Sunday, September 07, 2008

Teachers

The question was asked: What would you like to say today to the teacher that gave you a hard time in school?
Well, here is what I'd like to say:

Up yours! I'm 43 years old and I don't have to be here any more! You're obviously part of my nightmare!
One teacher that I can think of that gave me a hard time was my gym teacher when I was nine years old. I hadn't understood something he said so he made me run back and forth across the gym as a punishment and encouraged the other kids to laugh at me when my face turned beet red.
The other teacher that gave me a hard time was my sixth grade teacher who I really don't think liked kids at all. It's amazing that I still enjoy writing, but I think it's because I could see he was a jerk, in spite of the fact that I was always crying in his class. He was always giving me F's on my writing because I "followed too closely" the outlines I created. In other words, he knew that I wrote the story first and then the outline. But if you didn't follow the outline you created initially you would also get downgraded. It was a no-win situation. However, I remembered from when I was in fifth grade submitting a writing sample for those yearly tests and the results came back telling me that I was writing at an eighth grade level. I was proud of that and it stayed with me. Luckily, because sixth grade was horrible. Not only did I have this teacher trying to make me feel stupid, but I was given one of those IQ tests that is based on pattern recognition. Having a degree of dyslexia (which was not something they'd heard of back in the day) when it comes to numbers and patterns, I did horribly at it and until I was in my twenties and took a Mensa test (and did well on the whole, believe it or not) I believed that I was borderline retarded and was fooling everyone whenever I got a decent grade.
On the whole, I'd like to give almost every educational professional from my sixth grade year a whoopin' that they wouldn't forget.

1 comment:

Tom & Icy said...

In many cases the old saying is true: Those who can't do, teach.