Teacher knows best

[Gregg]

I'm still not over getting suspended in 7th grade for a meltdown argument I had with an American History teacher who casually dumped off a "That's not what Jefferson was thinking when he wrote the Constitution" and I, being asshole me pipped in "Jefferson didn't write the Constitution, Madison and Mason did" setting off an epic fight where I discovered my gift for utterly humiliating someone who was objectively wrong and refuses to back down from their mistake.

I got three days, for "ridiculing faculty" and almost another 3 for pointing out that he was doing the ridiculing, I was just making sure everyone knew it.

I have been doing that "keep making them defend the wrong thing until they have a meltdown" since, but never with such perfection as the day I made Mr Amyx have a nervous breakdown and psychotic event in front of 25 13 year old kids.

[sugar magnolia]

When my brother was in the 5th grade (I was in 4th) our school desegregated and his new teacher halfway through the year was Mrs. M. Williams. They were reading Romeo and Juliette and the teacher gave the definition of enamored as "hard paint or varnish." My brother called her on it, and it soon devolved into a big to-do with him getting sent to the office. Both of my parents showed up to talk to the teacher and principal. My mother has a masters in English and doesn't fuck around when it comes to her chosen field. She once corrected a grammatical error in Eudora Welty's obituary. They were arguing for an apology from the teacher and no discipline. At one point the teacher was standing in the office screaming about rude, racist children and their parents. They ultimately decided to put him in the other 5th grade class, and Mrs. M. Williams didn't finish out the year.

Years later, as a senior in high school, he was assigned a poem to write. It was a long involved story about a rock star and it was fabulous! His English teacher decided it was plagiarized because no high school senior could write that well. He actually wrote a letter that said "it's too good to not be plagiarized. I can't find the source but I know it is" and sent the letter to my parents and gave him a failing grade for the year. It kept him from graduating with his class and he had to take summer school that year. That time a lawyer got involved. My brother got a written mea culpa and an apology from the teacher and my parents got their money back for the summer school class.

[sad-cafe]

well that isn't me



Not all teachers are the same

[Gregg]

well that isn't me



Not all teachers are the same

Oh no, I had many wonderful dedicated teachers and a few who knew I'd either get a PhD or go to prison. But it was in my 7th grade history class that i realized that I was at least as smart as some of my teachers. It took away the intimidation that some teachers use in place of knowing their subject and I was the wrong kid to learn that lesson so young. I had absolutely no fear of having that kind of argument with a teacher again because my mom backed me up and told me not to worry about the suspension.

[Gregg]

When my brother was in the 5th grade (I was in 4th) our school desegregated and his new teacher halfway through the year was Mrs. M. Williams. They were reading Romeo and Juliette and the teacher gave the definition of enamored as "hard paint or varnish." My brother called her on it, and it soon devolved into a big to-do with him getting sent to the office. Both of my parents showed up to talk to the teacher and principal. My mother has a masters in English and doesn't fuck around when it comes to her chosen field. She once corrected a grammatical error in Eudora Welty's obituary. They were arguing for an apology from the teacher and no discipline. At one point the teacher was standing in the office screaming about rude, racist children and their parents. They ultimately decided to put him in the other 5th grade class, and Mrs. M. Williams didn't finish out the year.

Years later, as a senior in high school, he was assigned a poem to write. It was a long involved story about a rock star and it was fabulous! His English teacher decided it was plagiarized because no high school senior could write that well. He actually wrote a letter that said "it's too good to not be plagiarized. I can't find the source but I know it is" and sent the letter to my parents and gave him a failing grade for the year. It kept him from graduating with his class and he had to take summer school that year. That time a lawyer got involved. My brother got a written mea culpa and an apology from the teacher and my parents got their money back for the summer school class.

Me and your brother would be friends.

[Phoenix520]

I skipped 4th grade*. Instead I was placed in a split grades 5/6 class. It was a bit chaotic, what with the classes often doing separate subjects, although many were taught to both simultaneously. It was weird.
Me Sigismund, the 5th grade teacher, took an instant dislike to me. I was much younger than the other kids and she felt I had no business in her class.

One day I was giving an oral report in front of the 5th grade. Behind me, like directly behind me, 6th graders had a map project spread out on the floor. Pots of paint sat on the map. I kept moving to my right to avoid the painters but Ms Sigismund wanted me to stand right in the middle of the first row and kept waving me left. Can you guess what happened?

While nervously shuffling back and forth from where it was safe to where she instructed me to stand I kicked a pot of paint over, all over the map.

Ms Sigismund, sharp-faced and thin with a voice like a rusty razor, had a smirky smile as she castigated me in front of everyone for being a stupid, clumsy girl. I was mortified and didn’t speak in class for the rest of the semester.

When we returned from Christmas break I found myself in a regular 5th grade class. Mr. Weber, who’d co-taught my old class, was the teacher. No one said anything to me but my mom had a long talk with Mrs Vest, the principal, sometime after the incident. I guess Mr Weber, the coolest teacher I ever had, didn’t like her much either.

* Oh, my. I haven’t thought about the period of my life for ages. I bet this is where I didn’t learn the stuff that makes math make sense.

[Gregg]

I skipped 4th grade*. Instead I was placed in a split grades 5/6 class. It was a bit chaotic, what with the classes often doing separate subjects, although many were taught to both simultaneously. It was weird.
Me Sigismund, the 5th grade teacher, took an instant dislike to me. I was much younger than the other kids and she felt I had no business in her class.

One day I was giving an oral report in front of the 5th grade. Behind me, like directly behind me, 6th graders had a map project spread out on the floor. Pots of paint sat on the map. I kept moving to my right to avoid the painters but Ms Sigismund wanted me to stand right in the middle of the first row and kept waving me left. Can you guess what happened?

While nervously shuffling back and forth from where it was safe to where she instructed me to stand I kicked a pot of paint over, all over the map.

Ms Sigismund, sharp-faced and thin with a voice like a rusty razor, had a smirky smile as she castigated me in front of everyone for being a stupid, clumsy girl. I was mortified and didn’t speak in class for the rest of the semester.

When we returned from Christmas break I found myself in a regular 5th grade class. Mr. Weber, who’d co-taught my old class, was the teacher. No one said anything to me but my mom had a long talk with Mrs Vest, the principal, sometime after the incident. I guess Mr Weber, the coolest teacher I ever had, didn’t like her much either.

* Oh, my. I haven’t thought about the period of my life for ages. I bet this is where I didn’t learn the stuff that makes math make sense.

I got math instinctively, I bought a calculus textbook in the summer between 7th and 8th grades and taught myself, so I didn't pay any attention to any math teacher until I got to college where I got a bit of culture shock when I realized that I suddenly wasn't ahead of anyone and was behind quite a few. I also see math in 3 dimensions as curves and "Euclid on acid" shapes which is just impossible to explain to anyone. I firmly believe there is a line where higher maths become mental illness and I exist very close to that line. I got sucked in or pushed anyhow into being a math major and I'm good at it, but its tiresome.

History was what I loved and I have both a very good memory and I just ''get'' what the lesson of this or that event is. So while some History classes are mostly just memorizing dates and names and some are soft on facts but "why is this important" I feel good either way. Do not play trivial pursuit with me, it won't end well.

[Slim Cognito]

I don't have the smarts most of the people here have but I did have a gift for math. When I was in school, we had jr. high and sr. high, with the freshmen in the jr. high building. My sophomore year was the first year we could take Algebra so I signed up, not thinking much of it.

A quick background: I was this tiny little Edith Head wanna-be who made her own clothes, even jeans, tailored to me, and dressed like Janis Joplin. I had hair down to my ass and although I didn't pin boas into my hair, I did have lots of feathers and beads. My Nana taught me to embroider and crochet and I had the greatest embroidered jeans on the planet.

The early 70s was very much "do your own thing" in our school district, which meant you either sank or swam. A lot of kids sunk because they spent "free periods" playing dodgeball instead of studying. Nobody was pushed to do anything they didn't want to do. We covered our notebooks with brown paper bags so we could doodle and I constantly drew Grace Kelly-worth evening gowns during class, although I luckily never got called out. If I was allowed to choose my desk, it was always the back row, last desk stage right.

So, back to my first day of school as a sophomore in the big Senior High building, which was intimidating enough. As I sat in the back row/corner desk of Mr. Knopp's Algebra class (Knopp withOUT a silent K) his first question was "Who can figure a square root?" As I doodled away, I absentmindedly raised my hand because, wasn't that what we were there for? Apparently not. I was the only kid with her arm up and I was one of the very few sophomores. It was mostly juniors and seniors. The older kids who were serious about their grades had already taken A1 and moved onto higher math classes.

So the only kid in the class with her hand up was called to the front of the class to solve a problem he was writing on the blackboard. All the kids snickered as I slowly walked up there terrified. But I got it right. (I'm sure it wasn't anything too complex). From that day on, everyone called me hippie nerd. But I think Mr. Knopp was pleasantly surprised. He called on me a lot after that, but I never felt he was singling me out. I was never asked to solve a problem I couldn't handle.

I didn't hang at school much come my jr and sr years. We didn't need as many credits as students do now so if you had good grades and were on-mark to get all your credits, you could leave early, so I left after third hour and either went to work or art school. The KC Art Institute was kinda big deal at the time. And it did get me into Hallmark straight after graduation. I never attended games, etc, so I didn't have many hs friends.

I'd forgotten about that story until I went to my 35th reunion and, sure enough, "Hippie Nerd!" Turns out a lot of people knew me, either from my clothes or my nickname, but I didn't have a clue who they were.

I hated the name at the time, but now I kinda dig it. And Mr. Knopp is the only teacher I had, other than kindergarten, whose name I can remember.

[Gregg]

My Ex-Wife went to KC Art Institute.

[somerset]

I also see math in 3 dimensions as curves and "Euclid on acid" shapes which is just impossible to explain to anyone. I firmly believe there is a line where higher maths become mental illness and I exist very close to that line. I got sucked in or pushed anyhow into being a math major and I'm good at it, but its tiresome.

And then I believe you went to England, where they ruined your English forever

[Maybenaut]

When I was in first grade the nuns gave us math problems as punishment. It should come as no surprise, then, that I can’t add two two-digit numbers without a calculator.

[Gregg]

I also see math in 3 dimensions as curves and "Euclid on acid" shapes which is just impossible to explain to anyone. I firmly believe there is a line where higher maths become mental illness and I exist very close to that line. I got sucked in or pushed anyhow into being a math major and I'm good at it, but its tiresome.

And then I believe you went to England, where they ruined your English forever

True. But my English was originally "Argillite Twang" corrupted with a Boston accent made worse by whatever jumble the Army got me speaking and then I finally went to England. As my dear friend Wally (from Knoxville) used to say 'After we went to England our English became passable to y'all, or at least mine did".

[Gregg]

When I was in first grade the nuns gave us math problems as punishment. It should come as no surprise, then, that I can’t add two two-digit numbers without a calculator.

It degrades as a skill as steeply as a professional ballplayer's ability to hit a fastball. That's ''arithmetic" which some people will tell you isn't really important to higher maths. I don't agree with that, since calculators were still verboten in most classes I took until college and by then you're using them to check your work. Like I said, it was tedious and boring to me. I could do it, I did it well enough for academic scholarships, but I lost the love of it long ago.

[sugar magnolia]

I can do math in my head all day long, pretty fast, and get it right, but I can't do that shit with paper and a pencil to save my life. I can literally stand at a cutting table and figure out how many yards (or fractions of a yard) I need for each fabric for however many cuts of how many inches to make a queen sized quilt while the clerk is cutting the first piece, or figure how many of what length and width of boards to build something. I can do algebra in my head because the shapes make sense, but the numbers and letters in a formula don't. I failed miserably at that whole "show your work" thing, but got the answer right. I adored my 8th grade algebra teacher, Coach Boyd, who later became my mother's principal and close friend. I also adored my 10th grade English teacher who was widely hated by everyone but me.

[Gregg]

Aside from the History teacher above, who I did in fact cause to have a breakdown, he retired in the middle of the year, a few friends and I played a game messing with the English Teacher who's drinking problem was the worst kept secret in the school. We say at tables with 5 people a table and every day we'd be someone we weren't the day before so when she called "Chris" I'd answer, when she called Todd "Todd" he'd correct her "I'm Gregg".. we did that for an entire semester and to this day I'm not sure if she knew and played along, she was drunk and didn't notice or we were slowly driving her mad.
Her son was a few years older than me and years later I got to know him pretty well through mutual friends, and I'm sorry we ever messed with his mom, because she was never mean or anything, just flighty and she did have a drinking problem, which I now know I shouldn't have judged her for then.

Also, I have no idea whose grade I actually got credit for.

[scirreeve]

Sophomore in high school. World History teacher was the football coach and dumber than shit. He said something stupidly wrong in class (I don't remember what) and I said he was wrong out loud. Got booted from class and had to have my parents come in to meet with the counselor. Counselor said I did nothing wrong and my parents agreed. Dumbass football coach said he didn't want me in his class any more. Counselor said fine but you have to give him an "A" and I spent the rest of the semester in the library during that period. I still remember his name - Coach Dow. I called him Dil Dow behind his back but that is what teenagers do.

[Phoenix520]

I’ll never forget my algebra-trig teacher. She’s another reason math is such a mystery to me. Well, I don’t remember her name now but I can hear her quavery voice with that weird southern drawl saying as she wrote an equation on the blackboard, “I hear y’all a-grinnin’ back there. Stop that.” What we were “a-grinnin’” about was usually that she had neglected to button more than the top and bottom buttons of her top. Sometimes she had a slip underneath, but sometimes not. Once, not even a bra. We had her for 5th period. Not one person, all day long, had pointed it out.

She should have retired years before I had her. She was almost senile. She marked right answers wrong half the time and vice versa. In fact, one of the few who passed the class was Chuck Buck, captain of the football team, a typical dumb jock. And he sat behind me and copied my answers. I failed. About 3/4 of that class was in my summer school re-take.

One day she took off her raincoat… and was wearing only her slip and rain boots. Fifth period, mind you. I doubt she went through the entire day in this state of deshabille or we would have heard about it. What on earth had she done with her dress? Chuck, bless his heart, took her coat from her hands and helped her on with it, like that was the deal all along, and gently escorted her to the office. We had a substitute for a few days, but damn she came back. Still as batty as ever, still hearing us a-grinnin’, still failing to teach us math.

[Maybenaut]

My 10th grade English teacher, Mrs. Maxwell, passed around a sheet on the first day of school for everyone to put their names down, and she used that to take attendance. Someone wrote “Marshall Tucker,” and every day for a couple weeks she’d call his name, “Has anyone seen Mr. Tucker?” Finally someone said, “I think he’s on tour.” Mrs. Maxwell responded, “Well he can stay on tour the rest of the semester for all I care. He’s missed way too much to catch up.”

[busterbunker]

Funny thread. Found it word-searching Eudora. My parents were teachers, along with half of my siblings. Home-schooling was a chore. School was baby-sitting.

I got chucked into a new school with a new teacher in 7th grade. I kept my mouth shut until he said the blood in our veins is blue. I was like no way dude, look it up in the encyclopedia, crimson ain't blue. He said look at my veins! I countered look at mine, my blood is green! I think it was the first time the dumb Catholic kids heard anybody challenge authority. I was the dorky new kid and he worked that to his advantage.

In 8th grade he took me aside, quietly admitted I was right. I was like that's cool, whatever. Like my dad lost his job because he opposed the Vietnam War, whatever.

The most important thing a teacher can teach is the love for learning.

[Foggy]

Word.

[Suranis]

I drove my teachers mad by being able to recite stuff the teacher couldn't understand, such as the structure of the Earth, from memory, but somehow could not write anything or never did my homework right.

[keith]

The football coach at my high school was also the American Problems teacher. EVERYONE disliked him. He was a great coach, but a lousy teacher. REALLY bad.

He was also the "boys health" teacher. His discussions of anatomy were amusing to say the least, but the class also included road rules for which he claimed NO ONE had ever got 90% on. Three of us (including me) got 98 out of a 100, but he marked us down to 88 just to prove his point. When we called him on it he accepted one of our 'wrong' answers was actually right. The worst one I remember was 'do you always have to stop at a stop sign?" Which he claimed that you don't at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere with perfect visibility and you can see everything. Every person in the class put a complaint in the school suggestion box.

Several of us decided we were going to avoid Coach's American Problems class by taking it in summer school which was at a different school location. The summer-school teacher was of course Coach. He asked a question one day and called on me. I gave the correct answer. He told me I was wrong and called on someone else who gave the correct answer again but in different words. Wrong again, call on someone else who this time gave the correct answer for a third time using the exact same words as I did the first time. Finally! Someone gave him the correct answer!

[keith]

As for math, I have mixed results.

I could always understand the principles perfectly, but once I understood them I just had no patience to apply them.

Except in Euclidean geometry. I found that trivially simple. I remember Beaver Cleaver and Ricky Nelson and I dunno who else always having meltdowns over geometry in school and I just couldn't grok what their problem was.

Calculus was less easy of course, but easily understood. I just got bored working out problems and therefor performed lousy on tests. I forced myself to retake Calculus a couple of times just to keep up the practice, but it didn't do me much good - and therefore didn't get very far. I could visualize what was going on and totally understand the consequences of this or that, but when it came to the nitty gritty, I just wanted to move on to the next concept. I was on target to a get a major in Chemistry/Physics and a double minor in Math and Astronomy. I finally realized that my mental block in Math was going to do me in, and when Organic Chem hit me in the mouth, I realized my real love was Computer Science anyway.

[busterbunker]

I liked geometry from the start, when they told me it was all based upon postulates: statements that are assumed to be true without proof. Like there's no such thing as a point.

I was like cool, I can dig this, since you just admitted you're all just making this up. Sometimes it pays to be honest.

[Foggy]

Teacher story:

I was in 7th grade at Thomas Pyle, uh, they don't have middle school in Maryland. Thomas Pyle Junior High School, that's what it was. The music teacher taught some other subject, we sat in the band room and watched him smoke cigarettes, which in 7th grade were a thing. And he could hold in an enormous lungful of cigarette smoke forever. We'd count how long before he let it go.

Anyway, I pissed him off so badly one time, he grabbed a pair of bongos and threw them completely across the room so they hit the wall on the other side, and when they fell, they fell on a violin and cracked it with a big CRACK! and everybody held their breath because we knew he was going to kill me for sure this time.

I would almost say, poor guy, I know I can be really annoying, and he did have to buy the kid a new violin. But he could have killed somebody with those bongos, and even though he got lucky and they didn't hit anything but the wall and the violin, it was a stupid and dangerous move.

I got other teacher stories, but that will do for today.