Technology Teacher Showdown
This is a long one - sorry....

I had a technology teacher at school who was an absolute cock. He took an instant dislike to me. In fact, he took an instant dislike to all the lads in the class.

This dashingly-moustachioed middle aged chap in his safety goggles and natty white coat was only interested in the attractive girls in the class, you see, who received lavish guidance and assistance in their projects, whilst he would occasionally just wander over to the table where me and my mates sat and tell us our projects were crap.

This was really frustrating to me, because being a bit of a spod, but not that great at technology, I wanted to do well and really needed quite a bit of guidance to do so. Against my principles, I decided to enlist my dad's help on my project.

My dad, you see, was not only a technology teacher, but also a massive enthusiast for anything which involved building stuff. Most of the furniture in the house when I was growing up was made by him. The porch was built by him. He is the sort of person who has a wall of tiny shelves in the garage, all arranged in exact order and meticulously labelled, so that he'll never be without the right sized screw. And he's not just some handyman-type - he was a GCSE examiner for technology, and had also had a brief apprenticeship in technical drawing when he was a lad. The man seriously considered a career designing ships....

Inevitably, invited to help out on my technology project (designing and making a bathroom organiser thing to keep your shower gels, soaps, etc. on in handy reach), he approached it like a man asked to facilitate a moon landing.

We went down the shops and purchased every variety of soap, shampoo, and shower gel, in order to take accurate weight and dimension measurements. We then designed a holder based on these dimensions, including shaping the holder in a manner which maximised the ease of removing items whilst ensuring they didn't drop out. We investigated the qualities of a selection of materials before settling on plastic as the most durable option, despite the fact that in order to make it my dad had to obtain access to a particular kind of industrial plastic and plastic moulding machine used by a bloke down the pub. Making it involved getting in the car on a Saturday and driving to a workshop on an industrial estate to use the machinery.

The coursework which accompanied the final product included detailed debriefs of every detail of the design, as well as explanatory notes on aspect such as methods of fixing to the wall, and the pros and cons of various plastic types. Not only was this all very detailed, it was checked off against the GCSE marking criteria in order to ensure it would be well-nigh impossible to award me anything less than an A*.

I submitted it. Waited for my results to come back, confident in the knowledge that even this cock-end couldn't possibly justify screwing me over this time. Eventually, the results came back....

D

My dad was, to put it mildly, fucking livid. He contacted the school and was promised the teacher would call back. Apparently, the conversation went something like this:

Dad: 'Hello, I'm Snowy's father, I'm puzzled as to how his technology project, which he spent an enormous amount of time on, only got a D?'

Teacher: 'Well, Mr Snowy, as I'm sure you'll understand, we're trying to work the children up towards their final GCSE projects, and GCSEs marks aren't awarded purely on effort but based on a strict criteria, which we're obliged to follow. I'm sorry that you feel that Snowy has worked so hard to no avail, but unfortunately, there were areas in which his project just didn't warrant higher marks, and it's only fair for me to give an accurate mark now so that he can improve in future and achieve a higher mark in his final project'

Dad: 'Oh, OK. Well, I have the Northern Examination and Assessment Board's GCSE marking criteria for technology projects (which I believe is the board you use) in front of me right now, and a copy of Snowy's project, including model, so would you mind talking me through exactly which of the criteria you felt it didn't fulfil?'

Teacher: 'Eh?'

Dad: 'Well, I think it's only fair...'

Teacher: 'You actually have the marking criteria?'

Dad: 'Yes - I do.'

Teacher: 'Erm.. tell you what, let me have a look over it again and see'

And so I got an A, which dad saw as at best a compromise, knowing full well it should have been an A*.

The irony of it all? When it did come to my final project, my Dad was too principled to help me and I was too principled to ask. and so I got... a D.

Still, it was worth it just to know that my Dad had put this pillock in his place.

And no apologies for length - there's a detailed rationale for it which my Dad will submit on request.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 14:37, 17 replies)

Your dad
is full of win. Your technology teacher however was a cunt and I think you'd have been justified in violating him with a big splintery bit of wood.
(berk, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 14:48, closed)

Win !
Pity your you and yer dad didn't go on to market your tech project - I've never met a bathroom organiser that I couldn't break, kill or overload. Yours sounds like a goer.
(womanwhocanonlylivewithdogs, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 15:06, closed)

Hang on.
Your dad - a technology teacher - co-made your project with you, a GCSE project that is supposed to test the ability of schoolchildren rather than their parents - and you are aggrieved because you got a D? A D seems perfectly reasonable if you didn't do all the work yourself.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 15:27, closed)

True
but the point is, the teacher in question didn't know I hadn't done it myself, he'd simply given me a low mark because he didn't really give a shit about the work and didn't like me.

As I say, neither my dad or I would have done it on anything which actually contributed to final grades.

Think of it more as an experiment...
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 15:31, closed)

I see your point,
and yet feel righteously aggrieved for all the people with uneducated kack-handed dads, like mine. Actually "bitter" is a better word than "aggrieved".
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 15:32, closed)

He was good at technology
but not much help on some other things. He offered to help me practice my French once.

'Can you speak French, dad?'
'No, but speak at me son, and I'll just say yes or no back...'
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 15:38, closed)

I love it...
...simply for the fact your Dad made him out to be a complete cock (as you'd previously warned us in the opening sentence) over the phone.

A click (for your Dad)...
(SonoraAeroClub "OH SWEET HELEN OF BALLS!", Thu 13 Aug 2009, 15:38, closed)

This technology teacher sounds exactly like mine.
Which school was this? Or maybe this is a general type.
This particular teacher threw me off the technology GCSE because I was off sick for 3 months and he thought I'd "bring his average down". Utter, utter cunt.
( Zuowan, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 15:45, closed)

I think it's a general type
This was a small town in the Midlands in the mid-nineties.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 16:37, closed)

Worcester?
Mr Taylor? (Or was it Mr Styles?)
( Zuowan, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 17:23, closed)

Very, very close
Bromsgrove. A short hop on the 144 bus.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 17:34, closed)

Your Dad
is ace!
(zero.coke, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 16:14, closed)

Rings a bell
I reckon it's a type. The tech teachers at my school had a way of making you feel completely incompetent (in my case not unjustified) upon stepping into the workshop / classroom and one or two of them did display particular enthusiasm for helping the girls with anything that required bending over something while holding a tool (fnarr, etc.)

I'd be interested in the contents of the GCSE marking scheme because my final project plumbed previously unexplored depths of appalling rubbish and yet I walked away with a B overall.

I decided to construct a carrying case for model rocketry equipment, the brief for such requiring it to be large and light. I thought either plastic or plywood would be a suitable material - the tech teacher insisted on mahogany... Consequently, it weighed about four and a half tonnes and had all the portability of the Eiffel Tower. In the end I submitted four planks of expensive wood, complete with crooked and misaligned dovetail joints, that represented about a term's worth of effort.

I'd like to think that I aced the written exam to claw my final grade back up to the dizzying heights of a B, but it's also possible that our head of department (also an examiner) did some sort of deal with the examiners when they saw my pile of off-cuts in order to keep the department's average up.
(Dr. Scambolic, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 16:43, closed)

after
reading this and the replies it seems like every school had at least one tech teacher who was rather fond of the girls.

ours got found out and suspended.
(stitched, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 16:52, closed)

Aaaahh!
So did ours!!
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 21:45, closed)

Ours...
...knocked up a girl in her final year, married her after graduation wiht her parents blessing, and as a consequence was demoted from a year 12 (i.e. her!) coordinator to a year 9 coordinator (!?).

I still thought it smelled fishy but others thought it was just starcrossed love that worked out in the end.

He was done for kiddy porn and assaulting a fifteen year old he was coaching for basketball a few years later.
(Angie the Redneck Wonder, Sun 16 Aug 2009, 22:39, closed)

My mum was a teacher too...
...and responsible for newly qualified teachers in her school.

It's surprising how many male NQTs went to see her to say they were quitting because they'd realised he just couldn't resist the teenage girls.

Guess it's better they do that than hang around and do something wrong! Though a few of them did that too, of course.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 18:11, closed)