I got a job educating sex workers in meditative techniques to relax the mind, body and soul.
I was a Whores' "Om" Teacher.

Frankly, you people deserve this.
( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Sun 20 Mar 2011, 18:02, 1 reply)

They all were.
I'm not sure what the fuss is about really. Horsham Public School wasn't that great.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 20 Mar 2011, 14:11, 1 reply)

Inspired by sandettie
at www.b3ta.com/questions/awesometeachers/post1127689, here's the outright Jeopardy approach to QOTW feghoot puns, where I only give you the last line and you can imagine the build up for yourself.

"And then he breathed a sigh of relief, as he realised that it was in Whore Sam's tea-chest."
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Sun 20 Mar 2011, 13:21, Reply)

Chemistry and Physics teachers: not sure how I'm still alive
We were playing with light sensors plugged into ZX Spectrums in secondary school physics, and we noticed a subtle waveform in the light output from a bulb. My lab partner thought it was due to the 50Hz mains, whereas I thought that it was flicker from the monitor. We asked the physics teacher about it, and he said:

"Well, you could feed the bulb with 240V DC..."

He helped us connect 20 bench power supplies in series. Turned out it was the bulb.

I also had a pyromaniac chemistry teacher. One lesson we were making a bunch of compounds (really boring stuff, like road paint), and the chemistry guru in my team (he later went on to work as a chemist) suggested that gunpowder was also relevant to what we were studying. They set it off at the end of the lesson... it beat the crap out of the road paint.
(ohp, Sun 20 Mar 2011, 12:47, Reply)

Biology teacher
In year 9, my biology teacher was quickly trying to remind the class of what the female reproductive system looks like and what all the parts do.

She turned to draw it on the board, but the board was too full of other important notes.

So she did a full-body mime.
(Telly Toning my vagheen, Sun 20 Mar 2011, 12:25, 2 replies)

Our Physics teacher
was the usual physics teacher stereotype. She was old, mean, dejected, monotone and deadpan.

However there was one quirk of always using her husband as an imaginative tool in her examples. She would be reciting equations and numbers for a few hours then suddenly throw in this curve ball of an example.

For instance, one I remember (most of the actual physics has long gone) was her describing terminal velocity.

"If I dragged my bastard husband to the top of the empire states building and hurled him off, it would take him X seconds to reach terminal velocity. With X being Y and yadda yadda he would go splat on the ground after 15 seconds."

Or there was the discussion of how long you could survive in a vaccum.

"If I threw my bastard husband out of the international space station, if some bugger let him in within two minutes then there is a good chance he'd survive. If I let him in just in the nick of time then he would have suffered irreversible brain damage - but I'd still have to look after him. So for best results - two minutes or more should do the trick."

She was a mean bitch who kept giving me detentions for nothing, but how could I not love someone as jaded as Mrs Baxter of Form 2C. You're probably dead but gawd bless her.
(MrTeapot hasn't played with himself since, Sun 20 Mar 2011, 11:00, Reply)

Haiku meditating on whether to shave one's bikini line before taking a dip in hydrocarbons
Swim nude in petrol,
Lengthy locks in diesel drenched,
Smooth or sump titch hairs?
( .Yeti., Sun 20 Mar 2011, 9:52, 1 reply)

The benefits of nuclear weapons
... or at least what my physics professor thought to be a benefit:
"I generally don't understand what kind of a problem people have with a nuclear weapon. You will evaporate into smoke in milliseconds, you don't even notice what happens. What contrast to the dark ages where you were hit over the head with a mallet and would spend hours lying around on a cold, uncomfortable field, bleeding to death in absolute agony with your skull broken into pieces. Don't you think nuclear weapons are a big step forward from that?"
Followed by a minute of absolute silence from us students. To contemplate about the wise words we had just heard.
( RedWine President of the S.C.U.M., Sun 20 Mar 2011, 6:54, 6 replies)

Comic Book Guy
In 2004 the government and Nasuwt decreed that all schools had to make sure teachers would do no more than 38 hours of cover each year. And so was born the position of cover supervisor.
The cover supervisor role required no qualifications however, so my school ended up hiring a guy named Tim Quinn.

He was, in short, excellent. He knew nothing about the classes he covered, but each time a teacher was sick everyone prayed to have him cover the class. For he was not just any minimum wage, unqualified guy telling us to revise. He used to be a scriptwriter, illustrator and editor of such things as The Beano, Bunty, Jackie and Dr Who Magazine. He also worked as an editor for the Marvel Comics Group on Spider-Man, X-Men and the Incredible Hulk.

Classes with him soon devolved into tales of the comic industry, his work in America for Marvel and him drawing cartoons.
He even wrote an article for The Guardian (second article down) about his time at our less than wonderful school.

Learned very little of use, but he definately made an impression that work isn't always boring, and his history showed that with a little passion and enthusiasm you could travel the world doing something you loved.

Best teacher ever, except maybe my French teacher who had a fantastic rack, but that's another story :)
( palmr The speaking clock says:, Sun 20 Mar 2011, 1:52, 1 reply)

Immunology Professor
In my final year of uni I took an elective course in Clinical Immunology at the Middlesex Hospital. The Professor was a very smart, thoroughly engaging chap called Prof Jonathan Brostoff who as well as knowing the subject inside and out (he had written a number of key textbooks on the subject) had a way of bringing it to life that stuck with me. It ended up being the best course I took for my degree.

Fast forward 20 years and I realised throughout my career just how often the stuff he had taught kept coming up - I have been working in immune-related fields a considerable amount.

So I did a quick google search and tracked down where he was now teaching and sent him a "You probably won't remember me, but Thanks" email.

To my delight he replied back saying he was tickled pink to get my note.

I realise reading through this QOTW just how many great teachers I had when I was a kid. I could answer this Question several times. But I'll just stick with the one I bothered thanking and wish I had done that sooner and more often.
(Thomas_The_Spankengine, Sun 20 Mar 2011, 1:45, Reply)

Last year of Junior School...
...and a new teacher with a sense of imagination, back in the days before everything was scripted and they had to be boring bastards. This is the bloke that - when I'd finished the curriculum reading a coupe of months early - made me read Hemingway's The Old Man & The Sea, aged probably eleven. Or, to imagine scenarios from Gullivers Travels, got everyone to sit back in their seats, close their eyes, and enjoy 'Echoes' by Pink Floyd and match up visualisations for art with the far out sounds (man). Also the man who called me an ignoramus when I was a cocky little know-it-all twat, and by god I was.

The first teacher who really made me use my imagination, and recently retired from the head position at a primary in Herne Bay, but for the record; Martin Saffery, ex of Teynham Primary - bloody good work.
( Fathter Puddytat Kill Kill dat widdle boid is mine on, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 23:35, Reply)

There are two teachers that spring to mind for me
First off was my 5th Year English teacher. Not only could she recite an entire 40 minute story from start to finish as if reading it from a book, or slightly change one of my essays to get a pass mark, but she also had a rather inquisitive mind into what constitutes for "slang" nowadays. (Not that she was particularly old or "out of it", mind you.)

The incident to which I refer, was mid way through a typical class, at which she stopped us and said;

"Actually, I just remembered something, do any of you know what a "Strawberry Cheesecake" is?"

A few boys burst out laughing, others tried their very best not to make direct eye-contact whilst biting our lips and chuckling, and some of the girls just looked perplexed.

"I'm just asking because another teacher was saying in the staffroom that they had overheard some 3rd years saying that a boy had given a girl a strawberry cheesecake, but none of us knew what it was." (For reference to the folks down-south, a 3rd year is 14-15 years old)

One of the more confident boys in the class piped up;

"Well, I don't think you really want to know what it is miss.."

"Oh no...It's not like a "hot lunch", is it?" She replied.

A few more facial expressions turned to perplexed.

"What's that?", the same boy asked.

"Oh, I couldn't possibly say, I could loose my job if I told you."

"Well, how about a deal then? We'll tell you what a strawberry cheesecake is, if you tell us what a hot lunch is."

She pondered on this for a short time, before agreeing to the deal. And then came an explanation, the likes of which I doubt I will ever hear from a person in an educational position again.

Her explanation came in the form of a story about one of her friends, who, in the late 80s or early 90s, had been at a party somewhere, and had hooked up with an actress, who at the time was in Coronation Street. (Though I can't for the life of me remember who)

So, needless to say, things were done, and the subsequent morning, her friend was asked by the actress if he "Would like a hot lunch?" He assumed this meant elevenses, and, like any gentleman would, took up the offer with a smile. At which point, she climbed on top of him and took a shit on his chest.

This story was met with howls of laughter from the class, and a general sense of disbelief, but a deal was a deal.

"Ok, well basically, a Strawberry Cheesecake is when a guy cums on a girl's face, then punches her in the nose, so that blood comes out and it mixes like a strawberry cheesecake"

Our teacher raised one eyebrow and screwed up her face a bit.

"Ugh.. My story was better"

That it was.


-----------------

Secondly, (A shorter tale you will be glad to hear) was one of my computing teachers.

This story is more about one of my friends involved, but it still made me chuckle at the time.

Our teacher was attempting to teach us about RAM, specifically, how it looses all it's data when the power is cut. (Which I shall assume you all know a little about)

He gave us an example:

"So, say I was playing a game, (What's the last game I played... Half life 2) Say I was playing Half Life 2, and I was on the last level, and I had a powercut. What would happen?"

To which my friend raised his hand and said:

"Well, you'd have to go back into the citadel, get the gravity gun, use the elevators to get to the office..."

Put a smile on my face :)
(Charlie-M, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 23:35, 2 replies)

Science is fun.
Had an awesome science teacher, who lived across the road from me, he exposed us to radiation, tear gas and had a leathal shot with a board rubber.

Took a group of us treking around snowdonia a couple of time with a compulsary training once a week, 8 weeks before each trip, never worried when we did stupid things halfway up a mountain.

He was harsh but fair, if you fucked around he could come down on you like a ton of bricks, but if you followed the rules he was an excellent bloke.

The type of teacher that made learning fun, reflected in the fact that i sailed through science with an A.
( Thor_sonofodin has done things, terrible things on, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 23:27, 1 reply)

My best teecher
was defanatly my Inglish teecher. His name wass Mr Eddwards and he tought me evrything I no about the Inglish langwij.
(bobman500 enjoys a grope as much as the next fella, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 21:20, 3 replies)

awesome...ly tragic
Only my second post ever so be gentle...

Maths teacher at my old school. Bit of a dick, looked and acted like Simon from first couple of series of Teachers but without any script or charm. Would try and join in with any matches on the five a side pitch (whilst me and stoner friends would glower unhealthily from the hill nearby). The epitome of trying too hard groovy teacher really.

Turns out he was growing huge amounts of weed in his garage:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2546489.stm

He claimed to have advertised his garage as available for rent, met this "friend" in a pub gave him the keys and got regular cash payments but never, ever, ever looked inside his garage to see what it was being used for.

Got struck off and ended up working in the tie section of house of frasier in the local shopping centre.
(Bunbury, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 20:52, Reply)

My Physics teacher, Mr. Prothero
During a GCSE physics lesson on atomic theory:

Me: so the nucleus is made of Protons and Neutrons. The Neutrons have no charge and the Protons have a positive charge

Mr P.: Yes thats right.

Me: so why dont the Protons repel each other thus destroying the particle?

Mr P.: Because of the strong force.

Me: What's the strong force?

Mr P.: You'll have to do A-Level Physics to find that out.

And so i did. In honesty, most of it was quite beyond my level of intelligence, but i enjoyed every bit of it.
(Frample Tromwibbler climbs an obstacle like old people fuck, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 19:08, Reply)

Lengthy build up
involving beastiality, PG Tips and seating. and hence.

horse hump tea-chairs.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 14:37, 5 replies)

College French Teacher
My only memory of college is that of my (moderately attractive) French Teacher, mid 20s, sitting on the desk with her feet on a chair, occasionally adjusting her posture and 'accidentally' opening her legs in the process.

Caught an amazing glimpse of a pair of silky panties with a picture of a flower on them. That memory pulled me through my teenage years.

Many years later I'm starting to think she did it on purpose. FFS sometimes I can be so naive.
(ed-z, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 14:02, 1 reply)

Proper teacher training
I work with a professor of education who is also an ex teacher.
He told me about his first teaching job in an all boys school in the 60s.

He was given a short tour and a word of advice on his first day.

“ To gain the respect of the pupils and to maintain order in the class room you need to show the boys that you’re not to be trifled with.”

“What You do upon entering is grab the closest child and throw him forcefully to the ground, Shout at the boys to sit up and pay attention, and then introduce yourself”

Simples.
(L E T S G O "Stop buying into and spreading this shit", Sat 19 Mar 2011, 13:56, 1 reply)

I had this one teacher
Taught me some stuff.


Sorry for length.
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 12:45, Reply)

Quickie
Usually shiny and happy music teacher storms into the classroom in a bad mood.

Us: "What's the matter, Sir?"
Music teacher: "I went skiing to Austria over the weekend and I left my favourite jacket on the slopes!"
Us, collectively: "It's a hard life, isn't it, Sir?"
( .Yeti., Sat 19 Mar 2011, 10:54, Reply)

If I ever ...
take leave of my senses and study to become a teacher. I will introduce, my first Powerpoint slide of any class.

"Should any phone ring in my presence, I will confiscate said phone, answer the call and humiliate the callee to the extent of my pleasure and the enjoyment of the rest of the tutorial class."

Said examples are:

- To the callee's mum, tearfully posing as the previous night's one night stand, and asking if he's like this with all other girlfriends.

- To an unidentified, probably female, caller, that I have contracted genital warts from callee, and I advised they test for same.

- To the callee's employer, posing as a distressed and earnest girlfrient, explaining the recent demise of the caller, and wish the employer well in filling the gap left by the demise of said callee.

Just as well really.
(Que?, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 7:27, 10 replies)

My finest teacher ...
successfully negotiated an extended metaphor.

My Year 10 Maths teacher taught us a lesson on derivitives. He drew a grid on the floor, organised us into groups of four, and gave us each a fiver, and small wooden horse.

Upon this precipice he taught us the basics of odds, and therefore gambling. He assumed the role of bookie, set up a board, and weighted several horses. He adjusted the odds accordingly, invited us to place our bets, and then introduced 1d6 (a six sided dice for the uninitiated).

Each imaginary horse would have its' team roll said 1d6, have its handicap applied, and then proceed along the indelibly inked track on the Maths room floor.

I won a tenner on the back of that imaginary crippled piece of wood masquerading as a thoroughbred.

The lesson of derivitives is now deeply inscribed on my conscience, even if it is only trotted out once a year on Melbourne Cup Day.
(Que?, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 7:06, Reply)

I'd probably have had a lot of awesome teachers
If I'd have given them the chance to actually teach me anything, 8 schools in the 12yrs of standard education didn't go down with my parents too well but I've done ok since.



*sorry for a crap post!
(Kip, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 6:22, 4 replies)

Me, Friz.

( __, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 1:59, 4 replies)

From the Awesome to the Awesomely Tragic
I've had plenty of memorable teachers over my time. I'm just about to leave for University which is disappointing but thankfully the lecturer who introduced the topic was equally batshit mental, raving about the implications of individual differences in psychology and his ex wife.

Some of my more noteworthy teachers have included:
- Miss B. A woman from Africa who taught English. She didn't have a bloody clue what she was teaching and was regularly reduced to tears by the class. After she left it transpired that she'd been removed from the country as she was here illegally.
- Mr A. An ICT teacher who said next to nothing, fired staples at pupils and brought in home-made Flumps.
- Mr D. A hippy with a ponytail and earring who drove a mini. He taught Graphic Design and wandered round classrooms barefoot. He agreed to help produce my band's first recordings but unfortunately left before this could happen. The bastard. I chose Graphics GCSE because of him and ended up with The She Witch.
- Mrs M. A miserable old Geography teacher who once stapled my friend's book to the wall for no other reason than she was bored it seemed. The class victim was barricaded in the cupboard while she was out of the classroom. Upon her return, she simply shrugged, sat at her desk and continued teaching the class, ignoring the pleas from the cupboard. Shit hit the fan a bit when the head of key stage came in.
- Mr P. A true legend. If anyone deserves a statue built of them it's him. A proper traditional biology teacher, with a beard and classroom full of skulls and plants. He's one of those people who could tell an anecdote about anything. Drives a clapped out one of these:
www.caranddriving.com/pix/UCit2CV.jpg

I've had plenty other outstanding teachers who've worked really hard to help me achieve things. Special thanks to the tiny dot of a woman who taught us English for a year or so. An incredibly frail old lady, she collapsed in our classroom but still returned to teach us. She always encouraged me to write and that's stuck with me to this day.
(Voodoo-Child16 Pissed in their Champagne on, Sat 19 Mar 2011, 0:07, 1 reply)

Art and mangled legs
My tutor at secondary school (known as 'Mr F') was amazing - and scary. He had a quiff, a lincoln-style beard, and a history with motorbikes. He was the art teacher. He scared the shit out of us on the first day with a terrifying speech threatening detentions if we even drop a pencil on the floor. Then on day two he turned into the best teacher ever.

He used to talk about how cool bikes were - but then he said "but don't ever get one, or this will happen...". He rolled up his trouser leg to reveal a horrible jagged eight inch scar running down his shin. He often told us about his various disfiguring bike accidents. He also warned us about the consequences of trying to drive a car while wearing platform shoes. It involved a smashed brick wall and some fractured bones.

One day I was walking through the quad (open playground-type space at our school) when I saw Mr F and the equally deranged drama teacher ambush one of the 11th formers. Mr F was holding the 15 year-old's arms while the drama teacher repeatedly punched him in the stomach. I told my older brother about it, and he said "yeah, they do that to all the year 11 kids before they leave school".

And those were my formative years.
(Supermonkey, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 23:38, Reply)

UMIST, 1998
Pay as you go mobile phones were just becoming popular in the late 1990s (I got my first one in 1999) and the phenomenon of people having their phones ring during lectures was also just coming in. During one lecture in the biggest lecture theatre on campus (R/C16, if it means anything to anyone here) it happened and the lecturer walked over, grabbed the phone, asked who it was, and said "He'd rather be with me than with you. Goodbye." The phone owner was quickly taught not to answer calls from his girlfriend during lectures again.

This lecturer was quite a sound bloke with a decent sense of humour and could be supportive if you needed advice. His research interests were in assistive technology for the blind, and he developed the screen reader in Windows 2000.
(mhoulden, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 22:53, 1 reply)

Suburban Glasgow, mid 1990s.
I was a little arsehole in 3rd & 4th year Chemistry. I could do the work easily. Indeed, I did the work easily, which left plenty of time each lesson for mucking about and ruining it for everyone else. Most teachers would have hated me for this. But not DM (the D stands for Doctor). Because DM was awesome.

Reasons DM was awesome:
1) He straight up told my mother at parents evening "He's a cheeky little shit, but he'll grow into his sense of humour"
2) He was the external assessor for someone's 6th year oral exam. They had done their project on the same area that DM had done his PhD in. He asked a few basic questions to check the kid knew his stuff (he did) then subjected him to a 20 minute ordeal of nightmarish questions, long since having decided the kid was going to pass anyway.
3) He taught me that the best way to annoy medical doctors is to tell them that if they don't have a PhD they're not a doctor, just a Bachelor of Medicine. I use this to this day, and it still works every time.

But best of all...

4) He gathered the class round his desk, and told us a tale. A tale of a friend of his, also a chemistry teacher, who was blind now. Did we know why he was blind, he asked? We did not. Because he put sodium into hydrochloric acid. Do you know why he did that, he asked? We did not know. He looked straight into my eyes
'Because of a little shit like you, constantly suggesting stupid ideas and goading him with a relentless stream of "Do it, sir! Go on! make it burn!"'

I don't think I've ever been happier.
(Dr Death's Malpractice Suit, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 19:56, 2 replies)