School days, rule days & witches
Now, I'm sure that some of you are already heading back to the salt mines & it's been quite a while since I was in school, but ofcourse I was in college recently. I remember not being too enthused about school back in my younger days, but once I learned in college that I could actually be a great student, I kind of regreted having been the slacker I was back in school.
Any of you have any witches that you have to deal with? & yes, I say that jokingly. Actually you'll find that those who are the most strict.....in many cases have your best interests in mind. Case in point, I remember back in Junior high. We had an old English teacher that struck fear in us all. Beehive hairdoo & that old lady chain on her glasses. By God, you were gonna diagram a sentence & be able to pick out the subject, verb, Direct object, & all of that other jazz whether you liked it or not. She even made us make a rule book containing all of this stuff & by God, should any of us have ever showed up without our rule book, Oh Christ! You were in for it. she had a list up on the blackboard called the late buss list which was a detention list of all of those being kept after school. Even the straight A students in our class made the list from time to time. I was a regular. I just knew that Friday was gonna be my ten hour day & that's all there was to it.
This was back when a teacher could slap you & she never let us down. Later, we found out she was a friend indeed. When we went on to high school, she would offer to help us in any way she could & to this day, anyone who ever had her as a teacher adds her to the guest list at their wedding. The funny thing is that back then, I wasn't into rollercoasters at all, but she was. That's right, this elderly lady may have been old, but she was young at heart. She was crazy about riding rollercoasters.
Ofcourse there are occasions in which a teacher does act in an irresposible manner & probably doesn't belong in the profession. I can recall a junior high math teacher who was on drugs, a gay band teacher who got canned at the school, & we had a real witch back in the third grade in which on one occasion made a few of us stay in the classroom all day without permission to leave the room for any reason. I don't even remember what it was we had done,but somehow, I don't think it was anything too major.
Coaster Zeke
Actually, the majority of my best teachers have been the ones who haven't been really strict. My favorite teacher of all time was a great teacher, he was somewhat strict, didn't like foul language, but would give kids their chances, he was never slow to play along with any games, he always made learning history fun, he was a Cubs fan, and an overall great guy, he taught me what I needed and more.
As for the teacher that taught me the most, he was a good teacher, but not my favorite, he was extremely kind, he really didn't have much classroom control at all though, and that's where he lacked, but I learned more in that class than in any other class in my life, a math class too.
As for the unkind teachers I've had, one was a music teacher, and I really hated her. If you didn't bring 2 pencils to class every day, it was a detention, you had to borrow a pencil from someone with three, and give them a pencil in return. She did play major favorites, and after a bad first day, she hated me a lot, and a few other kids that really never did anything wrong, but if they gave a wrong answer after raising their hand, look out, she'd literally make a fool of them in front of the entire class. Ever heard the phrase, "Smart kids ask questions,"? Well, throw that out the window, on the 3rd or 4th day, I asked a question on a project that we were assigned after she asked if there were any questions. It was something she hadn't brought up yet, and she recognized that, but after answering that, she told me I asked too many questions and told me that I would be limited to 3 questions the rest of the trimester. There's so much I could go on about this lady, but I won't, it just angers me, this woman should not have been teaching in a classroom.
I've had my share of bad teachers, and looking back at all of them, I didn't like them then, and I don't like some of the bad ones now, even though there were a few strict teachers out there that were going for the best of us, most of the ones that did a better job at it were the less strict ones, and in college now, I feel it's a good time to be able to look back at them and know better than back then which were good and which were bad. There are some cases where my mind has changed over the years, but really, the best ones were the kind ones, but that's just in my school district and the schools I went to. Still though, the best teachers out there IMO are the early elementary teachers, they're willing to show the patience to deal with hyper young kids and teach them the most important things they'll ever learn in life.
