The Worst Teacher

Jane O Davies

Jane Davis taught in various private schools in Palermo then she preferred to go freelance and has taught privately from 7-70 (soon to start teaching very young learners) for 15 years. She was a Cambridge Oral Examiner for 8 years and Team Leader for 1. Ishe is now working with Palumbo Publishers as an Educational Consultant and will next year start a Master's degree in Educational Psychology. E-mail: jane.o.davies@usa.net

In all the time I have been in Palermo (15 years), I can count on the fingers of one hand the complimentary things I've heard about teachers' effectiveness and/or the way they treat the students. Jane

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Ginevra
Bartolo
Valentino
Letizia

Ginevra

Unfortunately, my italian teacher is not suitable for the job she does, at all. The previous experience I had with my ex-italian teacher shows me how many weaknesses she has in teaching a classroom of 19 teenagers. First of all, her way of explaining the lesson is unbearable. She cannot express herself clearly and understandably as she always makes grammatical non-impeding errors. Furthermore, my classmates and I noticed that, when teaching something, she uses the same words or sentences as our book just like she had learned them by heart not much before.

And now I am to tell the worst aspect of her bad teaching, ie, her way of evaluating students. Both in oral and written tests she marks with disgusting subjectivity, that is to say something is done as she would have done it, the student will take a high mark. Thus, in this way, she annihilates everyone's originality by penalising it. Apart form that, she judges a student in comparison with another, as a result noone has actually the mark deserved.

Undoubtedly, these problems are due to an ineffective training before enabling her to teach but this is not a justification. Indeed, having such a poor teacher for such an important subject is a terrible disadvantage.

Bartolo

He's my art's history's teacher. He is short and robust, he's bald and his eyes ar dark brown. When he comes in class he attend five minutes or more and whe we are so distract, he start calling the roll with the quietest voice never heard. If you don't answer, after four or five second he take the assence. If you want to understand what he's saying, you must read his lips. He's history's art's lessons are really more boring than a funeral. We must read on a university book of art's history and he sometimes stop to add something. This book isn't of course good for a class of fifteen years. If you are distracted for a moment he send you out.

Valentino

My worst teacher I have ever had is Ditta. He's my art's teacher this year. He's the worst for many reasons: He calls the roll too quit and if someone doesn't answer he writes the absence, he explains the lessons seldom, and when He does it, we don't understand much, because he can't explain anything! He also doesn't award someone who do something more than others, at the contrary he sometimes gives lower votes to who does more, and gives higher votes to who does less!

I have never had a teacher worse than him.

Letizia

I've got many teachers. All of them are good. They teach very well and they're very nice. But in the secondary school, I had the worst teacher I have, ever I had. He teacher physical education and he was very unpleasant. He was not so tall and fat and many times he didn't go to school, so we didn't do physical education.

But when he went, he was very unpleasant, like I wrote before. For example he screamed very much and he said many wrong words. Many times he said rude and impolite sentences to me and to my friends.

I didn't tolerate him, because he was a superficial man, whitout pleasantness for my companion and for me.

Fortunately now I haven't him for physical education.

So he was the worst teacher I had.

Please check the Secondary Teaching course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Humanising Large Classes course at Pilgrims website.