Almostgotit confesses, belatedly, to a murder
September 09, 2009 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, bad teachers, education, humor, parenting, poetry, schools
My 8th grade daughter has a bad teacher in one of her favorite subjects. He’s a swaggery guy, newly imported from the west coast. He uses curse words, makes stuff up about English grammar, assigns no discernable work whatsoever, and belittles both the natives and the other teachers.Some of the other parents want to do something about it. I’m disgusted by the guy but don’t want to hurt my daughter.
I also don’t want to commit another murder.
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Long, long ago, I wrote a very dramatic and terrible letter to my own 8th grade teacher on the last day of school, and I think it made him quit.
Here’s why I think so: I saw Mr. M afterwards, walking across the campus. He looked stunned, my letter dangling from his hand as if it were a telegram telling him his entire family had just been murdered. And then he didn’t come back to teach again the next year.
Mr. M was a mousy little man who wore only brown and gray, didn’t wash much, and peered at us through John Lennon glasses balanced on the end of his long nose. But Mr. M had us studying all night and writing 40 page papers, goading us mercilessly with his dramatic favoritisms and sudden irritations. I was deeply in love some of my classmates, while vying desperately with several others for Mr. M’s arbitrary attentions.
Though it was a language arts & social studies class, Mr. M was our theatrical director, and we didn’t just read Shakespeare in that class, we lived it. For two hours every day, he played us very skillfully. We switched identities, fought with swords, died tragic deaths, and did lots and lots of swooning.
(I was particularly proud of that one.)
We were probably Mr. M’s entire life, but were too full of our own selves to notice. What I did notice was that he was impossible to please, and seemed only to have eyes for the same attractive people that I did.
So I killed him.
I had no idea, really, that this mop-headed, bespeckled teacher was also a real person, who could stop being a teacher and become unemployed instead. Nor was he, really, the source of my adolescent angst.
Probably.
Anyhoo, what to do about my daughter’s teacher?
There’s a happy ending for Mr. M, at least. I have no idea what happened during the intervening years, but someone sent me a newspaper clipping about him many years later. It was a feature story, headed by a large color photo of my former teacher, now posing in a flamboyant Bill Cosby sweater.
Introducing the new and improved Mr. M! He had resurfaced, and was known district-wide for his wildly polychromatic wardrobe, heavily featuring the color purple. The clothes were meant to go along with his penchant for dramatically unconventional teaching — get it?
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Moral: Don’t mess with Almostgotit’s head, and don’t ignore her poetry. Cause if you do?
First she will kill you and then she will turn you into a gay purple circus performer.
Knox County teachers, consider yourselves warned.
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September 10th, 2009 at 12:45 am
So …. if you mess with Almostgotit’s head, she will turn you into Barney?
September 10th, 2009 at 7:30 am
@D: exACTly.
September 10th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I guess sending Mr West Coast a short note, “Delta is ready when you are” is not quite the thing to do.
This is a toughie. Dealing with bad teachers is an important rite of passage for the young, but don’t you hate to see an incompetent fool draw a salary out of your tax dollars when you know there are better teachers out there? And know that your own child will miss an entire year of important instruction?
Is there is a way a group of parents can challenge the work assigned as it compares with the lesson plans the teacher prepared at the beginning of the year? So glad I don’t have kids–I couldn’t deal with this kind of carp. I honestly don’t know how any of you do it.
Is it illegal for your child to wear a wire in class? Or perhaps you could give him a cat with undisclosed hurling issues?
September 10th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Hi LouAnn! I can’t deal with this kind of carp either. Sending a cat after a bad fish, or (even better, since I’m trying to avoid murder this time ’round) handing his carpy self a plane ticket back to the coast sounds like a good idea, therefore.
September 10th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
That particular school of which you write certainly seems to have its share of crappy (carpy) teachers. I sat open-mouthed at one of teenager’s IEP meetings whilst his sixth-grade science teacher that year droned on and on about why she would not allow mechanical pencils in her classroom. (Something along the lines of, “If YOU had to listen to that clicking in YOUR classroom ALL DAY LONG, YOU would not allow them, EITHER!”) I could not enlist words to form in my open mouth, but my brain was screeching, “ARE YOU SERIOUS?” This was only the beginning of her diatribe, as my boy had dared to enter her classroom on the first day of school with the verboten mechanical pencils in tow. She didn’t accomplish much with him that year, but she did manage to pound every ounce of joy out of the study of science, which had previously been his favorite subject.
At the very least, I think you and the other parents could take matters into your own hands. Maybe surround the guy wielding, I don’t know, what? Not mechanical pencils, but maybe Strunk and White?
September 10th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
And your next post will be about an AMAZING teacher that your daughter has…… it will be good for your soul.
September 11th, 2009 at 10:16 am
You are a force to be reckoned with! Good on you!
September 11th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Oh, and confession is good for the soul.
September 11th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
We will survive our teachers’ eccentricities, as long as they aren’t physically harmful. Teachers have a tough job with anxious parents looking over their shoulders. Most importantly, do they encourage our children to think and be analytical? Do they teach our kids to question everything and form opinions of their own?