My primaryschool maths teacher taught us roman numerals and one of the tasks we got was to write out the current year in roman numerals.
I came up with MCMXCVIII … to which he smugly replied that it’s wrong and the romans were a lot more clever and it’s just IIMM (take 2 off 2000).
Years later I learned that he was quite wrong about that and my answer is in fact the only correct one.
TFW your school insists you learn something utterly pointless and then the teacher teaches it completely wrong.
IIMM just looks so silly. If that were allowed, then why would the Super Bowl roman numerals be so long in the 1900s?
(I don’t even watch football.)
There is a modern normative convention but there was never an official standard, and the Roman’s usage actually had a lot of variation. Your teacher may have been right that some Romans actually wrote IIMM, but he certainly wasn’t right to claim you were wrong.
“I gave you a 98 because I don’t give out 100’s.” Even though I got everything right, I couldn’t get the grade I deserved because of some high school health teacher’s ego.
I had a university professor give me a 99 on a written exam because “only Jesus is perfect”.
I didn’t really care but it’s also something I may never forget because of how bizarre I found it
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In fifth grade, we had this medieval month where we all built castles and competed in events to earn a knighthood. You only had to earn like three medals out of maybe 10 different games, like throw a ball into a circle, or make another student laugh.
Every contest, the students were helping each other, or bending the rules, and the teacher was like “whatever.” Except for me. I didn’t earn a single medal, and everytime it was close, I got fucked by the rules. There was one I remember vividly, because my thrown soccer ball was on the line, and was ruled out. Then another kid’s ball was on the line, and his was ruled in. I complained to the teacher, and he went up and toed the other kid’s ball into the circle.
That kid was then the one I had to make laugh. Every other jester attempt, kids were giving away laughs. Literally everyone got a courtesy chuckle, but I remember that fucking kid sitting there stone faced while I tried to tell him jokes knowing he’d never laugh no matter what I did or said.
Looking back, I’m sure I was probably an insufferable twat about the rules or something, but I was 10. I definitely believe that teacher had it out for me, and I was one of two kids who weren’t knighted, the other having missed the games with mono. My classmates definitely had it out for me, and it was a miserable year all around, but I remember the moment I realized that the teacher was also one of my bullies.
Man that sucks, that teacher should know better, excluding 2 kids like that will definitely stay with them for a long long time. And what a perfect lesson plan for everyone to get knighted, that could lead right into knights of the round table and King Arthur, have everyone sit in a big circle and talk about his knights.
Stupid stupid teacher.
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I was never that ambitious.
I think you gotta keep in mind that he was a very punchable child and that isn’t the teachers fault. Really, the actual victim was their entire classroom
that isn’t the teachers fault.
The…the teacher was literally encouraging his punchable behaviour though.
That’s a right we should all protect
That really sucks. I had a hockey coach like that. If you weren’t in the main group, he either ignored you or humiliated you in front of other kids. I was a passable defense player and he only cared about forwards so I mostly escaped unnoticed but several friends and I stopped playing hockey because of this guy. In the league we were in they kept teams together and we kept getting him as coach. We were 13 or 14 at this point and it just wasn’t fun anymore which sucks because we all loved hockey but he was just such a bullying prick.
4th year in college in a 3rd world country. Final exams. Last exam. About to graduate after an agonizing year of microbiology. I don’t remember exactly what I did, but he saw me and thought I was cheating off of another student. I was not. Starts yelling at me. I start yelling back. Fails me on the last test on the very very very last day of the last year of college and I was about to go on with my life. I had to repeat the whole year because of him. College is different in my country. You fail one class, you fail the whole year. I still hate him to this day. When he dies, I’ll go shit on his grave.
Pity you cant make his life one year shorter. Make it a decent shit
Oh I’ll make sure I’ll have taco bell beforehand.
This one made me literally lol
😂 glad you got a laugh out of it.
My dad was in construction (ran an excavator, mostly) when I was a kid. He found a large megalodon tooth in amazing condition at work and gave it to me. I brought it to school and my teacher took it from me. I never saw it again.
It’s especially infuriating now because I know the value of teeth in that condition and size
That’s fucked up, I would be seething if they happened to me
Had a woodshop teacher steal my dad’s hat exactly like this.
A middle school social studies teacher of mine gave me detention on numerous occasions because I refused to take notes in his class.
Partway into the year during parent-teacher conferences, where parents met with teachers to discuss their children’s performance in class, the issue was brought up.
“Pixelscript is having some difficulties in my class. He is not taking notes during lectures. I’ve given him detention several times.”
“Well that’s strange, it says on his report card that he has an A in the class.”
“Well, yes, he does extremely well on homework and tests, but you see, he doesn’t take notes…”
“…Are you kidding me?!”
The greatest irony of the situation was that on the few occasions he forced me to take notes, it lessened my comprehension, because focusing on writing in real time during the lecture actively harmed my understanding of the lecture. God forbid a student actually listens to what you have to say…
I think people learn differently. Most lectures I have to wait for the instructor to finish their slide or something and then begin copying notes. If they’re going really fast I don’t understand anything, at that point it’s just writing them down as fast as possible in order to study later instead of learning in class.
I had a similar experience with a high school biology teacher. I always took very scarce notes (just what i knew i needed to write down). She insisted we take thorough notes and later copy them over neatly into another notebook. I refused. Nevermind that my handwriting has always been abominable. She based some part of our final grade on turning in these copied over notes, and I consequently got a poor grade despite doing well on tests. I took great pleasure in telling her about my 5 on the AP test at the end of the year. (It was a national test, scored 1 to 5.)
It’s a classroom management thing.
I didn’t understand this until I was a teacher but unfortunately, “if I let you do it, I have to let everyone do it” ends up being pretty true. Kids will absolutely point to other kids and say, “but you let Joey put his head down and listen.”
My response can’t be “but Joey is passing my class.” As much as I would like it to be.
It’s also a respect thing and I don’t mean that like you might think. I don’t demand unearned respect from everyone like an asshole. But one thing that happens is, if you let kids skirt classroom expectations and let them avoid doing things you ask them to do, they learn that your rules/expectations are actually just suggestions. Everything becomes negotiable.
Sorry dude, I would have made you take your notes too.
I’m sorry but you’re wrong here. Kids need to learn that everyone is different and everyone is not treated the same. The oft liar is never trusted. The fat kid is probably the one that stole the candy. The nerdy kid probably did most of the group work. If you get good grades, the teacher gives you more slack in some areas.
And your example sucks. Putting your head down and “listening” is not the same thing as sitting up and paying attention to a lecture but not taking notes.
Don’t get me wrong. I see where you’re coming from and agree generally, but on academics, there’s too many different ways to learn. Whatever someone figures out that works best for them should be left to that if their marks are good every evaluation.
Much as I’d like to agree with you, you’re clearly talking out of your arse.
Teachers are hamstrung by administration nowadays. If we could treat kids differently, we would. Alas, terrible admin+awful parents means differentiation isn’t even remotely possible.
That’s all very highly regarded
Who said anything about putting heads down? I wasn’t pissing about reading a book or playing games on my laptop during lecture, I was paying attention. Head up, eyes locked, watching.
“Classroom expectations”? The only reasonable expectation here is that I pass the class. Whether the teacher thinks patting my head, rubbing my belly, and jumping up and down whilst doing so is the ideal way to acheive it is irrelevant. Especially so if it is demonstrably to the contrary. Literal data for this exists in the form of grades displaying the trend.
My response can’t be “but Joey is passing my class.” As much as I would like it to be.
Maybe my anecdote is no longer reflective of modern institutions where teachers are increasingly restricted and scrutenized over dumb factors they don’t even control, but I find this quite a strange take, because a different middle school teacher of mine in the same school played this exact card to great effect. It is not immediately obvious to me why you couldn’t.
EDIT: Sitting on that response for a moment, it seems that to some degree you read it as if I was being disruptive in class, or otherwise not paying attention and setting that example to my peers. In these cases I would take your side. You have a responsibility to teach students the soft skills of proper attention and listening comprehension.
I was not violating this. My whole debacle was very specifically the putting pencil to paper part. In my view, notes are strictly an assistive tool. If I demonstrably did not require this tool to perform (evidenced by grades), and even moreso performed worse with it (further evidenced by grades), I do not agree that I should be forced to use it, specifically at a time where students are arguably old enough to start making choices like study strategy for themselves.
And I am not sufficiently convinced that this specific kind of selectivity is sufficiently toxic to your teaching position that you have to cast aside your better judgement to not rock the boat. But perhaps things really are that dire now. If they are, well, I guess that’s just a bummer for both of us. :/
As a kid, I always took everything apart, because I can’t help myself and I need to know how everything works. I still do it today (it’s my job now!)
I’m 4th grade, I was taking apart my mechanical pencil and putting it back together, and my teacher took it, snapped it in half and under) threw it away.
She told me I’m no longer allowed to use mechanical pencils, I can only use wooden ones.
Since I didn’t have a wooden one with me, I was sent to the hall the rest of class.
They should be encouraging that behavior, seeing as it’s so common that that curious behavior leads to techy jobs and all.
I’m so sorry for the theft and damage too. She could have just hidden it from you until the end of class or something, if she had to.
I never let it stop me. I started working at a print shop, and the huge copier (xerox 1000i) kept jamming. I’m talking huge jams, this thing is about as long as 2 Mazda miatas.
The fuser belt tore on me at like 4 in the morning during an emergency print job, and the technician wouldn’t be there until about noon, so I broke into his parts cabinet and figured out how to replace the belt. I had it up and running about an hour later. The fuser on that machine is about as big as a Brother desktop multifunctional copier.
He did come in, and scolded me for repairing it, but was fascinated I did it (it’s a 2 week training in New York just to work on those).
I ended up bugging all the techs to hire me and eventually, they did! So now I work on photocopiers, and I absolutely love it.
Congratulations, that’s amazing!!! I worked in a print shop too and am now studying computer science, and printers are the toys of the devil as far as I can tell. Always determined to fail in the most inexplicable ways.
She could have just hidden it from you until the end of class or something, if she had to.
Or she could be more interesting than a disassembled mechanical pencil.
I had a high school math teacher who had me convinced I was too stupid to do the assignments. I literally couldn’t do high school algebra. I had an average of 11% in that class, and she would tell everyone their grades each quarter. Out loud, in front of the class, and I had an 11%. Questions were met with “You really should know how to do this”.
25 years later, and my lemmy shitposting is interrupted by a meeting where intelligent and talented people discuss drawings of a proposed building. Drawings that were created by me. For the building I was paid to design.
I can math just fine, when someone takes the time to show me how. Algebra, geometry, trig, I can do them all. But when I was a teenager, a supposedly smart and educated person had me convinced I couldn’t figure it out.
I got told all through high school and college I was bad at art. Turns out I just had to learn differently than what they were doing and I’m not bad at it. I draw, paint minis, pixel art, some 3d now and am really happy with my work. Same thing with music I can’t wrap my head around reading music so teachers all told me I wasn’t a creative type. But hand me an instrument that is intuitive to me and I’m actually decent at playing along to things or making my own music.
It can take so long to convince yourself that teachers were wrong about your capabilities. I didn’t unlearn all that self deprecation until my mid/late twenties.
I never liked afternoon naps as a kid, so I brought some Tom & Jerry comic books to read during nap time at kindergarten. The teacher told me that everyone has to take a nap, took my comic books and never returned them. I’m now 25 years old and still salty about that.
I was feeling saucy after having learned about the metric system, and for a lab report I deliberately wrote 125 mL as 1.25 dL. I lost half of a letter grade for that.
Wtf thats completely valid
These mistakes happen when the teacher is not paying attention, or got their 12 year old child to help them grade papers. Should just talk to the teacher and get it fixed instead of holding a lifelong grudge.
I did go to her. This was at a religious school where I was lucky to be learning any science at all, and when I asked her what was wrong about it, she refused to explain besides that we hadn’t learned about deciliters yet.
Oh so she’s a dumbass. Sorry to hear that
I think she just wanted to punish me for being a smartass, which I was, so perhaps some forgiveness is in order.
When I was about 13 I was spending a lot of my lunchtimes in the library working on programming a game. One day I logged on and saw all my code had been deleted. I assumed I’d done it by accident and pulled the latest copy from git. The next day I was called into the assistant head’s office because “games are not allowed on school computers”. He then for some reason told me that the graphics I’d made myself were bad and that my game was buggy and that if I continued to do that in school I would be suspended. He did, however, say that I could do it at the computer club which was on every Thursday night. Great, except there was no computer club.
Omg this is mad. Nice that you had everything in git! Pretty badass.
First year of high school we had a creative writing assignment for English class. The idea was we all wrote a short story about anything at all. I decided I’d write something comedic.
It was about a guy who studied hard for a big test and then on his way to the test one thing after another delays him and the things get more ridiculous as the story goes on. Once he finally makes it to the place just on time he’s told the test is actually the next day.
The teacher then asked me to stay after class so she could tell me my story was stupid, I’m not funny, and I should never try comedy again. Talk about inspiring creativity!
That really makes me appreciate the teacher I had in HS who told me she liked my idea but a short story may not be the best format to try multiple points of view in the narrative.
Sounds like it would have been a great comedy movie in the 90s, starring Steve Martin perhaps?
Had a teacher tell me my father was in hell because he lost his battle with mental illness. Catholic school was scarring.
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I had an art teacher when I was around 12 years old who hated my guts. I wasn’t the most well behaved student but the things she did was sometimes petty other times aggressive.
She once threw a water bottle at me because I had a chat with the guy next to me. She missed but the bottle damaged the wall next to me.
She told my girlfriend to stay after class because she wants to talk to her. She spent 10 minutes trying to get her to break up with me.
She never failed to tell me that I’m a good for nothing and I’ll probably end up as a homeless drunk and I’ll live beside the road.
She always made fun of my drawings and paintings trying to humiliate me in front of the class.
I wasn’t her only target, she had one in every class.
I had a teacher like that, who thought I was a bad influence on my other students. The worst part is that if you do turn out okay, they think that they did a good job by motivating you by being such a dick head. No, you aren’t motivating me by being a jerk to me. I motivated myself. You were just an asshole.
