President Barack Obama’s recent remarks about how teachers rather than celebrities like Snooki should be idolized in this country got me thinking about the best teachers I had from grade school on up.
I will be frank here. I didn’t particularly like the instructors who influenced me. The dislike started with practically all the nuns who taught me in grade school.
Sister Petronia, my first-grade teacher, for example, had two trademarks for which I didn’t care. One was when a student stepped out of line, she always declared, “I’m ashamed of you.” And when that student, or any student for that matter, stepped out of line, she’d go out of her way to embarrass that person.
Whenever she’d look inside a student’s desk and find a mess, she’d pick up the desk, allowing everything inside to slide out in front of the class. The embarrassed student was left to pick up a month’s worth of assignments and parental notices that should have gone home.
I suspect if she caught a student with food, even God wouldn’t be able to bail him out.
My second-grade teacher, Sister Cresentine, was a humorous elderly lady when in a good mood. If you got on her bad side, she’d throw a textbook at you from across the room, telling you to go back and re-study the material.
My seventh-grade teacher, Sister Julleta, who taught religion classes and was in charge of the altar boys, was like Sister Cresentine when it comes to exhibiting her wrath on a student if they stepped out of line. If a student was not careful, Sister Julleta could be their own worst enemy. To this day, I still wonder if she actually struck a student I saw her disciplining in the hallway one year.
There were lessons to be learned from those nuns. I assume in Sister Petronia’s case; she wanted the students to have some respect for themselves. On the other hand, their goal was to not be liked anyway. They were there to teach and administer discipline when the situation warranted it.
By comparison, the best teachers I had in high school were far fewer than the handful of survivors rescued at the end of the ocean liner disaster movie, “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972).
I was thankful that my freshman algebra teacher, Mr. McClusky, doubled as the school’s winning basketball coach and, I was told by a fellow classmate that the guy supposedly hated freshman to the point he came off as a drill sergeant when conducting class.
I wouldn’t be surprised if any students heard his voice from across the hall as he yelled at students for making stupid mistakes when doing algebra problems. He always called me “Joseph,” a name only used by my mother.
Whenever students scored poorly on their tests, McClusky would make them redo the problems again and then write ten times, “I will not make silly mistakes.”
I could have used someone like him for the Algebra II course I took my sophomore year and geometry my junior year as I learned next to nothing. Taking those two upper-level courses, I still to this day wonder who was more of a joke. My fellow classmates, most of whom did nothing but pass notes, talked during class, stole others’ homework, and cheated on tests? Or the instructors who didn’t know shit about how to control a f-----g, g-----n class so the rest of us could learn?
I did not care much for Mr. Poundstone, my junior-year ethics instructor who attended the University of Oxford because he wouldn’t administer multiple choice tests nor did he advocate giving extra credit assignments. His tests were always essay and short-answer questions to determine if you knew the material.
The same went for Father Martin, the instructor who taught social issues my senior year like a college course, which in a way, it was.
When I started college, I got the impression the professors didn’t give a damn whether you attended class. If you didn’t show up and study, you failed. Their job wasn’t to keep after you like your parents.
Dr. Bridges, my media law instructor, who also doubled as my Reporting II professor, got onto me for not taking his journalism courses seriously. Like my first-grade teacher, Sister Petronia, who had no qualms about embarrassing students, Dr. Bridges one time asked me why I didn’t show up for his Reporting II class one day. My reason being was because I was working on a story for the campus newspaper, which I got drafted into doing. An excuse he didn’t accept and rightfully so. He told me in front of other students in the lab that I had better get my priorities straight.
Given the great number of red marks I got on my reporting assignments in Dr. Bridges’ Reporting II course, which suggested I did not know how to write worth a damn, I wondered if the professor who taught me Reporting I, where I got a better grade than the C I received from Dr. Bridges, knew what she was doing.
Are these nuns, high school teachers, and college professors the kinds of instructors President Obama would like to see “idolized” on the front covers of magazines, as opposed to celebrities? Were these the kinds of instructors who made a difference in my life? I am not sure. As I said, I didn’t care much for their strict teaching methods. At least, however, I walked away either having learned the material or realized there was no such thing as an easy A.
©8/17/10
I will be frank here. I didn’t particularly like the instructors who influenced me. The dislike started with practically all the nuns who taught me in grade school.
Sister Petronia, my first-grade teacher, for example, had two trademarks for which I didn’t care. One was when a student stepped out of line, she always declared, “I’m ashamed of you.” And when that student, or any student for that matter, stepped out of line, she’d go out of her way to embarrass that person.
Whenever she’d look inside a student’s desk and find a mess, she’d pick up the desk, allowing everything inside to slide out in front of the class. The embarrassed student was left to pick up a month’s worth of assignments and parental notices that should have gone home.
I suspect if she caught a student with food, even God wouldn’t be able to bail him out.
My second-grade teacher, Sister Cresentine, was a humorous elderly lady when in a good mood. If you got on her bad side, she’d throw a textbook at you from across the room, telling you to go back and re-study the material.
My seventh-grade teacher, Sister Julleta, who taught religion classes and was in charge of the altar boys, was like Sister Cresentine when it comes to exhibiting her wrath on a student if they stepped out of line. If a student was not careful, Sister Julleta could be their own worst enemy. To this day, I still wonder if she actually struck a student I saw her disciplining in the hallway one year.
There were lessons to be learned from those nuns. I assume in Sister Petronia’s case; she wanted the students to have some respect for themselves. On the other hand, their goal was to not be liked anyway. They were there to teach and administer discipline when the situation warranted it.
By comparison, the best teachers I had in high school were far fewer than the handful of survivors rescued at the end of the ocean liner disaster movie, “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972).
I was thankful that my freshman algebra teacher, Mr. McClusky, doubled as the school’s winning basketball coach and, I was told by a fellow classmate that the guy supposedly hated freshman to the point he came off as a drill sergeant when conducting class.
I wouldn’t be surprised if any students heard his voice from across the hall as he yelled at students for making stupid mistakes when doing algebra problems. He always called me “Joseph,” a name only used by my mother.
Whenever students scored poorly on their tests, McClusky would make them redo the problems again and then write ten times, “I will not make silly mistakes.”
I could have used someone like him for the Algebra II course I took my sophomore year and geometry my junior year as I learned next to nothing. Taking those two upper-level courses, I still to this day wonder who was more of a joke. My fellow classmates, most of whom did nothing but pass notes, talked during class, stole others’ homework, and cheated on tests? Or the instructors who didn’t know shit about how to control a f-----g, g-----n class so the rest of us could learn?
I did not care much for Mr. Poundstone, my junior-year ethics instructor who attended the University of Oxford because he wouldn’t administer multiple choice tests nor did he advocate giving extra credit assignments. His tests were always essay and short-answer questions to determine if you knew the material.
The same went for Father Martin, the instructor who taught social issues my senior year like a college course, which in a way, it was.
When I started college, I got the impression the professors didn’t give a damn whether you attended class. If you didn’t show up and study, you failed. Their job wasn’t to keep after you like your parents.
Dr. Bridges, my media law instructor, who also doubled as my Reporting II professor, got onto me for not taking his journalism courses seriously. Like my first-grade teacher, Sister Petronia, who had no qualms about embarrassing students, Dr. Bridges one time asked me why I didn’t show up for his Reporting II class one day. My reason being was because I was working on a story for the campus newspaper, which I got drafted into doing. An excuse he didn’t accept and rightfully so. He told me in front of other students in the lab that I had better get my priorities straight.
Given the great number of red marks I got on my reporting assignments in Dr. Bridges’ Reporting II course, which suggested I did not know how to write worth a damn, I wondered if the professor who taught me Reporting I, where I got a better grade than the C I received from Dr. Bridges, knew what she was doing.
Are these nuns, high school teachers, and college professors the kinds of instructors President Obama would like to see “idolized” on the front covers of magazines, as opposed to celebrities? Were these the kinds of instructors who made a difference in my life? I am not sure. As I said, I didn’t care much for their strict teaching methods. At least, however, I walked away either having learned the material or realized there was no such thing as an easy A.
©8/17/10
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