Most annoying things about school

[eatenbyagrue]

I hate dealing with some of the "senior" teachers where I work. Because there's a high value placed on seniority where I am, the older "veteran" teachers get to run over the younger ones, even when it'd be counterproductive to do so.

Of course, I have an anecdote to illustrate this.

I have a colleague (we hadn't been "friends" for a long time, but we made it through university together so there was friendliness and respect) who ended up working in the same school where I work. We teach the same subject (English), but different years. The "senior" teacher mandated that they use newspapers to teach a lesson (I forget the subject matter), and while this may not normally have been a big deal, she issued this mandate the day before the lesson had to be given. So naturally, my colleague had to scrap all her instructional materials (I know this because I helped re-write the quiz and lesson plan for that topic) and pull an all-nighter (yes, even teachers do it.) to get everything prepared the next day.

From what I heard, the lesson was a disaster, and most of the students naturally didn't do well. When she got called up in front of the English moderator, the blame was placed solely on my colleague.... by the senior teacher. I testified in my colleagues' defense, since I'd helped her with her instructional materials, but the senior teacher got off with a minor slap on the wrist.

The schoolyear is now about to end, and my colleague told me that she doesn't plan to go on another year at that school, and I don't blame her.

CAPTCHA: appropriately enough, "wide berth"

 

[TristanBelmont]

I can't work with people. Ever. It's not that I hate people, I just hate the people at my school, and yet my teachers continue to pair me up with others when I work infinitely better on my own. It frustrates me to no end when I receive lower grades on projects and such because of the failings of others, and even when I go to my teachers afterwards and ask them if I can redo the assignment on my own, they say no and that I should have worked better with others.

WHY

 

[eatenbyagrue]

I can't work with people. Ever. It's not that I hate people, I just hate the people at my school, and yet my teachers continue to pair me up with others when I work infinitely better on my own. It frustrates me to no end when I receive lower grades on projects and such because of the failings of others, and even when I go to my teachers afterwards and ask them if I can redo the assignment on my own, they say no and that I should have worked better with others.

WHY

Some projects just work better as group or pair work. Also, part of the reason school is an important part of a child/teen's development is that it teaches them how to function in society: for all the bad things about it, the fact that a school is society in microcosm is what allows it to teach people how to navigate society. Yes, you don't enjoy it, but in the end it teaches you a vital skill.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Working with other people.

I don't mind if it's serious, or something we all enjoy. I mostly hate it because the people I'm with are almost all bastards who only turn up 2/4.5 school days a week. Seriously, in Britain, school is generally good, but there's not much of it. Yet they can't be bothered showing up, yet I always get stuck with them. Every. Time.

I also can't understand Scottish accents despite the fact that I have a somewhat light one. Working with people sucked.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

High school was the absolute worst. The thing I was probably most fed up with being told was that since I'm a student, I have almost no rights in school, and that my word were never to be believed. I was a student that always kept to myself, never bothered anyone, and was the one being picked on, yet I always got in trouble for things I never did.

The worst time? In gym class our "Disciplinary Official" thought I called him stupid, so he forced me to the office.

1. The guy was at least 50. Being insulted in the way he did by assuming he was called stupid is the most pathetic thing I've ever witnessed in my life.
2. Probably the most important factor was that I didn't call him anything. I wasn't even talking about him, or ANYONE for that matter. I was talking to my friend about Bioshock Infinite (before it came out).
3. The guy always had a problem with me. My assumption and the people I knew was, I wore mostly all black and had long hair, so I looked like I would cause trouble, but I never did. The man would actively search for reasons to bust me, especially at lunch.


Other than that, I racked up almost hours of detention for "swearing", "hitting", and being late. The only one that had any merit was the "being late", but that was by 2 seconds. Literally.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Having double P.E last thing on a Friday and still having to get changed back into your uniform to go home in, never made sense and it would have been so much quicker to just let us go as we were.

Not being allowed to wear your coat inside the school. Okay in lessons I can understand since it would be rude, but in the corridors? I wouldn't have minded if it was actually warm enough but our heating system was ancient and it was freezing.

Group projects, there was always some dickhead who just wanted to F about and never did any of the work, yet you had to pick up the slack or else you all got a bad grade, the annoying thing is they knew it too.

Punishing an entire class for one student's misdeeds. I get that the teacher was trying to divide and conquer and all that jazz but it was just fucking annoying and didn't work. I didn't get annoyed at the miscreant I resented the teacher for punishing everyone instead of punishing the one offender.

And yeah just the dicks in general, we all knew who they were, you know the ones that just blatantly didn't want to be there. Thankfully there was less in college and even fewer in university.

That's about my whole list right there.

But also the unlucky combination when you get a teacher who has no intuition or teaching ability and a class that wants to stall them the entire semester.

And also marking guidelines that are fucking stupid. i.e. chemistry. They have a verb ladder where if a question asks you to do a thing, you have to do all the other things before it as well, you can't just read the question and write an appropriate answer like a human.

 

[Tenkage]

any more ideas? Seriously lets see more group projects being hated LOL

 

[omega 616]

Physical education as a mandated class.

Some people like sports and that's great, all the best to them! I just don't find a drop of pleasure in undressing in a room full of smelly guys, running around freezing cold (I live in the UK), playing a sport I have zero interest in, get dressed in an even smellier room and then go back to class caked in mud and sweat!

All in the name of reducing childhood obesity. Which lets be honest, isn't the way to do it! Chubby to fat kids hate physical activity, are really embarrassed by getting changed in front of people and an hour a week (spread into two 30 mins on different days) isn't going to do shit to the weight ... especially when they are probably shoveling chips and a pizza slice down their gullet every day!

 

[Evonisia]

Having six lessons a day just irritates me. What is the point of lessons which only last fifty minutes? They barely give time for preparation and the thought of "well I have four lessons to go" at eleven in the morning is just boring. Granted I know six is probably standard in many places but I spent primary and most of secondary school having less than that (hell in Year 7 we had three lessons a day which was either the worst thing ever or the best thing ever).

I would say PE, but the teachers have stopped trying to get me to bother. There are some annoyances with it. If you don't want to shout at me for missing the football or not hitting it perfectly, don't hit it to me, you don't have to.

 

[wulfy42]

If you don't like group assignments, avoid The University of Phoenix like the plague. A large part of your grade is based on team assignments which means a large # of students who pass the classes do so only because they are mostly being graded on team assignments. It was understandable while I was getting my AA and BA, but students working on the Masters who would turn in papers you wouldn't expect to see in middle school...in almost every class. It was crazy. Being a perfectionist I would work 3x longer incorporating the other students work into our team assignments, but making it actually look good, then I would have spent just doing it myself.

Ended up with a 3.97 GPA...so close to a 4.0 sigh.

I found public schools so worthless as a kid that I ended up working as a janitor so I could go to a private school using the P.A.C.E program. That let me graduate 3 years early (on my 16th birthday actually). I had a full scholarship to college but didn't use it, went to a vocational school to be an electronic tech in 9 months instead (while working full time on graveyard shift).

I later went back to school to get my teaching degree and actually try and fix the problem in our school system directly (by being a teacher). Sadly the problem isn't fixed that easily, as new teachers can often have a very hard time getting hired. I did end up teaching briefly for most of a year since I had been volunteering at the school so they had me replace a teacher that left for the rest of the year. I actually enjoyed volunteering more then teaching though, since I had more time to work with individual students, so I went back to doing that after the year was out.

Personally think all teachers should have assistants who help with classroom management and organization so the teacher can focus more on...well teaching, and can spend time with individual students as well. Trying to help individual students in a classroom of 30+.....even with assigned seating and good discipline/classroom management skills is almost impossible.

Also, the amount teachers get paid is absolutely insane. I can make more money from home, half asleep, then you make as a teacher, and actually getting a teaching position is crazy hard if you don't have at least 2 years experience.

And the worst thing is many of the teachers that have the most experience are burnt out. It's not all their fault, so many students don't want the teachers to really challenge them, especially at the college level. The best teachers I have ever had where always disliked by the majority of the students. Enough years of complaining by students and parents can cause many teachers to just give up and phone it in (and then there where probably some that should never have been teachers in the first place).

An advantage of volunteering all over the bay area was that I had the opportunity to work with many teachers. While there where some great ones (almost every school had one or two), there was usually far more really bad ones that should not be teaching at all. Some had no classroom management skills at all, to the point I thought the students could even be in danger (Students hiding under tables, putting glue bottles in the microwave, throwing things at each other in class etc), others literally allowed NO questions (or talking) of any kind in class, just reviewing homework, having students work at their desk/take a test, and then issuing the homework for the next night).

I don't volunteer even at this point anymore, although I may do so again in the future sometime. I'll probably stick to working with after school programs with the students that actually want to learn though, and with a more open forum where you have more of a chance to help them. Working with the current public school system in America is just too frustrating.

Spent quite a bit of money and time because I really wanted to help and make a difference. I know many others who have done the same thing. The problem is, you can't just jump in and make changes, so many people who really do want to make a difference and create a enjoyable learning environment for students, are not able to do so.

 

[wulfy42]

Grr, double posted.

 

[shootthebandit]

Physical education as a mandated class.

Why is this such a common one, PE was a skive. I used to find numerous ways to skive off, The cross country tabathon was the best (tabbing is a UK term for smoking). They made us run around this park which I would walk half way round, have a couple of tabs and walk through the middle of it. Why they used to make us run round it when there was a perfectly good path through the middle i'll never understand

We sometimes got to pick our activity and trampolining was always a good one. All the lads would go out and play football and say "hahaha you are gay for doing trampolining" I would reply "Yes its massively gay that I am in a room that is full of tits bouncing up and down while you are with a bunch of lads in small shorts?" plus it was warm and I didnt really have to do anything except dick about on a trampoline

 

[KazeAizen]

Could this thread have been timed any better. Group projects. For me they are either major hit or major miss. This time its turning out to be a major miss.

Basically we have to make an environment in UDK. Not too bad. I'm in charge of the texturing. However I work on a Mac ergo impossible for me to work from home. Therefore I have to drive 20 minutes to school to work on the thing. However one of my team mates who I consider a close friend just basically called me out today. In front of my other friends more or less. Through a text via Group Me he said my partner and "him honestly" are thinking about giving me a bad grade for my part of the project. I've been showing them my progress. I've been doing the work and they are going to give me a bad grade? Especially when the other partner has missed a majority of the times we scheduled to meet up as a group without any explanation even though she clearly knew what time we were meeting.

Also I'm terribly sorry I can't get the some of the stuff done exactly as you demand it and exactly when. Its not like I have a life outside of school and a job that these past few weeks tends to eat up my weekends. I've about had it with both of them especially "my friend" as he just says some of the most absolute stupidest shit ever. I'll make a joke, he'll take it seriously, I'm in the room, he makes it a point to say my choice of MOBA (League) is terrible. He just tries to the general contrarian to me just to be contrary. Anyway that was a short little rant that I probably should've saved for somewhere else. However yes group projects are annoying to me for reasons like this. Also whenever they change the bsp (like the other one just did) I have to retexture the dang thing anyway so you just throw out any previous work I had just done. Kind of hard to get work done when you toss out all the work I just did.

 

[bdeamon]

In my school, there are cameras everywhere. Literary every corner is watched. Kind of bums me out really.

 

[lumenaide]

I had a class in high school called Careers. It was actually half a class (it took half a semester, and then was replaced by another class called Civics). During this class, we were not taught a single thing that was, in any meaningful or objective way, true. We were taught the Myers-Briggs typology test (which is just a rehash of Jungian psychology - for those who don't know, Jung based his work on ESP and ghosts), a few copycats of the Myers-Briggs typology test, and an incredibly inaccurate career counselling courtesy of the government. Over the course of the half semester, no fewer than three people flipped over their desks and stormed out (I was not one of them).
I also had a Biology class in which 10% of your mark was for web design.

 

[ClockworkPenguin]

I generally liked school because I was good at it so it was an ego boost.

I got bullied a lot though, because I was basically 'the swot'. I didn't like that so much. Putting up with that shit it why I will never take up teaching, because fuck trying to control that.

Uni is pretty much the opposite. The people are great, but the work makes me feel stupid, until I talk to other people and find its not just me.

 

[KaZuYa]

I remember my computer studies class at college being full of people who either signed up because they thought it would be playing games and/or people who thought "oh computers might be handy" and decided to do an A-level course with absolutely no grasp of computers at all.

Then since the course was 90% course work and the lecturer was obviously only worried about grade stats ended up handing over the example paper to the class and told them just to copy it and the four of us who handed in our work 1 week early got marked down for presentation because we didn't spend the last 3 days drawing flowers on the cover. The four most clearly talented people got A's while the rest of class got A*'s, yeah nice one mate the people who might go on to university in that field and needed the A* you screwed for your stat's.

 

[freaper]

Also, it's bad when I hear a statement like "X course has no purpose. Why am I forced to learned this?". I can understand it coming from students since most teachers don't take the time to teach WHY IT'S IMPORTANT. It's worst when I hear it from other teachers. That gets my blood boiling. There was a specific program with clear objectives constructed to educate children. It's not a "teach them x, y and z" list. It's a goddamn program. It just shows one of the biggest problem in education: Lack of passion. Why should a student learn or a teacher teach if there's no joy into it from both side? Why teachers haven't took their time to learn the needs to teach a class? Knowledge brought our civilization to the biggest peak we've seen. We still have problems in this world. If we can't awake an interest from the next generation, how can we improve as a whole?

AND FOR PETE'S SAKE: No teachers likes to hear "Will this be on the test?" at everything we teach. It's basically saying to us "I'm only listening up to this point".

I completely agree with you. We learn for the sake of learning, no matter how unimportant it may seem at first, the fact that you CAN learn a myriad of different things should be regarded as amazing! Both students and teachers should realize that they're working together to form a whole new generation which will lead the planet one day, and not simply wasting time in a dusty classroom. It saddens me when people view certain subjects as useless (I can understand boring). We're not robots programmed to do one single thing for the rest of our lives, we need to learn about the world, in ALL its aspects.

OT: Assholes who were just biding their time and making the people who actually DID care miserable.

 

[BanicRhys]

The group projects, I didn't mind when I was left with all the work if I was able to set aside my pride. In fact I preferred it that way. What I hated was when my group-mates would create unnecessary amounts of extra work by over thinking the whole thing.

How everyone tried to be my friend, always asking me mundane shit they didn't care about.

In uni, I hated how the teachers would force their hippy agendas on us. Yeah sure, pollution bad, sustainability good. I don't see why that needs to be part of the criteria for a 3D modelling project.

Sport class. We had PE, which was alright because half the time we'd just do theory, but we also had sport in which we didn't actually learn a fucking thing, we just spent an entire 2 hour period (sometimes you lost your entire lunch break to catch the bus if you were doing swimming etc) playing Soccer or some shit.

 

[Tenkage]

In my school, there are cameras everywhere. Literary every corner is watched. Kind of bums me out really.

Big brother is watching, seriously hate the feeling of being watch *shivers*