Did any people here have a hard time with a teacher?

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A teacher.

How about all of my teachers even in college. I really hate school because of it. I love to learn. But I hate school.

Had a teacher in seminary who was jealous of me and had it out for me. I still can feel the bad electricity in the air when we'd be in the same room together.

I had a hard time with my student teacher but everyone did in my class. She was always losing our school work and would mark it as a missing assignment. I used to have meltdowns about her and would say things like "I wish i could throw her off a cliff" and saying I want to kill her. She also seemed to ignore other kids goofing off in their seats and I would be reading or writing and she would take that stuff from me and tell me to listen and I would end up lying my head down. She was so boring because of the bla bla bla she would do so kids goofed off in their seats because they were bored.

I also had a hard time getting along with my speech therapist in 6th grade and the special ed teacher and some other staff member. That was the worst year ever so my mom dropped occupational therapy for me and speech at school because I was getting too frustrated and not getting along with them.

But I have been lucky to have teachers who didn't pick on me or who I got along with.

All the teachers I had troubles with were authoritarians. Those who are easy-going laid back type click with me the best and adored me. I was equally good in their subjects. Say if I got 95% in a test, the teachers who liked me say "good job, I knew you'd do well", the teachers who didn't like me say "Why did you make this stupid mistake? Why didn't you get 100%? You could have. You just didn't work harder / be more careful ...etc."

I'm just glad that I grew up in a non-typical area where many teachers were actually smart and nice, the authoritative ones are the minority. In my experience teachers with lower intelligence are more likely to be bossy and demand respect and obedience from their students.

Yes, I don't get along with anyone. Teachers were no exception.

I only ever had an issue with one teacher. She was my English teacher, when I was 13/14. Everything was fine at the start of the year and I usually got As. But, then the class were being required to read a novel in a fortnight and write a synopsis. Due to concentration difficulties, I'm a very slow reader, i.e. I can read a page and not know what I've read, then have to re-read it. When I was under pressure, like this, I could read a whole book and not understand any of it. 2 weeks was not enough time for me to read a novel, especially not when I had other homework to get on with as well. So, at parents night, my mum (who is not the most tactful of people) told her that it wasn't possible for me. The teacher told her it was an essential part of the curriculum (it wasn't) and I can guess my mum displayed her anger. From then on, the teacher made my life hell. She ridiculed me in front of the class, on several occasions. At no time did she ever suggest that I would benefit from an assessment of my difficulties (it was the 80s after all). She seemed to think I was just lazy. I didn't know what was up with me, so I had no explanation. It was very confusing and the thought of a child being blamed for something which is outwith their control angers me. I suppose this is what makes me so determined to ensure the same thing doesn't happen to my daughter. At every opportunity I get, I speak about her concentration difficulties, to ensure they don't ever get the impression that she's lazy.

I was diagnosed with autism when I was 13 and I always had a problem with a teacher(s) in each year. I would say it is a result of personality type.

Had problems with several teachers. Worst was in 5th grade. He very blatantly played favorites. So his pets got all the favors, but was still tolerable if you were in the middle. But he put me and another student in the pariah category. He had different sadistic treatment for her and me. He put her in an isolation area and no one was allowed contact with her, for me he knew i was an easy bully target so he purposely overlooked it and even encouraged it. Then for grading, he put an unreachable expectation on me so i could never reach it.

When I was in vocational school, I had a teacher in e-commerce class who always singled me out. Despite the fact that I always get good grades in that class, due to my behavior related to my Asperger's, she always called me out, and once threatened to call the psych ward on me. Because of these factors, I always have found this my hardest class, and considered dropping out of vocational school at one point. I am just grateful that I graduated and didn't have to deal with her anymore.

I had one teacher in particular who decided I was a 'crooked nail' that needed to be hammered flat. She took on my persecution with relish. I was ten years old, and -- while highly individual -- not describable as a 'problem pupil' in any accepted sense of the term. She would pursue me from lesson to lesson, holding conversations with other teachers in front of the whole class, describing what a bad and wicked child I was, making unrealistic demands and applying disproportionate attention to my ability to do homework (I always rebelled against being made to do work in what I saw as my own time). Her persecution and campaign of vilification worked, and before long practically all my teachers were involved in it. I had no idea what was going on, or how to put it right, as no-one ever explained it to me. I became socially-ostracised as a result, and my anxiety before each school day made my physically sick on more than one occasion. And I couldn't bring myself to explain to my parents what I was going through, since I tended to believe that all adults would naturally side with each other and that telling my parents would inevitably make things worse. I now recognise that my mother would have been horrified at what was going on, and would have raised hell with the school over my teacher's behaviour, but it didn't seem like that at the time.

Anyway, time passed and the school year ended, and I moved into a form with a different tutor, who -- while not actively positive toward me -- didn't persecute me either. And eventually, I left that school altogether as I progressed through the education system.

It was many years before I was able to understand what had happened to me at the hands of that vindictive teacher (this was the 1980s, so long before my AS had been diagnosed and in any case there was no mainstream educational support for AS pupils at that time).

I hated her then, and my adult perspective on what she did meant that that hatred did not lessen but rather increased with my understanding of what she was doing to a confused ten year old.

When I was an undergraduate, I received news from my home town that my teacher had retired.

I sent her a 'Bon Voyage!' card, and wrote in it: "One small step for a woman, one giant leap for the education system", and signed it clearly so she could be in no doubt as to who it was from.

Then later, I learned that the reason she had retired was because she had had a stroke and was partially paralysed, so was hardly going to be taking any 'small steps', still less 'giant leaps'. So my message to her contained unintended emotional cruelty.

I do not feel in the slightest bit guilty about this: In fact, I hope it made her cry, the evil old b***h.

By contrast, I later had an absolutely excellent teacher who (perhaps because of his own somewhat eccentric character) took me under his wing and nurtured me, and whose involvement in my education was a positive and beneficial one. He was first my physics teacher, and then my form tutor, and I used to spend many hours in discussion with him about various science things, discussing ideas for inventions and how they might work out. One that I particularly remember was an idea for a method of 3D TV broadcasting and display obviating the need for special glasses. Over ten years later, I saw 'my' proposal being put forward in a newspaper article. I snipped it and sent it to my old teacher with a note of appreciation. He wrote back and expressed his hope for my future progress (and sent me the recipe for the highly-potent cocktail of spirits he had invented and called 'The Glencoe Massacre', which he used to secretly store in acid-bottles and surreptitiously serve to us at Christmas). That's the standard of teaching to which all teachers should imho aspire.

My teacher problems started 5 minutes after my Mom dropped me off at for my first day of Kindergarten when the teacher announced, to the class, that they would have their snacks but that because MY mother didn't bring a snack for me I would have to wait at the back of the room while they ate. I began crying like a little baby (I was 5), ran out the door, and all the way home, while behind me the teacher yelled "Come, back. Come back!"

I had to go back to school eventually and that teacher never let me forget it: I spent hours and hours by myself in the "cloak room", as we used to call it, and this is where my dislike of school and schooling began. This was around 1948.

denny

I've been told I come across as a know it all when I point out that someone is wrong. Some teachers/lecturers react really badly to that. Some are okay with it. I've had a couple of teachers who loved me and I always seemed to work better under their guidance. They mainly let me do my own thing but with a few pointers and that always seemed to work well.
I don't think my lecturers in college have an opinion of me yet. One of them probably dislikes me as I snapped at her for getting too close to me in the last lab I had with her. Well I thought she was too close, so I raised my voice until she left. I don't know if I actually told her that she was too close or not.

I think most people have a few "lemons" for teachers; whether we're on the Spectrum or NT. It's just part of life, I guess. I had pretty good luck with teachers being easy to please and easy to get along with, but I had one who was a really nasty old German lady, who put everyone down, and made us feel like dirt. I was terrified of her, and she preyed on that. This was for 2nd Grade. But all the rest of my teachers liked me, and I liked them, and I would write nothing but praise about them.

Charles

I had a couple of teachers whose classes I didn't enjoy, not because they were nasty people but actually the opposite-they were too soft and would never discipline any child so their classes were horrendously loud and I couldn't learn in such environments. I had one teacher who was convinced that my AS meant I should be in a special school (she had a son with HFA who was in a residential special school and I think she always compared the 2 of us and so thought I would be better off in a special school too). I had another teacher who would call me a Martian all the time (my surname is closely related to that) as a joke about the way I always seemed dazed and not quite with it. A couple of other students had a go at him about it one time. Most of my teachers were very nice though-they loved me because I was a good student and always tried my hardest in classes and kept to deadlines. I did have a reputation as a "Teachers Pet". I do think teachers get an unfair press a lot of the time in the UK-both my brother and sister are teachers at different stages of the system and I know how hard they work for little reward so I always have great respect for them although I do know that some can be horrendous.

When I was in elementary school I had only a couple of teachers who were very rude to me, not due to me having done anything but because I had delayed response. They tried to "snap me out of it". When I think back, they were not very deep people and probably did not have the intelligence to deal with my apparent lack of affect in a more constructive way. And they were the ones more likely to actually admire the so-called cool kids in the class. My instincts weren't very quick but I learned to realize that those teachers were biased.

For the most part I had trouble relating to my peers, but actually preferred the company of the teachers, as I could start conversations with them about the solar system, physics, or whatever other thing piqued my interest. When I found an eager conversationalist in a teacher (and I had some really good ones over the years), I preferred talking to them than playing ball with my classmates - so boring.

I enjoyed reading your account of the bad but especially the good. I think that the authoritarian teachers who are purposely unfair can have issues of their own which their authority positions in the old days helped them to unleash on vulnerable kids. Whenever and wherever such things happen, it is thoroughly disgusting. A great teacher - a great person period - sees potential in others and encourages conditions for their success. I agree - we should always cherish the great teachers.