"Substitute teachers that we didn't like" experiences

There are days where teachers are finally sick or get a jury duty summons and a substitute teachers comes to the rescue. Sometimes they turn out to be worse while others are better.

Let's talk about the worst ones. Either they're just too strict, too lenient, or just too plain stupid.

In 8th grade, I had a substitute for band since our director was sick. It was this old Asian lady that had the stereotypical bob hairstyle with the glasses. It was fine. Then she took roll and started to criticize the way we pronounced our last names (they were either in Chinese, Vietnamese, or Spanish). Strike One.

Then we decided to play excerpts from the Phantom of the Opera. We described to her that it was a dark and booming piece to give her an idea what it's about. The beginning of the music was labelled forte, which means to play loud. We played and just a few seconds in, she yelled out to stop and play quieter. She accused us of being deaf when we told her it was supposed to be loud. Strike Two.

Afterwards, we played a piece where there's a trombone, trumpet, and clarinet solo. She kicked them out for playing "too loud" even though it was mezzoforte (meaning to play somewhat loud). Strike Three.

Maybe I'm overreacting and she's not a musician. However, she didn't have to kick them out. She made them late for their next class as well and didn't bother to write a tardy slip. What were some of your experiences with Subs you didn't like?

 

I had an appointment with the school nurse/counselor and even had a note for it but the supply teacher wouldntlet me go and forced me to sit through the lesson, i didnt though and just walked out and he shouted after me 'i will tell your head of year if you dont come back here!' Needless to say, he was the one who got told off for making me late lol.

 

There was this Ukrainian couple who would switch off as substitute teacher. Sometimes it'd be the husbands, sometimes it'd be the wife. The wife was worse. She substituted for our class one day. She sent two people out. One was because a girl sneezed. The other was because he put his water bottle in the recycling bin. What the hell?! They were super super super strict and I'm so glad that I never ever have to deal with them!!!

 

I had a teacher who took my Spanish class for a week. There's a problem with taking an advanced Spanish class when you don't speak Spanish. There's also a problem when you think speaking Italian will do any better than English. There's definitely a problem when you come in and say "Spanish is my least favourite Romance language; so ugly," as your first introduction.

Even worse, she liked (relatively, given her dislike of Spanish) my (vaguely foreign-sounding Aragonese) accent, so I had to read out and speak more than most of the others, along with my Andalusian friend and a classmate with a Madrid accent, because she disliked the Latin accents. So she offended most of the class, and made the rest read like little pets.

We rejoiced when our normal teacher came back.

 

Hmm, yeah, there was one teacher we had in the eighth grade who spend more time discussing sex techniques and how to pick up women than actually teaching the class, Algebra. The worst part is that a good portion of the class, or at least the boys, were all for it, and thought he was the greatest thing to walk through the door. The guy seemed a lot more interested in looking cool and making friends than actually doing his job.

I'm sure there were others, but at the moment, that one comes to mind first.

 

we've had a substitute teacher for history in primary school and after we told a teacher later, she agreed that the substitute sucked. He said he didn't like kids, so I have no idea how come he chose that profession. we were around 12 i think

 

That's awful! Please tell me you reported her! :eek:

 

Haha... I used to be a substitute teacher for a couple of years before finding a full time job.

***Long story about being a sub that you didn't ask for, read if you'd like. :lol:

Spoiler

Its actually quite difficult when you have students running into the room and immediately think that they're going to get one over on you. At least at the start. To you, you've known these people forever, so obviously you know who is generally trustworthy and not. They probably don't and hesitate/yell/send people out.

Also, substitutes can easily be asked not to come back on a whim (with a poor report from the regular teacher). So, some tend to be very high-strung when it comes to noise and behavior.

That said, I only had five rules when subbing day-to-day: 1. Stay in your seat the whole time, 2. Complete the work left for you, 3. If you want to talk just keep it at a normal volume (seriously, you're right next to one another, you don't have to shout), 4. If you want to be on your phone hide it under your desk like a normal person, and 5. If you need help just ask and I'll work with you. These were my rules verbatim, every time.

After a while, one school just kept requesting me every day and I had the chance to get to know the students and teachers very well. I was sad when the seniors graduated, I had the chance to see them develop as people over the course of time when I was there.

As for when I was in school, we didn't have substitutes. We'd just go to study hall for the period.

When I was in grade school, I did have a sub make fun of me. I was in second grade (I think - I was little) and I spelled a word incorrectly. So, the sub shouted it to the class and everyone laughed at me.

 

In 6th grade my teacher had to get surgey so he was out from almost 2/3rds of the year point to the end of the school year. Our substitute for 1/3rd of the year was this awful lady who was just plain mean and didn't get along with kids at all. I think I have a bad memory of her because we had her for so long.

In 10th grade, just this year, my geography teacher was pregnant for the third time (that time, with twins; I had had her twice for LA in my middle school years, both of them during pregnancy) and she had a leave. This was when we had between 1/4th or 1/3rd of the year left. The sub we had ditched us halfway between that, and we had a sub for our sub. Then sometmes the sub for our sub couldn't make it, so we had a sub for our sub for our sub. At this point we hated the class because everything was so damn unorganized.

 

I had this substitute teacher who was obsessed with my Spanish last name. It was so embarrassing because he would just draw attention to me during attendance and stuff. No other teacher cared about my last name.

I also had an annoying substitute teacher for my computer class. She always did attendance(my main teacher didn't) and she always walked around the classroom and chatted with everyone. She obviously more into boring smalltalk than computers.

 

One substitute teacher I had for Spanish was this old lady who delineated a delightful anecdote wherein she interrupted a bunch of Spanish-speaking people so that they could stop their 'foreign gibbering'. I was like, 'wooow you're racist.'.

And then I had an English substitute who said that people who commit suicide are 'weak' and should be held in contempt. She pissed me off so much.

 

I once had,no not once several weeks my least favorite teacher went to Boston to visit her mom who was sick (I would later reilize she was actually my favorite teacher, because since everyone disliked her I felt I had to, I changed it and by the end on the school year she was everyone's favorite). So obviously everyone was really excited because this teacher was gone but we got a teacher as a sub who walked around the room and eat onions? I am talking about whole onions, raw onions and she would touch herself In Weird places like she put her hand in her pants and then, she touched my hair.......WTF!!!! I was like bitch don't touch me that's nasty! I got sent to the principles office, but thinking back and it was so funny cx cx haha omg when my teacher got back I gave her an enormous hug this was In Eigth grade by the way, she was so creeped out she was like, Jose are you ok? Because she thought I didn't like her in fact she really hated me but we actually became friends, me and her son also became really close and my ex-teacher still helps me, in high school by editing my essays and stuff and giving me constructive critisizme. :icon_bigg:icon_bigg:icon_bigg:icon_bigg

 

I don't think I ever had a terrible sub, or at least not one that I remember. I guess the worse experience I ever had with a sub (though it's funny looking back on it now) was during standardized testing time. It was the week before it began, and we were doing a sort of "dry run", where we had to report to the room we would be taking the tests in. As misfortune would have it, there was a sub that day in that particular room. Somehow, the school did not make her aware that this dry run would be going on before actual classes began, so when we got there, she wanted us to start doing work. We tried desperately to convince her that we weren't actually her students, but she thought we were trying to trick her and refused to believe us. She only believed us when her real students showed up. Before then, she had us answering essay questions on a book none of us had read ha.

 

We had one who was a real "winner," and I say that facetiously. She was actually the mother of one of the students in another grade. She was an over-the-hill blonde lady trying desperately to hang on to her youth but hadn't quite gotten around to plastic surgery. She drove a Mercedes. She name dropped a lot. She was bonkers as to when she would go off and then remain cool when she could have/should have gone off. She was more of a joke than someone we hated. It was sort of a treat, in a comic sense, when "Mrs. A......" was going to sub. We'd all talk about how ridiculous she was and laugh.

 

In my Japanese class , my teacher left to go back to Japan , and we had this mean substitute teacher from Japan , she would kick anyone out for anything ,she would just say " Go to the office ! " if you just laughed . We were so scared of her we nicked named her kowai sensei which meant scary teacher . So many students got kicked out of the class for not doing anything and if you made a mistake when speaking Japanese she would ridicule you and mock you and yes people she spoke both English and Japanese very fluently , she would also give you punishments for bad Japaneses. When our teacher came back we were so happy because we didn't have to deal with kowai sensei anymore . although at the time I did not like her I actually liked her now even though she was harsh, but she was very nice to people who spoke Japanese well yeah I'm boasting .

 

In the 11th grade I had a substitute teacher for my history class. She literally resembled Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmations. Our class only had 12 students in it but she managed to piss off all 12 of us. Everyone of us got into an argument with her in the 90 minute period. At one point she yelled to us "you all need to take your medication." (refering to meds for ADHD). After she said this 8 of us left the class and went to the school office complaining to the principal. None of us got in trouble with the school but needless to say after that incident the bitch never subbed at our school again.

Also in from 1st through 5th grade my mom was a substitute teacher. I refused to have her sub for any of my classes. Dont get me wrong I love my mom but I didnt want her teaching me in school.

 

In 6th grade my math teacher got arrested for hitting a student so we had a really ditzy sub for the last two months of school and she put all my perfect grade papers aside for reference and didn't give me grades so on my final grade i got a D whichy mom called about and the school figured it all out and i was supposed to have an A. then this year my ela teacher had to go to georgia on buisness so we had this hispanic teachee who instead of having us do our work made us talk about our religion and what we would do if we couldtalk to god. which was awkward cuz a good 5 of my friends are atheist and one is agnostic. so yeah. awkward. especially when the jesus freaks made it all about how gay marriage was tearing their religion apart and i was jjust like wtf?

 

Let's see, there was one drill sergeant that I remember, there one in elementary school who threw out all the lesson plans and just took every class outside for recess, and there was one in high school we called Mr. Potato Head. He was named that because if you took his face and his Mickey Mouse ears and placed them on his beer gut, it'd look like Mr. Potato Head. As mean as that is.

 

in 11th grade english, we had a sub who, upon seeing that there was only 7 of us in class that day, told us to do our work and then left. our teacher didn't tell us what we were supposed to be doing that class, so we just kind of sat there... the sub came back five minutes before the bell (70 minutes later, what was he even doing??), yelled at us for "packing up early", and told us to stay through the lunch hour. then he left again. so we just kind of left.

in 8th grade we had a band sub for about a month, who we tortured to no end... we would all switch music and sit in a completely random order, so no one of the same instrument was near each other. we would also purposely call her a different name every time we addressed her. i'm pretty sure after the second day, she just gave up... :lol:

also worth mentioning: my grade 8 history teacher had a nervous breakdown in front of our class, so we had a sub that let us watch transformers for a week, and he was replaced by one whose accent no one could understand. a kid who spoke his first language would have to translate sometimes.

 

Idk, I had a sub in primary school who told our class to "SHUT IT!".

We had her wife as a teacher in high school and she was better. Polar opposite: calm and collected.