Your story reminds me of something that happened to me in high-school. I registered for a challenge english class. I lasted about two weeks because of a strange grading policy the teacher chose. If you didn't turn in ANY assignment, regardless how few points it was worth, your grade in the class would be set at a hard F. If you wanted to pass, you had to turn in assignments late. She'd give you a zero for the late assignment, but your grade would be allowed to calculate.

I found this policy led to her doing ridiculous nonsense, like having extremely long essays be worth 3 points. and then a three question quiz worth 40 points. Her whole setup just struck me as bizarre and kafkaesque. So, I went to my guidance councilor and changed classes.

Less than a week later she tells her remaining students that she had a dream that I was shooting students and teachers from a tree with a sniper rifle. Some friends I still had in the class relayed this to me and it rattled me a bit. I asked around to a few other teachers / administrators about it and got shrugs.

Same same but different I guess.

..I have a lot of stories about teachers.

I had only two horrible teachers to be honest, so i consider myself lucky.

One was in both primary and middle high, the other was at my university.

First one basically stripped me of my ability to count big numbers in my head - i could multiply and divide 4-5 digit numbers easily. She just didn't believe it and marked everything as failure unless I've written down everything step by step.

Latter on she was my chemistry teacher - average grade for my class was just one mark above failure. When we got new teacher i could score top grades easily - not because she was more lenient at grading - but she actually could convey her knowledge.

At university we had a numeric methods teacher who didn't grade the method, but the result. a single mistake in writing things down resulted in a failure of whole assignment. We never did any theory, just did everything by hand. Thankfully numeric method teacher at my masters was way way better - he was actually teaching us.

It's funny how little organizational power structures change:

I only had two horrible bosses to be honest, so I consider myself lucky.

One was at my first job out of school, the other a few jobs later.

Fist one basically stripped me of my confidence in my coding ability - I could build complex algorithms easily. She just didn't understand minor complexities and made me use more, simple algos and over document.

Later on another project, we were always behind schedule, just one fire away from the project collapsing. When we got a new boss, we were able to complete features easily, not because there were less features, but she could actually convey requirements.

At my later job, the boss didn't care about code quality, just that PBI's were moving through. Single mistakes brought down the entire app. We never did root cause analysis, just patched symptoms. Thankfully a boss that came in later was way better, he actually pushed quality.

From outside the US, it's hard to avoid the impression that some non-trivial percentage of high school supervisors and support staff are fundamentally irrational and unable to think and act like stable, responsible adults.

This is incredibly damaging for teens, because teens need to see adults modelling rational, fair, and effective boundaries, and dealing with problems in sane ways.

Powerful adults acting like capriciously ineffective self-indulgent authoritarians is almost the worst possible school environment.

Unfortunately all it takes is one irrational adult to cause lasting harm, and over the course of 12 years each student is likely to come across several.

The common trait, based on my experience, is that the problem staff feel they have all the information, are the experts, categorize complex interactions into 'seen this before' bins, and feel they are the sole authority and report to no one. They are basically acting as judge, jury, and executioner.

They are a minority within the public school system however they have the overwritten rules and regulations to back up their actions.

It's not a US-only phenomenon. I've got lots of similar incompetency stories from Poland.

My mom was a math teacher in primary school for 6 months after which she had to stop doing it because the kids drove her close to a mental breakdown.

Her friend from high school (which sucked at math) still teaches in her hometown and is seen by a lot of kids (and now adults) as completely incompetent (as reported by cousins growing up there).

I recall multiple instances of incompetency, abuse, blaming and general stupidity in my own education. Good teachers were the odd ones. Most were mediocre. The problematic ones had to really cross the line to get fired or warned.

I'd be interest to learn of a country that does not have this sort of problem to some degree.

"teens need to see adults modelling rational, fair, and effective boundaries, and dealing with problems in sane ways". This may sound like sarcasm, but is not intended as such: this is rude preparation for the workplace and the "public square". I agree that education would be better.

Better safe than sorry is an excellent policy when someone else bears all the consequences.