I had an awesome maths teacher
but the awesome things about him were seldom to do with his mathematical teachings or even his teaching skills.

He was quite a character, ebullient while under the effects of alcohol but a dour and joyless man come the inevitable hangover. So, classes could be eventful, and predictable, given the morning is dedicated to alcoholics' mourning, and the afternoon heralds the evening that it precedes.

At either time, though, he did not like distractions, which was strange, given that he himself was quite a distraction. One moment you could be just getting to grips with a complicated long-division calculation, and the next you would be on the floor, having fallen off your chair laughing at the teacher with a bin on his head (checking for chewing gum stuck to the lip of the bin), gushing blood from a cut on his forehead (walked into an open door, you had to be there to be able to laugh at the blood and obvious pain, but I assure you it was funny), eating a 4ft striplight bulb (I shit you not!), or howling loudly and protractedly at someone in the class for their having made a small error.

He got us through maths and for that I thank him, but I have never met a more eccentric teacher, and he brings a smile to my face whenever I remember him.

Perhaps a good example of his level on the awesomeness scale was the time he took us on a school ski trip. Organisation was his forte, but organising kids was not, and he stressed and strained to get 70 excited children from England to France together and in one piece. When we got there, though, he visibly relaxed (if that is really a good description). A few drinks in and he was roaring in the dinner hall, and the last I saw, as some of the hotel staff led us away to our rooms, was him dancing on a table in a kilt, kicking leftover food, crockery and cutlery across the room. Apparently he passed out on a table not much later, could not be roused, and thus spent the night in the dining room, dribbling onto the tablecloth.

The next morning he defied our expectations and led us, albeit slightly wobbly, to the mountain, still wearing the kilt. When we got to the top of the cable car, he climbed onto the railing, and swan dived into a large pile of snow, all 15 foot from apex of trajectory to first impact with the white stuff. Amazingly, he leapt out of the snow (apparently uninjured) howling "SNOWWWWW!!!" strapped on his skis and skied off into the distance, leaving 70 kids on a mountain with no one in charge. Awesome.

He didn't reappear until the next night - it looked as if he might have spent the night out as he was muddy, wet and shivering - respect to a man with such a clear and unambiguous reaction to responsibility. He even bought me (among others) a bottle of lager to drink at the disco that evening - despite teaching maths he had forgotten what age we were, although I suppose "when in France..."

All of this did no good to his reputation as a teacher. The children passed their exams, as long as they didn't die first (relaaaxxxx, no one died...), but his viability as a "loco parentis" figure crashed and burned. Last time I heard he was still teaching maths, and still plucking spiders from the spiderwebs in his classroom and eating them in front of giggling schoolchildren, but I don't think they ever put him in charge of anything more than manning the score box on the cricket pitch. A job he did admirably, with a jug of pimms and a loudhailer! A legend in his own right.
(IdlePeAcEsign if trouble were my mistress, i'd send her to them, Mon 21 Mar 2011, 22:06, Reply)