Friday I wrote a post about one of the best compliments I ever got on my writing, from a teacher I would rank among my best. Today, I want to talk about the opposite.
Now, as a teacher, I feel like educators often get a bad rap. We talk about how important teachers are, but oftentimes they aren’t treated as being very important and their jobs are viewed as easy (never tell a teacher they don’t work “real” hours since they’re “done at three” and have summers off). So, I hate to sit here and bash a teacher.
But, this lady was a bad teacher. And, they do exist. The sad thing is that they keep getting jobs or administrators are too afraid to get rid of them. I don’t think we should be blaming teachers for being bad so much as we should be blaming school’s for keeping the bad around.
Anyway, my fourth grade teacher was a mean, bitter, nasty lady. There was no sunny warmth that I feel like an elementary school teacher should have. She probably actually would be fired in today’s climate because she often touched kids very harshly. One time I was having a hard time understanding something and she grabbed my head and jerked it towards the board. It didn’t hurt or anything, but it was definitely what I would consider NOT OK.
It may have been the same incident when she told me I was crazy. It has always helped me to read things out loud. I was having a hard time understanding the directions to one of those achievement tests, and so I was reading them aloud (quietly) to myself.
In front of the entire class, she yelled at me and said only crazy people talk to themselves.
Ouch.
I got to thinking about this the other day because I still do talk to myself. Often when I can’t write (and I’m alone) I talk out dialogue between my characters, if I’m with people I still do it, just in my head rather than out loud. It’s kind of my own version of plotting, but if anyone heard me, they would probably deem me crazy.
So, maybe she was right all along?
Nicole Helm 