What advice has a teacher given you that was bad, unhelpful, or just stupid?

#1

A teacher once told me I was "overreacting". I had just been stabbed in the arm by a plastic knife. I just walked out of the room with him yelling after me to come back. When I got to the office, they yelled at me for getting my eleven-year-old blood all over their floor. Madam, I was a child that had just been stabbed. I ended up going to one of the older students in the hall and borrowing his phone to call my mom. He and his friends were very nice, they got me paper towels to clean my arm and sat with me until my parents came.

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#2

In fifth grade, I was bullied continuously for being the new kid-- as well as one who was very obviously being neglected and abused at home. When I came in from recess angry from being tormented the entire time, my teacher told me I "had a chip on my shoulder.".

When I was 15, my father broke my nose. I was still being neglected: not allowed to bathe more than once a week, made to wear outgrown and out-of-style clothing (because it was cheap). I had two gorgeous shiners from the broken nose on top of all that as well as my increasing stony silence in class. Not a single "responsible adult" took me aside or tried to intervene.

I will be furious about this for the rest of my life, not least because continual events like that made me unable to trust humans or maintain long-term relationships of any kind.

But I guess I'm just "angry" and "bitter", right?

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#3

"Your results in the (foreign language) mock exam were not good, we advise you not to pursue further study in this subject".

After leaving school with top marks in that language, I went to the country where it is spoken and put myself through university there.

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#4

'Walk it off' - After I broke my ankle.

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#5

Catholic school in the early 1990s. I developed VERY early. A group of boys would grab at my chest, snap my bra, flip my skirt up and try to pull at my underwear.
When I got the courage to speak up to a teacher she told me to put on a sweater and ants under my skirt and pray. In May. In a school with no AC. Great advice
I learned at a very young age about victim blaming.

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#6

One teacher told me "if you don't get this, then you're dumb." which is incredibly rude and unnecessary. I didn't get it. Guess I'm dumb.

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#7

My gym teacher made us do planks to entire hour, and were werent allowed to get up. The class was yelling him to make it stop and that it hurt real bad and we were all crying but he did nothing. The only one allowed to get up was the teachers pet which just stared at us and smiled as we were in pain.
When we were able to go to the next period he told us "suck it up. It cant hurt that bad." When I count even make my elbows straight anymore. Before you say that I could have just not done the planks, he said he would give us detention. Yea he was reported to the office by the whole grade an he got fired

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#8

"Don't worry if you don't understand. Girls just can't do math." Male math teacher, circa 1995, in an American public high school.

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#9

My PE teacher. "You're not going to the nurse if you can still walk." I had nearly broken my arm.

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#10

I had just gotten glasses and my teacher asked me why I didn’t tell anyone I needed them. I wouldn’t have known because I didn’t have anything to compare it to.

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#11

"Sit down. Torah will make you feel better."

When I, a seven-year-old, told her that I'd run into someone at recess and fallen down, and that my head had hurt 'since I woke up.'

Yep. I had a concussion.

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#12

"You're not allowed to ask questions for the rest of the day" after I asked her if I could use the bathroom in 1st grade

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#13

You should not even try to go to vet school because you are female and you are only a B+ student.

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#14

When Iasked a math teacher if he could tutor me in what I missed after hospital he just refused

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#15

In junior high I told my history teacher I wanted to become an archeologist. I thought he would react positive. Instead he looked at me, paused, and then said: 'you know you'll have to study really hard and really long to achieve that, don't you? I don't know if that is a carreer for you..'
I was dissapointed. I believed him because I was twelve and he was my HISTORY teacher (he would know, right?).
From that moment I believed it was not for me and I didn't pursue this carreer.
Today I'm 34 years old, I (almost) have a Masters degree in Social Work I'm very pleased with that, but to this day I very often regret that I didn't follow my dream and I still want to become an archeologist.

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#16

In 1982, when I was 17, one of the kids in my Vo-Tech Diesel Mechanics class was killed in an accident at his after-school job.

The day of his funeral, our teacher called us into the classroom and started his remarks with, "As hard as this is, if you kids could see into the future and see how hard it's going to be, a lot of you would kill yourselves right now."

I was the only girl in the class and I don't remember anything else he said...I just remember the pain on the faces of all those boys who refused to cry and being glad I could.

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#17

Not me but my friend. In 5th grade she made a few minor mistakes (missed a comma and had some misspelled words) on an essay that took 5 1/2 hours and he just ripped it in half in her face and when she walked away I heard him whisper "dumb" under him breath. He also did other stuff like that to other students and got fired at the end of the year when a few students finally emailed the principal about it all

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#18

"Don't study drama, that's for prostitutes." I'm currently an art and drama specialist.

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#19

I have a skin disorder (ichthyosis vulgaris) and up until about early adulthood, I didn't sweat much. We'd have to go outside on very hot days for PE. The teacher wouldn't allow us water or to go inside to get a drink from the fountain. Not even to go to the washroom. Because I had a hard time sweating I would overheat quickly. Every hot day I would get symptoms of heat exhaustion: dizziness, disoriented, weak, out of breath, then I'd start feeling a bit cooler. Each time I'd be begging the PE teacher to go inside to cool off and she refused saying I'm fine and just making an excuse to not participate. By the end of gym class I'd look so flush and so tired. You would think gym teachers would understand how serious heat exhaustion and heat stroke is. I'm pretty sure I was close to heat stroke.

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#20

one of my freinds got punished just because he wasn't siting up straight. i said "it was ok" and the teacher said that it wasn't. he was crying, why did she say that?!?!?!

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#21

My math teacher told me to stay in for recess for missing one division problem, (I have dyslexia and numbers just blurr together-) and I stayed in her classroom for 1 and a half hours and she never showed up. She then came in when the ball rang for recess to end, and was like "WhAt aRe YoU dOiNg HeRE?!?!?!" I explained, and she gave me a long lecture about "talking back" IN ADDITION, I had made a lil' oragami cat while I was waiting, and after the loooong lecture, she snatched it from me, crumpled it up, and threw it in the GARBAGE. NOT EVEN THE RECYCLING. Also, I was talking to my fren and I said "Oh yea, I'm lesbian." (proud lesbian here

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#22

When I asked my grade 10 math teacher about the usefulness of taking more advanced math classes I was told that it was useless unless I intended to pursue a degree in math. Should have not taken him seriously, but I lost interest right about then.

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#23

Ok, I got mine, I was in 1st or 2nd grade. My math teacher had let us use pennies from her coin purse and she got mad at me because she thought I stole a penny. A PENNY! When ever she let us use coins for math she would give me this look and say “ these are my coins, don’t take them.” I didn’t steal a penny, and I was the best student in the class sooooo, yeah.

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#24

Idk if this counts but in elementary school I had a few friends but no super close friends except 1. So anyways we had a play time and me being the weirdo I am decided I wanted to do some extra math stuff instead. My teacher wouldn’t let me, saying I had to play with my friends. (Now at this point that makes sense. She wanted me to be social because that’s important). So I went to cry behind her rocking chair, (this is where it makes no sense) and when my friends tried to come comfort me and talk to me, SHE WOULDNT LET THEM, AND SAID I JUST NEEDED SPACE. LIKE REALLY?!?!?

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#25

IDK if 'this' can even be considered "advice." My fifth-grade "teacher" REFUSED to teach me because, according to her, I am "bad people luck." I STILL (to this day) do not know how a person can bring another luck- be it good OR bad.

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#26

When I was 14 a new school year started, a teacher I barely knew came to see us. She pointed with a finger at some students and sent them to another class. Only later did I realize that she had sorted all the 'smart' and 'good' students into an A class and what remained became the B class. All my friends were in the A grade and I stayed with the students who liked to make a fuss in the B class. It was a disastrous school year and I had to redo this grade and even changed school. All this because one teacher was given the power to sort the students according to her impression with a finger. She retired the following year...

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#27

Told the bio teach a lungfish had primitive lungs. He screamed at me it was just lung shaped.

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#28

I had a teacher say I was a good for nothing student and that I would achieve nothing, and also I had a bullying problem when I was in 2nd grade, and the head teacher integrated me and told me I was gonna be expelled if I didn’t say anything. I WAS 6.

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#29

This didn't happen to me but a friend of mine in college.

Everyone had to have a meeting with the head of the graphic design department, who is also the career counselor, before completing their senior year. She was a good student who loved art and graphic design. Well, she went to her meeting with him her senior year and she left out of the office in tears. He pretty much told her that she shouldn't have to look for a graphic design job because she would probably just become someone's trophy wife and what not based on her good looks and never have to worry about getting a job. Not exactly the advice that you want to hear from your career counselor and head of the department.

Needless to say, her father was up there the next day and chewed him a new asshole for insulting his daughter like that! After that incident, plus several others, he left the college.

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#30

Pay attention

I have adhd and maladaptive daydreaming. Not paying attention has never affected my grades and I do really well in all my subjects. I constantly get told to pay attention. Like, do they think them telling me to pay attention is going to suddenly cure all my mental disorder? No, it’s not. So, Carolyn you telling me to pay attention is not going to help me in any way shape of form. Thank you for coming to my rant

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#31

I’d taken sewing class for the fall semester and had gotten a C. Sewing machines and I don’t get along. I made a lot of mistakes and had to redo a lot of work, but the things I’d made lasted a long time. I came back to school following winter break wearing a snazzy outfit made by my mom that she’d given me for Christmas. At my locker, directly across the hall from her classroom, my sewing teacher saw me put my coat in my locker and complimented my outfit. I thanked her and told her my mom made it. Her response? “Well, at least someone in your family can sew.”

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#32

I got yelled at for having a seizure in class (4th grade). I was also made to sit on a stool in front of a 5th grade class with a cone on my head that had the word “dumb” written on it because I spelled a word wrong.

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#33

A drawing teacher I had my sophomore year at UNT told me I should consider quitting college, experiencing life & experimenting with drugs. I didn’t quit college and got an A in his painting class my senior year.

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#34

I was 10 and got my ears pierced with small golden rings. In music class, a girl who was jealous about it, just ripped one of them out of my ear. Instead of the teacher demanding that she apologize to me, he sent us both out of the room to talk about it. I was already bullied constantly at that point, not just by her, but by a big part of the class, so that was an additional slap in the face.

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#35

You shouldn't try to be a nurse, you've never even been a candy striper, from my AP biology teacher in high school. Been a nurse for 38 years now never held any other job in my adult life. Candy Stripers have NOTHING to do with nursing btw.

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#36

One time we had a fire drill and we were supposed to be quiet and I asked this girl next to me(we weren't even friends)if I had anything in my eye because a fly yeeted into my eye and if was itchy.And she says to stop talking and I try to explain myself but I got in trouble and had to spend recess with her.

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#37

To make sure my zip up sweatshirt didn't fall off my shoulder because having it hang off my shoulder made me look like a "floozy". I was a 9 year old girl, he was a middle aged male teacher. I had to ask my mom what a floozy was.

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#38

"You'll be fine if you just finish this one assignment."
It was two hours before it was due and was a 7 paragraph essay on a book no one even cared about.

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#39

"Work hard, you can be anything you want to be". Bollox. The system is stacked against 95%

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#40

I often heard in the primary school from a female teacher: "Don’t want to learn this, you won’t need it anyway. You will be a big nobody. "

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#41

I was put in a math class that was to advanced.the teacher refused to put me in a lower class.I never learned multiplication and ended up switching schools.

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#42

My religion teacher once told me that I was too dump to pass High school and that I'd better change schools.

I didn't listen to him and now have an honours degree in veterinary medicine.

Just because they‘re not good at certain subjects, you shouldn't limit children's possibilities.

(Still not good in languages though 😅)

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#43

I had a teacher who had taught my older brother a few years before me, they did not get along at all (probably due to my brothers terrible attitude toward school in general) and as a result he took an instant dislike to me despite the fact we are nothing alike I loved school and was considered a gifted pupil…..he told me during a careers lesson I would amount to nothing like my sibling and would be wasting my time going to college so should look for a job in the local plastic factory….I ignored this of course and never forget his words which motivated me to prove him wrong, which I did the day I started work as a geography teacher at my old school I’ll never forget his face when I walked into the staff room on my first day…he retired two years later and I wrote “probably for the best” in his leaving card

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#44

“No you can’t go to the nurse cause your abs hurt during the workout, if it hurts it means you are doing it right” sorry to burst your bubble mr PE teacher, but my appendix was about to explode

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#45

"Your grad school only picked you because you're a woman. Drop out and give a man your spot."

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#46

When i was about 7 or 8 we had some random music test in a class. I didn't really even understand the way the questions worked.
At the end a teacher said i had no musical ability or talent and shouldnt put any time in to it.
So i grew up believing it.

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#47

I was constantly told through school I was lazy and needed to try harder or I would be sent to a special needs school (I have since been diagnosed with Dyslexia and Dyscalculia) Only 2 teachers actually helped and I passed all exams with no extra help and got better results than many other students. I went on to college where I was told that I didn’t look like the sort or person who should be studying the course I was on ( whatever that means lol). I have been in that profession for 22 years so far and running my own successful business in it for 8.

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#48

To take calculus and Chemistry in high school, as it's required in College. I wish we were taught to do our taxes. That's required in life.

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#49

I had an art teacher that did this to everybody, she would walk by and look art your art and then say under her breath but enough for you to hear, “oh my goodness that looks so terrible” and that hurt a lot and then I kinda had depression at the time so it made it worse and then when I wasn’t happy at school she would say “get over it you’re not really depressed” and so yah I don’t like her and I’m glad I’m out of that school now

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#50

Ok so I have a really bad teacher this year and he has said a few things to p**s me off:
1. Someone was getting bullied and when he told the teacher, he said "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me."
2. At my school, girls cant wear short shorts. Someone had worn some shorts that were iffy and while we were watching a movie and she was laying on her back, he blatenley looked at her for a minute and them yelled at her to put her shorts up.
3. I turned a paper in and he lost it then yelled at me to redo and counted it late.
4. I accidently fell out of my chair pm the last day of school, which was field day btw, and he got mad at me and the whole class had to sit fpr the last twenty minutes of school that day, I then texted my mom to come get bc she was volunteering at the school that day.
5. He never gets papers in the gradebook until the VERY last minute.
6. My friend was getting bullied by this kid and when we go to the teacher he says tell the principal and when we tell her she does nothing. The kids mom works at the school so he never gets in trouble. I had to go the the 4TH GRADE TEACHER. Im in seventh f*****g grade.
Sry i had to rant

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#51

“Study hard now...next year will be even more difficult “ Said EVERY damn year 1st grade thru end of high school. Scared me the first couple of years... but I caught on to their terror for incentive techniques. Made it through college- no sweat!

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#52

I'd love to tell the story but Bored Panda cuts off all my submissions after one sentence. 😐

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#53

Teacher told my mom to just ignore me after I tried to kill myself, bc "I just wanted attention

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#54

I have a big ass list of things from my maths teacher. Not all of these were said directly to me, but to a classmate.

‘Shut up before I make your life hell’

‘Shut up before I put you in hospital’

I was told ‘no, of course not!’ When I asked to re-fill my water bottle, as the water in it was months old. Apparently that water was ‘fine’. May I add, this was a few weeks ago, where I live it was absolutely boiling, I was also very de-hydrated and I couldn’t remember the last time I drank something.

‘Take your mask off, you don’t need it in my class’ this was before masks were mandatory, but we were aloud to wear them in class if it made us feel safer.

‘Oi, you, move your legs to the front’. Apparently someone’s LEGS weren’t facing the front - not his body, just his legs.

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#55

My metalwork teacher Saud I'd only be good enough to stack shelves in a local shop.
I've been

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#56

Not entirely advice but my 5th grade teacher was a jerk. (During Online school) One time, she was going over notes for a huge test we were gonna have the next day, and she was going too fast for me to write everything down. So I asked in the chat if these notes were somewhere so I could go over them in my own time. One kid was trying to help me and the teacher noticed we were talking in the chat. She didnt bother to scroll up and see that I was asking a question. Instead, however, she decided to tell the kid who was helping me off for talking in the chat. Had a small panic attack during the thing because I felt bad for them.

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#57

I may sound like a crybaby, but in kindergarten to 4th grade, I had an art teacher who was (according to me) sexist. Now, I may not be the best artist ever, but she set unrealistic expectations and never gave me anything higher than a C. She never favored any of the boys in my class, me included, unless the student had a mental illness. She still works there today, and, to my knowledge, is still inflicting pain on people today. Lovely, right?

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#58

Once I asked my teacher for help with something and she told me to ask my sister. Like your the frickin teacher.

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#59

"You are just gonna work at McDonalds"

i got mostly 4's (Canadian grading system.)

yea, when I'm the manager.

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#60

On my very first day at a new school, my second grade teacher chastised me in front of the whole class for not reading aloud in the way she wanted me too. She wanted me to read the quotation marks aloud, like “Jack said QUOTE hello UNQUOTE” instead of just reading the sentence as is. How the hell was I supposed to know that on my first day? I still have never heard of reading that way. I’ll never forget how humiliating that was.

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#61

I was in the 4th grade, and had just transferred to a new school, the teacher was an older woman with a stern attitude, when it came to the maths lesson, they were learning roman numerals, something I had not been taught in my previous school, it was my first day, and she puts these letters up on the chalk board and then asks the class what numbers they equal, I did not put my hand up as I had not learnt this yet, so this teacher picks me, I tried to tell her that I had not learnt roman numerals yet, so I could not answer the question, she called me a liar, and said that every school taught it, when I argued with her, she called me dumb, and made me sit on a stool in a corner with a dunce cap on. It pretty much caused me to be bullied by my entire class for the rest of my time at that school. By the way, I now work as business manager, and have done for the last 30 years, so definitely not a dunce.
Also when I was in high school, I had a PE teacher who did not believe in asthma, which I suffer from, he made me run a full lap (around 800 Metres) of the oval, every time I slowed down so I could breath, he would be pushing me the back yelling run, and don't give me that asthma crap, well at about the 400 metre mark, I collapsed because I couldn't breathe, he was yelling at me to get up and run, when 2 of my male classmates, both popular boys, came up, told my teacher to get away from me, and that they were taking me to the first aid room, (these were the days when you were not allowed to carry your puffer on you, it had to stay in the first aid room), they picked me up, and fireman carried me to the first aid room, and stayed with me till I could breath again, the nurse called my dad, and the teacher ended up getting suspended.

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#62

I had an ongoing feud with a girl in my class who kept doing mean things to me and spreading rumors, and I got a few bad grades because I missed some school. I decided (I was ten) to get back at this girl by writing some poor feedback on her feedback sheet for a project. I wrote "It could be a lot better and idk because I couldn't hear you very well." The teacher pulled me out of the classroom that day and literally told me "I wonder what happens to people like this, you know? What are you even gonna do with your life?" He just had such a tone in his voice and I can't even explain it but It depressed me for so long because he told me I wouldn't even amount to anything. He said "Do you even think people are gonna love you if you're so mean to them?" I was so terribly speechless I couldn't even tell him that she was the one doing things to me. Teachers, please listen to your students and DONT invalidate their feelings and only hear one side of the story. AND DONT tell them they're a failure.

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#63

this probably does not even begin to compare with the other stories, but anyways, i had two teachers in second grade (ELA and STEM) who were fairly cruel. the procedure went like this almost every day. "okay class, drink up all the water in your bottles before we transition classes" (in the hall) me: "may i please use the bathroom?" teacher "nO YoU dO ThAt In STEM!" (same question, STEM class: "nO YoU dO ThAt In ThE hAlL!" i ended up wetting my self a lot. until stem teacher (lets call him Mr. meow) got the hint. oh and also, we did this thing called "free math" where mr. meow wrote a number on the board and we had to fill a notecard with equations for that number. and when i say fill, i mean untill the paper was gray with pencil lead, and every time we all, as a class, did not coat our cards, mr. meow would act like we failed to add 1+1. the teachers at my elementary school, were, um, demanding and strict.

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#64

I was a perfectionist, a straight-A student in high school who was studying hard to get into law school. Once a literature teacher gave me a bad grade on an essay. Not because it was bad. His goal was to "cure" my perfectionism and to teach me a lesson.

Instead of learning from this perfect way of setting an example, I got servere anxiety instead and studied waaaaaaaaaay harder.

I'm a lawyer now and a perfectionist to this day. You can't cure it. Accept it.

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#65

If subsititues count then there was this one subsitute who was super mean and rude to one of my friends and she would often end up crying. No one liked that sub.

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#66

sit on your finger advice given by my teacher in p2 when I broke my finger

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#67

My teacher told me when I was grieving for the man who raised me and was basically my father that I needed to get over it. She also told me I was a failure and would amount to nothing in life. Mrs. Dietrich, I have no idea if you’re on here, but if you are and you see this, f*ck you.

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#68

I tested remarkably high in mechanical aptitude in high school. When my counselor said something about that to me I replied I wanted to be an automobile mechanic. Her exact words to me, accompanied by rolling of the eyes, "Young ladies don't DO that sort of thing." I went on to become a Master Certified Technician with an L1 in Advanced Computer diagnostics, one of 84 in the United States. Take that , guidance counselor!

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#69

so last week i was in a bad mood in theology class (religeon) and my teacher told me if i beleive in god i would have the best day of my life. guess thats what i get for going to a catholic school.

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