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Did you like your teacher?


Longjohn

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Most of my teachers were excellent - especially my college undergrad advisor who really took the place of my father who knew little about higher education or responsibility or opportunities.

But there was one useless teacher in 11th Grade College-Prep English named Mrs. Palethorpe.

She would do things like give us elementary school homonym spelling tests, not even realizing the purpose was to see if we knew which homonym to spell according to the sentence it was in!

She'd say, "Spell 'its' as in the sentence, 'It's a nice day.'  Then she would say, "Now, that's it's with the apostrophe."  We tried not to look at each other in disbelief and laugh!

Then she claimed she gave two of the words in the reverse order, so everyone got 18 out 20 right!

She would tell us to pick any book we wanted to read for a book report.  We were college prep kids, we had read tons of books - some had been required summer reading before 9th and 10th Grade!  We could have simply written a report on any book we had already read.

But that was too easy.  So several of us went to the library, picked books we had never read and weren't going to read, and made up a whole story to fit the title.  I picked The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. I made up the entire story.  But another kid in class named Tim actually did read it and did a report on it.  When handing back the reports, Mrs. Palethorpe said, "Mickey and Tim, I don't know what to make of your reports. It's as if they are two entirely different stories!"

I, by academic reputation, got a B and Tim got a C - and he was the one who read the book!  To this day, when I run into Tim in a store, restaurant, etc. he'll say, "Hey! There's the SOB that didn't even read the book but dropped my book report grade to a C!"

Since then, I read The Martian Chronicles. and saw the Rock Hudson, Roddy McDowall, etc. movie. Ray Bradbury was much more imaginative than I was!

 

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For most of my school years I'll admit that I was not the best student. A few teachers tried to help me but most of them just pushed me through the system and washed their hands. 

But in the long run I think that I turned out ok. 

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I was a terrible student. Mostly bored and then unmotivated. Spent a year convincing my second grade teacher I could not read but was reading chapter books at home. Loved my seventh grade history teacher, Dr Naugton. He made history seem like an amazing adventure. 

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I can’t imagine having school aged kids right now, especially grade school.

Most of my HS teachers were nearing retirement and lost their passion. I wasn’t a great student either... When I went back to school at 24 I had some awesome professors who really took me under their wing.  I’m forever grateful to Dr Thames & Karber who really helped me get through my studies.

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10 hours ago, BR46 said:

For most of my school years I'll admit that I was not the best student. A few teachers tried to help me but most of them just pushed me through the system and washed their hands.

There was a kid in my second grade class, that I graduated with...who was functionally illiterate. That means ten times between second grade and graduation, he got passed, and shouldn't have.:(

10 hours ago, Airehead said:

I was a terrible student. Mostly bored and then unmotivated. Spent a year convincing my second grade teacher I could not read but was reading chapter books at home. Loved my seventh grade history teacher, Dr Naugton. He made history seem like an amazing adventure. 

Whoa. Sounds so familiar.....

I was bored, bored, bored. Coasted through by getting F's on the classwork and A's on the tests - averaged out to a solid C. The most frustrating thing was hearing over and over ".....we know you can do the work....." I just wanted to scream "Well if you know I can do the work and I know I can do the work,,,,what the hell is the point of me doing it? Are you just holding up hoops for me to jump through? How about you give me something we don't know if I can do?"

Most of my teachers were drones, but I loved my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Fradenburg. I gave her shit....and she gave it back. She tied me to my chair once and threatened to tape my mouth. :D Can you imagine a teacher doing that today? They'd be out of a job and in jail in nothing flat.:( I used to love driving her crazy by sitting there, head down, deep in doodling, while she was talking. She'd think I wasn't paying attention and ask me a question....and I'd give her the answer, without looking up. "How do you DO THAT?" :D

My Shop teachers, of course were ace and I thrived in that more relaxed, informal and creative atmosphere.

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I liked half of my teachers or so. I was academically a good student.  When a HS teacher manages to get over 70% of the class interested in some Shakespearen plays...that is a good teacher.

When a math teacher exercises great patience teaching math in HS without the students allowed to used calculators, that is a good teacher.

I wouldn't be where I've been, I wouldn't have entered into university, if it were not for foundation of some good teachers.  My parents were not the type that read books to us in evening.  

Just because I was a bookworm doesn't mean that got me into university.  I didn't do it all myself.

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