So many of my friends are teachers now and I think every one of them is just perfectly cut out for the job. They're all sweet, patient, fun and cute. The other night I told my friend, who was just hired to teach biology at a new school, that her students were going to love her because I can't imagine a better person to teach them. That got me reminiscing...what did I think of my teachers at the time?
I was horrified to remember that the kids in my class made fun of my 5th grade teacher for having hairy arms. Every time she would come to your desk and lean her arms across it to examine your work, people would stare in disgust at her thickly covered forearms. And there was our AP US History teacher who was morbidly obese and would have panic attacks in class; she certainly didn't go unnoticed by mean high school kids. Then there was my freshman MUN* teacher, I'll call her Ms. P. This one I have to acknowledge my participation in the ridiculing. She was a giant, probably over 6 feet tall, and built like a linebacker. Her saccharine-sweet voice was pretty much her only feminine trait. I remember giggling with my friends as we passed doodles back and forth, depicting exaggerated and outrageous cartoons of Ms. P, often with an arrow labeling her "man hands."
I'm sure that these teachers occasionally overheard students joking or intercepted a note passed in class. I would like to think that their self-esteem wasn't forever damaged by the opinions of teenagers. But oh. my. gosh. How rude was I?!?! The ironic thing, of course, is that I ended up being tall and lanky with large hands and probably many features that kids would dramatize and label in a cartoon of me. I shudder to think what my students would say about me if I became a teacher, which is why I am very thankful I'll be entering a profession which is not known for judging its members on beauty or popularity.
*Does anyone else know what MUN stands for, or was I the only nerd that did that?
3 comments:
OH NO! I shouldn't be reading this post! I just spent all morning filling out applications to teach since I'll get my results from the certification test in less than a month!
Hm...I wonder what nickname I'll have. I don't THINK my arms are too particularly hairy! haha
Model UN!
I had a Mrs. S who was built like and sounded like your Mrs. P. Sweet lady, though, so she didn't get the brunt of our evil. No, that was reserved for a few bat-shit crazy nuns and one young female who had more money than brains and never wore the same outfit twice. We kept track.
In a prior life, I taught junior high. I had students who called me fat to my face. I had students who made "boombababoom" noises when I walked into a room. I had students who threw desks for attention and one boy who had a perfectly average IQ who decided that peeing in my fish tank was a good idea. Mind you, I taught students with diagnosed emotional illnesses, so it was a bit more extreme. Still, it does get to you.
At least you have the excuse of being a child, I wasn't any more mature, well... now.
I actually spent a significant amount of time making fun of my German TA my last year of college. He had really long fingernails, which were totally gross to see on the overhead projector, he said "Tcheuss!" in this really high-pitched shrill voice (when the rest of the time he had a deep baritone voice). I spent most of my time snickering with a few classmates about him, about the conjugation of the verb fahren (fahrt, heh), and finally, in looking up his mugshot online from an arrest about a decade earlier for something like public intoxication, wherein he was sporting a rockin' mullet.
The irony? He ended up being my graduate school colleague the very next year, he was doing a double degree in German and IR. I still couldn't look at his fingernails though.
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