Your comment about the teacher saying thay hate math reminded me of an incident with a student and parent that my wife told me about last year.

The parent came to her, quite concerned, asking about the "math chair". Apparently her daughter had said she didn't like it in class, and the parent thought it was some kind of punishment... "Katie, you didn't finish your homework, go sit in the math chair and do math until you see the light!"

Turned out, my wife has a thing where, before they start working on math each day, the whole class shouts out "WE LOVE MATH!!" - the math cheer .. and the student didn't like it because it was so enthusiastic that it hurt her ears!