English Teacher Stories

Tell us your memories of the people tasked with teaching you about literature back in school, whether they make you laugh or despair.

Half the board are pseuds, the other half are English teachers.

I'm sure this thread is going to go fantastic.

Not a specific story but in 8th grade I had an English teacher who was a total hardass. I was always the "I'm smart but don't apply myself" type and he wrecked me the first few weeks. I had never had such a demanding instructor. In his class we read boys to men shit like Sherlock Holmes, Hemingway's short stories, Jack London, etc. He was old school and a devout Catholic. My older brother went into rehab during that year and this guy basically functioned as my dad. He made me a better man and a better reader. He still crosses my mind desu. A good English teacher is unironically one of life's greatest joys.

My (swedish) high school teacher only ever made us read one book: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

quality education

This. I'm norwegian lol.

>3rd year in secondary school (age 13-14)
>english teacher does everything possible to avoid teaching us because she has her hands full trying to get the older kids to pass their GCSEs and A Levels
>every day is a coin flip, either we write an essay in silence analysing an advertisement which would never be marked or she puts on a movie
>over the course of the year we watch Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh 3 times
>Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet no less than 5 times
>mfw we were supposed to be studying Macbeth

On the other hand

>GCSE english class
>my marks for coursework essays and written exams are always among the highest in the class
>there's a speaking component to the coursework (debates, presentations)
>get garbage marks for those because I'm a shy little fag, bringing down my grade
>teacher pulls me aside and asks me to audition for the school play that she's directing
>my idea of a nightmare but agree to it because I'm incapable of saying no to people
>audition is just me and her in the room, I do okay, she gives me a big role
>first rehearsal with all the other kids, maximum self-consciousness, die on stage
>she BTFO of me in front of everyone, says if I'm going to be so meek she'll give the part to someone else
>work hard at it because I don't want to let her down
>start to come out of my shell, make some friends with the other kids in the play, confidence never been higher
>play night comes, we smash it, feels great
>teacher pulls me aside, says she's proud of me and that she'll write to the exam board and get them to use my performance in the play as the speaking part of my coursework
>get A*

the happy ending of your second story felt unsatisfying. i tend to expect when people bring up hubris and arrogance clashing with meekness and so on that it will end in some disaster or peter out in a sad whimper. people don't tend to tell stories of daily life with all its quirks and neuroses working out ok or even great in the end on Veeky Forums. i suppose that's what happens most of the time.

Olay sure. Grade 11 English teachers favorite book was the long walk by King, favorite band was blind melon and favorite rolling paper was banana flavored.
Grade 9 teacher had huge tits and giant nippers. They would get hard all the time and you could see them through her bra and sweater. Really distracting
Grade 10 teachers favorite book was the Shawshank redemption short story.
Grade 12 I had some.hipster who was pretty cool. Showed us the movie the devil and Daniel Johnston for no reason.

Well if it helps I crashed and burned at university.

I was a shithead that barely payed attention, but I remember my english teacher telling us "they call it rock and roll because it's about sex... that's what they would do in the back of their cars... the cars would rock.... and roll."

>Why do people think The Great Gatsby is such a great book? It's just about a bunch of parties.
>Almost died right there
>I'm not sure where this excerpt is from, but you don't need context!
>It was from Ulysses

wtf I've read this before like ages ago

Yes I've posted the second one once before

nice story user

Senior year of high school I had a teacher completely ignore the curriculum and work on organizing prom instead. We sat in class most days on our phones. Some days I would sleep or read. It was a complete waste of time. A far cry from the war journalist teacher I had in 8th grade who inspired me to read by recommending The Call of The Wild and Frankenstein. Who showed us photos from Iraq. Half way through the semester he had to leave and go back. He was a truly great man compared to that fat old black bitch senior year.

when she was my teacher i had a high opinion of her because she gave me good marks and was pretty good looking
now i realise how much of a retard she actually was because she gave me (a retard) such good marks

>they call it rock and roll because it's about sex... that's what they would do in the back of their cars... the cars would rock.... and roll
shiiiiiit

I like it

>12 hours of Kenneth Branagh
my god

I don't have any stories, but they were very pleasant people. I wish they had challenged some of the things I said that seem very silly and obvious in hindsight.

The only English teacher I remember was some ex-military guy who was like 25 and insisted The Scarlet Letter was one of the best American novels. We would spend all class discussing the profound symbolism. Towards the end of the semester he actually got arrested in class; turns out he was a huge cocaine addict and brought it to school

Insanely hot woman. Hotter than anyone in the Pornhub top 100 at the time (back when that was a respectable accolade, not like today's porn industry shills who manipulate rankings). She was flawless. She knew it too, she was feisty, and it was insanely sexy, she was a real woman, it actually ruined my perception of the "girls" in our school. She was married to some banker, and you could sort of feel her regret for her decision to "marry rich" over choosing a true soulmate. When themes of this came up in like Great Gatsby or whatever she was reading, I noticed her tone change a lot. I was a mediocre student but I pushed myself in her class because I actually enjoyed literature and I had a huge crush on her. I found out she was a huge Morrissey fan because I saw some CDs in her car. She also had an old copy of Swanns Way, French version, on her bedroom dresser (which I saw when she was sending pictures of her new home decoration to her friend via email while I was at her desk). I made it a point to quote Morrissey and Proust in writing assignments. Partly to get a good grade and partly to make her like me. She actually inspired me to become a writer, and eventually she said out loud to the class that I was the best writer in the class.

I joined the poetry club solely because she ran it. I didn't give a fuck about poetry but I enjoyed face time with her, and I was the only boy in the club, and some of the girls were cute. A girl in our class who was super pretentious about "litchrachure" (pronouncing it how British ppl do but in her fucking white trash American accent), she was in poetry club and was jealous when the teacher said I was the best writer. One day I wrote an actually nice poem, I liked it, hit me in the feels, whatever. When the teacher read it, she was impressed. She read the pretentious girl's poem, kinda criticized it. The pretentious girl said "my writing is way better than user's, he doesn't even understand litchrachure, how could you even say that?" And the teacher snapped and said "You do not understand lit-er-a-ture. You quote Twilight. user quotes Proust in original French then writes out the translation for me. You write about emotional trauma you suffered from being tickled by your brother. user writes about tears of happiness from the beauty of life he feels at a family members wake. user is on a level of maturity my husband isn't even on, and his writing comes from a place deeper than your mind can comprehend."

I was blushing like a faggot but it was the best moment of my childhood, it gave me a lot of confidence

My grade 9 english teacher was based but my grade 11 and 12 english teacher was a crazy liberal. She was obsessed with Mandela

My grade 12 english teacher sucked. Half of grade studied Othello in grade 10 but she made us read it again. We were supposed to do Hamlet.

Pretty cute story user

>in 12th grade
>reading myth of sisyphus in library
>english teacher walks past me
>"hey user whatchya reading there"
>show her the cover
>face goes from innocent curiosity to an expression like as if i just told her someone died
>asks if i've read the stranger
>say yes
>"pretty.....dark stuff kiddo....pretty dark stuff"
>walks away

>in class reading ulysses (by myself, not with the class)
>asks me from across the room "hey user what're you reading"
>just show her the cover
>face goes to genuinely impressed
>"are you gonna be come a joycean scholar?"
>"uh...i guess"
she was an easily impressed person

grade 10: Thought we were all too stupid to understand literature so we listened to the giver on audiobook instead of reading huck finn
grade 11: she majored in music so all of our assignments were centered around "present your favourite album!!!!" I don't remember reading anything substantial and she bitched about her divorce often. I also learned later that she slept with several students so
grade 12: Best teacher I've had, inspired me to study literature. Almost lost my scholarship at the end of the year so she personally helped me improve my presentations (which everyone gave me low marks for because I was shy as fuck). She really loved macbeth so we spent 2 months on it which I don't even mind because it made it easier for me to study in uni

my year 12 english teacher had a mental breakdown

we gave him drafts of our essay, and a bunch of girls in the class fixed their essays to what he said to do, then go marked lower (i just kept it the same and got marked higher, lol). They complained to the principal, then the next class the teacher started yelling at us about how ungrateful we were and how horrible we were. Then we never saw him again and had no English class for 2 weeks while the school tried to figure out what to do.

I can't even remember if we were given any books to read.

fake tho

>let me show off that i've read camus and ulysses to Veeky Forums

fake AND gay

It is though

I went to a small, rural school in southwestern Pennsylvania.

I had a dumb cunt of a lit teacher who gave the class meaningless projects and stupid filler work all year in place of actually reading things. We read lord of the flies, heart of darkness, and kite runner and that's all I remember. She was universally regarded in the class as a cunt and we even tried to get her fired on the grounds that she wasn't adequately preparing the students for the AP test -- which she didn't and the majority of the class failed miserably. Lo and behold she's still teaching there today.

I also had a lit class with some 20ish black haired dude that I forget the name of. We read Frankenstein and some other classics, watched the Truman Show, pretty generic stuff. Due to insistence from your typical school thots he felt the need to play his guitar AND sing in front of the whole class. It was some dumb song like Wonderwall and I couldn't help but think 'wow what a giant penis'.

And finally there was a gentle, morosely obese lady whom I had the pleasure to study Lit & English under in the very small and very underfunded gifted program at our school. She acted as both a teacher and adviser to students in her classes, and she made each child feel as if they were significant to her: as if we were all capable of something greater. She would drop everything that she had been preoccupied with in an instant if a student came to her seeking guidance, whether the problem was study-related, peer-related, or personal. At the same time she had absolutely no tolerance for disrespect and wouldn't let kids who were combative or unwilling to learn into her classroom. I saw, in several different instances around the school, her helping what were regarded as the school's 'problem children'. In my area, that usually meant meth, abusive parents, and other unsavory things. But I think she really saw potential in each kid that walked through her door, and did whatever she could to see that potential out. I was something of an outlier, for I never really had a pressing issue I felt the need to explain to her. Realistically I had been internalizing my childhood issues, so as not to seem outwardly weak. At that time, it made me a very callous and silent boy. Despite that, she always treated me with kindness. She would constantly tell me that I had the ability to be a very good writer if I applied myself. We talked a lot in and out of class about authors we liked and works we really enjoyed -- my favorite at the time had been Vonnegut and we mutually agreed that Mother Night was great. Looking back I guess I consider her like a second mother, she instilled in me a passion for literature and writing that nobody else could.
After graduating I quickly moved away from the area to pursue a job opportunity. Years have passed, but I can imagine she’s still at the school doing what she can. I have failed, largely, to keep up with reading and writing, and for that I'm sorry Mrs. Stockdale.

I had a phenomenal AP Lang/Lit teacher. Remarkably intelligent in a number of disparate fields and relentlessly dedicated to helping his students academically and otherwise, he also taught remedial English and did things like bring food and clothes to his students who were less well off or homeless.

Anyway, while reading Hamlet as a class, he would say "you should be laughing now" every five seconds and we all hated it because we didn't get any of the jokes.

Now I'm a high school English teacher (largely because of him) and I do the same shit. It pisses my students off just as much and I love it just as much as he must have.

>You write about emotional trauma you suffered from being tickled by your brother.
not an illegitimate source of trauma

I'm not a native speaker, the only actual literature they ever made me read in class were The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman

The most memorable English teacher I had was an angry Scotsman who shouted a lot, looking back on it I think the dude was pretty alright
If I remember right I had him in grades 7, 8 and 9, it's too bad he never saw me get real good at the language
All the other teachers I was graced with were women and shit at English

I would also like to complain about all the fucking propaganda
>muh Abos in Australia have it so bad why do they take them from their camp fires (they didn't even have any huts) and make them go to school
>some dumb short story about a britbong Muslim who sees his son become a devout allah akbar and beats his ass one night in despair WHO IS THE CRAZY ONE NOW HUH
>muh global village
>muh fucking India
The last two years of high school made me develop a genuine hatred for India, what a disgusting and abominable place nuke them all

You're a fuckhead

t. Pajeet

This fucking thot ass bitch didn't teach us shit. We were reading Hamlet and kids didn't give two shits
They just would talk about there personal issues all the time with our fucking bitch teacher giving half baked girl advice. Shit sucked

>had FOUR (4) literature courses in uni
>same teacher in all of them because she's the only lit teacher available
>kinda old lady that went from really friendly and cheery to annoying and unintelligible during the last two courses
>first three courses were practically the same shit
>barely any reading done, mostly writing reports or "reflections" on the videos she makes us watch
>tries too hard to be hip and trendy to the point that it becomes annoying and cringy
>sometimes she tries to be serious but it's really boring and there's NO reading at all, barely any talk of any authors
>during 2 straight years of literature courses with her we didn't read a single book in its entirety and only superficially covered Poe, Hemingway, Horacio Quiroga, Cortázar, Defoe and Kafka

All she did is make me want to become a lit teacher at my uni to do a better job then her. That will probably turn to be my goal once I graduate.

>This fucking thot ass bitch didn't teach us shit

it shows

My creative writing professor was super impressed when i used the word "whom" he told my parents about it.

I know no everyone goes to a suburb with 80 percent whites at there school.

How many layers of irony was he on?

In high school I was in the gifted class and for once we actually got a real teacher who had standards and graded hard and all the "pre-med" Staceys got him fired because they weren't getting A's anymore, kek.

First year of college I took comp 1 and wrote some really shitty paper about how I'm a lonely wanderer who walks the beach with my guitar and so on. Got a B- and couldn't believe it, thought it was the greatest thing ever written.
At the end of the semester we had the option to read aloud one of our papers to the class for extra credit.
I read that paper and when it was over all the retards thought it was good too, some black dudes said "wow, that man can write"
I looked at my teacher with this expression of smug anime wistfullness as I took my seat and he looked like he was in agony lol

how old are you?
stories please from teaching

28

What kind of stories? I only just finished my second year teaching, but I have plenty of stories. I've taught everything from honors classes to remedial and spent the last year at an "alternative" high school, so I probably have whatever kind of stories you'd like to hear.

Not the original user asking for stories, but I'm also interested in hearing stuff.

I will be teaching reading classes this summer, for all ages. Few things I want to know: what's the hardest you've had to discipline someone? What's the most disrespect/misconduct you've seen from a student in your class? Have any of the girls* hit on you, or made it apparent they want to engage in sexual activity? How did you handle it?

>pronouncing it lit-er-a-ture
Americans shouldn't be allowed to use English, they deserve Brazilian Portuguese

>second last year
ultra-neurotic social justice paladin with permanently dyed hair who would never shut the fuck up about refugees and never bothered to teach us shit about English. We spent what felt like 6 months reading Macbeth aloud in class and maybe there was some other stuff but nobody but me bothered to do it. I read Kite Runner because that dumb bitch told us to and I was the only one. Pretty sure she's the reason I'm such an edgelord when it comes to politics now. The entire middle east can burn and anybody seeking refuge ought to be shot before they taint our already crumbling literary tradition with shit books like The Kite Runner.
>last year
hyper-Stacey who was technically solid and knew how to get good grades on exams but couldn't teach an engaging class worth shit because that was all she'd focus on. We covered nothing of substance because she was too busy programming us to become English robots. At least half of the room was completely disengaged at any given time but to be fair the handful of Staceys who were committed as fuck to getting awesome grades who hung off of her every word and monopolized her attention actually did get good grades. She knew what she was doing which is more than can be said for most English teachers, but holy hell was it a dull class.

I thought I was up for answering questions tonight, but I really need to sleep. I'll try in the morning if the thread's still up.

If I don't get to it, let me just tell you that as a teacher my best advice is simply to keep the end in mind, that your goal should be to do the best you can to educate them in the subject you're teaching, but also to help guide them as a whole person as best you can. Listen to them. Appreciate that when they cuss you out over something stupid, they might be going home to a single mom who can't put food on the table every night. Actually talk to them, get to know them, relate to them, show them through your actions as well as your words that you actually give a shit about them. Many of the kids that are failing classes and getting into trouble just need that one adult to care about them.

If I don't get to you in the morning, best of luck. Being a teacher can easily be beyond frustrating, but the experience of seeing the positive impact you've made on the life of a young person is a reward without equal.

My 11th grade English tracher was a huge prick. All he ever talked about was how E.B. White was the greatest ever, and he cared more about his job as a track coach than actually teaching us anything. The next year he got fired for having child porn on his computer and fucking a student teacher in a closet or some shit. High school teachers are weird people

They were all either boring and unremarkable or old ladies that everybody took advantage of.

I was one of those guys that mostly kept to themselves, and I was stuck in the corner with the loud class clowns. I remember one time the teacher bent down to pick up papers she dropped and one of them got behind her and did humping motions the whole time and I burst out laughing with them. Man being a teacher must suck

Go back to plebbit

You're on a literature board, at least try and speak English

low key making fun of you. it went over your head.

Question: How do you feel about the politicisation of curriculum? Where I'm from it's very clear that politics are getting in the way of learning classic literature, Shakespeare getting replaced with ethnic writers for the sole purpose of representing ethnic writers etc

watch it. making "them" speak proper english and correcting their grammar is an act of racism and internalized colonialism.

In my senior English class we read "Into The Wild". Actually we sat in class and listened to the book on tape while following along in our books. Then we watched the movie.

I told the teacher this was stupid and she started crying. She told me there were kids in our class who couldn't read so she had no choice. Still not sure if this is true.

I ran into her a year ago and she just told me that I was a little shit.

wish I had teachers like this.

Hey, thanks for this response. Really nicely put. I will take all of this into consideration with my teaching job this summer.

Who am I you ask?
>Albert Einstein
>And the whole school clapped as we consummated into the night in a field of roses

Am swedish.

My teacher introduced me to philosophy, gave me a few entry level books from the school library because I showed interest.
Also I'm pretty sure we had to read part of C&P at one point, wasn't really interested at the time.

>year 12, "learning" rhetoric
>teacher calls Aristotle "some dead white guy"
>turn 360 degrees and shoot up my school

I didn't really give a shit about literature at school, but looking back, we had some really patrician teachers. One of them was this kind of vieux riche intellectual who read nothing but the Greeks with us. The other was the exact opposite, from a really poor background, who ticked off all the German classics with us.

>High school freshman year
>Teacher tried to make sure we weren't plebs
>Had is read illiad and Odyssey as first assignment
>Only would approve good lit for reading assignment after that
>Immature me just thought she was a stuck up bitch
>Didn't pay attention or read anything because muh WoW had just come out
It's a regretful kind of feel

You didn't even read 1984 or any Shakespeare?

>Every year after that we just read great Gatsby, the book about kids on an island (name is escaping me at the moment), and a Shakespeare play, every year.

>Seventh grade
>Teacher is a sexy pixie looking weeb
>Had is read interesting things like watership down
>Big on poetry
>Couldn't pay attention because she was first crush I had on a teacher
>Still passed because middle School and she liked me
Ended the year by watching copies of mxc that she had taped during her trip to Japan the previous summer.

I once wrote an essay in our final year that was so good the teacher read it out to class as an example of how to do the assignment. Considering how much of a retard I am, I don't think the school had high standards.

This teacher also didn't know the first thing about poetry and this year was basically our first serious exposure to poetry. Soooooo, whatever love we might have had for poetry got nipped in the bud pretty quickly and I still can't read it.

>The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
That book was pretty sick and provides a great deal of incite into autists on the internet.

>only ever made us
I don't think you can make kids do anything really. I and maybe three other people ever did the readings and that's only because I read the books in my off time prior to the semester. The school tried to take the "let them love reading! XXXDDD" route and every year seemed to be filled with Australian books, movies or just other crap I don't remember.

This obviously didn't work. We did Frankenstein in final year, I think Shakespeare in years 9-10 and thats all I remember. Other schools did Beowulf, Greek Plays and more Shakespeare.