Bad teachers

[xoxoxoBruce]

This just proves my point that the only people that post on these websites are freaks, misfits, nerds and dweebs. Aren't we.

[SteveDallas]

I was quite lucky, I had no really rotten teachers, or maybe it was cause in Elementary school at least my mom taught at the same school. (Boy was that fun! )

I was really pretty bored with the whole business. I picked up things rapidly, at least those I was interested in. (Even though I was a voracious reader I had little use for language arts.) Math was really a trouble area, because I was so interested in it and picked it up so quickly. In 6th grade my math teacher told me (nicely) I could do the lessons with the rest of the class, or I could sit in the back and work the problems in the math book at my own rate. I was in heaven--I finished the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade books by the end of the year. I wasn't very well-adapted socially for many reasons (general geekiness, shy, a minor speech impediment, complete lack of athletic aptitude, a certain amount of cluelessness about social interaction). You could just tell I was gonna have real fun in Jr. High, right??

My parents, God bless em, came to the conclusion that the public schools were not going to accomodate my needs. So they sent me to a private college prep school in town which was willing to place me right into 8th grade.

So. You take a geeky, maladroit, antisocial kid who's the son of a schoolteacher and a fishing tackle salesman, and you plunk him down in the middle of the kids of lawyers, doctors, real estate magnates, old money, new money--just LOTS of money. And you compound the precariousness of his situation by skipping him a grade.

Is this a recipe for disaster, or what??

[to be continued]

[Bitman]

Originally posted by SteveDallas
Is this a recipe for disaster, or what??

Got me, I'm still clueless. I always wished for a "How to Live on Earth" class for space aliens, I coulda used that.

But the thing I can't figure out is why people are so averse to paying for school for their own kids. I've dropped the idea of privatizing all schools before, and the idea is met with horror. Food is corporate, housing is corporate, health care is semi-corporate, why is schooling still communist?

[Annebonannie]

I promise you, bitman, I have had that exact feeling myself. When I was in school I used to think that everyone else must have been issued some sort of handbook or primer at birth that taught them how people work and how to get along with others. It wasn't terribly helpful that classmates didn't hesitate to tell me I was weird, and I guess I was. While everyone else seemed to be listening to Van Halen and watching Night Rider I was listening to the Doors and reading Asmov. I was totally out of sync.

I've finally reached a "proud to be a nerd" place in my life. I could have used it when I was in highschool, although I still retain the knack for saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. Usually I realize that in retrospect whatever it was I said sounded incredibly filthy and perverted, but occasionally I manage to offend and/or mortify someone.

It's a gift.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I was weird

Of course. That's why you fit in so well around here. We all are.

[Elspode]

My family bounced around town all through my elementary years, and so I never really got to stick with any friends. This resulted in my being relentlessly teased - Fatty Patty was the usual sobriquet, but people who sort of liked me a little just called me Fat Pat. I liked that, it was more familiar.

When we hit Grandview, I was just going into the 7th Grade, and it was then that I finally grew out of my baby fat (I guess that's what it was...I dunno, I got pretty athletic, without being any sort of jock), and the teasing stopped and the girls came around.

Education was always just a bit boring for me, and consequently, I just did the absolute minimum to pass (I always aced tests, but never turned in any work I didn't feel like doing...result? C's overall). Most of my teachers were sharp enough to peg me for what I was...bright and searching for alternative paths, and so I ended up pretty much being allowed to do what I wanted, as long as I showed up. I spent a lot of time doing work for school productions, yearbook, newspaper, photo stuff, etc when others were grinding out the crap in class. I probably spent more time in extracurricular activities than I did in actual classes by my junior year in HS.

Some teachers, especially the jock/military/disciplinarian types, hated me...I was a hippie and a non-conformist, except that I could do whatever their golden boys and girls could do, and often better than they could do it. I think that they felt like I was a waste of potential, from their narrow little points of view.

School was okay...I had many great teachers who pretty much knew I was a dope-smoking, guitar-playing, girl-chasing free spirit with a bent for creative expression and crazy-assed humor.

I'm a nice guy, and nice guys usually get to skate through pretty easy, all in all.

[wolf]

Originally posted by Bitman
why is schooling still communist?

because it's an essential step in bringing about the socialist one world government scheme, of course.

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by wolf


because it's an essential step in bringing about the socialist one world government scheme, of course.

Would you stop it???? Come on. You KNOW we're supposed to make sure they're all quietly drooling in front of reality television so they won't notice when the black helicopters come. Have you forgotten that the Great Leader himself specifically asked us to refrain from mentioning the Grand Plan for Planetary Unification in front of the uninitiated??????

[bartman]

Originally posted by SteveDallas

...specifically asked us to refrain from mentioning the Grand Plan for Planetary Unification in front of the uninitiated??????

AHA!!!!!!

I KNEW I would find out about your little plan if I just lurked long enough........

Now let's see, who can I tell that'll believe me.....?

Edit: Fergot this:

[windhund]

My 4th grade class was so unruly and uncooperative we made the teacher cry. I really feel bad about that now - she was a first-year teacher, making crapola money and we were all such brats. Gad.

I have no beef with school - I'm still friends with a lot of folks from high school, though our 20th reunion was so boring I really wish I had my money back from that one.

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by SteveDallas

Is this a recipe for disaster, or what??

"Or what," as it turns out. This was a small school. Each graduating class had between 6 and 10 students for the most part. The year I started 8th grade, the 7th grade was unacceptably large at something like 16 students and was split into two groups, the only grade (the school went from 5-12) to be so split.

Did I become best buddies with everybody? No. But they pretty much accepted me for who I was, and I started coming out of my shell a bit. It didn't hurt that the "jock" clique was all but nonexistent here as opposed to most schools. (There was no football, and soccer and basketball were populated with darn near the entire male population of the place--including, surprisingly, me for a couple seasons.) Even when I ended up in trigonometry, AP French, AP European History, and physics as a sophomore with a bunch of seniors for classmates, I fit in OK. As I grow older and (theoretically) wiser, I marvel that this kind of thing wasn't a social disaster, as it could have easily been. And while I liked the place at the time, I was totally unappreciative of how shocking my acclimatization there was.

One solution to the problem of geeks is to ship em all off to be together, and that indeed is where I was for 11th & 12th grades. This is where I REALLY came into my own as a reasonably competent person. I still cherish the friendships I made there, and it's impossible for me to attend a class reunion (which I attend religiously) without pining to return to North Carolina to be closer to more of my classmates.

(The other place went out of business 2 years after I left, due to financial problems. It's harder to keep up with people from there.)

[xoxoxoBruce]

Steve, most prep schools you're thrown in with a bunch of kids that are away from home and don't have any alliances on the outside. Also an environment where people come and go so the group changes from year to year. That would help keep cliques from forming. Kinda need all the friends you can get.