I was chit-chatting with my officemates this week, and happened to mention a programmer who left the company about a year ago.
“Remember him?” I said. “He was that tall, shambling guy, y’know, the one who, if you talked to him for five minutes without knowing what he did for a living, you’d swear he was a high school Phys Ed teacher who also sometimes taught basic math.”
Got a chuckle from the group, at which point we started talking about the gym teachers at our schools who were pressed into classroom duty when some subject or other came up short of warm bodies. My school’s football coach, for example, taught introductory geometry for a year. Not terribly well, but not especially badly, either. Followed the book and kept the sports tangents to a minimum.
The winner was a guy whose basketball coach made a mess out of teaching health and sex ed. (Runner up in terms of funny stories, though it wasn’t directly relevant to the topic, was a woman whose male basketball coach was terrified of “female stuff,” and who would accept without question any student excuses even vaguely related to menstruation. “Take the day off! Don’t give me the details! La la la la!”)
The basketball coach also taught geometry. I rocked at geometry but managed to barely pass when he taught it. Oddly enough the jocks that used to copy off of me all got good grades without cheating in his class.
All over the map. A few were purely P.E. teachers/coaches - that’s all they did and they were a mixed bunch. One was the stereotypical shop teacher - kind of a cheerful, but vacuous sort. An adequate “general science” high school teacher/head football coach ( pretty decent guy, if macho to a fault ). A decent marine biology teacher. A very mediocre, histrionic history teacher.
The best was my 7th grade geography teacher Mr. Dixon who, inadvertently or not, started me on my lifetime fascination with history and geography. He was also the football coach and I think did one or two sections of P.E…
I also had a pretty good U.S. history/psychology teacher in high school who was a favorite instructor of mine. But he only coached the long distance runners, never taught P.E. that I knew.
My high school’s gym teacher was also the detention officer. Her demeanor was well suited to the latter job.
In 9th grade, my physical science ‘teacher’ was also the baseball coach. He’d come into class, say, “Gonna go set up the pitchin’ machine. Y’all hush, and study somethin,” and then disappear.
Thirty minutes later, he’d come back in, find us talking (naturally), and say in a slightly louder voice, “When I tell y’all to hush, ya hush. Gonna finish settin’ up the pichin’ machine.”
Reports in his class had to be submitted in handwriting. Even if we composed them on the computer, he made us copy it back in handwriting. We knew he wasn’t going to read it, so we often left messages for him in the handwritten copy. He never caught on.
My actual PE teacher … I’m not sure he taught anything. He definitely didn’t teach PE well.
But along the way, I had the girls’ volleyball coach for biology, the baseball coach for local history, one of the track coaches for Spanish, and one of the football coaches for math (actually, he taught some of the harder math classes).
The actual PE teachers only taught PE; there were 2 for the boys and 2 for the girls, and they split up the classes between them (technically there was girls PE and boys PE, but a given class time had both running at once and much more often than not, activities were done with both groups together - exceptions were baseball, hockey and touch football, since our female PE teacher was sexist against women and didn’t believe we should play any of the fun sports!)
But I digress…
One of the football coaches also taught Math, but he had always intended to teach Math; the sports coaching was extra for him.
All the schools in the school board that I went to has, AFAIK, a dedicated PE teacher.
My PE teacher during junior high also taught art. He did a good job considering the class was not well-supported by the small religious school; no art history or theory, they pretty much expected the teacher to run a arts/craft-themed babysitting class, keeping us kids occupied for a little while. He brought in easels, paints, drawing boards, modelling compounds, etc, and turned it into a functional classroom.
I know he affected one guy’s future pretty dramatically; there was a shy, big kid who’d just sort of existed over the years at the school. Not too good at any of the subjects, not a very good athlete. He liked drawing at the drawing table, though, and worked really hard on a drawing of his house that he wanted to give to his mom. The teacher encouraged him throughout, and got something to click in the kid’s head; he may not have been a stellar student or athlete, but he liked drawing buildings. By the end of the semester, he was carrying a portfolio, working on concepts, drafting, and was telling people he was going to be an architect.
When I last saw him a couple of years ago, he’d actually made it into his field, and was an architect.
My high school biology teacher was the track coach. He would come in, give me the teaching plan, & leave to go tend to the latest fund raiser. I would teach the class. There were kids that took his class and physics at the same hour because the physics teacher knew that his colleague would never notice.
The actual gym teachers only taught “health” in addition to gym.
In the early to mid 70’s my gym teacher was also my Current Events teacher, and a Richard Nixon fan to boot.
For some reason, he never seem to be in a good mood.
In Jr. High, my 7th and 8th grade math teacher (what is that? pre-algebra and algebra?) was my PE teacher. There was also a football coach to taught us US history. He flat out said to us, “Look, I had a double major in phys ed and Spanish. I don’t know anything about history.” I loved him, though. He was a good guy. The wrestling coach also taught math and US History.
In high school, my gym coach was the Algebra II guy. The basketball coach taught the other Algebra II class, as well as geometry (he was a great teacher. I didn’t have a head for math, but he pulled me through).
The more I think about it, the more I realize that all the coaches were basically in the math department, except one guy on the football coaching staff. He taught freshman English.
