gobuchul
It was originally set up to prepare people for a career as a Merchant Navy Officer.
Not sure if there any others?
It's hazy now, but I think there was one on the west coast of Scotland. I wanted to go to it but my father refused to sign the papers.
He was a ex First Mate and 2 of his ships were sunk in WW2. Virtually none of his MN friends survived the war.
Had a primary school teacher who'd throw the window open, put her legs up on her desk and smoke.
Senior school has quite a list:
Blatantly racist PE teacher.
Music teacher would walk out of the classroom if we were too loud. Guess what.... we were loud.
A RE teacher who'd just come in and write at warp speed on the rolling blackboard with his back to us and not teach. I gave up trying to keep up and would just sit there as others threw things at him.
A geography teacher who would beast pupils in a military fashion. I always remember a kid being made to hold his arms out horizontally, if they dipped, the teacher went mental, the kid ended up a crying mess. He was the blackboard eraser thrower.
A DT teacher who in hindsight was clearly in the full throws of a nervous breakdown.
PE teachers would slipper you with your own shoes, the head would cane us.
Plus some weird & wacky characters.
Funnily enough I didn't enjoy education and it didn't take me long to figure out to just pop in for registration & then go home.
Mr Burt, physics teacher who was fond of plimsolling...well, anyone really. just as long as he could wallop someones arse, he was happy...took a run up at one of my mates, he had to stand in for the Chemistry teacher who was ill for a term and like qwerty's teacher would dictate at high speed and you''d spend all lesson with hand cramp from all the writing. More racist games teachers. A mad Irish groundsman, who'd come out at break with a tractor and gang mower to keep the fields mowed, he take aim at kids (I'm not joking, he was sacked for it eventually).
Some really good ones though. My head of year took great care of me through a bit of family crisis, thanks Mr Taylor, you were a rock.
I had an RE teacher who was an absolute legend. I don't recall him ever teaching me anything about the subject. Lessons instead seemed to revolve around him recounting amusing incidents from a long and varied life, usually illustrated in some way with a complicated diagram on the whiteboard and always with a practical point behind them.
Also another teacher who treated everyone as an adult and had this way of getting the best from anyone he taught. A simply wonderful man. Retired now but we still catch up for a drink from time to time.
Honorable mention for my A-Level physics teacher who joined us for a celebratory night out after the exams and got so plastered we had to carry him home, where he promptly threw up on the mat when his wife opened the door.
Memorable teachers
http://www.hullgeolsoc.co.uk/gobbett.htm
Mike "moon rocks" O'Hara, for that "****, I can do this" moment.
Mr Hughes, French and his lesson on the EU when Britain joined
Mrs Hunt, French for opening so many doors
Mr Haggit, Physics, thanks for the "o"level lessons in your own time in a secondary modern that only did CSEs
Mr Slater, English. Well how do you folks think he did?
Mr Griffin for the ability to machine, weld, solder and turn bits of metal into useful
objects
Mr Shaw Maths, sorry I've forgotten nearly all of it but it was useful when I needed it.
The music teachers, the kids were utter arses with you, but thanks, I'm still using what I learned every day.
As for most of my class mates, threw the chances away didn't you, idiots.
This has reminded me of my GCSE maths teacher. She had students who she'd never let you ask a question, regardless of how long you had your hand up patiently waiting. I was off ill for the first week of the two week coursework, didn't get an extension and she didn't even give me the coursework info, another student had to tell me. One of her favourites had one day off and got an extension
Told mine and multiple other student's parents we'd never pass maths, even though this was set 1 of 9. I got a B overall and just missed an A after pretty much teaching myself for two years.
Conversely my geography teachers throughout school were all amazing and gave me my passion for environmentalism and sustainability which is now my career
gobuchul
It was originally set up to prepare people for a career as a Merchant Navy Officer.
Not sure if there any others?
My dad went to one on Anglesey called HMS Conwy. It's now a national trust site called Plas Newydd
Looks like this is another way I was fortunate in my education back in the 70s. We did have a totally incompetent history teacher who in hindsight was having a breakdown which we did not help but some of my teachers became friends ( one i am still in contact with ) and some of them had real life long influence on me. Tricky Dicky ( Mr Dixon) the english teacher used to occasionally give me a lift to and from school in his lotus and fed my appetite for reading especially SF. Mr Connolly and Mr McGinley - they took the hillwalking club out every weekend and McGinley also ran the music club which had a library of albums to borrow - rock music and he also ran the lunchtime discos.
my last year at school we hired a pub and got a late licence a couple of times ( the bon accord in Glasgow) even tho we were only 17 ( we claimed to be doing it for 18th birthdays) and invited a few of the teachers who did join in.
Well I suppose there was this guy: Man charged over paedophile death. Not the man charged, the one who got murdered and dismembered.
Strange (or is it?) thing is that he was actually quite a good teacher... you know... otherwise...
Turns out my geography teacher was a bit of wrong 'un.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/572989.stm
I always thought he was a bit of prick after he threatened to throw me down the stairs for not doing my homework but turns out he was a serial sex offender as well.
We also had Mr Woodcock (affectionately known as balsa balls) in high school.
Not a teacher, but I used to know a lad called Woodcock. An ex-girlfriend of his once kindly suggested that a more appropriate moniker might be "Knob of Butter."
Probably around the time of the ‘Raising of the School Leaving Age’ as it would have meant schools needed and extra year-group worth of teachers. (We had a block called the RSLA because it was built for that purpose)
Holy shit. We too had a Rosla building, up until now I had absolutely no idea why.
Mr King the chain smoking CDT teacher
Our chain-smoking CDT teacher is who I was going to post about, only his name wasn't King, it was Nutter. Our year had the dubious honour of being the first ever to sit GCSEs and they'd given all the practical classes pretentious names, eg metalwork was now "CDT: Engineering." Mr Nutter took CDT: Technology - pneumatics and moments and all that shizzle.
Mr Nutter's idea of teaching CDT was to take the register, occasionally give us something to do if we were lucky, then piss off to the staff room to chain smoke until 5 minutes before the end of lesson whereupon he'd reappear and tell us to tidy up. I remember one time he produced some Lego Technic and gave us some half-baked direction to build something before disappearing for an hour; I made Airwolf.
Two weeks before the GCSE exams were due, I realised I was going to fail the subject. I'd learned nothing the entire time I was there and my project was non-existent beyond some scribbled notes and a frame made out of Meccano or something similar. That lunchtime I broke into the CDT lab (shimmed the door lock), picked the lock on the cabinet holding the textbooks and stole one of each title (I think there were about half a dozen in total). I spent the next fortnight teaching myself two years' worth of CDT lessons, it was the only subject I revised for.
After the exams I went back up to the school to collect my exam results like the girlie swot I was. The receptionist read them out one by one, got to CDT, I winced and then said "go on...?" She said, "B," I went "bloody hell!" and she burst out laughing.
Anyone looking fir a book that resonates with this thread, particularly if you’re a scot, a tale etched in blood and hard black pencil by Christopher Brooklmyre is an absolute joy.
Anything written by Chris Brookmyre is an absolute joy.
We had Miss Housego. Not nasty, just absolutely as mad as a box of frogs, most likely drunk most of the time...
In one English class, I watched her draw around her hand in chalk on the front of my homework book then call me out and gave me detention for drawing on it.
She eventually got fired after someone caught her giving a 6th former a BJ in a store cupboard.
Other notable high school (1983-88) mentions.
Mr Cross, maths teacher. One of my favouritest ever teachers. Younger than most and therefore "cool," relaxed, good at his job, and told painfully bad jokes. A few weeks ago I was looking at the staff list at my high school and noticed that there's a Mr Cross there now who is head of maths of something similar, I was vaguely toying with rocking up to the school to see if it's the same guy and tell him how influential he'd been to me, guess that's not going to happen any time soon now if ever. )-:
[EDIT: deleted this one, it's not really fair]
Woodwork teacher, Wilkinson I think? He had a habit of giving practical demonstrations on the importance of stout footwear by throwing hammers at pupils' feet.
Mr Haydock, French. Absolute crack shot with chalk, I swear he could knock wasps out of the air with the stuff. Dunno as he ever threw it at kids directly, but a sudden explosion of chalk dust on your desk was pretty effective at focusing the mind.
Ms Whiteside, English. Mad as a box of frogs but ace with it. Had an affectation of going "right, my little..." and then inserting the first noun that came into her head. Right my little wombats / hatstands / whatever, I don't recall her ever repeating herself in the 2 or 3 years she taught us.
Mr Hagar, electronics. Fun game with him was to get him tangented off on a pet subject. He had an Audi Quattro and I vaguely remember was locked in one-upmanship with one of the other teachers, get him talking about cars and you could cheerfully say goodbye to half the lesson. He had an incredible way of drawing dotted lines with chalk, holding it in an odd way so that it bounced like a sewing machine needle, I never did quite work out how he did it. Funny what sticks in your mind, isn't it.
Mr Hagar
He sounds horrible
Hah!
I might've got his name slightly wrong, it was a long time ago.
Not really any *really* bad ones -- PE teachers on the whole were hard to please (if you're rubbish at PE). One dodgy English teacher, accusations made but not sure if followed through (ooer). One drama teacher renowned for being very friendly with younger female pupils. Married one later, subsequently divorced again. Still see his name around.
Some lovely teachers as well, especially maths department (one of whom still keep in touch with as my career choice was influenced by him). Physics as well, some good and quirky teachers there. English and history less so.
get him talking about cars and you could cheerfully say goodbye to half the lesson.
We had a lovely Physics teacher - comically any practical demonstration he gave would, without exception, fail. Never the less he was great at explaining stuff and really good at nurturing enthusiasm. But - if anyone just interrupted him at any moment, while he was talking on any subject and said "So, err - what exactly is a Quark?" he'd devote the rest of the lesson to trying to answer that question - the fact that we were paying no attention and talking amongst ourselves didn't seem to deter him.
We also had a very fat, scruffy, gravy-stained, heavy breathing, sweaty heart attack magnet maths teacher who wrote everything on the blackboard in illegible rainbow arcs because his gut was so big and his arms were so short
holding it in an odd way so that it bounced like a sewing machine needle,
But he could do that.
at the time thought they were all wierd not so much looking at these.
1 Batpig always wore black academic cape had a small snout like nose..
2.DCM dont come mondays mr maund Metalwork/woodwork always good fun didnt mind a bit of 'laddishness'hiding in inspection pit, clamping kids in vices cuffs in 2 bottom of trousers in opp corners
3. sid dickinson Tech drawing woodwork always had a rollup going woodwork room former army hut very dry dusty ideal for smoking in! would send a boy out to get cheese sandwich from out of bounds cafe across main road. 4 foot dowel kept order in class !!
4 .nutty kate. constantly off with stress related stuff french teacher
5.CJJ. chemistry distilled his home made wine into spirits!! proper old school lab hardwood benches
6 DR Preston maffham loved spider collecting at breaks wrote books about them apparently also big into cacti He also used to collect dead things to skin and preserve in big bottles of formaldehyde, room would stink also took sex ed/human biology apparently vaseline with condoms was ok and we learned of his fave positions too!
7 pe collection of psychos one pushed his way through group of kids on stairs they went down like 9 pins. Mr cowell great bloke only recently retired good runner hated bullies alledgedley had'words' with lad called smithy behind cricket pavillion once Never had any trouble with him after. We never saw a thing that day
only one or two board rubber/chalk chuckers
I look at my 15 yrs of teaching as a sort of penance for being a tool back then! dont miss it at all
NUNS, lots of Evil Nuns 😖
Oh, one of my exes went to a nun-filled Catholic school. Her entire sex education - in the mid 80s at the height of the AIDS scare - was "don't do it, but if you do do it then don't use a condom because it offends god." 🙄
Madame went to a nun-filled Catholic school and now teaches in a Catholic school run by nuns. Like most good Catholics following the rules in the good book is a mix of random and selective, besides there's confession, and we're an easy bike ride from Lourdes if she's really naughty and a 35 day walk from Compostelle to completely wipe the slate clean.
Metalwork teacher who apparently "knew" quite a few sixth form girls over the years (before it was an offence). His wife was a bitter and angry English teacher at the same school
Geography teacher did some practical biology with a female sixth form friend of mine - she seemed Ok with it. He also took us all to the pub on the A level field trip and ended up making us all toast at 1am when we got back to the accomodation
Head of Lower School did actually have to leave after an affair with a sixth former
Design teacher with a terrible squint - he'd look at you and shout to tell you off but would be pointing to a kid 6 desks away
History teacher kept order by hitting us with a range of drumsticks, but let you eat sweets in class if you shared them round
French teacher who complained about going decimal as the old money had been great for confusing the foreigners
Another French teacher lived on my Saturday milk round and only paid half her milk bill as the other half was down to her cheating husband
Maths teacher - also my form tutor - who would eat Mars bars with a knife and fork in lessons
