Teachers have a defining role in a student’s life. They can guide you, mentor you, act as role models or even be your friends. At WIS, I’ve had the luxury of having these types of teachers. However, to say my previous school was different is an understatement.
There were definitely moments where teachers were not guiding me (at least not in the right direction), not mentoring me, definitely not acting like role models, and not being even remotely friendly. Were all incidents entirely their fault? You can decide. Either way, they make good stories. So without further ado, let me tell you about my weird teacher experiences.
My first experience happened when I was only about six, but I definitely haven’t forgotten it. I don’t know why my teacher thought it was a good idea to entrust a bunch of first graders with live animals, but she did. We were studying the life cycle and were actually incubating live chicken eggs that would hatch.
Despite how nice this idea was, when the time came for the eggs to hatch, none of them did. Our teacher then proceeded to open the “dead chicken eggs” and show us what could’ve hatched; as if the ordeal wasn’t scarring enough for five-year-olds who probably haven’t fully grasped the concept of death. I distinctly remember her pointing to a part of the yolk telling us this was where a leg could have formed. Needless to say, I was off eggs for a while.
In retrospect, first grade was just a weird year. The teacher would tell us stories about her medical operations with really graphic descriptions of her symptoms. She even explained how the doctors had to tie her arm down because she had no control over the nerves and could inadvertently hit herself in the head with her own arm. Later, we continued our life cycle unit and some tadpoles didn’t make it back into the pond either.
I was reminded about this next incident while reading The Visit by Friedrich Durrenmatt in English class; keep in mind, The Visit is a tragic comedy. In The Visit, the poor townspeople are offered one billion dollars if they kill a specific town member. Slowly, out of greed, the town gives in.
One day on the bus in fourth grade, a bunch of kids were messing around and started spitting at each other. Spitting is a perfectly punishable act; it was just the way she did it. The teacher turned around and caught two students but didn’t know who the third was. We, the class, all knew. In order to find out the culprit, the teacher kept the whole class in every single break time.
I guess she assumed we’d all peer pressure the one kid into owning up. That is exactly what we did. Day by day, this kid’s resolve started to crumble; until one day, he broke down sobbing in front of all of us. The teacher didn’t hug him or thank him for his honesty, even if it was delayed; she just dismissed us to lunch.
My teacher was pregnant for a large part of the year with a string of different substitutes during her maternity leave so we didn’t even have her that long. During her pregnancy, she misplaced all our folders, assumed we didn’t turn them in and kept us in during every single break until she found them in her drawer. Maybe she just loved keeping us in every break time.
To be fair, this next guy was a substitute, but he was a teacher at a neighboring school. While our sixth-grade music teacher was out on sick leave, he had us for several lessons in a row. The boring lessons included everyone going up and pressing the middle C on the piano. The uncomfortable lessons included him making us 12-year-olds sing “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” while he sang along, making weird facial expressions.
He was horrible at class control and we weren’t an easy class to control, to begin with, this just made things worse. He’d send boys to “the doghouse,” which was a corner in the room but that just gave them a stage. One day he got so fed up with a boy who constantly read in class that a stream of cuss words left his mouth as he slammed his hands into the table. The boy was reduced to tears.
These incidents were all bad but not terrible. By far, the worst experience I’ve had with a teacher was a Design and Technology (DT) project in seventh grade. This teacher didn’t care about us at all; I don’t really think he particularly liked us, I don’t even think he really knew our names.
We were supposed to be in pairs and create a small movie about the other person. I was really proud of my movie; however, my partner’s movie about me left a lot to be desired. He made me the complete laughing stock of the entire class. But the teacher’s reaction was priceless. He told the boy off (like he should have) but then he offered me “revenge”. He gave me the option to make a mean movie back at this guy which, no matter how tempting, was completely unethical and just kind of wrong.
I feel like the school just didn’t know how to function well in general. I mean the principal couldn’t get our names right at graduation. Maybe I was even lucky nothing worse happened to me.
By: Celeste Bloom
