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A Letter to the Teacher Who Doesn’t Teach

I’m not the type of person who’s “too cool” to appreciate her teachers. I’m not the type of person who takes pride in making fun of her teachers. I’m not the type of person who dislikes her teachers for no reason.

I’m the type of person who respects her teachers.

However, I do not respect you.

You don’t teach. You don’t know the lessons, and yet you expect us to know it ourselves. Also, you don’t accept corrections, most especially when you’re obviously wrong. If you’re going to be making mistakes, you should at least acknowledge them instead of insisting your wrongs are right and feeding us false information that you end up marking wrong in the test anyway.

You don’t know how to control your class. Being caught in the middle of an out of control class makes it harder to understand your already confusing teaching. Command respect. Don’t expect it to be given to you, just because you’re a teacher. Being overly strict makes you scary, but not being strict at all makes you pathetic. Conclusion: You’re pathetic.

You don’t treat your students equally. While it’s impossible to be completely unbiased, you’re still expected to be as fair as you possibly can. Favoring certain students above others won’t make those students like you. It’ll just creep them out.

You’re a teacher who doesn’t act as one and therefore shouldn’t be treated as one.

I’m not pointing at any teachers in particular with this post. This is a hypothetical letter to an imaginary teacher created from all my worst experiences with teachers.

Did any teacher in particular come to mind when you read this post? Are there any other annoying traits you’d like to add the list? Tell me about it by commenting below!

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I have had teachers like this before. Absolutely hated them! Good luck with this teacher. Just smooth through the class and do your best! It may require you to do some extra studying at home to understand the stuff.

Comment by Kelsey • August 27, 2011 • 1:46 am

I had pretty bad experiences with substitute teachers before. UGH. For example, I had one lady think she was all high and mighty. She was “always” right and never listened to any of the students. Even if she was following instructions from our teacher incorrectly. When we would try to explain it to her, she would look at us in distrust, think we are trying to lie to her, and punish us like elementary students! She must have had a really bad experience in the past, to be so distrustful of students. Subs need to learn how to be firm but friendly enough to gain the respect of their students. Subs usually don’t understand how the class normally works, so they shouldn’t act as if they are the real teacher.

Comment by Kim • August 28, 2011 • 1:52 pm

In high school, I was able to tolerate that kind of ignorant teaching because as much as our school would not want to admit it, we were still spoon fed. College is a jungle and when you encounter such teacher during this phase, freak out. Or for a better advise, talk to him or her and tell them that you’re not learning. and you have the right. You always had the right but in a few years, especially in college, it’s nice that some students gain the guts to actually fight for that right. :]

Comment by Danielle C. • August 29, 2011 • 1:04 am

I’ve never experienced teachers like this before but I did hate a teacher. She was quite nice, even though she was kind of fierce and all that, and my entire class hated her because our favorite teacher had to leave us for a few months due to gastric pains and she was taking out class.

We were bad to her and sometimes I felt bad, so I mostly didn’t join in in stuff that were against her even though I disliked her. But when I didn’t hand in my homework (which was real frequent due to my laziness) she kind of scolded but she wasn’t very harsh to me. That’s what I actually like in a teacher: fierce but not fierce at the same time. :D

Comment by Dorine • August 29, 2011 • 7:29 pm

I think this is a problem in today’s world. There are so called “teachers” who don’t do what they’re supposed to do. And these people should be reported to.. I don’t know who but to someone.

Comment by Shiri • August 29, 2011 • 11:56 pm

I am fortunate enough to say that I avoided all but two of these teachers before college, and that in college, my professors were not all good teachers, but always were good enough to command my respect. I hope that you never, ever have to actually send this letter out to someone.

I always hated the phrase, “If you can’t do, then teach!” For the most part, my teachers have defined that statement, but it’s sad that some teachers seem to operate like that.

Comment by Stephanie • August 30, 2011 • 8:52 am

Ugh, my algebra I teacher years back was such a biased teacher. She had a daughter at the school that played on the varsity soccer team. Guess who her favorites were?! The soccer players. It wasn’t even a *slight* bias, it was a huge let’s-only-call-on-the-soccer-girls kind of bias.

It irks me to the extremes when teachers don’t teach. I mean, that’s what they’re getting paid for, so why don’t they do their job? My geometry teacher was the type of teacher that told us to read the textbook to learn how to do the math. It was horrible considering math is my weakest subject. If we needed help we had to come to him after class, and me, being the extremely shy person I am couldn’t muster up the courage to get help.

My school has very small classes of around 11 students, so thankfully the teachers don’t have a difficult time controlling the classes.

Comment by Paige • August 30, 2011 • 11:49 am

Did any teacher in particular come to mind when you read this post?
Someone who reads powerpoints to you. OMG. I had one like that. Didn’t even know what he was teaching. Like if you asked him any questions that were in depth about the powerpoint he couldn’t answer them. XD

Are there any other annoying traits you’d like to add the list?
When the teacher doesn’t even let you wisper. OMG.

Wow. That’s a pretty awful teacher there. XD :)
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Neither do I. Which is why I prefer getting gift cards. :)

Yeah, I don’t really NEED to lose weight. I just want to because of the way I feel about my body. It’s just something I need to do to feel good.

Comment by Erin Nicole • August 31, 2011 • 1:13 am

I’ve had bad experiences with teachers as well. Pretty much all of the above of what you listed. I took a night class for college and we basically had to teach ourselves, and one student was always correcting the teacher. How do you expect us all to pass if you don’t even know what your teaching?!
I hate when teachers pick favourites, its not fair to the rest and it is REALLY creepy. I had a young teacher in grade 7 and he was always talking with the “pretty” girls in the class, to this day he still does, on FACEBOOK!

Comment by Kayt • August 31, 2011 • 3:52 am

This reminded me of a teacher I had freshman year of high school. She would always bring about six of her Bibles to school. Rather than teaching us IPC (Integrated Physics & Chemistry), she only taught us Biblical things. She had went to A&M University, and she only liked you if you said you’d go there. She was actually really mean and just … didn’t care at all as to what she did or anything. She’d always get mad at us for failing her work. She just didn’t/wouldn’t teach. It was so ridiculous. I don’t know what the point in working at a school and having to teach a specific subject is if you don’t believe in anything that you’re teaching to the point that you to just the opposite – you don’t teach it. :L

Comment by Liz • August 31, 2011 • 8:18 am

Dayum! Someone needs to print this entry out and mail it to a teacher who deserves that kind of message.

My past teachers I’ve had, thank god, did not possess all those traits you’ve pointed out, but I can think of each paragraph for each teacher I’ve had. The problem I see the most are teachers who don’t have control over their class. I just remember yelling “SHUT UP” or “QUIET” a lot when the class was being rowdy because some of the teachers didn’t have the balls to do jack shit.

Comment by tiff • September 1, 2011 • 2:54 pm

I feel like teachers are in this huge position of power because they are the ones who shape our lives and determine our success in life and everything and nothing makes me more mad than a sucky teacher who hates their job or doesnt want to be there or is simply bad at their job! I am sorry that you have to suffer through a bad teacher! That sucks!

Comment by Lisa • September 1, 2011 • 9:24 pm

I actually never really mind the teachers who my peers claim don’t teach. Of course, they’re usually a little different than what you’re describing. It’s not that they feed us the wrong information, they just don’t teach everything we need to know for tests. I’ve finally gotten to the point where high school had become college in disguise and it’s just assumed that we’re on our own for a lot, but before this year, all I’d hear is complaints, especially in math. Math teachers aren’t obligated to show us every possible situation a certain rule could appear in. It’s impossible. In fact, that would hinder us from learning how to recognize certain patterns. But I guess some kids just can’t grasp that.

I have had some bad experiences with the favoring, though…but more good, than bad, thankfully. I don’t know if any teachers have necessarily favored me, but I have found myself in positions where I’m automatically given a good grade when I teacher is feeling lazy because they know I probably produced good work. That’s unfair to other kids, though. Sophomore year, this girl who sat next to me was obviously peeved that my English teacher found me slightly more intriguing than her. She’d always say sassy things to me. It’s not my fault.

My biggest pet peeve is teachers who punish the whole class for the behavior of one person or a small group. I had that a lot in my English class last year. I think that’s such a poor way to punish someone, because who’s really suffering? The good kids.

Clarisse

I’ve had some teachers not teach us everything on the test, and it annoys me because usually they don’t even tell us it’s on the test. By then it’s obvious they just completely forgot about it.

It’s easy to complain about math teachers. I find math easier than most others, so I don’t complain about too many math teachers, but, when I do, I complain a lot. As a teacher, you should know the lesson extremely well, and I think this is especially true for math teachers. I especially hate it, as I’ve mentioned in the post, when my math teachers don’t accept corrections, especially the obvious ones. It frustrates me.

Comment by Gabi • September 4, 2011 • 5:00 am

[...] everyone, I’ve had more that one terrible experience here (teachers can be pretty irritating). There was this one time that a teacher of mine made a huge error in my grading, so my final [...]

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