My Brother’s Worst Teacher<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nMy younger brother had a terrible teacher in the 2nd grade. He had what we now know is ADHD, but was undiagnosed and barely understood by the educational system at the time (this would have been circa 1986). The teacher surreptitiously took Polaroids of him in the act of “misbehaving” and would show them to my parents at parent-teacher conferences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most infamous photo features Michael on his knees in the chair, leaning over the desk with his elbow on the desk and his left hand holding his chin. Meanwhile, his right hand is gripping a pencil, and he appeared to be writing what we can only assume was the assigned task. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mom still has the photo. It’s one of her favorites of him.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Truly Bad Teacher<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The absolute worst was the day this teacher sent him to the principal’s office and forgot to retrieve him for lunch. In our elementary school, the grades went to lunch in order of year: 1st grade went first, 2nd grade went next, etc., all the way up to 6th grade. My little brother literally watched his class walk by without him on their way to the cafeteria – because children who were sent to the principal’s office were required to sit at a desk plainly visible by anyone walking down that hall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So by the time his 6th-grade sister (aka, yours truly) walked by, he was sobbing, devastated that his teacher had forgotten him. He was permitted to come to lunch with me. When we got home that afternoon, the way mom tells it, I planted my fists on my hips and announced, “You will\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0believe what Michael’s teacher did to him today.”<\/p>\n\n\n\nAs an adult and a professional teacher, I can honestly say that teacher hated teaching my brother, and it showed. She had no business being a teacher of anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My Worst Teacher<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nMy worst teacher was not as bad as my brother’s, but bad enough. He taught Driver Education. I was in the 11th grade in a US Department of Defense Dependent Schools (“DoDDS”) in Frankfurt, Germany, where the US Army had stationed my father. The one and only time in my life I ever got sent to visit the principal, it was by him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The day I got in trouble, I was deliberately ignoring him, because once again he was using his platform to berate the teenage population of the world – the very people he taught. I was admittedly doing something you shouldn’t do in class – writing notes to pass to a classmate or something, probably, but I don’t recall the specifics. Whatever it was, I was bent over my desk, engrossed in it. Not surprisingly, he called on me to answer a question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He may have been surprised that I’d heard the question, but he maintained a neutral expression. He had been discussing the sin of drinking and driving, and the epidemic of teenage drinking, and the question was: “What do you think makes teenagers drink?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I answered, “I have no idea. I don’t drink.” I may have sounded snarky. (Moi? Never.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He asked what I was writing. I said, “Notes.” (Hee hee.) He called me on it, though, and asked, “Taking notes? Or writing notes?” and demanded to see what I was writing, which of course, was not lecture-related. That was when he sent me to the principal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my high school, the Assistant Principal who was in charge of discipline was also the football coach, and I had been dating a football player for more than a year. Therefore, we knew each other, and Coach knew I’d never been sent to his office before, so he was very confused as to why I was there. I told him what happened. He gave me a sticker – do you know those stickers that football players get to affix to their helmets every time they make or participate in a significant play? Like a touchdown or a tackle or a fumble recovery? Yeah, it was one of those stickers. My boyfriend was like, HOW DID YOU GET THAT?\u00a0\ud83d\ude02 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that’s not the end of the story, because there was still a parent-teacher conference to survive, and my dad was furious with me. US Army, Military Police, he was a drill sergeant prior to our Germany assignment, and he believed in chain of command. His message was, I don’t care what that teacher said or did, you show him respect, always. My, “But, Dad…”s fell on deaf ears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until the conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a reminder, Dad was a drill sergeant, which is basically a teacher. His job was to teach army recruits – barely adults – how to be soldiers. He was good at it. He loved it. He’s probably the reason I caught the teaching bug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when this teacher looked my dad square in the face and said, “I look at young people these days, and I just want to crawl in a hole and hide,” I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen my father that angry. I was so flabbergasted that I don’t recall the specifics of what Dad said, other than snippets like, “I’ve taught eighteen-year-olds for years”, and “never say something like that…” Honestly, I have no idea, but he let that teacher have it. Mom and I looked at each other with huge eyes, and when Dad said, “Come on, we’re done here,” we stood and followed him out without another word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that was my worst teacher. Still not as bad as Michael’s, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Encouragingly,
Michelle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a professional teacher, I’m interested in pedagogical topics like what makes a good or bad teacher. Obviously, I’d prefer the be the former! So I drew on my own experience and identified the two worst teachers I have ever encountered. My Brother’s Worst Teacher My younger brother had a terrible teacher in the 2nd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
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