Teachers, cont.

Sooooooo, how's everyone doing today? Good, dandy, and swell? I spent 1 1/2 hours trying to get to work this morning in a blizzard covering the entire city. I would just like to ask God why we are having such a horrid snow storm in MARCH. I'm ready for spring, I'm ready to wear my skirts and open-toed shoes. My spring clothes are begging to be brought out from the closet!

So, to continue with the last post. Many of you thought I might continue listing people who have inspired me throughout my life. Yes, there are many more people I could list such as BSC, different friends and family and even some blogger friends who have helped open my eyes a bit. But, I've decided to go in a different direction with this one while I'm still on the subject of teachers.

I have decided to publicly announce the names of all the teachers who did me wrong. These teachers are not just teachers who gave me detention once or twice, or who yelled at me in class. No, no, no, these teachers have committed acts so heinous that the exact scenario will be etched in my mind forever. For all the future teachers out there - please remember that your students, though they may be young, have feelings that can be hurt, hearts that can be broken, and aren't as stupid as you might think. Teachers have been given a gift to touch children's' lives with knowledge and love. These are accounts of teachers (who in my life) failed miserably.

Mrs. Rooney - 1st grade - I'm not sure how many of you have ever been taught by a British teacher, but let me just tell you that it is an experience far different than we have here in the States. They like to yell ... a lot. One day in class while practicing our spelling, she asked a very girlie-like little boy named Peter to write the word "PRAM" on the blackboard. So, he skips up to the board and writes "PAM" as legible as a first-grader can write. She. flipped. out! For the next hour all we heard were yells and screams from Mrs. Rooney towards Peter about how stupid he was that he couldn't spell pram. Now that I think back on the whole act, it's quite comical that she went psycho on a little boy just for forgetting to place an "R" in his spelling word. I also think that she just may have had a bit of PMS.

Mrs. Langston - 4th grade - Mrs. Langston was just a really dull, really bad teacher. I learned nothing in her class except how to be mean to people. She would publicly announce people's grades just so she could humiliate the students she didn't care for. And of course, as 4th graders, we were relentless on the kids who's grades were either too good or very bad. She had been teaching for approximately 150 years and was burned out. She should have retired 50 years earlier.

Ms. VanDeren - 7th & 8th grade - In seventh grade Ms. VanDeren and her HUGE thighs taught my English and history classes when we were living in Bogota, Colombia. While doing research for a paper assigned in her English class, I approached her desk to ask a question. While I don't remember exactly what I asked her, I remember her response as clear as day. She looked at me with her icy blue eyes and said "Lori, are you just dumb today or is your blonde hair showing more than usual?" Dumbfounded, I went back to my desk, with my question still unanswered, fighting the tears back. I would not give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry. Yet another incident with Ms. Thighs occurred in 8th grade when she taught my Spanish class. She found out that I blush easily ... very easily. So she decided to have the whole class stare at me until I turned red. This happened on almost a weekly basis. She would say "Let's see what shade of red we can turn Lori's face. Everyone stare at her!" So they did. And I would turn almost purple. I hated her for that. She was a mean teacher. I didn't tell my mom any of this until the next school year. Ms. VanDeren got a phone call from my mother. She denied all of it. What a lying bitch!

Mrs. Longmire - 10th grade - Mrs. Longmire taugh AP Spanish. I took the senior-level class as a sophomore because we had just moved back to the States from Colombia. She hated me because I could speak Spanish better than she could. I wasn't obnoxious about it, it was just a fact. The other students would ask me questions instead of her. The school office would have me take Spanish-speaking exchange students around the campus instead of her. She was pissed! So I walked into class one hot day towards the end of the school year and she immediately handed me a note for in-house detention! WTF?!?! She claimed that my attire was inappropriate. Hmmmm, I was wearing jeans (with no holes, just jeans), sandals and a tank top (no bad logos or sayings, it was plain black). Other girls in the class were wearing things very similar to my outfit, but it was only me she targeted. When I walked into the office with my note, the administrators laughed at the fact that I would be sent to in-house detention over something so stupid. They gave me permission to go off campus and change my clothes at home so I wouldn't offend Mrs. Longmire anymore. It all worked out in my favor because I spent half the day trying to find someone to come pick me up from school and take me home to change (I didn't have my drivers license yet). Evil, evil lady.