my worst teacher was the woman who taught me english in the first and second years of secondary schools when she wasn't on sick leave having miscarriages (so it's hard to hate her really, she was probably a real mess), and the assorted short-term replacements for her. as i said on the best teachers thread, between them they managed to turn me from a kid for whom english was his favourite lesson into a kid who spent most of the time looking out the window and doodling.
the books were totally beneath me, i'd read them years ago, or they were so simple that i'd read them in an afternoon and not be impressed at all, i found the pace of lessons really slow and so when tasks were assigned or questions asked i was miles away in my own little world, thus giving the illusion perhaps of stupidity. i think that the final straw, in my own memory anyway, was writing some story about a character from one of this daft books for people who haven't learnt to read properly by age 12... the character was a kid who bullied some other kid and made him do something that killed him, fuck knows what, but our task was to write a short "what happened to him afterwards" story. with my own peculiar take on things, i wrote a story that involved space aliens and explosions and possibly the world ending with a noise like someone blowing a raspberry. it was silly anyway, but i was a child that wrote for pleasure dammit and it seemed to fit. anyhoo, this didn't go down too well and the teacher (i cannae remember her bloody name though, for some reason) wasn't impressed with my flights of fantasy and i was told to do it again, taking it seriously. so i did. with no malice in my heart i wrote a story about a boy, wracked with guilt, who ran away from home to escape being known as the murdering kid, lving on the streets of london, getting stuck in drugs and becoming a rent boy and whatnot. i was dead impressed myself. however teacher wasn't. i was given a bollocking for not taking it seriously again. and i never fucking forgave her either. from that moment on her classes were dead to me. she got the absolute bare minimum that i could do. it was a bloody good thing that a year or two later i got a decent teacher, cos if i'd had to carry on with whatsherchops i doubt i would have got english gcses, then a levels, and a degree in the bloody subject.
it was a valuable lesson actually. as an english teacher one of my failings was probably that i was constantly seeking to engage the disengaged at a cost to the kids who were clearly into it but fuck it, i got poetry and stories out of kids described as troublemakers or lazy so i think i win.