Not quite the same, but in 11th grade, we had a young female math teacher. It was her first job out of teacher’s college, so she was maybe 24 or 25; and a very attractive woman. And on the third day of the school year, she shows up in a see-through blouse.
Oh yeah. That day, she got the attention of all the boys in class.
In fairness, she was wearing a bra (as I recall, it was black), but holy hannah. I think someone in authority spoke to her, because she dressed much more modestly during the rest of the school year. Indeed, on many days, she looked like Miss Grundy from Archie comics.
A 2002 paper by Winer and Cottrell found that 57% of elementary school children and 33% of college students said that something goes out of the eyes in the process of seeing.
My stories are so mild that they aren’t worth mentioning, but the topic has me thinking. The worst teachers I had were all in junior high- grades 6 to 8. It seemed like the administration exiled all the burnouts, mental cases, and incompetents there. Is that a common experience?
I’m not sure middle schools are a dumping ground for bad teachers, but it is where teachers with little seniority often start out. Some teachers find it a good fit and spend their entire careers there, but middle schools are generally the least desirable gig for someone with a single subject credential. Mostly because it’s where student discipline is the most challenging.
Our JHS bio teacher was teaching us about roundworms (quite similar to tapeworms, I believe. Normally I educate myself a little before posting on any subject, but I really don’t wish to know more here). Anyway, he said that its body was covered in eggs, and that if you touched such a worm, its eggs would seep through your skin and eventually infest your system. He then picked it up with a set of tongs and took it around the room so we all could look at it close up.
I had a high school US Civics teacher adopt a class format in which the class itself formed its own government and made its own laws (including how class was conducted and how/whether tests were administered).
The effect was that tests and lectures were abolished, and “leaders” wrote themselves hall passes to do pretty much as they pleased during class. The only valuable thing I learned in that class is that if the electorate is horrible, the government will be horrible, and there are but weak, ineffective guardrails against it.
So when I see the government taking a turn as it’s now doing, I don’t think “surely this will be struck down, there must be someone in a position of power who can stop it.” It won’t. There isn’t. There’s nobody at the wheel but the voters who elected the bad government in the first place, and if they hand it over to corrupt partisan hacks, game over.
Oh, and in a hilarious coda to the story, the teacher who implemented this policy was later busted for having sex with students and watching porn in the classroom during his off-hours. His dedication to political realism was quite frankly heroic.
YMMV - though I have had plenty of teachers agree with me.
Most grades are a joy to teach unless you just don’t like that age group. Some teachers like young kids and do elementary. Some like them older. Seniors were my favorite. etc etc
There is an exception. 8th and 9th grade ( mostly Junior High). For some reason, this age group is usually not a joy to teach. I have met few teachers that said they did. 7th graders could be a joy but you could see them ‘turning’ in the last couple of weeks. 8th and 9th grade they turn into demonic aholes. Toward the end of 9th grade you can see them turning back. 10th grade they are usually fun to teach again.
So, I think your observation has some merit. Good teachers, after some experience, tend to not wish to teach those grades and, if they are good and wanted to be kept, it is granted. Less competent teachers take their place.
Another factor is that, around here, at least, teaching certifications are either K-8 or 6-12. Which means that, theoretically, any certified teacher is qualified to teach middle school. Which in turn means that when a school district need to shuffle teachers to get someone in every classroom, middle school is where the largest share of that shuffling will be.
We had a pretty weird teacher for …freshman biology? I forget. Anyway, one day, we shuffled into class and he was beaming. After we took our seats, he pointed to the blackboard where he had drawn a pretty good circle. That was it: a circle on the blackboard. I’m certain he pointed it out to everyone that came into his classroom that day.
There was a super popular teacher that taught history who had a real knack for gently making fun of students in a way that everyone laughed, including the target. He frequently said something like “And remember, if I tease you, it’s because I like you” and I think it was true. One day, a really dumb classmate said something pretty dumb, even for him. I think it was a question about how banks existed solely to make change*. Teach walked over, put his hand on dummy’s shoulder and said, “Dummy, next time you have a question, write it on a piece of paper and give it to me. It will save us both a little embarrassment.” After everyone mostly stopped laughing, he reminded us that he’d only tease if he liked you. I don’t recall him ever making fun of me but he was a great guy.
*This is somewhat mitigated by the Saturday Night Live hit bit about First CityWide Change Bank which had come out a few years prior. As freshmen (or sophomores, I forget again), we wouldn’t have had much banking experience.
My nephew’s high school, on Bainbridge Island, WA, was also Chris Kattan’s alma mater 15 or so years earlier. It was the source of two recurring sketches: Spartan Cheerleaders (really, that could have been any high school in America) and Suell, the teacher with the thick Cajun accent nobody could understand. I never met the guy that was based on, but a LOT of my neighbors there had.
I remember our science teacher in junior high school got to talking about his experiences in Vietnam one day. Nothing too graphic or harrowing or anything, as I recall, but we did wonder why he was telling us all this during science class.
My fourth grade teacher would not permit us to refer to ourselves as “kids.” The word “kid,” she assured us, meant a baby goat, and absolutely nothing else. It had no other legitimate definitions. Juvenile human beings are called “children.”
I had a teacher that insisted that also … but it didnt matter students parents even the principal knew not to say it in front of her …in fact she had the principal 3 years in grade school( 1st 4th and 6th ) so he already knew
Mine wasn’t in school but I accidentally discovered how the pretty younger and new to teaching English teacher supplemented her income when I stayed overnight in a hotel after seeing a wrestling card 3 towns over…
I had an English teacher who thought he was a George Carlin but did not have the comedy chops to pull it off. He also would use as examples of stupidity graphic stories of how he saw various people killed for being stupid in Viet Nam.
Weird college professor story but as a freshman in a general education “Introduction to Debate” class the Professor’s first assignment was to have us in-class watch two documentaries on the same subject that were HEAVILY biased in either direction, and then both “debate the actual issue” as well as compare/contrast how the documentaries presented the same facts in different ways.
The topic was about animal rights and on one side we watched a PETA documentary and the other side we watched an episode of Penn & Teller’s BULLSHIT! The weird thing is despite everyone in class being 18 or above, the professor decided to censor the show Bullshit! on the fly so that anytime Penn said the titular line he would immediately mute the TV with the remote and then unmute it when the curse was done, so we basically were constantly hearing BULLLLL-. I have no idea why the Professor brought in an episode of Bullshit! if he knew he was going to censor the curses anyway.
In 10th grade English I had a male teacher who would make any female student who was wearing a t-shirt that had letters across the chest come up to his desk and he would read the phrase to the entire class. Pretty much everyone knew why he did it but nobody complained despite this being the late 90s.
My 9th grade English teacher would assign us books to read by chapter but HATED it when people read ahead of the assigned material. So when we were discussing in class the chapter and somebody accidentally brought up later story elements as “spoilers” she would yell in class I TOLD YOU NOT TO READ FURTHER!!!
