink at the side of the desk.
Step four – fill the jar with water from the tap.
Step five – momentarily realise you have done the most dangerous thing ever in your entire life and there is nothing you can do to reverse it.
Step six – decide what best to do next.
Step seven – decide dropping the jar in the sink is the best action – a sink now full of water.
Step eight – stand back, watch the pyrotechnic effect you have caused and issue the most profound expletives you can think of.

Result – exploding sink; hot burning sodium flying everywhere; thick white smoke engulfing the room; screaming pupils scrambling over the benches and each other to get to the back of the room; muffled ‘Cripes’, ‘crikeys’ and ‘cor blimeys’.
Even teacher’s use of the CO2 fire extinguisher had no effect as the reaction continued for about three minutes.

And when it was over and the smoke had cleared, teacher realised nothing much else could be taught that day. So announced end of lesson, collect books and go. So we did, and most went with evidence to prove that they were not making up a story about the last hour – we all had holes burnt through our jotters on the pages where we had written ‘Exothermic Reactions.’

Now that was the best chemistry lesson ever.
(Yelly Gought, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 21:33, 19 replies)

So, while not being outrageously posh
Our school **did** have a rowing team – in fact, on the occasions when they competed against other schools from the area, it was just like the Oxford-Cambridge boat race – if they’d had to swerve from time to time to avoid drifting shoals of discarded rubber johnnies in the Mersey. But I digress.

The teacher who coached the rowing team was also one of the maths masters who taught our year, and we’d ended up getting him assigned to teach our class for GCSE.
This coincided with him becoming more and more obsessed about winning the rowing competitions. Invariably, in class, instead of trying to work out how long it took 3 men to dig 1 ditch if it took 4 men an hour, we were constantly set problems exploring the different permutations of rowers rowing at different speeds, and different numbers of rowers in the same boat, as though he could put together the ultimate rowing team by sheer power of mathematics.

He ended up having some sort of breakdown actually while he was teaching a class (not ours) and was literally thrown into the back of the ambulance still babbling about numbers of rowers and how he was going to find the equation that would grant him victory on the river.

He was our oar-sum teacher.
(tjn whizzing on the electric fence of life, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 21:22, Reply)

One of our teachers would tell us about torture - thumbcrews, racks, iron maidens, red-hot pincers, you name it.
This would be when I was about 9 or 10. Now when I'm on holiday I visit those continental torture museums and mentally tick off ones he told us about and gleefully spot ones he didn't. Ha! Mr Ridgway, what about the Pear? Eh? Eh? Eh?
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 19:24, 2 replies)

i have no shame in admitting i banged my teacher
The shame comes in admitting I was homeschooled.
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 19:02, 6 replies)

Last day of school.
On our last day of school, before we entered the big wide world, our RE teacher said he had something important he wanted to share with us. We were expecting something profound and moving, maybe even how much he was going to miss teaching us. But what he said was this:
"Remember boys and girls, the world doesn't owe you a living."
That was 30 years ago. It's probably the best bit of advice I was ever given at school.
(Woofie, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 18:03, 1 reply)

Kool and the Gang
Throughout my time at school, I learned that every teacher had a distraction trigger, a small topic of conversation that would immediately remove all thoughts of the lesson in hand and carry them off into a world of daydream and wonder.

One mention of alcohol to the biology teacher would send her into a fit of reminiscence. She would insist she was still young and 'cool' then show us the bottle of jack she kept hidden in her desk. The rest of our biology lessons were spend trying to steal shots while she was out of the room.

One particularly old, grizzly science teacher would talk for hours about 'Xeena the warrior princess' or 'Buffy the Vampire slayer'. he was really quite perverted and not one of the teachers you'd like to have teaching you.

One of my favourite distraction triggers belonged to one of the best teachers. He taught english with a down to earth manner that we could all relate to.

But if the lesson was dragging, all we had to do was mention Kool and the Gang.

No idea why he liked them so much, but he could talk about them for hours!
(Katzilla Follow Me! @Kat_Zilla (I don't promise funnehs), Tue 22 Mar 2011, 16:57, 4 replies)

Mr A & Mr T
Two 'metalwork' teachers. Between them they changed the course of my life* and gave probably the best speech at careers day I've ever heard. It went something like this.

'Some of you will want to be MP's, some of you will want to be social workers, dancers, actors, bus drivers, pilots - whatever. What you do for and in the world pales into insignificance when you look at engineering.
If you shot all of the people in the above groups tomorrow, next week the world would still be working, the power would still be on, the water would still come from your taps, If you shot all of the engineers tomorrow, you'd all be screwed - think about that when you look down at those studying enginering - they are the ones keeping the world running.'

*Yeah, I went into engineering.
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 15:54, 16 replies)

I would just like to note that if it's not deliberate, then
there are few things as levelling as a teacher as having your written English corrected by a 12 year old Romanian.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 15:46, 1 reply)

Chemistry
While we had our fair share of eccentric teachers at my school a Mr Davies stood alone for destruction

Top 3:

Blowing up his fume cupboard. Due to a little over enthusiasm with the chemical ingredients there was a loud pop and it came apart like an Ikea diagram

Burning down the school fence using thermite

Best of all he, in his words, "found a use for physics" took one iron ring and one soft iron core and promptly created a rudimentary rail gun. He used this to shoot out the ceiling tiles in his room though he scaled back on this behavior when he shot out a light!
(The Liquorice Allstar I need cricket, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 15:40, 1 reply)

Mrs Smith
I have nothing but praise for Mrs Smith.

She took a class of rowdy schoolboys, piqued our interest in Maths and got each and every one of us through our O-Level a year early and had us all well on our way to A-Levels. Extraordinarily patient, always willing to admit a mistake and give the benefit of the doubt provided we were honest in return, she was just about the only teacher in the school to treat us like adults. It was with genuine regret when mad genius Barnes Wallis Junior (son of the great man) took over our maths class, for he was no Mrs Smith.

But most of all, she wore those light, floaty dresses much loved by women of a certain age and stood in front of the windows. Oh, Mrs Smith, you were everything.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 15:30, 1 reply)

I know my rights
A mate of mine, A, spanned a gap between careers with a little supply teaching. Now A is a startlingly tall chap, 6 foot 10 if I recall, and therefore quite imposing. But this didn't stop one Asbo-in-training from continuously disrupting his classes and causing trouble.

Eventually, A's patience wore thin, and he hauled the lad up -- and up -- and up -- by the collar and made sure he understood that he was one more interruption away from a sound thrashing.

"You can't touch me," said the little scrote, feet waving in mid-air. "Teachers aren't allowed to hit their pupils, you'll get in trouble. I know my rights!"

"You know, that's true. Teachers aren't allowed to hit the kids. But you know what? I'm not a teacher. I'm just filling in a couple of months, and frankly I don't care if I never go into a classroom again. So go ahead, if you want to see how far you can push it..."

Apparently, the rest of the job went without a hitch.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 13:44, 45 replies)

Friend of my folks
was brother-in-law to my Year 9 maths teacher (who I shall call Mr Smith in this post). Brother-in-law once regaled the following tale to me, which is probably bullshit, but I always found it amusing.

One fine day in the past, Mr Smith comes into his morning maths lesson. One of those old roll-down blackboards sits at the front of the classroom. Smith rolls it down to find:

"Mr Smith is a cunt."

scrawled across it in huge letters. Smith goes absolutely apeshit, informs class that they are staying there all day until someone comes into his office and owns up to it.

With that, he leaves the stunned class in silence and goes to wait in his office next door.

According to his brother-in-law, Smith wrote it himself as he was hungover and couldn't be arsed to teach.
(Cylon Bum Raider already knows how this will end, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 11:48, 4 replies)

The Speech
Fans will remember that I was schooled at a minor public school.

One of the bigger lads at the back thought he'd cheek up the new physics teacher:

"Oi!" cried the lad, in his posh voice, to the teacher, "Why don't you fuck off back to South Africa?!"

His sycophants laughed and beamed their approval.

The teacher - a stocky man in his early 30s, who had opened his first lesson with a talk on centrifugal force, displaying it with a genuinely impressive display of yo-yoing, including Rocking The Cradle and all that - walked over slowly to the lad.

The lad - as I said, was one of the bigger ones - a stereotype of the public schoolboy: an over-priviledged, arrogant shit, who's probably now in parliamentary office, MD of several failing companies, and taking back-handers from banks in exchange for signing off deals on brown-field sites. He stood up, equal to the teacher.

The teacher stood in front of him, eyeballing him, and the lad stared back defiantly.

"When I started teaching, my first lesson was in a school in Durban. I walked into the classroom, where there were two boys bigger than you beating a girl with sticks for refusing to be their whore. As I walked in one of them pulled out a gun, pointed it at me, and shouted 'OI! TEACHER! FUCK OFF!". I taught both those boys and that girl to both read and to write.

YOU smell of talcum powder, get pocket money sent to you each week from your daddy in Dubai, and think that smoking cigarettes is cool. You've already got a car waiting for you for your birthday, you'll have a job as soon as you leave school, but I know your dad will thrash you if you get a bad grade, so if you want to take your chance, be my guest, but I'M staying here."

With that he put his hand on the boy's shoulder, and pushed him down hard into his seat.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 11:38, 5 replies)

The best lungs in class
In science class when I was about 12 our teacher produced a huge manometer, an air pressure meter for those who can't be bothered to open up Google. It was a huge pipe that ran up and down a long board in a U shape, contained water and was calibrated in centimetres. The idea being that you measure your lung pressure by blowing in the end.

Being the one that was always picked last in PE, I had to generate some sort of self esteem amongst my classmates, so I had a go. I used my tongue as a sort of plunger and managed to pump the water up the tube quite efficiently, but then it got very difficult and I blew as hard as I could. I tried a bit too hard and collapsed half-unconscious to the jeers of the rest of the kids.

Nevertheless, I had beaten the entire class (well the half that had taken part) by a good 4cm and the teacher gave me £2 as a prize for such a valiant effort.

However, my pride was short-lived because the next lesson was PE and I scored an own-goal in football so Neil Wilson gave me a dead arm, the cunt.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 9:28, 10 replies)

Aged 15...
I was experimenting with mood enhancing substances. My mates were mainly doing glue (ok for a skinhead, but not good if you are sporting quality threads) or cheap cider (that seemed to attract the slags, but not really exciting).

No sir. While not exactly doing massive drugs, I found my Friday and Saturday nights were a blast if I got my friends to have a look in their grannies medicine cabinet and bring me a few pills, especially if yellow. And this was how I building a nice little stash of Valium, Lithium, and some other pills I couldn't identify.

So... I became quite well known for standing in the corner of various clubs, pubs and youth clubs, with a large grin and a very glassy look in my eye. All seemingly gained from just 1/2 a cider and black.

So eventually, mates cottoned on, and wanted a piece of the action.

In French, I sat next to a childhood friend who is now quite famous on the north west comedy circuit, but back then he was an overweight kid with a massive foot problem. He wanted in, and wanted to buy some of the magic pills.

I carried them everywhere. Couldn't leave them at home in case my mum found them, so I always had them in a little plastic container. I pulled the lid off, and shook out the contents. Shit!!!!

I'd missed my hand, and a plethora of yellow and green pills flowed under the desk to the feet of my French teacher.

"What are these Piper?" asked the teacher.
"For my throat Miss" says I.

She looks me in the eye and says "For your throat indeed." and carried on teaching.

Why she didn't act on it and make trouble is beyond me, but top one Miss!

A few weeks later I gave the pills up entirely. It's then I discovered psilocybin mushrooms. Get in!
( Piper Alpha is being a grumpy northerm bastard on:, Tue 22 Mar 2011, 8:31, 8 replies)

The post below this reminded me of this
We had a French, French teacher student teaching in our school for a while. I'm sure she used to wonder why we needed so much paper in our class.

"Please Miss, can I have another shit of paper"
"Miss, can I take a shit as well?"
"Miss, I need a shit really bad"
"Miss, can I take a shit on your desk?"

Each reply was 'Yes, yes of course!"
(BeardyMat, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 23:28, 4 replies)

Not a teacher as such,
but just an event involving one.

At the beginning of every French lesson our female, elderly (to our eyes) teacher would always come in in and say "bonjour le classe", with the reply "bonjour madame" to the usual tedium.

Until Gary Hughes greeted her with "bonjour, le fat slag"

Slight mirth was had.

And she was.

Fat, not a slag AFAIK

He became a legend for that - bearing in mind this was a small school in the hidden part of Wales thirty years ago before the cane and corporal punishment was illegal.
( social hand grenade I was a lurker before you were a lurker, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 23:14, 4 replies)

My maths teacher
was awesome, I had him for about two years, and during that time I only ever looked forwards to maths. He'd tell us interesting stories about maths in ancient Greece, or even random things just about ancient Greece. He'd also usually give us sweets, especially liquorice, and he tried to have a different kind each time. He sometimes brought in some liquorice sticks covered in chalky white sugar, and his party trick was to place one on the chalk holder on the blackboard, and casually eat what looked like a chalk halfway through the class.

He was no longer a young man by the time he taught my class, but the amount of energy he still had was amazing. He was Scottish, and called all the boys 'Jimmy' and all the girls 'Lassie', and threw chalks at us if he thought we weren't paying enough attention.
My sister always tells the story of the time when a boy in her class brought a skateboard to school - he put it at the back of the classroom, and they were all quietly getting on with their maths excercises when suddenly they heard a rolling noise followed by an almighty THUMP, and turned round to see him on the floor looking sheepish with said skateboard rolling rapidly away from him.

He also had to use a wheelchair for about a month once because he hurt his achilles tendon doing circus tricks, and once took our whole class kayaking down a river in Belgium.

I doubt he reads B3ta, but just in case, Mr Kelly, you are simply awesome.
(SoupMina, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 22:50, 1 reply)

Maths Essays
My First Year at Secondary School was understandably a little daunting, but there was one teacher that stood out above the others. His name was Mr Gilmore and he taught me Maths. Maybe it was because it was his final year before retirement, maybe he had a moment of clarity some years previous and came up with a ploy that would make things a little more interesting for himself, but whatever inspired him Mr Gilmore had a penchant for Essays. If you mis-behaved for whatever reason, you had to write an essay on whatever it was you were doing.

Thusly, in one of our first lessons another lad in the class took my rubber and wouldn't give it back. Mr Gilmore eased forward in his chair, pushed his head forward so he could eye up the situation above his glasses and shouted to the culprit. "Did you steal his rubber? Only gypsies steal - write me an essay on gypsies for tomorrow morning. No buts."

Cue a flabbergasted look of horror from said lad, and a wide, lingering grin from myself. Other essays requested over the following year were 'rectal gas', 'the mining of blackboard chalk' and 'hermaphrodites'. An absolute legend who actually made me look forward to Maths every day, an almost unthinkable task looking back.
(BeardyMat, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 22:24, Reply)

I had an awesome maths teacher
but the awesome things about him were seldom to do with his mathematical teachings or even his teaching skills.

He was quite a character, ebullient while under the effects of alcohol but a dour and joyless man come the inevitable hangover. So, classes could be eventful, and predictable, given the morning is dedicated to alcoholics' mourning, and the afternoon heralds the evening that it precedes.

At either time, though, he did not like distractions, which was strange, given that he himself was quite a distraction. One moment you could be just getting to grips with a complicated long-division calculation, and the next you would be on the floor, having fallen off your chair laughing at the teacher with a bin on his head (checking for chewing gum stuck to the lip of the bin), gushing blood from a cut on his forehead (walked into an open door, you had to be there to be able to laugh at the blood and obvious pain, but I assure you it was funny), eating a 4ft striplight bulb (I shit you not!), or howling loudly and protractedly at someone in the class for their having made a small error.

He got us through maths and for that I thank him, but I have never met a more eccentric teacher, and he brings a smile to my face whenever I remember him.

Perhaps a good example of his level on the awesomeness scale was the time he took us on a school ski trip. Organisation was his forte, but organising kids was not, and he stressed and strained to get 70 excited children from England to France together and in one piece. When we got there, though, he visibly relaxed (if that is really a good description). A few drinks in and he was roaring in the dinner hall, and the last I saw, as some of the hotel staff led us away to our rooms, was him dancing on a table in a kilt, kicking leftover food, crockery and cutlery across the room. Apparently he passed out on a table not much later, could not be roused, and thus spent the night in the dining room, dribbling onto the tablecloth.

The next morning he defied our expectations and led us, albeit slightly wobbly, to the mountain, still wearing the kilt. When we got to the top of the cable car, he climbed onto the railing, and swan dived into a large pile of snow, all 15 foot from apex of trajectory to first impact with the white stuff. Amazingly, he leapt out of the snow (apparently uninjured) howling "SNOWWWWW!!!" strapped on his skis and skied off into the distance, leaving 70 kids on a mountain with no one in charge. Awesome.

He didn't reappear until the next night - it looked as if he might have spent the night out as he was muddy, wet and shivering - respect to a man with such a clear and unambiguous reaction to responsibility. He even bought me (among others) a bottle of lager to drink at the disco that evening - despite teaching maths he had forgotten what age we were, although I suppose "when in France..."

All of this did no good to his reputation as a teacher. The children passed their exams, as long as they didn't die first (relaaaxxxx, no one died...), but his viability as a "loco parentis" figure crashed and burned. Last time I heard he was still teaching maths, and still plucking spiders from the spiderwebs in his classroom and eating them in front of giggling schoolchildren, but I don't think they ever put him in charge of anything more than manning the score box on the cricket pitch. A job he did admirably, with a jug of pimms and a loudhailer! A legend in his own right.
(IdlePeAcEsign if trouble were my mistress, i'd send her to them, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 22:06, Reply)

Thanks Mr Pearce
My history teacher Mr Pearce was ace. Highly eccentric, bug eyed, easy to knock off onto some tangential subject, lighting quick to throw chalk / erasers at dozy students, sarcastic, masterfully insulting in a throwaway style. He was like John Lydon if Lydon taught history, dressed in tweeds and drove a roller. I didn't learn a damned thing in his lessons but I still maintain an interest in history to this day thanks to him.

Meanwhile my English teacher (who I shall not name but was nicknamed bollock cheeks) was a complete bastard who slagged me off continuously and made English studies the most hateful, excruciating lesson in my curriculum (save perhaps for religious education). For that I thank him. I'd hate to have think how I could have become a boring cricket obsessed, classroom tyrant and cunt like him if I'd wasted my life learning English.
(MagicMoose, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 21:50, Reply)

Mr Turner...
@ Brinsworth Comprehensive in the Mid '80s and my Form Tutor. From him I learned my love of science (Physics) and Maths, and more importantly, the value of critical thinking and the need for a logical, rigourous approach, challenging everything until it was proven.

Despite being a tardy, lark-about kid, I took his lessons seriously, due to his calm nature and enthusiasm for teaching well.

Now, as a Hons graduate and IT professional, without him my life would have been very different indeed.

Thanks Sir.
(erewhon, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 21:03, Reply)