This is the first of a two-part series. (I've written the second but doubt anyone will read it all at one sitting.)
Bad Teachers:
My kindergarten teacher was named Miss Heart. MisNomer is more like it because she didn't have one. She scolded me for sitting under the piano during music time. Little did she realize I felt safe there and loved pressing my ear to the body of the piano to hear its rich tones.
My first grade teacher, Miss Andersen, commited the cardinal sin of teaching: nicknaming kids.
One day she was passing back tests and said to this one boy named Hans, "Hands....and Feet...you need to use your head more. " And to me she said, "ZoBo, I mean BoZo---" and I don't remember the rest. I just remember that I was already so sensitive about having an odd name, I hated her for making it worse.
My second grade teacher was named Mrs. Schmidt. She had grey hair and seemed 70 years old, but she was probably 45. I'll never forget the day she ignored me and ignored me and ignored me as I waved frantically for her permission to let me go to the bathroom. She was calling up kids to the front to get their graded tests. I went up for mine along with three or four other kids, stood there in my 1972 maxi skirt, and made a yellow puddle on the floor beside her desk. She never asked which kid peed in her room--and I never told.
How about you? Who were some of your bad teachers and why?
You need not name them if you don't want to. I did because they are probably so old they don't know how to use computers, have long forgotten me or my odd name, and I really don't care. I went by Marie in second grade anyway. (See first grade bad teacher paragraph for why.)
Bad Teachers:
My kindergarten teacher was named Miss Heart. MisNomer is more like it because she didn't have one. She scolded me for sitting under the piano during music time. Little did she realize I felt safe there and loved pressing my ear to the body of the piano to hear its rich tones.
My first grade teacher, Miss Andersen, commited the cardinal sin of teaching: nicknaming kids.
One day she was passing back tests and said to this one boy named Hans, "Hands....and Feet...you need to use your head more. " And to me she said, "ZoBo, I mean BoZo---" and I don't remember the rest. I just remember that I was already so sensitive about having an odd name, I hated her for making it worse.
My second grade teacher was named Mrs. Schmidt. She had grey hair and seemed 70 years old, but she was probably 45. I'll never forget the day she ignored me and ignored me and ignored me as I waved frantically for her permission to let me go to the bathroom. She was calling up kids to the front to get their graded tests. I went up for mine along with three or four other kids, stood there in my 1972 maxi skirt, and made a yellow puddle on the floor beside her desk. She never asked which kid peed in her room--and I never told.
How about you? Who were some of your bad teachers and why?
You need not name them if you don't want to. I did because they are probably so old they don't know how to use computers, have long forgotten me or my odd name, and I really don't care. I went by Marie in second grade anyway. (See first grade bad teacher paragraph for why.)
2 comments:
Worst teacher I ever had: one of my high school social studies teachers (I'm not going to specify which area for further anonymity). I went to a school that, demographically (at the time) was mostly white. She was an African-American teacher that felt it was her role to "support" my "oppressed" black classmates; the rest of us could do 2 or 3 times the work and still not do as well as our friends that happened to have black skin. As a result, I worked my rear off and got a C one quarter (my only one in all of high school), barely pulled a B in the class, didn't learn a darn thing, and developed a hatred for the subject.
Can you tell it still brings up frustration? :)
My 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Johnson, had the COLDEST hands. When we would get worked up or were rowdy, she'd put her hands down the back of our shirts and say: "cool off." We really didn't like her.
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