That’s awesome. I still think I would be fired. I would inevitably get into a fight with a parent.
She didn’t treat us like inmates. Honestly, she wasn’t a bad teacher. She was inflexible but I remember her helping a lot of the female students going through personal struggles.
If I have some blame in the situation, which I do, it’s for being inflexible myself. I didn’t communicate with her at all. When asked why I didn’t use my own pictures I said because it was silly and what I did was within the spirit of the assignment. I gave her no justification for my actions.
Then, the threat of an F was maybe not super serious on her part, I’m sure she assumed it would move me. When it didn’t, she just can’t give in even if she probably wanted to. But the best and worst thing about me is that you just cannot threaten me like that. I am not scared to lose fuck all, consequences be damned. I’ve gotten a bit better as an adult, but I was almost expelled from high school for refusing to serve a garbage detention. They eventually backed down because they didn’t even know they were bluffing, just very few people would be as stupid as I was to refuse to give in.
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That is such a fantastic “fuck you” to a terrible teacher. I was not a bad kid by any stretch. In fact I was often probably considered a teachers pet. But some of my favorite memories of school are when I fucked with bad teachers. And I was raised give in to bullshit from power tripping adults, so more than once I escalated issues above the teachers head.
Teachers who fail kids because they don’t like them personally are the nut low.
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Oddly enough, my two worst, powertripping teachers were the ones who taught Zinn and were super liberal. But their liberalism was, like, militant and reactionary rather than coming from a place of compassion, empathy, and shared humanity, so that was a turnoff, and taking a sort of mainline, “by the book” view of American history (which is flawed, granted, but when you’re a kid who just wants to get an A, not exactly nefarious) got you lower grades no matter how well written.
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One more thing about said teacher. I went to a funeral in 2017 which was the first time I had been back home in fifteen years or so. At said funeral, I was kind of cajoled into speaking and eulogizing my former academic bowl coach, a truly great and incredibly committed teacher-- dude was on campus 14 hours a day, paid for me to go on the history class trip to Boston because he knew my parents couldn’t afford it, and spent his own money taking our team to Florida after we won the state title. I didn’t have any words prepared, but the other stories people told were just so awkward, like oh lol he kept getting me the same thing for Christmas and I didn’t have the heart to tell him I hate Swiss Colony beef logs lol! So I just riffed on how I don’t make it out of high school without this dude (100% true), how nobody in my life had ever given me a foundation of support and I wasn’t even special, he just did this shit for everyone. He tried to make see a mental health professional once, which was totally and completely the right call on his part; I didn’t take it well and called him every name in the book. Dude never once reminded me of this, didn’t take it personally. I don’t think he swept in under the rug, he was really just above it all and wasn’t going to hold some absurd inappropriateness against a teenager who clearly had issues. I didn’t mention that the dude constantly sent me cashews that I didn’t eat.
Back on track- a lot of my former teachers were there and surprised to see me, so a lot of hugs were had after it was over. A group of three teachers I knew came over including Prison Warden. I got two hugs and a nasty look away from Prison Warden as she walked right by.
I dunno what the lesson is here. Some people suck and some don’t. And some, like yours truly, are in between.
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I spent a solid minute scratching my head over this phrase until I figured out how to read it correctly.
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I am immediately on his side, sorry.
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I was not friends with people who sucked up to that fuckhead. Watched several of their lockers burn and didn’t feel bad for them at all. Are you married?
I just mean it’s funny man, I’m not actually taking his side.
Who will be alive in 2080?
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Sadly, she’s right. Nobody is going to be alive in 2080.
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