People Share Times Teachers Did Something That Automatically Earned Their Respect (40 Stories)

One of my high school math teachers had a policy that you could retake any test as many times as you needed to. No penalties. And she would help tutor you during any study hall or before or after school or during lunch.

Must’ve been a huge pain in the ass time wise to write new tests and tutor and grade. But her stance was that she was there to teach. And if you didn’t grasp it enough for the test, you didn’t gain anything by failing and moving on. But if you cared and wanted to learn how to do it, then she was responsible to support you the entire way there.

Told us a joke about his name (before we could) and allowed us to eat during his classes "because kids your age can't help being hungry all the time", as long as we did it quietly. Great guy. His whole attitude made all of us actually pay attention and do our best.

I had a principal in a new school i hadn't met yet because the first day of school at my new high school was my dad's funeral. He had no idea what I looked like, but he sought me out in the really crowded hallways and gave me a hug and his condolences. Never felt creepy, only cared about.

He went on to local politics and became our mayor. Only time I have truly voted for the best person for the job and not the least objectionable.

In my first year of high school, my class decided to play a simple prank on our English/SOSE teacher, by all laughing when he faced the board, and then stopping every time he turned around to face us. After a few minutes of this, he just left the classroom without a word. We all sat there, confused, until a few minutes later the assistant principal comes in and explains that we've really upset our teacher; he made us believe we'd seriously f!@#$% up...

Then our teacher walked in and pretty much went "gotcha!"

That son of a bitch had our respect from then on.

Had an extremely zany teacher who taught Psychology, and had the last name Ward. Psycho personality (in the best way possible) to fit her name and job. Never met someone who fit their name and job description so well. (Worse, she taught driver's ed too, on the side.)

She was the type whose zany personality was a big plus; most of her kids loved her, but if you effed around in her class, she'd eject you from it, with extreme prejudice.

She still teaches, and she teaches very well.

As an aside, there was also this middle-aged woman who was basically a hall monitor and filled in any other position she could think of, as well as handing out dententions or suspensions if she caught you effing around instead of being where you were supposed to be. Small lady, absolutely no-nonsense and tough as nails. She wouldn't take s!@# from you, but also incredibly fair overall.

I realized she knew when to bend. My older two siblings hated her because she always caught them skipping class, smoking, or worse. I got along with her very well and never caused her any trouble. I asked her once about my little brother, and she said he was a good kid and while she'd had to give him detention a few times, she was also proud of him because when he got into a fight, he did it for the right reasons. My little bro's a very tall, hulking guy and never hesitated to defend someone from a bully. It got him a few detentions for fighting but apparently she made it clear she was proud of him for standing up for others nonetheless.

I repeated this later to my brother, and he said she was a very good woman, very fair, and that he'd liked her for that fairness, and her sheer guts.

We had a pretty cool and badass teacher in 5th grade. He was cool, made jokes, made lessons fun but at the same time, didn't take s!@#.

We had these REALLY naughty boys in our class, like they pulled pranks, skipped class, bullied other kids, never turned in assignments or projects.

One day they did something really bad (don't remember what it was) and it made our teacher REALLY REALLY MAD. I was like, this is it, we all about to be a bunch of witnesses. I thought he was about to put hands on these kids. This man was livid.

He called the main instigator to the front of the class, and just stared at him for what seemed like forever. And this kid was just like, not bothered, had an attitude.

This teacher then starts talking, cool and calm, lecturing this kid about all the bad choices his making, about how he needs to think about if those choices are going to get him anywhere in life, stuff like that.

He brought that kid to tears. This kid, who thought he was the s!@#, oh so cool, untouchable, will never have to face the music kind of kid. He stood there in tears.

The teacher wasn't rude or disrespect, didn't like hit the kid or scream and shout at the kid. Simply spoke to him about making better choices.

Teacher said the "lecture" we a lesson to all of us.

I just think it was so cool the way the teacher handled it. Spoke to him (all of us) in a way that made us think about our future for the 1st time.

Make good choices.

I had been put in a lower set due to class capacity issues.

He started off with a speech around what we would be learning this year and then assigned work to the class. After that he walked up to me and gave me a big book with the syllabus and told me he knew I’m too smart for this class and instead of following what the class does he wants me to work through the syllabus at my pace (faster than others being implied) and he would come and check on me after assigning work to everyone else. He said I could do lots or as little each class but I needed to finish the book by the end of the year.

Super duper motivated me to smash his class.

I had a professor in college who was 5 minutes late to the start of an 8am lecture and clearly distraught. She started by apologizing for the delay and explaining that she just got off the phone with her sister telling her that her mother just died of cancer. The remainder of her lectures for the day were cancelled, but she was going to try to keep it together enough to do ours since we were already there so early in the morning. I respected that she decided to give us the lecture we had come for despite being in the immediate shock of mourning a loved one and being vulnerable enough to tell us.

I moved out of home during high school. It was stressful, to say the least. I started to fall behind in assignments, I would be absent for days at time, I missed tests etc.
I ended up explaining the bare minimum of my situation to my English teacher, and their response always stuck with me.
"Just do what you can."
It may not seem like much, but right then and there, for sixteen year old kid who felt like simply living was a burden... it was everything.

It was a professor, but she said she wasn't going to have a textbook for the class. Basically, she didn't respect the textbook representatives trying to take the pharma approach to force kids to buy an $170 access code.

Instant respect. You just had to show up to the lectures and she'd teach you what you needed to know.

A supply teacher spend the day recovering my lost sticker collection.

I'm sure its done in other countries but in uk primary/junior schools. Playtime becomes a trading hub on the playground for stickers. Anyway, one particular day i made a massive haul of stickers which I misplaced for a split second and it was gone. I was devastated and my teacher saw me in distress when i got back from class, my teacher promised she would get them all back for me.

True to her word she did. In fact it turned out several people had made off with my stash of stickers and she spent her lunch time tracking down every one of the children who had them, claimed them back and grilling the kids in turn to who else had my cards and getting them to see her. By the end of lunch she returned them to me all accounted for. For a supply teacher to do this, it was a seriously kind gesture as most teachers would shrugged their shoulders and carry on as if nothing happened.

I was in college and my teacher ran in about 10 minutes late. His excuse went something like this:

Him: “Sorry I’m late guys, I was...it’s not really important ahh...yeah just that...”

Me, a smartass: “...Godzilla?”

Him without missing a beat: “Nope, Mothra.”

A small thing like a sense of humor is nice.

My 4th grade teacher would have a "classroom yard sale" every year after she did her annual Spring cleaning. Her daughter was about 13, so the things she'd recently outgrown would be age-appropriate for us. (I'm aware this wouldn't work out every year, and I'm not sure how long she taught at our school but she told us it was a regular thing.)

We didn't have to pay for them. If we needed or wanted something, we could have it.

There was some sort of lesson incorporated into the yard sale...how to trade or value money or something like that...so we didn't feel embarrassed if we needed a few more things than the other kids did. I wish I could remember exactly how it worked, but this happened in 1994.

She was an all-around great teacher. Thanks, Miss Ferrell, whose name I've probably misspelled. Your class was fun.

I had a teacher in the 6th grade who gave me a C+ on a poster project that I turned in. When he saw my disappointment he asked, "What grade do you think you should have gotten?" I thought for a second and said "a B+". He immediately scratched out the grade and gave me a B+. (Tragically, I saw in the news a few years later that he drowned while on a fishing trip. That got to me.)

I'm epileptic and had a large set of seizures not long before finals in high school chemistry. My seizures tend to mess with my memory, and those multiple seizures had devastated my memory of everything I'd learned in class that semester. I was doing reasonably well in class but absolutely bombed the test. After the failed test I ended up just shy of passing the class and he decided to give me a bonus question that passed me. I didn't expect that, but the empathy was nice to see from a teacher. Even still, the whole situation sucked.

My math teacher told me I should have studied better. He then offered for me to retake the test which seems reasonable enough but there was no point as it was just all gone.

I've only had one since that was worse than that, but fortunately I've got an understanding employer. It doesn't hurt that I've got a union rep as well...

I remember my first math class in college. I didn't take any math my senior year of high school because I finished my math requirements my junior year. Anyway, the first math test hit me like a truck after never having to try in high school and I scored in the low 60's. The next three tests, I learned to study and got 3 98's in a row.

The last week of class, the professor (who was a hard ass by the way and would kick you out for having your phone out) called me up to her desk after class and said clearly you were having a bad day that first exam, so don't worry about that grade because I won't count it. It really changed my view of that professor.

My band director - he laughed with us, he talked to us like people instead of lowly teenage students. And he read to us - The Power of Positive Thinking. He saw a need for it - some of the kids were bored out of their skulls and thought it was stupid, but some of us listened. Personally, I love that he recognized a problem and took action. I've been out of high school for wow..30 years this year...I'm still in touch with him. He's THE most influential person in my life that is not related to me, and it's because he chose to invest and do more than bare minimum as a teacher.

I had a professor once state that she doesn't believe in trick questions. Students trick themselves up enough without the professor helping that along. She never did put trick questions.

English teacher in high school asked where my homework was. Responded “I forgot to do it” and he said to the rest of the class “Why can’t you guys be like Scratch_That_? He doesn’t come up with some excuse he just tells me he didn’t do it”

I had a principal in high school that was extremely strict and was ALWAYS looking to get people in trouble. It got to the point where everyone knew that even the teachers hated him, but none of them ever said anything about it because they didn’t want to lose their jobs.

Well, there was this one kid that was being accused of something he didn’t actually do, and one teacher decided she’d had enough of the principal’s bulls!@# and stood up for the kid. She was an amazing teacher and of course he fired her at the end of the school year. That didn’t stop her from coming to my class’s graduation the next year though!

There was one other teacher that would make comments about the principal in class and insinuated his hatred toward him. Nobody snitched, and at the end of the school year on his last day of teaching, he wrote a note saying he quits because of the principal and left it on his desk and never returned. Love that man.