<p>Historymom, I feel your pain! My kids have had some soul-destroying teachers along the way, too. I’ve always wanted to ask them why they teach if they so obviously dislike kids.</p>
<p>I really like these stories, it’s like a support group!</p>
<p>We had just moved and oldest son was starting 3rd grade, he really hated his teacher, he said she just ignored him. When we got to his classroom at the later part of back to school night, (because we went to the younger son’s room first), the room was mostly empty, so we basically had the teacher to ourselves. After we had admired the things on his desk our son showed us some of his art work posted in the room and while we were doing this the teacher came up to us. We said hello and we commented on our son’s art work, she nodded and immediately begain to show us and complement the OTHER kids art work, no comment at all on our son’s work!</p>
<p>Fast forward same son in early high school. Now this kid hated and still hates math, he’s the philosophical and creative type he is also bold and was popular in H.S. His math teacher hated him so much, she used him as an example, specifically and by name, in her other classes as to what a “looser” is. We called the principal on that one and she was forced to call him up, at home and appologize.</p>
<p>On a brighter note. Younger son had just started kindergarten. I got a call from the teacher the first week, I thought what now! She told me they had their first trip to the library that day and after the tour, the kids were settling in to have a story read to them, she looked around and my son was no where to be seen. After some searching she found him on the upper level in the science section. He was sitting on the floor with a thick book in his lap. She asked him what he was reading. He replied he found a book on early man and it had drawings of brain cases. She said he was very excited to have found these diagrams. She left him to his reading. She just wanted to let me know she had never had a kindergartner do this before.</p>
<p>When S was in 4th grade, we got a call from his teacher one night. She told us that she needed to tell us that he’d written a sentence that was a bit inappropriate – however she was laughing as she told us. This was at a time when we’d been having a lot of dinner discussions about goings-on in the white house.</p>
<p>Apparently, the teacher had asked them to “write an exclamatory sentence,” and my S’s was, “Clinton had sex with Lewinsky!” Well, he was following instructions!</p>
<p>In elementary school we were given a spelling test when all the words on the test were still written up on the chalkboard… oops.</p>
<p>I also remember in elementary school when we were having a discussion about why drunk driving is really bad and when the teacher asked us to describe things about drinking and driving that were bad I said “you might not be able to see over the bottle.” (not quite knowing that ‘drinking and driving’ refers to drinking alcohol) ;-)</p>
<p>rocketman, I think yours is the one I am most going to have to share with others…classic!</p>
<p>My daughter taught herself to read at 3. She was/is a voracious reader - would read instead of homework, tv, playing with friends etc…
At the end of 6th grade my daughter’s Language Arts teacher called me. She had her doctorate and told me she needed to explain a few things about my daughter to me. She said her handwriting was very poor and she was concerned for her language development. After about 5 minutes of rambling about lack of social skills she finally said she was recommending her for a special ed evaluation. :eek:
I spoke with the principal who told me not to worry about it - fast forward to 11th grade - no practice, first try 750 V SAT.</p>
<p>It was a beautiful day in May, so my brother and a couple of friends decided to skip school. They were strolling down the street when a police car came up behind them. The officer asked them why they weren’t in school. The friends all hemmed and hawed, until my brilliant brother said, “The school had a blood drive, and since we gave blood they let us go home.” After a ride in the cruiser back to school, the officer was able to confirm that there was no blood drive, and my brother and friends were deposited in the vice-principal’s office. The VP could not stop laughing. He said it was such a beautiful day that HE had almost skipped work, and he probably would have just sent them back to class with no punishment if they hadn’t come up with such a stupid lie. So they got some detentions… and the next time the school had a blood drive guess which kid was sent to school with a note from his mom authorizing the Red Cross to take as much blood as they wanted?</p>
<p>Historymom, that is priceless. I have a memory or two raising my hand in elementary school to say I had done or seen some random thing or another when no one else volunteered. :)</p>
<p>In kindergarten, I was sent to the corner for sneaking into the library during recess to read a book. I was supposed to be outside playing, and kindergarteners weren’t allowed in the library, anyway. This did prompt the school to test me, however. After that, the teacher brought me books.</p>
<p>In 6th grade, the PE teacher FAILED me because I couldn’t do the movement from the gymnatics unit we had. Never mind I humiliated myself in front of the entire sixth grade trying, and popped my bra hooks in the process. My regular teacher was absolutely furious, but the PE teacher refused to budge.</p>
<p>S got an in-school suspension for skipping a math class because…he was in the computer room doing an assignment for that very class. He had been out of school for an excused activity (for which he earned the school a nice chunk of $$) and hadn’t been able to get to the lab with the necessary software to make it up. For the ISS, he had to sit in a classroom all day and do work. The online newspaper staff was delighted – he was their technical guy and they were in the middle of redoing the site. He spent all day doing their programming. Happy camper. The editors threatened to make the rest of the tech staff cut class (and get caught) so they too could spend ISS working on the website.</p>
<p>This is a wise teacher story – and the teacher in question was even a brand-new first-year teacher when it happened. :)</p>
<p>When I was in third grade, I would get bored in class and would read books half-hidden in my desk. The teacher had caught me a few times, and I did feel guilty about doing it because she was so nice, but I would just get so bored that I kept doing it. So one day, the teacher kept me in during recess while all the other kids went out. She opened the supply closet, revealing an entire collection of books she’d had as a kid – and she said I could read them all, if only I’d promise to read only at approved times.</p>
<p>It worked, even though I read through all her books in a month. (They were mysteries, and I thought they were great.)</p>
<p>I spent my HS years in India. Throughout my HS years, I and a friend of mine would rank 1st and 2nd, respectively every single year in our class of 50.</p>
<p>I clearly recall a Science class where our favorite Science teacher did not show up for her class. Instead, a substitute teacher entered the class room who was known to be inordinately boring. As she entered the class, my friend couldn’t suppress Indian equivalent of “Oh! *****!”
The Substitute heard this exclamation, walked straight up to my friend, and slapped her right across her face in front of the entire classroom! She was then asked to stand in the class facing a wall through the entire class.
She sobbed through every minute of the hour.</p>
<p>My memories of this class and the liberties the teachers took routinely in physical abuse of students is something I wish I could forget.</p>
<p>Years ago when S took the required pre-K screening to see if he was ready for kindergarten, he was shown a picture of a shoe and asked what he thought the shoe was made of. His answer was deemed wrong when he said “atoms”. (He had watched some TV show previously with H and learned that EVERYTHING was made of atoms… lol.).</p>
<p>The last post reminded me of a test my D took to get to the bottom of some struggles in math. She was asked what two listed things had in common. One pair was yard and pound. She was, of course, supposed to say that they were both used to measure. She said they were both places you could keep a dog. There’s my little math wiz.</p>
<p>^^^ ha ha!</p>
<p>cartera lol…I can see either of my DDs coming up w/ the same response</p>
<p>S2 always struggled with writing beginning in first grade. It was hard for him to compose his thoughts and think of things to write quickly in those “you have 15 minutes to get this done” settings. His fresh from college teacher had them write a sentence or two in a journal every day. One Monday, he came home saying he hated writing because his teacher had laughed at him. He said she told them to write what they had done the day before (which was Sunday) so he did and she laughed at it (shaming and embarrassing him in front of the class) . S2 had written “I prayed to God” . </p>
<p>Same S was to take a state mandated writing test in 3rd grade. He confessed when he got home that he didn’t write a thing…turned in a blank paper. I called the teacher. She was clueless. She had sat watching 20 8 yr.olds write for an hour and never noticed that S2 was not doing a thing nor did she notice that he turned in a blank paper.</p>
<p>When S1, a voracious reader, got to his 7th gr. honors language arts class, he found out the first book assigned for the class to read was a book he read in third grade. He politely asked the teacher if he could read a different book to do the project on. She said sure and then assigned him to spend class time every day in the school library alone (no guidance from her) researching the treatment of the Jews in WWII and writing a paper about it. What a gem she was.</p>
<p>Cartera, that is great! Who needs to be a math whiz when one can think that creatively on one’s feet?</p>
<p>In 2nd grade, S read voraciously & was reading books about playing chess & playing against the university student BF of the young teacher. She said at the parent-teacher conference, “I’m sure that your S understands the books he reads, I just don’t understand the book reports, since they’re about chess moves & I don’t play” I’m assuming he learned a lot from the books since he regularly beat all competitors, including the university students who asked him to handicap himself by removing his queen.</p>
<p>He also taught himself magic & was able to perform magic tricks at a talent show put on by his grade, complete with top hat & magician’s stage.</p>
<p>I have two stories of how kids would rather fit in than be singled out.</p>
<p>When my son was barely five, and in an all-day kindergarten, he was tested for admission to the school’s gifted program. The test was one where the child kept answering the teacher’s questions until he got three wrong - that determined the level of giftedness. My son was answering away with great accuracy until he noticed that all the other kids were outdoors for RECESS- and he had to stay in until the test was done! He promptly answered the next three questions wrong, on purpose, and ran outside. But the teacher was rather gifted herself - she thought something was wrong, and took him for testing on another day, where her suspicions were confirmed.</p>
<p>The second story goes back to Catholic school in the 1960’s, when our school was packed to overflowing, with class sizes of over 50 kids. My sister’s Jean’s second grade class was left alone for a few minutes, and the noise level soon escalated to the point where they could be heard in half the school. The teacher returned, mad as could be, and proceeded to punish the entire class. “Everyone, take the books out of your desk and stand holding them for ten minutes!” she cried. And then added, “except for Jeannie, because she 's such a good little girl!” Every kid in the room turned and stared daggers at Jean, who just about died of embarrassment that day.</p>
<p>DIII went for a checkup at the pediatrician as a tot. DIII was wearing a flowery dress. The doctor asked her to name the colors in the dress, assuming she’d say green, red, blue. Instead she got “magenta, violet, um…aqua”. The look on the doctors face was priceless.</p>
<p>DI had a messy desk in second grade and the teacher upended her desk and dumped everything on the floor in front of the entire class. When I told the teacher that I didn’t think humiliation was much of a motivator she said ‘too bad, that’s what I’ve always done and that’s what I’m going to keep doing’.</p>
<p>DII came home one day and confessed that she had gotten into trouble at school. She had been caught chewing gum, twice. Her punishment? She had to stay after school and scrape gum off the undersides of the desks. She told me ‘Mrs. G is still my favorite teacher’. I guess D understood the concept of the punishment fitting the crime.</p>