Write & Wrong

Teachers.

As a high school student, I have a lot to say about teachers.

I have recently switched counties (going from the best schooling county in the state to one of the worst)  to attend a school of the arts to pursue writing. (Ayeee) This school has been given great reviews on account of its teaching curriculum, so when I had auditioned, my mom and I thought it would be fabulous to have a great writing curriculum as well as great academics.

Oh, boy were we wrong.

By the second week, I was throwing binders across my room, yelling into my pillow how much I hated my English teacher, and Christmas-treeing homework assignments.

My mom was astounded - during the orientation, the principal of the school had made it clear the academic teachers were above par, and my mom was just, "Yeah, okay, sweet." But when I told my mom stories of how my teachers were even below subpar, she got pretty pissed as well.

Practically all of my teachers this year aren't even deserving of the title. Like, where did you spend your four (or more) years in college? Eating cheetos in front of the TV, barely graduating with a teaching degree? Because if you keep teaching me the way you are now, I'm barely going to graduate too, yay, thanks. And then stupid things teachers do, God. They're worse than Dad Jokes ("Hi Hungry, I'm Dad.").

There have been so many lists made about this, but I'm going to reiterate it for you so you can groan in agony. You're welcome:

-"No students, we have a whole ten seconds of class yet, there's no need to pack up."

-"Why were you late for class? Going to the bathroom? There's no excuse, five minutes is obviously enought time to go to leave your previous class, pry your way through crowded hallways, go to your locker, squeeze past slow-walking upperclassmen, go to the bathroom, grab your stuff again, and run across the school to this classroom. Detention."

-"Go to the bathroom now? In the middle of class? You have time between classes, go then." (I swear.. one day...)

-"Students, no phones out in class. But come look at this cool video on my phone!" (I know, I know, teachers should have safety precautions in case a family member needs them or the school's phones aren't working in case of an emergency, but something just.. doesn't... feel... right when a teacher does this.)

-"Now what we're reading has some, eh, adult content, so I need you all to be mature enough to handle it. The S-word is mentioned multiple times in this book, so stay with me here." (DO YOU NOT HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU JUST SAID?)

-"I know you all were probably going Trick-or-Treating, but there's no excuse why you didn't get your 4-page research paper done. It's your responsibility to get your homework finished." (When my teacher had said this to me, I ilterally had to get out my stress ball. Literally. I was two seconds away from cursing the guy out. Have some compassion, for God's sake - why would you assign a research paper to be due the day after Halloween with the knowledge that 90% of students would be out untl midnight and pass out on the couch immediately after getting home?)

-"Oh, okay, how many of you don't understand the material? All of you? Wow, that's too bad. Get started on the homework."

-"If you don't understand how to do this problem, there's stuff in the book. Go find it."

-"You have homework for tonight." (THIS ABSOLUTE HORROR NEVER CEASES.)

-"What's the answer to number ten? Oh, yes, you there, who doesn't understand the material and isn't raising their hand in fear of embarassment, walk us through how to do this."

That last one in particular really gets to me. I have a lot of hard, time-consuming classes this year, and in turn, I've had a crap ton of missed homework assignments. As much as it pains me to say it, *swallows vomit* homework does help me learn. Ugh. Gross. Just looking at it makes me want to drown in a state of lethargy.

But one day, I didn't get around to finishing an assignment for Latin class. Now, keep in mind, I miss some homework assignments purely out of prioritzing my homework load, but this time, I was absent the previous day. Since I have Latin every other day at my school (don't judge my school schedule - yours is probably just as weird), I didn't have access to my stuff because it was all still in my locker. So I finished all that I could during lunch and rushed into Latin to ask my teacher for an extension. "I was sick in bed yesterday, so I didn't have an opportunity to grab my Latin stuff with me; could I get an extra class to finish this up?" Reasonable, right?

Damn right.

But this, ugh, this thing just cocks her head to the side, shrugs her shoulders and says, "Well, it was due today..." and walks away.

I'm just thinking, really? C'mon, I did not practically cough up all my internal organs for you to sit here and tell me that being absent is not a valid enough reason to not complete an assignment.

So I Christmas-treed it right before we were required to turn it in, of course, but then, oh yes, we have to go over the entire worksheet as a class, meaning people she calls on would "walk through" the problem for the entire class! What fun!

Question after question goes by, and I'm getting more relieved but stressed at the same time. More opportunities to asnwer questions are being passed, but I'm struggling to follow along, as a lot of it doesn't make sense to me. We get to the last question, and I think I'm home free, "Yes, she won't call on me to answer any of this! I made it out alive!"

"Lauren, how about you do number ten for us?"

"Fuck."

She knew I didn't do it, she knew I didn't understand the material, and what does she do? She makes me embarass myself for two minutes while I try to explain something everyone but me understands. Why do you do this to me.

That's something a lot of teachers seem to struggle with in my school. Compassion. I feel as if all of my academic teachers are out to see me fail, or they don't care enough to help me strive toward success. I don't understand why you'd want to be a teacher if you hate kids, because as my Englush teacher reiterates practically every day through equally crappy jokes, "How much is a teacher's salary? Not much." 

The thing is, teachers need to have a love for students. If you don't have that much, it's gonna suck for everyone. I understand at my age, high school kids are, at the minimum, a pain in the ass. But at least make an effort, c'mon. But then there are teachers who aren't inconsiderate soulless demons, they're just teachers who flat out don't know what the fuck they're doing.They might care about the kids, but they don't know how to do their fucking job: Teach. If you don't know how to teach, why would you prefer "living off a teacher's salary" (as my English teacher never fails to remind me)?

One of my teachers just paces around the classroom lecturing, but it's all from the book. All of it. The book is good, yes, for extra information, homework, straight definitions, and whatnot, but when every single day in that class is just the process of doing an assignment from the book, going over this assignment, and doing some vocabulary from the book, yeah, we can tell you don't know what to do. High school kids can be pretty perceptive. But as much as we all say we're fine with it, my class is all on this mutual stance that, when it comes down to it, we need to learn. We need to go beyond the textbook, make real-world, relevant connections to help us absorb the material. This lady is not providing us with this, and since a lot of my class either: a) doesn't listen to her straight-from-the-book lectures, or b) struggles with learning from text, a lot of my class is failing. And my teacher fails to understand why.

Ugh. Ugh,

My teachers this year are hardly worthy of the title, and that's how I refer to them to my friends from Top-Schooling-County-in-the-State. Those pure souls - they aren't even prepared for what kind of teachers are out there.

(I can go on forever about this - Teachers part 2?) 

hey vote if you think some teachers need to learn how to teach.