• tomkatt@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    My senior class in high school, the French and History teachers got together to plan a senior trip to Canada post-graduation, with stops in Montreal and Quebec. They let us have beers (on our own dime) if we wanted since the drinking age up there was 18, and one of my history teachers even offered a few of us Cuban cigars the last night of the trip since there was no embargo in Canada but we couldn’t cross back into the US with them. Was a pretty good time.

    We were warned the Quebecois could be kinda douchey to non-native speakers, but I found the whole trip was pretty chill, and as long as you were at least trying to speak French to them, they were more than accommodating for directions and help. Was a really memorable trip, 20+ years later still a very fond memory. Good teachers are great.

  • Soup@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    I generally have a pessimistic opinion of these sorts of things being entirely made up for the likes/upvotes/shares, but some of them I at least wish/hope that they are true.

    This is one of them.

  • Matriks404@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 month ago

    I hope your teachers just doesn’t dump a list of vocab that you must learn without any context. This isn’t an effective method to learn new words.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 month ago

      I’ve never had anything this extreme happen, but I did once have a professor who realized that the lesson he was teaching was difficult and boring and, at the end of it, said that he was going to cancel the quiz and to not study hard this weekend because, “if you study too hard, your brain will explode and you’ll die.”

      I had a lot of trouble understanding your accent, Dr. Tran, and math is super hard for me, but much respect for that.

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      1 month ago

      I once had a teacher take us all down the pub

      Another who decided the lesson would be best spent in the woods and we didn’t get any work done

      Another you could distract by getting him talking about the Simpsons and barely do any work

      My history teacher used to make us role play as Romans and wear togas

      Like these things happen all the time

    • SolarMonkey@slrpnk.netEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      My Russian professor one year had an after-semester dinner party at her own house, complete with some of her family and friends showing up to play traditional music and teach us about the foods they made and stuff. There was indeed dancing and instruction of such, as well. And yes, everyone clapped, because that’s a traditional way to keep beat with music, especially music meant for movement.

      It was a really small class, but all the same, that sort of thing does happen, especially with language teachers in my experience, because they also want to teach culture. Those were most of my coolest (other than my very wacky physics prof).

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Only if you’ve never been to small-class-size college. “College professor takes a lesson to do something eccentric instead of the class curriculum” happened in at least one class at least once a semester. You uh, learn a lot about your professors.

      • Nima@leminal.spaceEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        can confirm. community colleges tend to have a lot of professors that give a damn. (and some absolutely batshit ones as well. you gotta take the bad with the good)

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 month ago

    I had a high school friend who’s dad was an Arabic language professor. He apparently once read a text to class so boring that he fell asleep while doing it.

  • Zachariah@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 month ago

    … and then one parent complained, and the admin micromanaged the teacher for the rest of the year.

  • JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    1 month ago

    I remember, in university, at the start of a Latin American History class the lecturer walks in with boxes and straight up asks, “SO WHO WANTS TO DO COCAINE?!?”

    Then proceeds to take out coca leaf tea bags, offers everyone a cup, and explains how she was intentionally wrong in her statement to highlight a big issue. She explained the Native use of coca leaf, and how they have suffered from people using their sacred herb in concentrated and illicit ways.

    She also gave me a box to take home, because I said it helped with my stomach cramps (medical issue), and it really did. No addiction felt either.

    With some teachers you can really tell how passionate they are.