by Wayne Leon Learmond

Created on: January 18, 2010   Last Updated: April 16, 2011

The answer to this title is a resounding yes.  Teachers can make or break a pupil attending school or college. If a child is unfortunate enough to encounter a bad teacher, every single day, then learning does not become interesting, fun, and educational. Learning, instead, becomes a terrifying experience - especially when a child knows that the one teaching them is the one that is always shouting.  Or the one who is always picking on them for no reason.  Or, as the case may be, the one who likes to make them look foolish in front of the rest of the class.

Generations of adults will vouch for this. For they are the living proof of how having a bad teacher at school can affect the rest of their educational lives.  I, myself, remember very vividly - in primary school - a particular teacher who never ever had any patience with me. This teacher would yell at the top of her voice, making me jump [as I was a very nervous child back then]. This particular 'teacher' also loved to embarrass me in front of the rest of the class - this she would do on a regular basis and this she seemed to 'enjoy'.

I learned nothing from her, only learning to fear her, resent her and hate her and to hate school. And then the nightmares began.  I would literally shake in bed knowing that I would have to face her in the morning. Things became so bad that my mother stormed down to the school, with me close at hand, demanding to see this particular teacher who had been making my life sheer hell in the classroom. 

That teacher was quickly moved on by the school soon afterwards, but she always stuck in my mind - and has done so ever since.  No child should have had to go through that kind of experience, when in school or college. One can clearly see how bad teaching methods can put kids off learning for life. This is the legacy that 'bad teachers' can leave with their pupils.

This is how bad teachers can adversely affect test scores.  If a pupil feels that he or she is not receiving the support they deserve from a particular teacher and,  to make matters worse, that teacher is making the subject that they are studying so uninteresting, then learning stops. That teacher is not doing what he or she is paid to do...and that is to teach a subject in such a way as to make it interesting and, to involve the whole class - not just a select few.

Also, if the teacher is skirting around the subject, and

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