Be Excellent To Each Other

I'm stuck doing translations of videos into German which got me thinking that I wish I had paid more attention in our German lessons at school. The teacher, let's call him Mr Vauxhall, was a clever chap flaunt in many languages. He had been at the school for many years. He was once known as a brilliant teacher, but by the time we got there he'd lost it.

His room resembled a bomb site, while waiting for the next lesson you'd hear the older kids mercilessly take the piss out of him. When he taught us, he was lack lustre until the point we stopped being nervous first years and learnt how to taunt and annoy him as well.

He was eventually kicked out of the school for being shit, arguably 10 years too late. Is still see him shuffling around town from time to time.

Other highlights were (again names changed slightly)

Mr Hammerstien the psychotic ginger maths teacher. Nice bloke 98% of the time but could flip into a rage at the slightest thing. A sight to behold, he would start staring, go bright red and then explode in rage. Aside from flying into rage with the kids, he would do this with wasps which he would catch in his hand and crush with his bare hands. I shit you not. He once smashed a window swatting a wasp with a metre ruler.

Mr Bath, the borderline pedlo PE teacher. He always stood in the showers just watching.

Mr Stinky, the Geography teacher. That man stank. I have never met a person who stank that much. He stank, his room stank, your homework stank when he handed it back. Rank.

Mr Rowntree, the history teacher, who thought it perfectly acceptable behaviour to take his dog for a half hour walk during your lesson.

Mr Monty, the English teacher who had served in the army in Cyprus and had many tales to tell and much wisdom to give. Genuinely nice bloke who used to smoke his pipe in class. Nobody minded either as whatever he smoked was the only pleasant smelling tobacco I've even experienced.

So, what weird and wonderful characters taught you?

Our Mr Monty was the computer studies teacher who would tend to wheel in the TV halfway through most lessons and make us watch The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer that he'd taped off the telly. (actually it was probably Big Night Out).

Quite the most respected teacher in the school probably. The workshy fop.

Which reminds me of our computer/CDT guy. He was really nice and knew lots of stuff. Married man with kids. However he sounded camper than a boy scouts day out.

If you sound as if you are as gay as a window, do not become a teacher.

Mr. Cleaver (I shit you not), the language teacher. He could speak fluent German, French, Swahili and god knows what else. His room was full of empty bottles of wine, and his storeroom was full of props he'd wheel out during lessons when any roleplaying was involved. I had to wear his leather jacket. I've never scrubbed the memories away. He was a great teacher and friendly, as long as you stayed on his good side; you did not want to see this man get angry.

Our physics teacher was a bit like your German guy Chinny.
Well meaning bloke but completely ineffectual at everything and sadly got the piss ripped out of him at every opportunity.
Plus you'd fear for your life when he went out of the classroom because fucking pandemonium would break loose - glassware flying about, people having the back of their head set on fire, you name it. Because he'd never do anything about it.

Interesting thing on the BBC News site the other day about a Panorama report revealing only 18 teachers since the 1960s have been struck off for incompetence. Apparently bad teachers are "recycled" by the schools system and just get passed around.

Mr Baker - A crazy, camp art teacher who used to fly off the handle if you didn't follow orders. Had a ginger wig, despite the rest of his hair being a different colour. Had his car keyed by the Boy Wander of the class

Mr Swift - Stank to high heaven. Also wore a wig, but his would flap in the wind as he walked outside.

Mr Jones - Crazy Geography teacher who would flail his arms about and talk/point to you while looking somewhere else entirely. Nice bloke but hopeless at teaching the subject.

Same as bad pupils, then.

(all names altered, slightly)

Dr Howsat, the science teacher who insisted on being called Doctor. Liked to make first years feel thick by asking them what a flame was and laughing when no-one could give a proper answer.

Mr Fozzy: History. A former boxer (or so we imagined). Huge man, must've been 6'4''. Used to tell students to read a chapter and do the exercises, then disappear to his cupboard for the other 85% of the lesson. Once made a beautiful origami swan entirely at random and left it on his desk.

Mrs Pringle: IT. Worst BO ever. Strangely, she was very well dressed and visibly clean, but utterly reeked of sweat.

Mr McCourt: Chemistry. The opposite of Mrs Pringle in that she stunk of perfume. A tiny, permatanned scot with fantastic way of saying 'purple'.

Mr Carr: History. Openly gay. The most fabulous of fabulous gays. Imagine Gok Wan as a little Geordie with a bouffant hairdo and an interest in The Industrial Revolution.

Mr McGargle: Tech. The most inappropriate, borderline paedo woman ever. Liked to squeeze past the boys as if there wasn't enough room. Ick.

And finally...

Mr Bastard: PE. Evil Eyes. Evil Mind. Was an evil mastermind in torturing kids. Excellent at basketball, but instead of coaching us, decided to just play us off the court and laugh. If it was cold and/or wet, football outside. If it was warm, the stifling Gym. Not above deliberately fouling kids to vent his frustration. Jesus, it lucky he never really hurt someone.

I had a great school

There's something about alot of the ineffectual teachers that cause them to shut down in the face of this kind of stuff. They's shout abit and get angry but they'd never actually do anything.

In the case of the German teacher him angry made it funnier. He'd retreat to his little room at the back of the classroom, slam the door, then he'd march in 5 minutes later and go red and shout. But nobody took any notice and he never did anything.

Teachers are a weird lot. I go into schools from time to time for work and you meet some people who are just, well, teachers. They look like teachers, they act like teachers, they dress like bloody teachers.

Blimey, well...

We I had a chemistry and a woodwork teacher who were very good at what they did, but cross them? Nah, I saw two lads get punched in the stomach during lessons for misbehaving.

A physics teacher who was quite clearly fucking insane, we lost him half way through our last year because he 'apparently' interfered with his niece.

Computer Studies? What's that? I signed up for it but had our teacher leave on maternity to be replaced with a string of fucking moronic stand-ins.

We had an AWESOME English teacher though (with foul breath). An ok art teacher who smelt like a poofs handbag and a history teacher that looked like a horse.

I'd forgotten my PE teachers (or rather blanked them out). Pretty much all evil and woe betide you if you were no good at rugby.

Most of our games teachers were fine, because even though I was a useless athlete I was good at the other subjects they taught. All except one, because he was the one teacher that didn't teach anything else of value (just RE and PSHE and shit).

All of the PE teachers in my school only taught PE, so they were all crazy outdoors people who took far too much pleasure in rain, mud and hail, and forcing you to take a shower each time.

Mr Greek was one of my maths lecturers. He had some how managed to only have to teach one module out of the whole maths degree. But it wasn't even maths based, it was something along the lines of questioning common knowledge. This involved him putting on science documentaries taped off the TV and then him buggering off somewhere until it finished. So there was one about string theory, another about how some ancient bones being discovered was changing what people think about human evolution and one on how Atlantis could be real. This was a required module for a maths degree.

It was rumoured that he wanted to be head of the maths department when the current head retired (who was rather cool and he looked quite a lot like Nigel Planer. There was a whip round to get him some bottles of wine for him as a retirement present). But luckily nobody liked Mr Greek and he didn't get the job. He also went on and on about how Greece was the best at everything.

Other then him, I've been quite lucky with teachers.

Games teachers?

La di da!

Never called it PE, on account of the total lack of educating that occurs.

Mr. Manchester for me, our CDT teacher. He was the only teacher at my school who was interested in teaching. He used to wander the corridors at break asking random pupils questions, and if you answered incorrectly you got detention - not as a punishment, but so he could go over it again. I remember once my entire class with him, except me, got detention - he asked a trick question (something to do with serial and parallel circuits and working out voltages or something), and I was the only kid to question it - I turned up to the detention anyway.

Good teacher. The rest were useless twats, however. Especially the language, mathematics, science, history and geography teachers. Christ, did they ever suck the fun out of learning anything.

I hated PE

One time this kid caught a discus in the head and had to go to hospital. Cue the entire rest of the year being lined up in the gym hall to be yelled at (for what purpose I honestly can't remember). Anyway, this yelling involved a graphic description of what happens inside your head and brain when it gets twunted, with the tendrils snapping off and it bruising like a rotten orange, and retinas and whatnot, and it was pretty warm in the hall and everything started to go rectangular so I thought I'd have a close look at my trainers for a bit, and when I came round this cunt was bellowing in my face because he thought I was taking the piss by fainting.

I used to work in lots of schools around a large new city in the Midlands. The secondary school I supported housed some amazingly thick young PE teachers. Just lacking in basic common sense. I was always surprised that they managed to find the way out of their house each morning to get to work.

I remember our CDT teacher once got so annoyed with one kid that he picked up a mallet and smashed the shit out of the kid's SAT project.

Oh, I remember my French teacher having very perky nipples.


I miss him

God I remember making our French teacher cry almost every lesson. Poor cow, we were twats when we smelt blood.

Ohhh no. You didn't just give me an open invitation to go into the details about my schoolteachers. You surely didn't.

No, this is all just some kind of clever joke, and I'm not falling for it.

Don't even get me started on Teachers. My biggest 'fan' is a teacher. That total crazed stalker person.

And I think I have figured it out.

Many times when I was making GUIs he would try and correct me. Sadly it was a case of 'I was there' when the software was being written so I knew things that nobody did about how it worked.

The problem of course is that you CAN NOT EVER tell a teacher he is wrong. For the simple reason they are right all day long and kinda get off on it, bossing kids around.

And he carries that onto the net in his behaviour. Which gets people's backs up immensely and thus they tell him to fuck himself (kinda like I did). I think I just told him to fuck himself a few too many times.

And yeah, I hear ya Chinny. My head of year was gay. I have no problem with that of course, fair play and all that. He was dating another guy who was also a teacher. However, for some reason the cunt would always show up when we were taking showers, even though he wasn't a PE teacher. Which, well you know, at 15 kinda makes you feel a little uncomfortable.

Never really had any properly strange teachers myself. Had Mr Flint in middle school, the English teacher who had a delightful smell of shit emanating from him at all times. Worst I think was lanky and ineffectual weirdo Mr Potts who was head teacher there. White haired beanpole, nervous constantly, could never tell off or control anyone. Had a very unpleasant nose with red rings on it looking like some kind of infestation of something.

First teacher in that school Mr Ibbotson was really good until she went on a training course and became crap. Same with my geography teacher a couple of years later. P.E. Teacher Mr Miles was awesome and was the only one who could probably control a class. He'd probably get ousted for a assault these days as he had a tendency to get a bit physical with some of the wrong doers. He went on the training course but quit it because it was crap. He was a well loved teacher for being strict but fair.

One of my music teachers in year seven or eight was a young woman who the cheekier/"harder" kids would routinely reduce to tears. Entire classrooms would sit there giggling at this clearly quite depressed person sitting with her head in her hands. What a bunch of horrible little shites!

As for funny names, one of my friends had a teacher whose genuine, real, given name was Norman Conquest. Sadly, he taught science, not history.

At our school we genuinely had (and Bobby can back me up here) a:

Mrs Manhood

and a

Master Bate

We had Mr Michael Jordan, a maths teacher.

A 5ft 4, bald, white maths teacher.

He *did* play basketball though

I had some right nutters teaching me at various points of my school life, far too many to list, so just a select few:

Music Teacher who was stone deaf and had his own theme song "The Bev Mobile" (The Bev mobile, the Bev mobile, chugging along in the Bev mobile...) People would actually throw stuff at him in the class and he would think he was being tormented by ghosts (or he at least used that as an excuse to why he didn't tell anyone off)

Physics teacher who was a born again Christian, and didn't belive in science, mostly taught us flawed logic, and was frequentl corrected by some of the brighter pupils. He was eventually sacked.

Maths Teacher who banned the singing of "Walk Like an Egyptian" so the class used to sing it all the time when his back was turned, he eventually flipped and walked out of the class (I think the final score was when someone hid a walkman with an external speaker and had that song play on loop) and he didn't come back for a month.

Brilliant English teacher who left at Christmas in the year of our GCSEs to run a post office in France! so we had to get all our work in 1 term early, and left us to play football in the last term when we had that lesson leading to everyone being marked down a grade and no one to argue the case for us.

Geography Teacher with a speach impediment and a furious temper used to throw white board cleaners at the pupils (this was in the late 80s/early 90s!) for taking the piss out of him.

Maths Teacher who would wipe the chalk board with his hands and chew his finger, who would refuse to teach anyone who didn't live up to his standards, (on the occasion he wasn't teaching the top set, he would still expect people to have that level of maths knowledge) and would accuse you of having "illegal footware" and ask you to "correct the incongrous feature of standard uniform" rather than "take your trainers off and put shoes on"

The History Teacher who made you sit in registry order and would shout at you for not knowing as much as he did about any subject who was married to the (admittedly very sexy) French Teacher and would let everyone know that he was "banging the most attractive woman at the school" 2 or 3 times a lesson.

The Other French Teacher who, if not gay, was very camp, and would riddle his lessons with the most unsubtle innuendo going and tell us tales of his conquests around the world never quite revealing the sex of his victims (as he called them). Changed his name 1/2 way through my time there. Maybe because he got married, although he did tell the class one of my favourite ever jokes: We were a bit about silent letters in French words, and we'd done quite a few, and he says "...and finally we come to the word sink, no one tells you about the silent P in sink, why do you think that is?" after a while when everyone is confused he says "If you did a pee in the sink, wouldn't you keep quiet about it?" Maybe you had to be there?

For Computer Studies we had some Women for the first term, who disappeared (I think she got pregnant, but not sure) after a while, and from that point on we had 20 different supply teachers, none of whom knew anything about computers. Only 2 people passed that lesson: my friend (who went on to work in the computer department of UCL) got a C and I got a B, really shoddy stuff.

Like I said, there ares a lot more, practically everyone of my lessons and teachers had something wrong with them in some way, shape or form...

Malc

Yeah. As I'm sure I've told you before when relating this story, we had a Mrs Hooker. Yes, a teacher who decided that taking that as a married name was a good idea.

She was a fierce cow, mind, so little mocking was had to her face.

Other teachers: Derren Brrowns Dad taught swimming Told us to swim, then retreated to his office to smoke a cigar.
Design technology teacher: 2nd worst class control I've ever had. Ended up losing 2 years of my coursework 'by accident' and making me unable to sit the exam at the end by doing so. This, I'd imagine, was i response to me getting him the sack. Which was in response to him ignoring the fact I'd collapsed and rather needed medicine which he was refusing.
Italian teacher: She looked like a man, was Italian, and couldn't speak english. Winner of the worst class control award. She'd often ask us to translate something, but then not actually know what the English was, and so whatever we said (so long as it was obscure enough that she didn't understand) was correct. "Yes, it does mean I like squirting cows udders." I wonder if she ever actually looked up our suggested answers. Didn't even last a year.
Her aside, the rest of the languages female staff were improbably good looking. Possibly not the best thing in a boys only school.

However, the award for most insane member of staff goes unequivicably to our headmaster. The man who decided he'd much rather have a zoo than a school, and went on a animal buying spree. Race horses, various tropical birds*, Bonsai trees, lakes, a species of flower to be named afteer the school and (worryingly) gallows outside the swimming pool.
And after about the third year, he'd summon us two days every week to an assembly where he could talk about how fantastic he was for an hour. Meaning the first lesson was cut rather short. Admittedly, this was possibly better than before when we had a slightly mad reverand (although awesome) talking about how his tie was the same as my grandmother.

Sadly said reverand got the sack when OFSTED came a visiting, and he handed back homework done about half a year back. But found that one of the pupils had moved back to Japan about 5 months previously, and so couldn't get his homework back. This made me sad, as the teachers I got after him insisted on RE homework.

*Including some £2000 pheasants, who were, rather excellently, got by a sparrowhawk a day after purchase.

Seems to be a running theme with female computer studies teachers.

We had a teacher called Mr. Aitcheson. One day I heard one of the other teachers referring to him as Mr. Haitcheson.

Seriously.

And a Phillip Michael Hunt

To give you some idea of his skill level, my A-level computing teacher taught us LIFO and FIFO backward. You'd imagine the clue was in the name, right?

Otherwise, I was an arsehole at school, but got on really well with all the teachers.

Once, while bouncing in a local nightclub toward the end of my school life, I saw my (young and rather yummy) maths teacher out celebrating her engagement. Her top was so low she kept falling out of it. I wandered over and said "Karen - if you can't keep your nipples covered up I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Maths the following Monday was fun.

We didn't really have computer teachers. We had a computer but I think I saw one teacher bring it out of the cupboard, power it on and then gather us all round to briefly gaze upon it like some sort of hallowed artifact, before switching it off again and putting it away.

We had a Mrs. Rimmer, a Mrs. Lister, and a Jack Russell. Probably some others, but I forget most of their real names in favour of their mostly silly nicknames/invented backgrounds (eg: the Fat Round Man, who was fat and round, and allegedly bounced upon the ground; the Iranian Terrorist, who looked alarmingly like someone out of True Lies; Mario, a rotund, mustachioed plumber on an eternal mission to find his lankier brother; Chinwig, who was bald but sported an astonishingly accomplished beard and moved faster than was reasonable; The Breast from the West, who wasn't from the West but you had to be there and besides we already had a Beast from the East; A pair of teachers with the same name - one lanky and the other rather fat, whose first initials were K and G respectively, and so became "Special K" and "Gastropod"; The Gimp, who was a gimp; etc.)

Mr Wetter(sp) the supply Physics teacher was pretty awesome. A HUGE american slob with comedy glasses and permanent chalk on his nose from adjusting them. He always rested with one leg flopped on the benches, pushing up his enormous gonads for us all to see.

"My n-n-name is Mr W-W-W-Wedder"

We had a Mr Dave Lister. He taught whatever it is they call woodwork nowadays.

I'm still sure that wasn't his real middle name. Nobody could be that evil.

The head of the Maths Dept at my high school looked like a clone of my Dad, just 20 years younger.

The new young maths teacher who started when I was in Form 5 (year 11 in kiddie speak) made a pass at me. Yes, it was a "she". And then spent the next three years flirting with me in a most embarrassing fashion

One of my CDT/Biology teachers (female) used to be a bodybuilder and her husband was a PE teacher in another school. She looked like a butch version of Morticia Adams, had pecs instead of tits and arms bigger than most kids legs. She also smelt slightly of sweat - not stink, just slightly. She was banging the head of CDT. She had a very strong Welsh accent and a very pragmatic approach to teaching.

My principal CDT teacher was a scratch golfer and a generally decent chap. Useless teacher.

My form teacher and Art teacher was actually a reasonably successful practising artist, but the world's biggest flirt with anything in a skirt.

Head of RE was a headcase with a smile that made the BeeGees look like they had no teeth.

There was the Physics teacher who was a Reverend, who looked like a partially fleshed skeleton, was about 65, spoke in Latin, a big fan of corporal punishment and twanging girls bra straps.

The head of Physics was so hairy he was nicknamed Wolfman and people would howl when his back was turned. Good teacher and good sport.

Our Classics teacher was a screeching Harpy. Absolutely batshit mental. She had a piece of 2x1 she called her "persuader" and she would use it as well.

The head of our English dept was about 45 and looked about 90. She used to shuffle about in a moth eaten, dusty gown and mortar board. Her nickname was Old Ma Beetle after the rusty pale blue car she drove. Apparently, though I don't know if this is true, she aged dramatically in a short period after her husband and son were killed in a car crash. Anyway, as you can imagine, she was a proper character, and would dole out lines like there was no tomorrow, insisted on everyone having a reading list of books we had read (she expected us to read at least two books a week, on top of all the bloody homework she gave us). Much amusement came about one day when I was called to the front of the class to explain the plot of a book a friend had secretly written in my "Reading List" notebook which she regularly collected to check we had been reading. The book was called The Tiger's Revenge by Claude Balls.

Mr Taylor the Geography teacher from South Africa who often put the only black boy in schools desk in the corridor outside the classroom to do his work on (seriously)
Mr Gardener the PE teacher who definitely seemed to like little boys a little too much and also took charge of the school outward bound trips. I saw him recently and he still made my skin crawl.
Miss Hill the Geography teacher with the fabulous breasts but no teaching skills whatsoever (not that we complained).
Davros - The one eyed Art teacher who was prone to bouts of ultra violence and at one point stuck his fingers in my eyes (perhaps he had a thing against the dual sighted)
Mr McAffrey - The Irish French teacher who was the butt of all our jokes and had possibly the worst French accent in history.

In 1987 our school took delivery of some BBC B's. As an Amstrad owner I felt a sense of immense superiority as soon as I saw how poor these machines were. They felt ancient and outdated even then and all the software was shit.

These were hallowed items that the teachers treated with awe, disregarding my protests of how the school could have had something better with a proper monitor for far less (a CPC 6128 *WITH* monitor cost the same as a BBC B with no monitor!!!).

The BBC B was fucking ancient by 1987.

I know, but they were still knocking around as the de-facto standard. Although the CPC quickly became the second most popular machine in schools and alot of educational software was ported to it.

I remember our computer teacher saying how the BBC was better and how the CPC was just for games and me bringing in magazine listings which basically had most of the software were were using available on the CPC, and a load of stuff that wasn't.

I have a theory that schools that actually knew about computers just went out and got 6128's, those that knew fuck all went and got BBC's.

My secondary school had a room full of CPC's. But by the time we got to the third year (when you started doing computing) they'd all been replaced by Opus PC's. It somehow seemed a backward step as they stopped teaching programming.

Head of the Maths Dept at my school was Mrs Parsons, arguably the most feared teacher in the school. Everyone was scared of her, including myself. Also known as the Dragon. Would shout at anyone doing anything slightly unrelated to work in her maths classes.

I went through a phase around Year 10/11 or so where I was visibly down and depressed (although I was never clinically diagnosed or anything) and she was the only teacher who noticed. She kept me behind after a lesson one day and had a chat with me about everything, and she was the polar opposite to her "Dragon" persona. I saw her in a different light after that day, and respected her all the more as a person. Sign of a great teacher that, IMO.

We also had Mr Thomas, our German teacher. Probably the most liked teacher in the school, he was the equivalent of Mr Withit from Skool Daze, always being hip and trendy. He was a damn good teacher as well, to be fair. Very easy to get along with and as a result, people listened in his lessons and got on with the work.

Miss Spensley was our Biology teacher. I've no doubt she knew what she was talking about, but nobody (male, at least) in the classes ever listened because she was the best looking teacher in the school. Didn't do much for me, to be honest, but she was nice enough to look at I guess. By the time we got to Year 11, all of the "lads' lads" were going out to nightclubs (which she often frequented) trying to pull her. Allegedly, one of them succeeded but that was never independently confirmed

Physics was taught by Miss Knowles. I thought she was better looking than Miss Spensley, but she was a bit older. She was nice enough, but she could turn psycho at the drop of a hat and become a screaming banshee. Crazy.

Mr S was the token PE teacher that everyone thought was a paedophile. I remember one occasion where we were due to have an OFSTED inspection, and the day before the inspectors arrived we came into school to find that someone had broken in overnight and graffiti'd "SHORTMAN IS A SHOWER PERV" all over the main building walls.

Took 'em ages to clean it all off.

And yes I did used to stand at the window and press my face against the glass at lunchtime to look at the 15 or so CPC's in that room. It was like looking into Amstrad heaven*.


* That and the yearly visit to the Bournemouth Amstrad Centre.