Woffelz

So I've been sitting in my biology class getting increasingly pissed off with my teacher because of her "trendy teaching techniques" [as my music teacher calls them]. The general consensus in my class is that we haven't felt like we've learnt anything and her teaching methods aren't working with us. Also, she talks down to her students a lot, which is why we don't like her.

So, how do we politely tell her and make sure gets the message? She's quite patronising [some of it's justified, to be honest, because of some annoying people in my class] and always wants to do things her way, whether or not it is beneficial to us or not. Obviously, we don't want her to hate us, but we want to be taught too.

Also, when I say "trendy teaching techniques", I mean stuff like:
- Putting us in groups, making us split off and we each research a disease and then teach the rest of the group about it. She made us do this for an hour and it would have taken half an hour to make the notes for it from a textbook and the other half could have been used to consolidate the knowledge in some way.
- Making us walk around the room to simulate blood flow....

etc

Also, does anyone else have any bad teacher stories [mine's probably nowhere near as bad as a lot of people's]?

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Mistress_Ibanez

Nothing wrong with either of those things. Peer teaching is a valuable tool - by teaching others you are consolidating your knowledge.

Is that it? What else is she doing that's so dreadful?


Anyway a lot of students learn better when they get to do something active for a short period of time. I don't teach a practical subject but even I get students to do a bit of stretching or get out of their seats to let them burn off some energy before we carry on. Yours even had some learning embedded in it.

What year are you in?

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Nero Galon

Hmm thats interesting...

I was expected something really weird...

Last Wednesday the people in my Film Studies class had to do the lesson in groups giving presentations on different scenes from different films we studied. Thats kind of similar to what you had to do from reading above. Its a totally fine method of teaching.

Trowzaa

My manager was a ****ing spacker. On the day I expected to be taking an interview for the job she turned to her assistant manager and asked "have you ever done an interview before? because I haven't." Note: she'd been the manager of that shop for over 10 years. Then whilst I was working there there was so many dodgy things going on, she'd hired all of her friends and a few people who weren't her friends, god forbid if you weren't her friend and did something wrong. Her friends do something wrong and that's perfectly fine though. I'd get told off for doing something, her friend of 50 years who was also new would do the same and she'd be fine. Then she accuses me of trying to steal £5 with absolutely no evidence. **** that bitch.

Yes i'm ****ing mad.

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Sir-Shredalot

Delegation and empowerment via giving people responsibility are key tools in business You should be ****ing thankful.

Woffelz

Nothing else really and I may have exaggerated . It's just that I don't like how most of her students are finding biology so tough when compared to the students with other teachers and other subjects. We have two teachers per subject and the other biology teacher is great - he knows our group quite well and can see how we learn unlike this teacher. We're more "textbook" students here and it's hard switching from one way of learning to another. The vast majority of other AS subjects are taught more "traditionally" [or whatever it's called] with the exception of art, drama and PE. Even in my music class, I'm subjected to death-by-powerpoint with no interaction.

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Woffelz

Did the £5 thing escalate? Can't you go to a union for this sort of crap you're having to deal with?

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CoreysMonster

I once had a boss at a nightclub I used to work in who stiffed me over a hundred Euros in pay.

That happened like 4 years ago. I made an angry thread about it, and I'm still pissed at that asshat.

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Trowzaa

Yeah, I had to have a disciplinary meeting where she said "you can either quit now and have a clean record or we can have the disciplinary and you could end up being sacked." So I pretty much told her to shove it up her arse and quit. Right from the start it seemed like she wanted rid of me.

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Mistress_Ibanez

Sounds like you have a lot of shit, unengaging teachers and you should be grateful that you have a teacher who is spending her free time planning engaging and active lessons for you rather than just turning up and saying "open the textbook to page..."

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Sir-Shredalot

You mean literally with the money on the bed? Hawt

Confuse-a-Cat

The worst I can remember was a university lecturer for c++ programming. He was the sort who seemed to assume that he was talking to a bunch of people who already knew as much as he did. If we did, then why would we need him to lecture to us?

And even worse, he developed his own sort of weird personal code to explain what was happening on an assembler level, and his weird code was used in our notes - but he never explained what it meant, so we had a frantic time trying to figure it out for ourselves when it came to revision time.

Woffelz

I respectfully disagree [and probably should have mentioned that she doesn't plan much in advance - at one point she even asked another teacher what to do]. Don't get me wrong, I actually like her enthusiasm for the subject but the way she teaches doesn't help convey it.

I also disagree with you saying that the other teachers are shit. My music teacher may bore us to death in lessons, but he does go out of his way by a considerable amount to help us with coursework and performances. Chemistry and maths here's pretty much taught out of textbook and it works for the students here [except for practical skills for chemistry]. I think the students in the classes I'm in learn differently to the students you teach.

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Mistress_Ibanez

You're telling me there is some stepford school somewhere were EVERYONE learns differently to the rest of the country? I teach about 400 children in total.

I am going to assume from that statement that this discussion is going to get me nowhere so I will just say the following:

1. Don't say anything. She is a professional who is allowed to make professional decisions about what is in your best interest. Leave her to do as she sees best.

2. You didn't say what year you are in so I assumed 10. Just because you have been taught doesn't mean you know about teaching. Sounds like she's doing ok.



By the way, an Ofsted inspector would call a 'death by powerpoint' lesson Inadequate. And a textbook lesson. The activities you initially complained about are what get teachers Outstanding gradings.

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Confuse-a-Cat

He mentioned AS a few posts back.

I've been doing some STEM Ambassadoring recently, and all I can say is that I'm glad I ended up going into industry rather than teaching. I have massive respect for everybody that does it.

Woffelz

The text I have entered was too short. Characters and stuff.

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Woffelz

As do I. Unless it's one of those teachers who hate their job and make the students hate that subject.

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Tanglewoodguit

Why have you paired teacher and manager? Weird combo.

It'd be like asking for bad Doctor/Milkman experiences.

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jazz_rock_feel

So wait, you have a teacher encouraging self-directed group learning, peer teaching, and breaks up lectures with physical activity. How are all of those things not amazing? These are actual skills that will be useful and is exactly the kind of things that general public education should be focused on instead of "textbook learning" and memorization of facts (in my humbly uneducated about education opinion).

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