Good vs. Bad Teachers

To celebrate the fact that schools go back this week I figured I’d write a list of my good teachers vs my bad ones. I was quite lucky to get mostly decent ones but some weren’t great and I can’t understand why they chose to be teachers in the first place. Anyway, I won’t be mentioning any teachers by name – just describing the classes they taught and why they were good or bad!

Good: My English Language teacher in my first year of college. She was probably one of the best teachers I had which is why I got my highest grade in this subject. She was one of those teachers who was really strict but not in a nasty way, she was still fair. A lot of people moaned about her because she got mad when they didn’t do homework – which like is fair enough? If it’s set and we don’t do it, we’re gonna get in trouble, we should all know that.

My favourite thing about her was the way she encouraged me with my writing. I handed in the start of a novel for her to grade and I spent the entire Easter holidays worrying she’d tell me it was weird or inappropriate. When she gave it me back she praised me and said “This is good enough for publication.” I always remember that moment whenever I doubt my writing abilities. From then on she referred to me and the girls I sat with as the ‘writing corner’ which always made my day.

She was also absolutely hilarious and found the time to joke about with us whilst making sure we learnt and worked hard. She’s definitely in the right job role because she was a fantastic teacher.

Bad: This teacher mostly taught Technology but he taught us English a couple of times. I’m not really sure what his official ‘teaching job’ was if you know what I mean but he was not a good teacher. We often made jokes that the only reason he became a teacher was so he could brag about the amount of money he had. I swear he never taught a lesson without mentioning one of his many ‘Apple’ products or making a reference to his huge house.

He was also someone who was just unnecessarily strict and patronising. I remember he found a crumpled piece of paper on a desk and made my friend stay behind because he found out it was her piece of paper. In the end he got arrested for dating a student so like… Yeah.

Good: My Film Studies teacher at college. When I gave her a ‘thank you’ card at the end of my two years at college I wrote something along the lines of ‘you made even boring lessons fun’ and she’d laughed and said “That’s a bit backhanded, isn’t it?” But what I meant was that several times I went into class and she’d describe what we were doing for that lesson and I’d think ‘ugh, sounds like a bore’ but it honestly never was. She never gave a bad lesson.

I wouldn’t really describe her as strict because she wasn’t, she was someone who was definitely down for a laugh as long as it was related to the work we were doing. I remember me and Becca were meant to be talking about a specific theme in ‘Watchmen’ and when she called on us to ask what we’d discussed Becca admitted “To be honest we mostly just talked about how The Comedian’s a dick.” and she didn’t tell us off, she found a way for us to think and talk about it academically.

My favourite thing about her was that she always remembered our tastes in movies. She’d always talk to me about the latest horror releases coming out, added horror to one of our units because I’d requested it and even bought a movie poster for the film ‘Orphan’ to hang in her classroom because she knew it was my favourite. She made an effort to ask us what our tastes were and actually remembered them even though she only taught us for two years. She was brill, I’ll never forget how good she was.

Bad: This teacher started off as my science teacher in Year 7 and by Year 10 she was my ICT teacher and I really didn’t like her. I don’t remember having much of an issue with her in Year 7, she was okay for the few months she taught us while our usual teacher was on maternity leave but when she taught us ICT she was awful. I went up to her and asked her to check one part of my work and suddenly she was flicking through my entire folder and ranting and raving at me about how most of it was wrong. After that I didn’t want to ask her to clarify anything anymore and tried to get on with my work by myself.

One year my Mom came in for parents evening and had a meeting with her. When she left she turned to me and asked “Was she drunk!?” I’m not sure if she was or not but she was a bit odd.

By the end of year 11 pretty much every student was failing ICT. To be fair it hadn’t been organised in the best way, at the end of year 10 we were told to print off every piece of work we’d ever done instead of doing it as we went along and then in year 11 lots of bits were missing so pretty much everyone had a lot of catching up to do. She dropped out and went on ‘stress leave’ and the school had to bring in a substitute to pick up the mess she’d left. She just wasn’t good.

Good: My English teacher in my second year of college. I did quite well with college teachers to be honest. He was someone I felt I could speak to if I needed to and was very fair to all of his students. On my first lesson we were discussing nicknames and he said to me “I call you Hol, do you like that?” and when I told him I hated it he insisted on calling it me for the rest of the year. With most people I would’ve been annoyed but it was funny with him because he gave everyone nicknames. He called Janie ‘Janine’ for the whole year.

My favourite thing was that once I finished college and was getting ready for university I received a card from him in the post with his email address written inside. When I went to uni and started struggling with the adjustment I sent him an email to update him. Now every couple of months I send him an update on what I’m up to and ask for regular advice and it’s just so awesome to have a teacher that cared that much that even though I’m not his student anymore he still keeps in touch and offers me advice. He keeps in touch with most of his ex-students and I just think he was fab. He’s retired now which is a shame as he was such a good teacher but I’m glad I ended up in his class.

Bad: My Media Studies teacher from college. I did get one bad teacher in college. I was disappointed because originally my Film Studies teacher was also my Media Studies teacher which obviously was fab but for some reason they moved the classes around and I got a new teacher who made me despise the entire course.

He was one of those teachers who didn’t know how to control a class and pretty much all of his lessons were filled with disinterested, disruptive people that he couldn’t deal with. I complained to my film teacher a couple of times and she sat in on a few of his lessons but irritatingly when she was there the class behaved themselves so she never really saw what they were like.

He was also completely unfair – I was once late for college because I’d missed the train. I had tried to find another way in but I had no change for the bus and didn’t have enough money in my account to take any out so I had to accept I was late. I came in and apologised for being late, said I’d missed the train and he told me off. Which I thought was fair enough ‘cos I was late. But then literally two days later another girl walked in, apologised for being late and said she’d missed the train and he replied “Okay fine.” How is that fair? I wasn’t even a bad student – well to be fair I did skive occasionally but when I was in, I did the work and I was actually well-behaved unlike 80% of his class.

He completely ruined my passion for the subject, my film teacher tried to talk me into taking it during my second year (‘cos we were advised to drop one A-Level in second year) but he made me hate it so I took Philosophy of Religion and Ethics instead, a subject I wasn’t keen on but much preferred to being taught by him.

Good: My Year 10 + 11 English teacher. She was a fab lady who was extremely patient and I think she’s the reason I managed to get an A in English.

We were in top set and I think in Year 11 most of us already had our GCSE in English, we just needed to retake to see if we could get a better level so she was relatively chill when teaching us. One day she assigned us an essay and I guess I wasn’t in the mood because I spent the lesson drawing a stick-man circus at the top of my page. After marking everyone’s work she gave it me back and said “Don’t do that in the exam” so I said “I won’t” and that was the end of that. Any other teacher would probably have given me detention and I’d have probably deserved it but she was chill like that.

She also didn’t mind when I moved desks. It was around the time I was making friends with Jess, Hirst and Becca and I really wanted to sit with them so I would grab a chair and put it at the end of their desk which a normal teacher wouldn’t allow but this English teacher didn’t care and let me sit there if I wanted to. She was one of those teachers who was chill but I still managed to learn a lot in her class.

Bad: My reception teacher in primary school. As a little four/five year old walking into a new school you probably want a nice teacher who’s not going to be too strict because hey we’re only tiny dots and this all new to us. My reception teacher wasn’t like that. She was honestly quite scary and I remember getting into trouble over the most ridiculous things. We were making little cardboard ducks for Easter and I asked one of the other kids the next steps and they told me to make the face. Not understanding, I drew the face on in pencil when I was supposed to wait and stick on some felt or something for the beak. My reception teacher almost imploded even though it was a mistake and it was in pencil? I could just rub it out?

I also went to open a door for my friend and my teacher asked what I was doing so in a panic I told her I needed the loo and she told me to go find the other toilets. When I got back to class she’d asked me if I’d been to them and I’d lied and said yes. She then told me off really badly, it was a whole mess, I didn’t even wanna use the loo! She told me off tons of times over the most pointless things.

She wasn’t entirely bad, I remember she told us we could all play and me and my friend decided to play ‘teachers’ so we did some handwriting sheets and we did that instead of ‘playing’ and when she told everyone to stop playing she tapped us on the head and said “Except you two.” At the time we were both over the moon because we could carry on ‘playing’ but upon reflection she was just letting us carry on working.

Good: My Maths teacher at the end of year 7 and possibly in year 8. I was a bit of a nerd in school and me and my friend were so close to this teacher that we practically had inside jokes and we just got on really well with him for some reason. My friend showed him a stone she’d made to look like our Geography teacher and he got upset we hadn’t made one of him so my friend made another one to look like him and we gave him both the stones. I don’t think he worked at the school long but he was an awesome teacher, I swear.

Bad: There were a few music teachers at our school and during my triple lessons we had a separate teacher for each hour. We had one for musical theory, one for music production and one for the singing/instrument playing. We only had singing/instrument playing once every two weeks and it was taught by one of my least favourite people ever.

The annoying thing was that she was never outright a bitch, she was just sneaky. She’d make sly remarks and I just genuinely didn’t like her. She was really rude and honestly just got on my nerves at every opportunity. She clearly didn’t like me either and wasn’t subtle about who she did like or dislike. She also got drunk on our choir trip to Spain and sent my friend off to buy her something and the more I think about it, was she even allowed to get drunk when in charge of over 100 people? Obviously she wasn’t on her own but like? That’s a bit unprofessional? I really didn’t like her and I know I’m definitely not the only one that didn’t.

Good: My Spanish teacher. Spanish wasn’t an option until the end of year 9 when we could either pick that or French for our GCSE subject. My logic was that I’d struggled with French since I was about eight years old so I might as well start from scratch with Spanish and try to pick it up within two years. It worked in my favour I guess ‘cos I scraped a C.

I really liked my Spanish teacher but apparently she was a lot nicer to our class than she was to other classes. I came in with a sore throat once and she made me a hot chocolate to make me feel better. My two friends told her they were tired and wouldn’t be able to concentrate without a cup of tea so she went and made them one each. Hot chocolate and cups of tea were quite a regular thing in her class. She was one of those teachers who you got on well with as long as you did your homework regularly and actually tried. She was good, she definitely helped me pass.

Bad: I wasn’t the biggest fan of PE growing up but my teacher from years 7 – 9 was pretty decent. Then I’m pretty sure that by year 10 she’d left and we were sort of left with a random teacher and by year 11 all we ever did was play bench or dodge ball. So me and my friends started skipping and just sitting in the library messing about instead – we said we were studying but we really weren’t.

One of the teachers was horrible, I’m pretty sure I confessed that I wasn’t a fan of exercise and she asked me what exercise I was going to do when I left school. As a joke I said long romantic walks to the fridge and she suddenly got really worked up and repeated the question so I said I didn’t know then she went “Well the school have failed you so TELL ME what exercise are you going to do when you leave school?” So I replied “Okay, I’m gonna walk away now then.” And did just that.

I understand it’s her job to give us an enthusiasm for exercise but it did the exact opposite and made me feel a bit rubbish as well. Maybe when I confessed I didn’t like exercise she could’ve given me suggestions or talked to me about why exactly I didn’t like exercise instead of shaming me and getting worked up about it.

Good: My History teacher in certain years. She was one of the strictest teachers at school but she was also fair and an amazing teacher. She was one of those teachers where everyone is always silent in her class without being asked because she just has that power. She was also someone that didn’t let her pupils tune out of what she was saying – every so often she’d randomly raise her voice and if I was feeling sleepy it would always make me jump.

Unfortunately in Year 10 I was moved into a different class from my friends and although I loved that History teacher because he was hilarious, he generally spent a bit more time talking about his own History than the actual History we were supposed to be learning about. I’m pretty sure I failed a test and they panicked because I was predicted to have good grades so they put me back in the other History teachers class. My grades came back up because failure was not an option in her class and she was a really good teacher.

I had way more teachers to write about than I thought! I’m sure being a teacher is a difficult job and you either have the knack for it or you don’t. I feel like I was quite lucky with my overall school experience because most of the teachers I didn’t include on this list were also decent and made my overall time in school a lot easier. Feel free to comment with your best and worst teachers!

Five Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting Secondary School

The other day my friend Becca shared a Facebook post that shocked the lot of us – we’d officially left school five years ago. A whole five years of our lives have passed since we were sat at school believing it’d never end. That means that I started Secondary School ten years ago this September! That’s absolutely crazy – at the time it felt never ending but now it feels like it’s been about five minutes since I put on my brand new uniform and caught the mini bus to my brand new school.

A lot of young people will be starting Secondary School this September and I wanted to pass on a bit of my wisdom to those people. There’s also some advice in here for people already at Secondary School. So here I present, five things I wish I’d known before starting Secondary School.

1. Friendships Will Naturally Form

It’s quite sad to leave most of your primary school friends behind and head to Secondary – in Telford we have way less Secondary’s than Primary’s so I started Secondary with about three other girls who had been to my primary school. I got on well with them but in my last year of Primary I’d been best friends with two year five girls and had grown apart from my friends in the same year as me. And anyway, I wanted to make some new friends. Because that was the point, wasn’t it?

This meant I was friendly to absolutely everybody – which I absolutely advise because what’s the point in being mean – but it also meant I tried to force myself into being best friends with people that I had little in common with. Be nice to everyone and you’ll soon find the people that you share similar interests with and that you naturally click with.

Also remember that your friendship group won’t necessarily stay the same the entire time you’re at Secondary School. My best friend in Year 7 wasn’t my best friend in Year 11 and that’s fine! People change over time, especially when you’re teenagers and sort of figuring out who you are and what you’re interested in and people naturally gravitate away from each other. I had several different friendship groups over my years at Secondary and I value all of them – but I’m in the right group for me now.

So my advice is to be nice to everybody – some people won’t be nice back but try not to focus on them. Focus on your friends and having a good time (whilst studying and working hard too obviously).

2. Boys Aren’t That Important

I’m sorry to all the boys reading this but as I’m a girl most of this advice is tailored towards girls.

I don’t mean my point as in ‘ignore all the boys, they’re worthless’ – if you end up making friends with a ton of boys then great, that’s cool! What I mean is that you shouldn’t put your value on whether you have a boyfriend or not, like I did for the majority of my time in Secondary School.

You will probably develop a crush on someone there – you’re there every single day and it just kind of happens. Me and my friends regularly discuss who we had crushes on in Secondary School and have a good laugh about it now because we would just never go there now. We honestly can’t believe some of the people we used to have crushes on back then.

In fact there was one guy that me, Jess and Hirst all dated at one point who we wouldn’t even want to talk to nowadays let alone date them. I remember he broke up with his current girlfriend to be with me which at the time I thought was like a massive romantic gesture but now raises complete alarm bells – if he could do that to her, what would stop him doing that to me?

My honest advice would be to try and forget about boyfriends and just focus on having a good time with your mates. I hate the fact I spent so much time at school hating myself because the boys at my school didn’t find me attractive – big deal! Who cares what they think? Enjoy the time you have now with your mates before you all get jobs and only hang out once a month – you can tell yourself it won’t happen to you but the moment you all get different schedules you’ll find once a month is actually a blessing.

3. If You Don’t Understand Then Just Say So

Okay this is bad to admit but in Year 9 we were doing a Science test and we were sat two to a table with instructions not to cheat. My friend kept glancing at my paper and whispering “Are you thick? That’s not the answer, this is the answer!” So obviously I put what she told me and passed the exam. During my GCSE year I was put into the higher Science class – and didn’t understand a word of it. By the end of the year I failed my first GCSE exam and had to be put down into BTECH where I had a year to complete a two year course.

For a while I felt like I was extremely stupid – never mind that I was in top class for every other subject, I was failing one class so I was an idiot. But I wasn’t. I just didn’t get science – still don’t in fact. And that’s fine. I should’ve been more honest at the time that it was my weaker point and maybe someone could’ve helped me.

This bad habit has kind of followed me throughout my academic life. In school I was very much ‘I don’t get it but I just won’t say anything’ – I kept this attitude in college and university and it’s such a bad habit! If you don’t understand then put your hand up and say “Hey, I don’t get this, can you explain it in a different way?” Everyone learns differently and no one should expect everyone to understand from just one explanation.

I had a friend who regularly talked to teachers and they went through what she didn’t understand until she did, and when it came to exams she knew how to revise and always did really well. I never knew how to revise and ended up ‘winging it’ more than half the time and trust me, it’s not a good habit to get into because it’s difficult to break it. Ask as many questions as possible – if you’re embarrassed to do it in front of the whole class then either call the teacher over when everyone’s started working, speak to them after class or even send them an email and tell them you were too embarrassed to say so in class but you really didn’t get it. You’re not thick or stupid for not understanding, it just needs to be explained in a different way.

4. Just Sit Down and Do Your Homework

At the start of every academic year I was full of good intentions – I’d do my homework the same day it was set as soon as I got in so I didn’t have to worry about it anymore. And within a couple of weeks it had slipped and soon I was only completing homework for the teachers that I knew would give me detention if I didn’t complete it. And even then most of the time I was completing it the lunch time before the lesson itself. This is another bad habit to have!

I’ll be honest with you, homework feels like a massive pain and even now I sometimes sit back and think about how happy I am that I no longer need to do any. But it’s set for a reason so do your best to always complete it. If you don’t understand then either ask your parents for help or do your best and then go back to school and explain you tried but didn’t really understand.

Also, terrible advice here, but if you do your homework regularly then on the odd occasions you do forget the teachers are more likely to forgive you and give you an extension. I remember my friend lying to the teacher and saying she’d done her homework but had left it at home. Because she regularly did her homework and never really got into any trouble the teacher went “Okay, I believe you”.

But honestly, just do it! Preferably on the day it’s set and as soon as you get in so that you don’t have to worry about it after that.

Another tip – make sure you accurately write down what you’re supposed to be doing. Once I wrote down ‘RE poem things’, sat down to my homework a week later and had no idea what it meant. I did the work wrong, because I genuinely forgot what I was meant to do, and the teacher accused me of being lazy. Which was fair enough but I wasn’t lazy for doing the wrong homework, I was lazy for not recording down what I was actually meant to do in the first place.

Start as you mean to go on and do your best to complete all of your homework!

5. You Don’t Have to Decide Your Career Right Now

I know the pressure will feel like a lot because suddenly your teachers are banging on about how important it is that you pick the right GCSEs that will define your entire career and whatever but trust me, you don’t have to pick at age fourteen what you want to do with the rest of your life. I’m twenty-one and I still don’t really know what I’m doing and I’m currently working a job I wouldn’t have dreamed of having in school.

Picking my GCSEs was a bit different because at the time we were told if we picked certain subjects we’d get a qualification called the ‘English Baccalaureate’ – I had to Google it and according to Google it’s still a thing but after I’d picked my GCSEs I was told this qualification had been dropped, something I was absolutely livid about. To get this qualification you had to have English, Maths, a humanities subject and a language subject.

Ultimately I don’t think this would’ve drastically changed my GCSE choices – I chose History, Spanish, Music and Performing Arts. The only thing different would’ve been that I definitely would not have picked Spanish because although I’m desperate to learn a new language there’s just not enough emphasis on language for British children in public schools to completely pick up a new language. The only phrase I remember from Spanish class now is ‘tengo barba y me lamo’ which literally translates to “I have a beard and I lick myself.”

When picking your GCSE choices don’t stress yourself out – pick subjects you’ll enjoy and that you’ll feel motivated to study for. Obviously there are some subjects you have no choice whether you do or not like English, Maths etc. But at our school we had two full days dedicated to whichever GCSE options you’d picked. For example once every two weeks I had triple Spanish on a Tuesday morning. Not exactly my idea of fun but it wasn’t the worst thing ever. Now if I’d had to do three hours of Geography or three hours of Art I might have genuinely jumped out of a window, that would’ve been Hell for me.

If you have an idea of what you want to do then pick subjects that relate to that. If you want to study History at university then it might be a good idea to pick that for a GCSE. But don’t worry about ‘picking the wrong ones’, it’s not worth getting stressed about.

Also make an appointment with the careers advisor in Year Eleven, I remember going to the library with my friends and all of us begging for an appointment soon because we were stressed and didn’t know what to do. She was nice, she didn’t scoff at me wanting to become a writer one day, she actually found some useful things for me to look through and talked about how I could achieve that. I wish I could speak to a careers advisor now, god knows I need one.

My point is that at the time I didn’t know what I wanted to do and that’s fine, if I don’t know now at twenty-one then I certainly had no clue back when I was fourteen. And if you do have an idea then that’s awesome, work towards it and do your best to achieve it! But don’t stress if you don’t have a plan.

There we go, that’s enough wisdom for one day. Feel free to leave a comment, if you have your own advice, if you’re after advice, if you wanna tell me a story, just comment if you want to!