In school, did you typically prefer teachers of a specific gender?

I’m not a sexist, but I do prefer female teachers.

I prefer male teachers. They tend to be more laid back and less “teachery.” And it’s a plus if they’re attractive

I think in my experience, the teacher’s personality and the atmosphere in their classroom were affected less by gender than by the subject they were teaching.

With the exception of one, I’ve preferred male teachers to female.
I’m not sure why.. but I think they are more open to joking around and put a little more effort into making sure the class isn’t stressed out.
Like you said, it’s more relaxed.

But at the same time, I’ve had a few female teachers who have helped me out A LOT.

I’m picking my courses for next semester right now, but not many of my community college’s kindercollege’s teachers are on RMP. =/

Hot for teacher! Miss Leah, 3rd grade, this one goes out to you.

I prefer old male teachers. They really don’t give a lemon on what you do.

I had nuns until college, then a mixture and I can’t really say I preferred one over the other, it depended on the subject and the teacher’s style and ability.

Female.. They tended to be more compassionate in college level math classes. The female ones would help and the male ones looked at me like I was stupid for not understanding differential equations.

I know we don’t have a lot of answers here yet, but it seems like so far people mostly prefer teachers of the opposite gender, doesn’t it?

My three favorite teachers of all time were 2 women and 1 man. I had no preference other than that in the younger grades I had all female teachers, so I was used to it and then in middle school, having male teachers was different. But I don’t think I ever really preferred one gender over the other. I just remember thinking that male teachers were going to be stricter, but that wasn’t my experience.

As a general rule, guy teachers were more interesting and girl teachers were easier and gave me better grades. My all-time favorite teachers are mixed, though.

When I was very young I preferred having a female teacher. In 4th grade I had my first male teacher, and there were times I was intimidated by him. But, I realize now he was a great teacher. If we excelled in something he took the time to really see how far we could go with it. I think he would have been better suited for high school though. As I got older it did not matter much what sex a teacher or professor was. Although, some of my favorite teachers were men going along with what @MacBean said. They had good senses of humor and incorporated real life in their instruction.

I always chose my HS and college teachers by their rep. as excellent teachers. The course descriptions were alluring but deceptive if the prof. was boring, repetitive or uncomfortable with English.

I never thought about this before, but I now realize all of the ones I liked best were male.

The only exception was my 9th, 10th & 12th (small school) English teacher. No one else liked her (they called her Big Bird and made fun of her unmatched knee-high hose) but I thought she was brilliant and I loved her very dry sense of humor. She took great pains to make me believe in myself, specifically in my ability to write well, and was a huge inspiration to me.

When I studied biology I had more male teachers – when I went to grad school for public health I had mostly female teachers – it is the same with careers in those fields…I found that the gender was irrelevant in that either could annoy me if they were a walking cliche

i think i will always prefer male teachers. but that’s because there’s something about working closely with an authority figure of the opposite gender that is undeniably sexy.

A French teacher should always be female.
And hot!

I am more comfortable with female teachers, they are usually more empathetic in my experience.

I’ve had bad teachers of both genders, so, no, I can’t say I care whether or not the teacher is male or female.

Although, strangely enough, every one of my good band directors have been male. The only bad one was female. (I don’t think it was a gender thing, though.)

I do remember preferring female teachers as a child, but that might have been reflective of the lack of male teachers, or the fact that both my mom and grandma were teachers.

@AstroChuck

Heh. My French teachers were always female. Only one of them I remember was young and “hot” by straight male standards. :)

I always found that learning came easier for me with male teachers. The few females I had for teachers were very uptight and prissy. They taught everything by the books and had little personality.

I preferred passionate teachers. And I had a few of them belonging to this endangered species. Some were male, some were female. My physics teacher was male and I guess because of him I also became very passionate about physics. He really changed my way of looking at the world. My favorite biology teacher was female. Her classes were so inspiring and when she showed us drawings that looked like this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle

and began explaining all the details she sounded like an art aficionado explaining Vincent Van Gogh and I was hooked. The sheer beauty and sublimity of nature’s inner workings.

If all teachers were passionate I guess many students would feel differently about education.

I’ve had “bad” teachers and professors of both genders. I don’t think I have a preference between the two. My only preference is for teachers with a sense of humor!

The two teachers who had a biggest impact on my life were male. As a male, I suppose I identified with them more. It wasn’t just their gender that was important to me, though. They did many things to impact my life and set me on the path of writing. None of my female teachers ever did much to influence the path I’ve taken in life.