Top Twenty Unnecessary, Ironic, Mean, or Just Plain Stupid Things Teachers Have Said

Well, apart from the countless ones I already listed in past blog posts.

1. When my geometry teacher solved a problem for us on the board, his head was in the way, completely obscuring his work. Valeria, the girl who sat behind me, commented (albeit louder than necessary), “I can’t see the work because Mr. F’s big head is in the way.” Mr. F promptly retorted, equally unnecessarily, “You need to shut your big mouth. It’s only holding you back.” I think it was meant to be clever…?

2. Erica, who sits next to me in geometry, rolled up the sleeve of her T-shirt to get a better look at a freckle. In doing so, she exposed her shoulder (scandalous!), which was slightly paler than the rest of her arm. Mr. F walked by at the same moment, glanced at her arm, and commented, “You need more color.”

3. Mr. F informed us we had a test today. The whole class protested they had heard nothing of a test, and Valeria took a survey, asking everyone in the class to raise their hand if they knew the test was today. Not a soul raised their hand, so she clarified, "I'm assuming this means no one knew there was a test?" Nobody protested.

"No, you guys knew," replied Mr. F, with his trademark Aw-look-at-you-cute-students-thinking-you're-actually-smart look.

"If you're gonna give us a quiz," chimed in a girl named Lily, "at least admit it's a pop quiz. No one knew!"

"I told you it was gonna be this week," he informed us, "so you guys knew."
4. Mr. F asked us how many of us were interested in law, then announced, "Well, here's where you get to start using courtroom stuff. In a courtroom, you have to use evidence to prove your answer." (Wow, that's so original! No teachers have ever asked us to prove our answer before!)
Erica, who had taken student court with me last year, objected, "Well, technically you don't have to prove it, you just have to convince the jury."
"Eh," he replied intelligently, waving his hand at her and moving on.

5. "We don't have time for questions."

6. From every lunchroom facilitator ever: “You guys are in [insert number] grade. It shouldn’t take you this long to quiet down. You’re supposed to be setting an example for the younger kids.”

7. Mr. B, assigning in-class research on feminine hygiene to a class of seventh-graders: “I know you guys are mature enough to handle this without giggling.”

8. The child-loathing sadist Ms. A, my seventh-grade algebra teacher, had a particular student who was retaking algebra and had been in her class the previous year, which was how he solved everything so quickly: he had already had the lessons. When she told us about the new part of the curriculum, which hadn’t been used last year, he quietly said, “Oh.” In the trend of antagonistic, unpleasant math teachers (I’ve had a number of them…), she unnecessarily snapped, “Yeah, Allen. So maybe you should quit messing with your calculator and pay attention.”

9. Whenever anyone asked her a question about a topic we'd already covered, Ms. A would snap, "There is absolutely no reason you should be having trouble with this. We've been over this in class already. Are you having trouble with this?"

And she wonders why no one comes in for lunch help...

10. When my algebra class was in the media center registering for eighth-grade classes, my guidance counselor wandered over and saw me pick algebra for eighth-grade math instead of geometry. I was retaking it, because I'd gotten a B, two C's, and an E, and didn't want that on my college applications. "So you're gonna want to pick geometry," she told me.

I shook my head. "I'm retaking algebra because I wasn't satisfied with my grades." I expected some sort of surprised pleasure, because I had actually opted to retake the most painful class ever because I knew I could do better, cared about my grades, and was thinking ahead to what colleges would want. This is the epitome of school-counseling recommendations.

Instead, she looked horrified. "Are you sure your parents are gonna be okay with that?" she asked.

 "Yeah," I assured her, holding up the page of courses I intended to take with my mom's signature on the bottom. "She signed off on it."

Mrs. F called Ms. A over and said, in a grim, grave voice, "We have a student here retaking algebra - and the parent's signed off on it."

Hypocrisy is alive and well in the school system, everyone!

11. At the beginning of the year, when Ms. A was explaining her homework chart, an elaborate system she had concocted that gave increasingly large, sugary rewards to the kids who finished all of theirs: “It’s lots of fun to have the kids who didn’t do all their homework watch you eating your ice cream without them.”

12. [Put a poster on the wall of Ms. A’s room reading You are valuable. Don’t let anyone make you believe differently.]

13. [Put cowardly on the list of adverbs on the wall.]

14. For an activity on Chasing Vermeer: the sentence Enjoy the packet of Pentomino's. (This from a professional reading teacher.)
15. From an English teacher: "The idea is to say as much as possible using the least amount of words possible."

16. Also from an English teacher: “Use sentence frames! You guys aren’t ready to write your own sentences.” (Note: My generation cannot be blamed for the inevitable cessation of new fiction.)

17. Admittedly, I've heard this secondhand, and never actually met the teacher in question, but my sister shared an anecdote of an art substitute who detailed the rules and then snapped, "It is so rude to raise your hand while I'm talking! If you have your hand up, it is covering your ear, so then you obviously can't hear me talk." I find this quite believable, sadly (see #20).

18. This is also secondhand: apparently, one of my friends had a Spanish teacher who asserted that one shouldn't date unless one is planning to marry the person they're dating.

19. A girl from my book club gave me an account of the time she wrote 42 on her paper, and her teacher insisted she erase it because the teacher "knew about you kids and your 420 reference to drugs." She protested that it was just the answer to life, the universe, and everything, but the teacher remained certain she was trying to sneak a marijuana reference in under her radar.

20. An English substitute I had when I was in sixth grade was explaining the rules to our class when she suddenly yelled, “Why are you raising your hand?! That’s so disrespectful!”

I swiveled in my seat to look, and there was Tommy, protesting, “I had a question!”

“Why would you raise your hand when I’m talking?” she demanded again. “Do your other teachers stand for this?”

“Um, yeah,” he muttered.

“Oh, I don’t think they do, young man,” she informed him coldly.

If anyone has any other anecdotes of unnecessary, ironic, mean, or stupid things they've heard teachers say, please leave them in the comments section. If I get enough, I'll compile another list.

And The Moral of the Story Is.....?

    I just got back from seventh-period English class and my teacher, who was out sick Monday through Thursday last week, has come back. I was on a student court trip all day Friday, when she finally returned. I asked three other students from my English class about what happened on Friday, and they all said that the teacher chewed them out for talking during class and generally “disrespecting” the subs. She told them she hoped it wouldn’t happen again (dream on, Mrs. T - you’re teaching middle school). The students apparently tried to argue that the subs were just insane - which they were - but of course, two random teachers against a class of twenty-something eyewitness students? The students don’t have a chance.

    I have frequently noticed this pattern, as a matter of fact.

    So today, we began preparations for our next writing assignment, which is going to be a narrative. The teacher says it can be about anything we want as long as it has a theme. (Remember - when she says theme, she means moral.) My prediction is that we’re going to get a rubric about length, structure (i.e., introduce the conflict at the beginning, have two instances of rising action and two of falling action, etc.), and just about everything except plot, but teachers have varying definitions of “anything”.

    She is still determined that authors only write stories to teach life lessons, and that this is applicable in every case. I wholeheartedly disagree - maybe you can take a moral from most stories, but that doesn’t mean they were just written as lessons. Maybe it’s me, but that sort of makes it sound like fiction has to be justified - like you can’t just read or write a book for enjoyment, like I do; you have to be getting a life lesson from it. For instance, what is the moral of, say, any of the Harry Potter books? Do you think J.K. Rowling wrote them to teach that, I don’t know, friendship conquers everything or something equally sentimental? (And if she submitted Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for an English assignment before she published it, would her teacher tell her it was unsatisfactory because it didn’t follow some neat little rubric and she didn’t emphasize her moral?)

    I thought for a while about what I would write. Originally, I was trying to think of a way to skirt the guidelines and let her draw her own conclusions about the moral of whatever story I chose to write. Then I had a better idea: I would tell the story of a girl who loved to write, hated guidelines, especially for narratives, and thought her teacher’s opinions about morals - which, by a complete and utter coincidence, happened to be exactly the same as my English teacher’s - were kind of stupid. And I would ensure it was also good writing.

    Asking for trouble? Obviously - though that’s not why I came up with the idea. I just thought it would be a good piece of writing, and maybe make her think a little. (Not likely, but a girl can dream, right?)

    Today, she passed out blue index cards for everybody. We had to brainstorm potential themes for our narratives. She told us we didn’t have to make our final decision - we could change our minds when we started writing, and she just wanted us to have an idea of what we were going to write. Since I already had mine figured out, I got permission to skip the brainstorming page and just write mine. I assumed, when she didn’t collect it, that she would get them at the end of class, so I left mine on my desk. It read Moral: Not all stories have morals and so students shouldn’t be required to write every story with a moral.

    Looking back on it, it’s a lot more provocative than it seemed at the time. I could - and probably should - have left it at not all stories have morals. But still, it was legitimate. I already knew how I could write it.

    It’s probably easy to figure out where this is going, right?

    I got out my book and read for about fifteen minutes. Finally, she noticed I was done and asked for my card. Tensing, I handed it to her and innocently buried my nose back in my book, pretending I foresaw absolutely no impending explosion, while I waited for the impending explosion.

    “This isn’t a theme,” she stated coldly, handing the card back to me. “Try again.”

    “Why isn’t it a theme?” Okay, it’s obviously not the sort of theme she wanted, but I could write a story with this theme. I had already had it planned. I could prove it.

    “Because I’m telling you it’s not.”

    “Well, yes, I know, but why isn’t it a theme?”

    “Because,” she repeated, her voice hard, “I said it’s not a theme.”

    I could sense that to argue further would have been suicide. Irritated at her lack of answer, I erased my theme. She walked away, and immediately, the others at my table wanted to hear the controversial theme. I recited it for them.

    “Well,” I said, perking up as I recalled something she had said earlier, “she told us we could change it when we started writing. I’ll just put down some sentimental fake theme and write my story with the real one.”

    Janet suggested, “You should just do something like ‘Friends should always stick together.’”

    “Great,” I agreed, blowing eraser dust off my index card and writing it down. “Just the nauseating sort of thing teachers want.”

    Janet snorted in reply.

    The teacher saw as soon as I was finished writing and came over to retrieve my card. She picked it up gingerly, as if it was a bomb that could go off at any time. I could almost sense her relief as she scanned it. “Much better,” she said, an undercurrent of warning in her voice as she carried it away.

    Ha. If she thinks I give up that easily, she doesn’t know me very well.

    The moral of this story is: If you come up with a moral a teacher doesn’t like, she will treat you like a tantrumming two-year-old.

PS: Here is the story I eventually came up with and submitted.

Substitute Teachers and Torment OR, Tormenting Substitute Teachers

   I haven’t received critique for my persuasive essay yet because my English teacher’s been out most of the week and I had the student court field trip on Friday, the day she came back. However, the presence of multiple subs has proved endlessly entertaining, so I’ll share a few stories while I wait for my essay.

    First, you must know about Janet. She is one of three by that name (not actually Janet, because I’m not naming names), and all three are in advanced orchestra, which makes it difficult for subs calling attendance. She is bold to the point of insanity. Case in point: When a substitute teacher requested her name last year, so he could report her misbehavior to her teacher, she hollered, “Chimichanga!”

    She is in my English class, which is one of the main reasons the presence of multiple subs was so entertaining. Janet has gotten the concept of bothering substitute teachers down to an art. First, she sasses them about whatever comes up - for instance, a teacher passed her a worksheet of questions about a poem, and she said, sounding thoroughly bored, “I don’t want it.  Can you take it back?”

    Once a teacher gets mad, he or she will immediately start the displays of power - “Would you care to discuss this with the main office?” “You realize I have you tomorrow as well, right?” “This is absolutely unacceptable!” - essentially trying to assert dominance. What’s really funny about it is that it’s obvious that’s what they’re trying to do. They feel this smirking eighth-grade girl has threatened their position, and now they must clearly establish that they are in charge and will not tolerate any more.

    Then she continues sassing them, trying to see how much they’ll put up with. They handle a surprising amount, considering how blatantly rude she is. They have all received the finger from her when their back is turned, which causes much sniggering among the nearby classmates. They start falling apart - completely losing control and basically ranting at her, and all the while she’s sitting there smirking, not even trying to hide her satisfaction at a job well done, and everyone else is enjoying the spectacle of a teacher comically screaming at this girl who’s making it perfectly obvious she couldn’t care less. The meaner the sub, the more satisfying it is to see them brought to justice.

    So Janet provided a lot of entertainment. Our first sub, a man who stayed two of the four days the normal teacher was out sick, played The Victim, the sub who makes a big deal out of acting nice at the beginning of the class, so they can immediately act like students talking during the warm-ups is a massive betrayal and they didn’t deserve any of it. (This is an example of the attempted guilting I talked about in my last post, The Power of Empty Threats. As I explained in said post, it doesn’t work.) Janet is merciless with these teachers - I’m not sure why they’re her favorite. Maybe because they’re so obsequious. Still, it is a very popular choice among substitutes, because it conveniently releases them of blame and pins any ineffectiveness on the students.

    On Monday, we started with the warm-up our normal teacher had left us. We were apparently about to get into morals, I discovered. I was determined to prove my teacher wrong about every story having a moral. The warm-up in question read, What was your favorite book or movie when you were young? What message did the author want you to take away from it? It was asking what the moral was.

    I knew whatever story I chose, she would find a moral in. So I didn’t choose anything with a storyline - to prove my point, I answered, When I was extremely young, I enjoyed the book Goodnight Moon. This has no moral. When the sub asked for volunteers, I raised my hand and shared my answer, wondering what this sub would do.

    “Well, maybe Goodnight Moon doesn’t have a moral per se,” he reflected, “but why do you think the author wrote the book? What message do you think they were trying to convey?”

    “Um…'Go to sleep'?”

    Irritation flared on his face. “That is really immature. I can tell you’re not going to do well on this unit.”

    Seriously. I am not making this up.

    The next day, I asked him what the message of Goodnight Moon was. He said he didn’t know.

    Wednesday, I got to miss English because I was performing in the winter concert teaser. Thursday, we got this lady whose name I never discovered. She played Authoritarian, the type that thinks they’re privy to the minds and hearts of students and therefore knows they’re not little angels. They’re the ones who intend to rule with an iron fist and keep students in line.

    At first, I couldn’t tell. She seemed nice, just tired, and I sort of felt sorry for her.

    Then, once I finished my warm-up, Janet asked if she could borrow my pencil for a second. I handed it to her. She wrote something in her agenda book and tossed it back. However, she tossed it a little too hard, and it bounced off my desk and rolled across the floor.

    “Really, Janet?” I muttered. She resumed her work and paid no attention.

    I got up and retrieved my pencil. A few seconds later, the boy next to me asked if he could use it, so I gave it to him. “Just don’t do what Janet did, or I’ll press charges,” I joked.

    “Why? What did Janet do?” he asked as he took the pencil.

    I snorted. “She threw it halfway across the-”

    “Excuse me!” yelled the sub in a tone that clearly countered Excuse you. “Why are you talking? This is warm-up time, not talking time!”

    “I finished my warm-up!” I objected, but she was still talking.

    “Why on Earth would you be talking now?” Her eyes were wide, as if she couldn’t believe that a student would dare be so disrespectful.

    “He wanted a pencil!” I cried, gesturing to the startled boy.

    “So? You don’t need to talk to give someone a pencil!” She stared at me disgustedly.

    I couldn’t think of another retort, so I put on my best sullen-teenager, wow-this-crazy-lady’s-got-serious-anger-issues face and shut up. Practically spitting, she stalked away.

    “Sorry,” whispered the boy, looking mortified.

    I shook my head. “It’s not your fault.”

    Kids always talk during warm-ups. There will almost never be a silent classroom. Therefore, even the ones who really prefer quiet - like me - have been forced to adapt and learn to register chatter as white noise, or they will never be able to complete their work. It’s a middle-school-created Darwin.

    In short, students naturally tune out the talking of other students while they work. Of course, it’s pointless to explain this to teachers, but it’s just a fact.

    A strange lady yelling in a very angry voice…that’s another story. Everyone was tuning out my brief murmurs, and then she comes along and shatters everyone’s concentration, by yelling at me about shattering everyone's concentration.

    Okay, I recognize and admit that I shouldn’t have been talking during the warm-up, but does no one else appreciate the irony of this?

    The moral of this story is: English teachers shouldn’t get a cold that lasts four days, or all hell will break loose back at school.