Top 28 Ways to Drive Your Students Crazy

Adapted from Kearney et al. (1991)

Don’t show up for class, and don’t bother to call and have someone put a note on the door. Next time the class meets, ask the students what you missed. This works best if a major assignment was due the day you skipped.
Walk in 12 minutes late. Give zeros to students who already left. Do this several times in a row, then start coming on time and giving zeros to students who are not already in the room when you arrive.
Since class started late, feel free to keep going until 12 minutes after class was supposed to end. Tell the students who are nervous about getting to their next class that that class isn’t important compared to yours. This also works when defending yourself to the instructor who is banging on the door to get in because his class starts in 3 minutes.
Rush through 50 Powerpoint slides in 25 minutes, talking as fast as possible and allowing no questions even though the material is about theoretical nuclear chemistry. Dismiss class 25 minutes early, telling the students they should be able to do the 60 homework problems with no further information.
Begin the lecture calmly talking about biology, political science, history, or whatever, but a few minutes in, go off into a tirade about the government or religious or ethnic groups. Recover yourself, but repeat several times during the lecture.
Make a statement of fact in the lecture, pause, and say, “That reminds me of the time when…” and go off into a Garrison Keilor-style reminiscence that takes up at least 10 minutes of class time.
Begin on the top left hand of the chalkboard and cover two boards with equations and notations, talking all the while with your back to the class. When you reach the end of the second board, pause, step back, and say, “Oh hell,” then erase both boards and start over.
Allow your office to become so overwhelmed with books, articles, artifacts, old lunch dishes, computer printouts, etc., that you can no longer find your desk chair. When students hand things to you, pile them on the floor and put a rat trap on top. Apologize to your students for not handing their papers back, and ask for new copies.
Give a big research paper assignment on the first day of class and forget to mention it again until the day before it’s due.
Alternatively, change the due date for the big assignment three times. You can also change the assignment itself in mid-semester; ask for an annotated bibliography and change it to a research paper or vice versa.
Don’t return graded homework or tests for at least 4 weeks. Make sure that more work is due before you return the old work. When students remind you about the work, smack your forehead and say, “Oh, I’m such an absent-minded professor!” Keep doing this until the students give up, then beam as you return their papers.
Require the students to buy an expensive book, but never mention it in class except to say that it’s out of date. Don’t tell them this until after the bookstore’s final return date.
When a student asks a question, burst out laughing. After getting hold of yourself, say, “Okay, Janey, let me answer veeeerrrryyyy slowly to make sure you understand! Class, do you think Janey can understand?”
Alternatively, sigh, pause, sigh again, and say, “Can someone answer Janey’s, uh, question, please?”
Use profanity liberally, explaining that the First Amendment applies, and that if students don’t like it they can go %@&* themselves.
Accept late work from one student who did not have an excused absence, but not from another such student. Also, pick out one student to be the pet. Call on him first, and last. Give him an A.
If you have a 3-hour class, don’t allow any breaks. Scold students if they show lapses in attention.
Stand too close to students of the opposite sex, gazing into their eyes when answering questions. Female professors can giggle when male students turn in their papers – say, “Thanks, I’ll enjoy this,” in a whispery voice.
Never learn anyone’s name. Point at people and say, “Yes, what?” When students try to talk to you, gaze over their shoulders and look lost in thought.
Cut office hours short every day, and refuse to make alternative appointments if students have classes during your office hours.
When lecturing, speak in a monotone. Don’t use a microphone if you have a large classroom. If you have any kind of international or regional accent, exaggerate it, and when students complain that they can’t understand you, call them ignorant philistines who clearly can’t cope in a global society.
Read directly off your Powerpoints, which should be crammed full of text. Use a red background and yellow words, or light blue with white words.
Give huge long multiple-multiple choice tests (a, b, c, d, a and b, a and c, c and d, etc.) Make sure the questions require rote memorization of the smallest details of the material. Print out the tests in 10-point font. Also, have only one test and a final.
Constantly complain about your department and the university. Act self-centered, impatient, superior, and moody. Act as if you have been denied the Nobel Prize because someone else plagiarized your work.
Don’t keep up with your discipline. Answer students’ questions with a wondering, “Gosh, I don’t know, I never heard of that!” This is especially effective if there are common exams or certification exams for students to worry about.
Make the class waaaay easy. Assign bogus homework and test questions, tell jokes all semester, and give extra credit that involves no work. But, pitch a fit if they don’t attend class.
Bathe once a month whether you need to or not.
At the end of the semester, burst into tears and wail, “I’ll miss you guys!” Insist on a group hug.

Just to remove any doubt whatsoever, ethical and effective teachers strive to avoid the above behaviors! Kearney et al. (1991) interviewed 250 students and found more than 1700 negative teacher behaviors. Students usually responded with incivility or hostility. The researchers coded the negative teacher behaviors into 28 categories which are represented above.

Kearney, P., T.G. Plax, E.R. Hays, and M.J. Ivey. 1991. College teacher misbehaviors: What students don’t like about what their teachers say and do. Communication Quarterly 39:309-324.