Everyone’s school experience is different. Friendships are created, rekindled, or broken, trends in the entertainment and fashion world evolve, and academic and personal discovery begin to take shape in students’ minds. At the forefront of the academic experience are teachers.
Teachers come in all different shapes, sizes, personalities, and teaching styles. Teachers don’t get along with every student so the type of teacher can really affect a student’s time in a certain grade.
There are those that can make your day and those who can ruin it. There are those that are strict and meticulous in their teaching methods and those who prefer to be more liberal and interactive. Then, there are those that can harbor your interest in a subject and those who completely ruin a subject.
Unfortunately, I’ve had a teacher who has done the latter.
It was during my junior year of high school that I finally encountered that one teacher that forced me into the world of silent hatred for 45-50 minutes every day. She made me dread the class that I’d been so hopeful to enjoy due to its strong connection with my interests and current college major. I’d walked into that classroom on the first day not even knowing that I’d meet the one and only teacher that I’d ever despise during my whole high school career.
Of course, I did give her a few chances. I tried not to judge her too horribly at first and in fact, I just tried to do the work while also tolerating her eccentric, persistent style of teaching. I tried to look at the bright side of the class as much as I could: it was a small class and we did have occasional food parties during lunch period. That was basically it.
As the year continued, my patience with the class was dwindling and by the time the last quarter rolled around, I was dying for the class to end so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the teacher ever again. One notable moment that sent me over the edge was during a particular meltdown the teacher had about the quality of a certain assignment (we did assignments in groups due to the small class size). She told each person what was wrong with their section and when she finally addressed me, she told me that my work was unsatisfactory despite her not ever giving me a shred of suggestion. I had worked so hard and because of her need to have something the way she wanted and her harsh order for me to redo the whole section, I excused myself and cried in the bathroom for a couple minutes before redoing my section.
There is no problem with redoing assignments or improving upon them at all. What is a problem is communicating that in such a terrible way. What is a problem is not giving suggestions to students if you want a creative assignment to look a certain way. What is a problem is not letting your students ask questions while you eat because you don’t want us to breathe on your food.
I can’t say that this feeling was mutual. My dislike for her was much stronger. Perhaps it was because she thought I still liked her due to the fact that I hid my feelings about her and the class for so long. In short, I now look at the subject a bit differently now because of my experience with that teacher and that is probably the worst aftereffect of leaving that class.
Good teachers are important and the student-teacher relationship can have a big impact on the student’s outlook on a certain subject. I don’t know about you, but any teacher that makes me so mad that I write an angry poem about them in secret is not a good time.
