I don't know if the elementary school I attended was just randomly freakish, or if most elementary school teachers develop bizarre eccentricities after years of stickers and line-forming. Whatever the case, I had some wack-jobs for teachers. Let's review:
Kindergarten: After moving in January, my new, "big-boned" teacher promptly breaks both her legs after locking herself out of the house and trying to climb in through a small window. Her replacement is mean, barks orders to us children in German and often complains that we don't know how to read yet but fails to do anything to resolve that. (Luckily, my mom did a great job at home.)
First grade: My teacher tells us to call her, "Mommy," but not to tell our parents. I feel guilty to two-time my own mommy, so I start calling her "mom" or "mother" instead.
Second grade: Somewhat normal, this teacher still boasts a 100+ Keds shoes collection and matches most of her outfits to their various colors and designs. Animal prints are a popular theme. She also chain smokes. About every five minutes.
Third grade: Pretty sure I lucked out with a normal teacher this time, though there may or may not have been a painful divorce and affair going on for her at the time. Whatever the case, she often sobbed at her desk. I should know, she moved mine right next to her because I was a bit of a chatterbox.
Fourth grade: This guy may be in prison. We rarely did schoolwork, but we watched TV all day, mostly faithfully "Good Morning America" and "Days of our Lives." He would make fun of any student mercilessly. He hung our Christmas tree from the ceiling. He seemed to have an unnatural affection for some of the female students. And he insisted on reminding me that I wasn't as cute as my sister, who was the size of a small mouse at the same age, whereas I was tallest person in my class.
Fifth grade: Not so bad, thankfully, though my teacher was a former P.E. teacher who developed skin cancer and opted to stay inside that year. Let's just say that most of our schoolwork involved jumping jacks.
Sixth grade: I actually loved both of my teachers that year - some sort of team-teaching gig - until one of them got pregnant out of wedlock and ran off to Alaska to be with her boyfriend. And then I moved to another school with totally normal teachers.
What's your best school story?
12.14.2007
Tales from school
Posted by Mrs. Dub at 6:12 AM
23 comments Leave a witty comment hereLabels: memory lane, Random Friday, school
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23 comments:
Oh my goodness! I have never heard of such randomly bizarre teachers, and you endured them all! That is nuts.
I'm afraid I have nothing to compare with this. One of my 5th grade teachers had a "roommate" but we were all pretty certain she was gay. And it was catholic school, so it was all very in the closet.
Ah, Mrs. Keith's keds--legendary.
i had one teacher in high school... he'd sit on a stool in front of class and put his feet on the bars of the stool and make sure his feet were close together so that he could open/close his legs ALL throughout class. AND he would talk to much that he would foam at the mouth. It was rather disturbing lol.
I'm with Mom, they don't come much better than your Third Grade teacher. Are sure the sobbing wasn't because you were sitting next to her desk? But you remember the chatterbox part right. Oh, and I am pretty sure that your Fourth Grade teacher liked his women a little bit older, like say 20 (and he was about 60), but not nearly as much as he liked betting on the ponies. If your classroom TV had featured OTB or horserace recaps, you'd have been watching Santa Anita instead of DOOL. I don't remember the rest, but even if you lived on the wrong side of the tracks in the District (i.e., you weren't rich enough to go to school with Alice Cooper's kids), it was supposedly the best district in the state at the time, and you were the most popular raisin in the school. Ironically, your sisters who started school in a woebegone inner-city district learned to read and do math before you and your brother who started in the "elite" district.
Straight from my blog, sorry for the length:
One teacher in particular stands out in my memory. It was eighth grade and his name was Mr. Crow. He didn’t look that intimidating, just an average balding middle-aged guy. His decor was a bit questionable, particularly the prominently displayed swastika flag on his wall. He did teach history, but I’m pretty sure a rather sadistic sense of humor was behind it. During his lectures, he’d walk slowly between the rows of desks slapping a ruler in the palm of his hand. If he thought you weren’t paying attention, or for no reason at all, he’d smack his ruler on your desk with a deafening snap that made the whole class jump. I’m fairly sure he had a part time job at a local grocery store manning the security camera. Or maybe he lived there. At any rate, he was always making creepy comments about having seen students there. Like, “Someone threw a package of toilet paper over the shelves at me the other day. Just remember, I know who you are.” One day I was in said grocery store with my mom, picking out a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. Over the freezerful of poultry, I was telling my mom about Mr. Crow and his odd Macey’s stories. The next day in class, he turned to me and said ominously, “Did you and your mom find that turkey you were looking for?” I blushed scarlet and nearly ran out of the room once class was over.
i had a 5th grade teacher who told us we weren't making little homemade presents for mother's day because our mom's just threw them away anyway. I cried the whole way home.
this just reminds me that i really should be very afraid every day when i drop my kids off at school.
lets move on to high school:
guitar class freshman year, i can't believe that teacher let us arrive 30 minutes late every day and didn't bat an eye when kids were rolling joints in the middle of class. that was a real education.
Oh man, what a collection! My 2nd grade teacher mysterious left with no warning halfway through the year, & rumors flew as to why. Our consolation prize was a tootsie pop and a new, much meaner teacher. In 5th grade it was rumored that my teacher kept alcohol in her coffee thermos; and we all believed it when she later mysteriously left.
In high school I had a string of different choir teachers my senior year, and when they ran out of music subs we started getting generic subs who would just take roll and leave us to our own devices. I took charge of the choir and had some official meetings with the principal about the matter, and I was solely in charge of our choir's portion of the fine arts banquet at the end of the year. They never paid me a dime; I should sue.
I have one thing to add Male Drama teacher 7th grade No UNDERWEAR and WHITE Pants... Delish.. OH,wait 2 things Mrs Carr who threw earasers at my HEAD .. oh and the 3rd is an ufortunate middle school counselor who beleived my fake crying so I could get out of running the mile .. memories are so sweet and yet so bitter
If it's any consolation, I have friends with children at Tavan today, and they LoOoOvE the school. I think it must be better now. ? ? ?
I really have no horror stories. I think my teachers were fairly normal. And I'm so sure PDaddy is taking a swing at Hopi. :) Just because we went to school with the Coopers.... Sheesh. :)
they do develop bizarre eccentricities after years of stickers and line-forming. trust me.
my health teacher (a lesbian) taught us HOW to be lesbians one day. i walked out of the class and was almost suspended for doing so.
stoopid teacher. my mom was (as you can imagine) all over that.
omg. brooke. you stole my one favorite teacher story!!! mr. thompson was SOOOOOOO creepy. the white pants (with the yellow stain in the groin area)... no, the ALL white outfit... the all green outfit. seriously, he had three or four ALL monochrome outfits that he just rotated. even the shoes matched. and all of the shirts were the t-shirts made from the middle school plays that he directed. oh, and he kept a jar of vaseline in his drawer... sure, he could've had chapped lips, but i think it has something more to do with the yellow stain.
okay, now i've just gone too far.
Okay, so I am just a random reader, but two stories from junior high/ high school come to mind. One day in my 7th grade science class, the teacher called me to his desk and asked me how much I weighed. I told him 90 pounds or something like that. He told me I couldn't possibly weigh that much so he sent me to the nurse's office and had her weigh me on the scale and then send a note back down to him with how much I weighed. Then he made me state my weight on a tape recorder he had, and to make the whole situation worse, he played the recording out loud every few minutes the entire class period thinking it was the most hilarious thing. Weird! Then my senior year in high school, I fell asleep in class and my gum dropped out into my hair because I was kind of leaning sideways and my hair was on my shoulder-I had really long hair. I wake up and my teacher is standing there with a pair of scissors and he tells me he is going to cut the gum out. I refuse to let him and tell him I will go to the bathroom and get it out, but he won’t let me and tells me either he will cut it out or I can. So I chop off a chunk of my hair in the middle of class. Again another great school experience. Sorry that was so long.
generally speaking, i had good teachers... but 7th grade. mr. whiteley. short man. tom selleck moustache. a little too friendly with the girls. hairy chest. how do i know that part, you ask? sex ed... something about showing us what puberty does to a man's chest. i even have a strange recollection of him mentioning that he, his wife and his kids all hung around his house naked. seriously... how did these people get jobs as teachers!?
oh... and i can't forget to mention my spanish-speaking french teacher. there is nothing more difficult than learning a second language from someone who barely speaks your own.
and what is it with school teachers and nasty coffee/cigarette breath?
oh... and my elementary school principal tried to drown himself in the ocean.
ok, so i'm really seriously reconsidering my stance on home-schooling right now.
Wow. Although you have me beat, I will share my worst year of elementary ever: 4th grade.
Let's call him Mr. S. He would tell us if we missed a question we were "Suckin' canal water, Mildred." ?? He made us feel terrible all the time and I don't recall learning a thing in his class. I had to play a lot of catch-up in math in 5th grade, but luckily I had my most favorite teacher ever that year.
Skip forward to 7th grade. I had a typing teacher that was AWFUL. I type a lot. I type really quickly, I've been told. (And loudly). But she was so mean. She called you out in the middle of the class to taunt you if you missed a certain percentage of your letters. She would go by and poke you with a stick if she caught you looking at your fingers or your screen instead of what you were supposed to be copying from. I came home one night so mad at her and started telling my mom about it when I said, "You know, she's just like Mr. S..." when it dawned on me they had the same last name.
And they were, in fact married.
I just want tosay ditto to angy and brooke and steph!!! I had those teachers too!! I also had a spanish teacher in 7th grade who threw a kid at the filing cabinets during class...... those crazy teachers!!!
It's hard to top a teacher asking her class to call her "mommy". That makes me feel pukey.
I did have a kooky 6th grade teacher who curled her hair in beer every night (?!) and had us sit in the grass outside "feeling" the universe so we could write poetry about it. Good times, good times.
Those are some bizarre stories. My 4th grade teacher was from Thailand. She really did make kids wash their mouth out with soap - that powder junk they have at schools- if they cussed, and would tape their mouths shut with masking tape if they talked too much.
My Spanish high school teacher - from Ecuador- would tell us all sorts of stories about women he had affairs with, and crazy (illegal) stuff he did when he was a kid, and called his wife his "Gringa" and told us about his "Lolita" that was waiting for him back in Ecuador. And was a little too friendly with the females in his class. Creepy.
no great school stories - but back to the ZOFRAN, I love love love love love love love love the stuff. I had to go to the hospital and get a drip of the stuff before I could get a prescription and not pay $50/pill or whatever and I would do it all over if it mean curbing the barf (which it did miraculously)
Heh heh. All good stories. Have to second what Pdaddy observed--grades 1-3 in the ghetto did a lot more for me than grades 3-6 in the "nice" school. When I showed up halfway through fourth grade, the class was using all the books we had used in third grade at the ghetto school--so the Christmas-tree hanging teacher let me devise my own curriculum for the remainder of the year. Mostly I used the teacher's edition books of other texts that he happened to have in the classroom. Because I felt I worked so hard during the day, I let myself take it easy at night and didn't assign myself any homework for the entire year. Christmas-tree hanging teacher was surprisingly okay with that scheme. Anyhow, that's why he liked me--he didn't have to teach me anything. It had nothing to do with my now long-departed mouse-sized phase.
Mrs Dub- can I just say, I wish I had grown up in your town! Not only are your teacher stories profoundly disturbing but it seems as though all your childhood friends had equally weird experiences! The best I can do is my crazy 3rd grade teacher who had been at the school FOREVER- I wouldn't be suprised to find her there today. Not only did she spit coffee at the entire front row of the class (we never knew if it was on purpose) she also enjoyed throwing objects at the heads of any students who weren't paying attention. Most of the time it was erasers, chalk, notebooks, etc... but I do recall a paper weight narrowly missing a boy in our class. How do these teachers keep their jobs??
oh, these were funny to read!
my personal favorite was an honors history teacher in high school. One day an Army recruiting helicopter landed on the football field while we were discussing the Cold War, and she started shrieking "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Get under your desks!"
Another time she rearranged the seating order and put all the kids from Canada (I grew up in Michigan) in the corner by the door, referred to them as "those dirty Canucks!" and refused to let them join class discussions. And another time, this kid from Brazil wrote his name on his textbook and she yelled at him, so he pulled a knife out of his pocket, cut off all the sides of the pages so you couldn't read his name, and handed the book back to her. Good times.
let's see - I ran cross country in junior high because Mr. Timko was my hot history teacher/cross country coach who convinced me to do it (I HATE running!!). and back in 3rd grade, my teacher's name was Mrs. New Year, and her father-in-law's first name was Happy. NO JOKE!! One time while in her class, my dad helped me make a very creative project, and she took one look at it and said, "Hmmm, different." We still quote that today...
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