Decades ago, I was teaching high school kids with mild intellectual disabilities. I was also the senior play sponsor/director. From the first day of play practice, I worked on responsibility. Being on time, learning your lines, taking care of props.

On the week of the play, I reminded students to pick up props in my classroom the Monday after the play. Of course, they didn’t. I had it announced every day during morning and afternoon announcements. Still had a room full of props. Changed the announcement to say that any props left over Friday would be given away. My students with mild disabilities began “shopping”. Claiming props they wanted if not picked up.

Friday came and there were half a dozen or so props left. One was a nice, but not new, makeup case, obviously from a set of matched luggage. One of my girls, Sandra, a quiet, low-key young lady, had looked at it longingly every day. When no one else claimed it, she asked shyly if she could have it. I said yes. Her eyes lit up as she picked it up and headed to the bus.

I guess you can figure out what happened next. The student whose case it was showed up Monday to claim it. I explained to her that it had been given away. She was mad, but I stayed firm. A few days later, the principal called me in. He said he had gotten a phone call from an irate mother. The case was part of a matched set of luggage. She needed it back.

My principal had been pushing personal responsibility all year. He supported my approach to the pick up of props. He had known of my plan ahead of time, and had approved it. The parent was loud, demanding, entitled. She would fight this one to higher authorities (school board or superintendent.) My principal said it was my decision and said he would support my decision, whatever it was.

I chose badly. I succumbed to the pressure from the privileged Mom. I pulled Sandra to the side and told her what happened. I asked her to bring the case back. She looked very hurt, but resigned. She asked if I could take her home one day and pick it up from her house, she was embarrassed to carry it back to school on the bus. I wrote a note to her mom for permission to drive her home on Thursday.

Thursday afternoon, I took her home. They lived in a small white house with flowers outside, right on the edge of the projects. The house was clean, neat and had all kinds of personal touches. I had never met her mom. The mom was much like her daughter, quiet, a bit hesitant. She apologized to me, which made me feel so much worse. I took the case, and called the owner.

I felt wretched. I kept pictured Sandra’s face when she proudly carried the case to the bus. I did what I could do. I bought her a tote bag, a nice handled mirror, and a zippered cosmetic case. She was surprised and delighted. It may have been my guilty conscience, but I think she even liked this bag better.

Sandra taught me a couple of harsh truths:

1. The right path is usually toward protecting the vulnerable
2. Sometimes the bullies win.
3. Sometimes when you mess up big, you can’t fix it
4. A little kindness can be healing

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ElfVibratorGlitter

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2, 3, 4.... And 1. :)

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I was giving a lecture to around 50 international high school students in my college at Oxford University.

I got drunk before the lecture. I just wanted the paycheck.

The lecture was called ‘Shakespeare 101’ or ‘An Introduction to Shakespeare’ or something equally uninspiring.

I arrived in the hall. Saw a bunch of faces beaming up at me. I put my feet up on a desk and began reading from my notes in a dull monotone. Completely shameless.

The students tolerated about 10 minutes of this crap before one Chinese girl put her hand up and said this:

“Excuse me, Teacher? I have a question. Can you make it less boring?”

Wow.

She was right. It was boring as hell.

Teaching is not about collecting a paycheck.

The onus is NOT on the students to make it interesting.

Good teaching is not just rattling off a bunch of facts while the students scribble down notes.

“You’re right,” I said. “This is boring. I’m so sorry. Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’ve got a script here for Hamlet. We’re all going to act this out line by line.”

I handed out a bunch of sheets and got the whole class up and acting. Actually acting. Saying the words with feeling.

The class livened up. The shy ones came out of their shells. We all laughed. We all became super enthusiastic. They asked me endless questions and I asked them questions back and we all had a great time.

Then at the end of the class, about 20 of them stayed behind for a photo and they all queued up to swap phone numbers with me.

So thank you to that girl who asked me to make my lesson less boring.

I then went on to make my living from teaching for the next couple of years and was never again told that my lessons were boring. In fact, my students all raved about how much fun they had and how I helped them to stay committed to their studies.

Teaching can be a hard gig but it’s damn rewarding when you do it properly.

Benjamin McEvoy , fauxels Report

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Frogsizedfrog

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Did you stop geting drunk before lectures? You can give a boring af word-by-word script lesson while sober even if you're just there for a paycheck. Personally I think and hope this made a difference and was another wake-up call for the teacher.

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My mom was a teacher. She taught middle school. She loved to teach. One day she got back home quite upset. She had been having a bad day, and took her anger out on one student. After she had finished her rant, she looked in the fear in the student’s eyes and realized, that even though she hadn’t said anything; the girl’s eyes told her that she had just lost any trust she had built up with the her.
That day taught her, that her position could cause positive changes in kids, but it could also cause fear that she could never undo.

Lavrentiy Evgenievich Davidov Report

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I once asked students to come next time with their own laptops and added "I am sure every one has his own".

After class a girl came to me and mentioned that my comment caused her pain as she has no laptop. She mentioned that she is raised by a single mother and only manage tp pay fees of the private college.

I would not assume any thing for granted.

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CT

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In the early 2000s, teachers started wanting our homework typed. Not everyone had a computer. A girl in my class did all her homework on a typewriter.

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I can respond from the student perspective. I grew up very poor and that comes with a certain amount of prejudice regarding your intellectual capacity.

My family moved to a new school right before I started 9th grade. We relocated a lot (often 2-3x per school year) and I learned early to fly under the radar by sitting in the back with the other poor kids, so as not to draw the attention of bullies and the catty ‘popular' crowds.

I was sitting in the back of the class in environmental science taking my first test of the year, which had a question on it so silly I snickered involuntarily, because it was just plain dumb.

Why is it cold at the south pole?

A. So the penguins won't sweat.

I forget the rest of the options, but the question and option that made me laugh resulted in my teacher coming up from his desk like a he had heard a starter shot. He grabbed my test, and the test of the poor kid Shane right next to me, accused us both of cheating, tore up our tests, trashed them and gave us both an F.

I had read and understood Rand McNally's Atlas of the Solar System when I was 4 and already knew at least 80% of the course material we studied that entire year.

More importantly I was deeply offended, embarrassed, and hurt by his automatic judgement of my intellectual capacity and character. So rather than throw a fit I decided he could learn a lesson that might be more valuable.

I deliberately failed every test, and turned in no homework all semester, but did the reading, participated in class, and paid attention.

A devious amount of patience has always been a character trait.

At the end of the first semester I made sure I sat in the first row directly in front of his desk and scored 110% including getting 2 college level questions right that he salts his extra credit answers with. I was also finished 15 minutes before anyone else in the class and made a show of putting away my pencil and kicking back in my desk.

After giving me my graded final back he asked me on the way out of the door to stay after class. This was the moment my patiently devious mind had been waiting for.

He was confused and said “You seem to have picked up on the material, in fact better than anyone in the class. Honestly nobody has ever been able to get all of my extra credit right, and you did. Why didn't you turn in any homework and fail all of the tests?”

I reminded him of his accusations of cheating, embarrassing Shane and I for no reason in front of the entire class, and pointed out that I felt I had amply demonstrated that I did not need to cheat, never had, and neither had Shane.

The blood drained from his face, he looked disconcerted and embarrassed for a second, as I would probably be today if a 14 year old punked me so thoroughly, regained his composure and apologized.

He told me if I finished all my tests and turned in my homework for the second semester I would receive my 110% final grade as my first semester grade. He also removed the first test when averaging Shane's grade which brought him up by a full letter.

We struck a deal and I took a bunch of his classes after that because he was a really good teacher, just perhaps needed a lesson in judging worth by social status.

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I learnt a lesson very early in my life as a University teacher that learning need not take place only inside the classroom, and students could learn the nuances of a subject on their own (despite bunking your classes), when they are suitably challenged to do so.

This dates back to around 1991, when I taught a course on Aircraft Performance to 3rd year undergrad students of my department. As per institute norms in force at that time (which remain pretty much the same even today !) an attendance of 80% was necessary to be permitted to write the end-semester (final) examination; and students with < 80% attendance were deemed to have insufficient exposure to the subject, and hence to be awarded a repeat grade. There were around 5 students in my class of ~ 25 who had below par attendance, and one among them was Anand Subramanian, whose attendance was < 50 %.

These 5 students pleaded me to overlook the minimum attendance requirement. They gave all sorts of frivolous reasons for missing my classes, and tried to argue why this rule was draconian and should be disregarded. I recall Anand making a statement that what if a student could learn and master the subject on his own, without the need for attending the classes; why should such a student be debarred from writing the final examination ? He claimed that he could gain complete understanding of this subject on his own in a week’s time, and was ready for any kind of test. But the deal was that I would waive this rule if I was satisfied with his knowledge of the subject. I took up this challenge.

After a week, when Anand came and met me, he showed me an expert system for Aircraft Performance that he had developed in AutoLISP programming language. This expert system could estimate any aspect of aircraft performance using the limited data that was available for any given aircraft, and the estimates would become better and better with training as more and more data was provided. For this, the system would scan through all the formulae related to aircraft performance and back-calculate the value of any variable whose value was fuzzy. When Anand demonstrated the working of this algorithm to me, I was amazed at the mastery over the subject that he had developed in just one week of study; he could reel out any formula, any equation, and also seemed to know the numerical values of the data related to a few aircraft for which he had trained this expert system !

When I asked Anand how he could do this in such a short time, he replied that he had learned AutoLISP as part of the problem he tackled in his undergraduate dissertation, and so he could quickly apply what he learned to solve this “real life” problem. Needless to say, I permitted him to write the end-sem examination, and I am sure he must have cracked it.

This example opened my eyes to the fact that given the right push, motivation, and an enabling environment, bright and hardworking students can learn many things on their own, without the direct help of a Teacher.

Thank You, Anand, for teaching me such a lovely lesson so early in my academic career!

P.S.

Anand was the Founder and CEO of NIMBLE TV, which was recently acquired by Synacor Inc. If he, or anyone else who knows him, reads this post, please help us re-connect.

Rajkumar S. Pant Report

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T'Mar of Vulcan

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Primary school example. When I taught Grade 6 English I did Jack the Ripper as a theme (it had been the previous teacher's theme and I just took over from her). I cut out any graphic descriptions, only showed the old drawings about the case, etc. But the kids were fascinated! They would bring me printouts of victim photos and ask questions about what organs were removed, etc. Yeah. But no parent ever complained. Unlike when I showed them an episode of Dr. Who. Just say... don't blink!

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I think (or hope) I learned not to jump to conclusions. A student in a College Level class told me she had to miss the midterm, and could she write a make-up exam instead. I don't think it was what I actually said, rather it was the the tone of my voice that that upset her. She said, "I'm sorry but I'm starting chemotherapy."

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Michael Largey

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The best way to respond to any student request is always "So tell me about this."

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I used to teach freshman composition for English language learners. I habitually assigned essays with what I thought were interesting prompts.

One of them was “What is my greatest fear?”

As I was reading over the responses to this assignment, one caught my attention. He was a young Vietnamese who had been in the army during the Vietnam War and had thereby been able to immigrate to the U.S.

In very bad English, he told the story of his job, which was to count the corpses on the terrain where a battle had just taken place. Not to fight, but just to count. That’s what he did all day long — look at dead bodies.

At first, I began to correct his English, but then I stopped. It felt ridiculous to be focused on grammar and spelling errors when reading this essay, which despite its gruesome details, presented also a flat, emotionless surface.

It turned out that his worst fear was having nightmares (which he frequently did) about those days — the sights and smells of the dead.

I wrote some sympathetic comment under the essay & stopped correcting the grammar.

The harsh truth I learned then was that some topics bring out truly horrible stories. I didn’t think “my greatest fear” would do that, but looking back, I realize that it’s a dangerous topic. Was the lesson for me, that I should pick my topics more carefully? Yes, partly it was only that. But partly it was that no matter what face a person presents to me, I cannot possibly know what lies behind that face.

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I’m the Director of a private preschool. We had a toddler of Indian descent that had obvious and severe developmental delays. As the school year passed… His teachers and I had concerns that he was not progressing and as the other kids in the class were learning to walk, talk and feed themselves etc. He was a big child (in height and weight) and would not be able to progress to the next class with his peers and was too old/big to stay in the class he was in. I had a difficult discussion with his parents, suggested that he needed ECI (Early Childhood Intervention) and informed them that we were unable to meet his needs. His parents were completely clueless. We provided many resources for them and offered much advice. They ended up shipping him back to India, where family institutionalized him and basically shut him away to be forgotten about… as he was a “shame to the family”. It broke my heart. I realized that there are just some people that will always choose to take the easy way out and avoid an issue than meet it head on. Some parents are just unable to advocate for their child and some people should not be parents.

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Charity Angel

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It's a real shame he couldn't be accommodated, but I'm assuming that there was a safety issue with having a child much larger than the others? Especially one who might not learn how to play gently?

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I have taught mathematics to students in the 3rd standard, to students who were preparing for CAT (Common Admission Test: The entrance exam for an MBA program in India) and to nearly everyone in between. It is fun to teach the same subject to such a wide range of age group. It teaches you a lot about teaching!

OK, so about the truths I learned from my students.

There is a plethora of things which I learned from my students, but because the question asks for one particular thing, here is one incident which I still remember vividly.

Once, after a class was over, a 15 year old student, who was in the 9th standard, came to me and asked me to solve a complex geometry problem which he was having trouble with. He also had his mother with him. I was very young at that time and perhaps because of this, she was looking visibly incredulous. I felt alarmed. I didn’t want to look foolish before her.

I confidently took the book from my student and peeped into it. The problem seemed simple. I took a pencil and began trying. It was a time when I used to have a lot of ‘performance pressure’ issues and I felt very uncomfortable, trying to solve a problem while the lady eyed me constantly. Normally I could have solved that problem in about 15 seconds but that day, even after a whole minute I was pissing in the wind.

And then it happened. I heard my student say, “You will never get it done!”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I had always believed, although subconsciously, that in this moment of crisis, he would be on my side. I stole a glance at him.

I found him smiling, not laughing, not smirking, smiling!

I don’t know what expression his mother’s face showed because I couldn’t gather courage to have a look at her.

I got even more confused and just stared at him blankly. And then he spoke the magic words.

“You will never get it done because you are not trying to solve the problem. What you are really figuring out is a way to get out of this awkward situation, probably because my mother is around.”

I felt like Dr. Watson usually feels when Sherlock explains him something ‘trivial’. Eventually I cleared his doubt and like they say, the pleasure was all mine!

Today, as a 24 year old person, I still feel surprised at the generic-ness of his observation. We are often told to ‘not to give a shit’ about what others think of us. But I learned something more fundamental that day.

In pressured scenarios, mistakes happen not because of incompetence, but because of divided attention. Don’t try to run away, focus on the problem at hand.

I learnt it, but I still struggle hard sometimes to actually ‘use’ what I learnt.

Kedar Marathe , Judit Peter Report

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That adults can be incredibly selfish and cruel.

In one case, a middle school boy revealed that his mother, when given a choice by a judge to choose to keep either her children or her boyfriend who was abusing one of the children. She chose the boyfriend.

I've often said I've learned many things about people and human behavior from my time as an educator I wish I had never learned. Watching kids go through the pain is scarring, and some situations I'll never get over… all because adults can be incredibly selfish and cruel.

Dr Daniel L Oakley Report

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wowbagger

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My grandmother was a special education teacher. I was horrified when she told me that not all of her students' disabilities were congenital or caused by accidents. Some were caused by abuse from adults.

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"My student, Sean, taught me that the time we have with our students is precious. Deeper learning experiences are needed by our students. Not in two years, not in six months, not next week. Deeper learning experiences are needed by our students today. Right now. This very moment. We need to structure environments where students are deeply engaged in their lives as they are living them.

I know this is true because during the last days of the 2010/11 school year, the worst fear of every teacher was realized for me. My student was murdered. Sean (15), and his younger brother Kyle (13) tragically died in a murder/suicide, killed by their own father. Sean was my favorite that year. In fact, Sean was my favorite student of all time. He was the kid I wished I could have been at fifteen. He swaggered into school with confidence, intelligence, and a never-ending stream of comic book superhero references. Sean and I became close immediately. This closeness in our relationship only increased as we spent many hours together in my after-school Graphic Novel Project, touring statewide on the weekends, selling comics at conventions."

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That I had no business being in front of a classroom.

It was my first year of teaching junior high band. Well into the school year I discovered that one of my clarinet players had no clue how to play the thing and through pure embarrassment simply faked playing.

Rather than dealing with her privately I spent most of the rest of the class trying to catch her up with two months of work, with her classmates giggling behind and her turning red with embarrassment and anger. I then realized I was teaching the subject and had no idea how to teach students.

I lasted another two years and to everyone's relief had a nervous breakdown, sought medical treatment and another field.

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The harshest truth I ever learned from a student was that things aren’t as simple as they seem or we would like, and that not every situation has a straight forward, cut and dried solution.

I’ve taught in a lot of places from elementary school to college to graduate university to prison, but this particular incident occurred on a basketball court when I was coaching a Boys’ Club team with my lifelong friend Lee McGee up in Harlem. Lee came from the same tough neighborhood in Brooklyn as Mike Tyson, whereas I came from the mean streets of New Hampshire and Western Massachusetts. He was head coach and I was the assistant. Our team consisted of 12 year olds who were a pretty unruly bunch of street kids who constantly challenged authority. This was particularly true of one kid, “Eric,” who was our best player. One day I was running a shirts & skins scrimmage while Lee was conducting a clinic with a few players. The teams I put together were a bit unbalanced, so I told Eric to switch over to the skins. His closest friends were all on the shirts team, and initially, he pretended like he didn’t hear me. Seconds later, Eric flat out refused, things escalated quickly, and Lee got involved. Eventually, Lee had some private words with Eric, had him run laps and sent him home. As Eric was leaving, I saw he was starting to cry, so asked Lee what was going on. Lee quietly told me that it was likely that Eric’s father beat him and he didn’t want the other players to see the marks. I was shocked and said, “If you suspected that, why the hell did you send him home???” Lee responded, “Rules are the one thing that separates us from the street and even some homes. These kids count on us to create an environment where rules apply. Without them, we don’t have a team and we lose ALL of these kids.” I still didn’t buy it and said, “Well, at the very least, we have to get social services involved.” Lee gave me a look that indicated that I didn’t know very much. “We do that and this will be the last time we ever see Eric in this gym and he will sure as hell take more beatings.” Later, Lee told me that he planned to check in on Eric and make low key inquiries with friends and neighbors.

Next practice, both Eric and I showed up early. We shot around in casual silence and never discussed the previous practice. Lee and I never ran shirts & skins again. Eventually, we made a run for the city championship necessitating more practices. In the end, our team was league runner-up and Eric was voted MVP.

A year later, we were coaching a team of 10 year olds. There was a kid who was slipping and sliding around in old shoes from the Good Will. Before the first game of the season, we met in front of a sporting goods store where I proceeded to buy him a pair of Nike high tops. Outside the store, the kid looked at the shoes with wonder, like they were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Then we proceeded to put dirt on the shoes and scuff them against the curb. When we arrived for the game, the other kids on the team all double-taked at the shoes but no one questioned his story that they came from a pawn shop. I had learned a lot since the previous season.

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When I was teaching a freshman composition class—one of my first classes as a colllege instructor—a student blatantly plagiarized an essay. Now, this student had been struggling a little bit all semester, and I got the feeling that he really wasn't all that engaged. When I saw he had copied large portions of his paper from the Internet, I knew I had to have a serious talk with him.

The next class rolled around, and I gave the class something to do and pulled this young man out into the hall. I confronted him about his paper, and he denied it, saying that he wrote it. But I pressed him, and I could see his walls starting to come down. He began to tear up, and admitted he had copied it from another source. He went on to tell me about the myriad struggles he had at home and in his life in general, and how hard college was proving to be for him. And hearing his story, my seriousness about his plagiarized paper seemed so petty. I realized: sometimes school is not the most important thing, and that students live lives that are more complex and challenging than we often know. What feels like a life-or-death situation in the academic world is really just another challenge in some students’ endlessly challenging world—it's all a matter of perspective.

It shook my resolve as a teacher a bit, but I was able to calm the student down and talk things through. I obviously still had to deal with this problem, so I gave him 24 hours to rewrite the paper and in exchange would not pass the paper up to administration. To his credit, he wrote an entirely new paper, all his own words, and displayed an incredible resolve I won't ever forget.

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I'm a relatively new teacher, but I have already learnt far more than my students than I have taught them. The key things:

1) Students will always know more than you do about something, and that's not a bad thing. I try to make my students aware that if they know something and want to share that knowledge, I'll facilitate that as much as possible - luckily I teach English which allows for lots of tangents!

2) Don't waste time. My students have taught me that their time is valuable, and that education is not one size fits all. When I'm teaching older students, I try to give them as much variety and choice as possible, so that they learn in a way that suits them. Sure, sometimes they won't pick a task that is most worthwhile for them, but then they hopefully learn something about how to reflect on their choices.

3) Pick your battles. Students are not robots, and they will have shitty days from time to time. So sometimes you don't jump on a student for being late if they look like they've already had a rough morning. If a kid has her head down when you ask about homework, she probably doesn't want it announcing to the rest of the class that she's not managed to do it. I've learnt that a quiet word at the end of a class can be much more effective than bawling at a kid in front of their peers.

I imagine that in a few years time, I'll have picked up a lot more.

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The harshest truth a student ever taught me was that I was not ready to teach young children.

I was doing my student teaching, which involved working with elementary school children for five weeks and then working with high school children for five weeks.

I was handing out supplies to second graders, and I was addressing the importance of waiting for instructions before starting anything and keeping their hands to themselves (Not marking on other students' papers, etc.). I looked over and saw a boy mark on the paper of the girl beside him. I went over and reminded him that they were not to mark on other people's papers. He replied, "I didn't." I told him that I had seen him do it, and saying things that weren't true is called lying. I asked him if he wanted to grow up to be a liar. At this point, he began sobbing, with shoulders heaving and everything. I felt like a jerk.

My observing teacher took me aside and informed me that I had done a horrible thing to that child. I realized that I had absolutely no idea how to relate to young children in that environment. How would I handle other situations?

I finished the student teaching at the elementary level and went on to the high school. I realized that I had a much more natural ability to communicate with that age group, while still maintaining a professional relationship. When I interviewed for jobs, I knew that I would be best suited for high school level instruction.

If I hadn't had that interaction, I might not have been as aware of my deficiencies, and I might have ended up being a not-very-good elementary art teacher. It was a harsh reality, but it was important for me, and I am much better off for having learned it when I did. I will also add that it taught me to think much more carefully about the words that come out of my mouth, because how my thoughts are expressed really does matter.

Elizabeth Knight , RDNE Stock project Report

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Bored Trash Panda

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While the wording could have been a little more gentle, I think what they did was fine. Kids in second grade are 7 to 8, are old enough to know what lying is and should be taught it isn't ok, especially when they are caught flat out like that.

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That you never know what struggles are truly going on in someone's life. C was one of my favourite ever students. She came to me midway through her penultimate year in school. She was failing everything, described as rude, confrontational and unteachable and didn't want to be there.

It took a long time to break down those barriers. I remember her writing on the first day "There's no way I'm staying in this school for …." (Insert derogatory word for people with learning difficulties). Fast forward a few months of relentless positivity then one memorable day she said "You're not going to stop trying, are you? I've realised you're on my side and you want to fight for me not against me."

Her sense of humour was legendary. Like the day she persuaded the whole class to come to school in pyjamas and onesies then tried to tell me they would learn better if they were relaxed. She discovered passions. She was an exceptional artist and historian. We did a project on the Holocaust and her dream was to visit Anne Frank's house.

C became a peer mentor, counselling younger students and imploring them not to make the mistakes she had. One of the proudest moments of my career was accompanying her to an awards dinner where she received a prestigious award in recognition of this.

When she left school she gave me a teddy bear and left to begin an internship in Health Care. She had beaten hundreds of other kids to the post by writing an impassioned essay about why the NHS was so important to people's lives. Though she had left us for the world of work she would rush from her early finish on a Friday to pop down for a cup of tea and a catch up. After a stressful week at work she would burst through the door bringing sunshine and infectious laughter in her wake.

At the end of July I was in Europe on holiday. A close colleague and friend called me at close to midnight and told me to sit down - never a good combination. C had left us at the age of 17. The tragic thing is that she had taken pills then regretted it and sought help. It was too late and she left us afraid and in pain.

What I learned is that however together someone seems you can never truly know the inner turmoil they may be experiencing.

C's mother (who is beautiful, brave and dignified) used her pain to salvage something positive. She set up a foundation to educate other youngsters on the dangers of cries for help. She also established a group to support and divert young women with mental health difficulties and provide social opportunities and counselling. Her legacy lives on. I am absolutely sure her story has saved at least one young person from making the same mistake. I only wish we hadn't had to lose her from this world to achieve that.

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As an adjunct professor at San Francisco State I was teaching an course in computer logic (early days of computer science about algorithym development). It was in 1978, as many Asians were coming to San Francisco due to the failed end of the war in Vietnam. An older woman named Ms. Xi (as I recall) sat far back in the room, wrapped in a gray blanket, looking grim and never speaking one word.

I used to have the bad tendency to “handicap” students (in my thought process) prejudging who would be winners and losers. I was rarely wrong. Ms. Xi seemed to have a real problem with English, she was old and unhappy looking. I gave her very little chance of sticking around to complete the school term (quarter system as I recall).

The mid-term exam was long, written form and complex. Students had to propose an algorithym to solve a particular problem related to queueing. Ms. Xi sat grim looking in the back row and completed the exam near the end of alloted time. She walked to the front of class to hand in the completed work. Her blanket dragged the floor a bit, and I received the exam saying to her “thank you Ms. Xi”. She looked utterly shocked that I knew her name since we had never spoken. I detected a very slight smile as she turned to leave.

I “blind graded” those types of exams in an attempt to remove any bias from the process. One exam in particular took me a long time to evaluate. At first I totally missed the purpose of the student’s proposed algorithym and thought it to be a real loser. But something about the work caused me to re-examine it several times. Finally it hit me! This thing was elegant and an approach that I had never seen prior at all.

That exam merited 100 points, a very rare perfect score. Looking at the student’s name I nearly fell off my chair when I realized that the student was none other than Ms. Xi. She seemed to accept the result in stride. From that day forward I had profound respect for Ms. Xi. God knows what odds she overcame to end up in San Francisco, but I truly valued her genius. This story occurred nearly 50 years ago. But the lesson that Ms. Xi taught me has been prominent in my mind from that day forward. “Never judge a book by it’s cover.” Thank you again Ms. Xi.

Mark Drummond Report

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“Y’all are doin’ too much right now.” Several students chuckle.

“What do you mean, D——-? We have to walk around and give instructions and plug these computers in. We’re teachers; that’s our job.”

“Yeah but y’all are doin’ too much though.” More amused agreement, some tension waiting to see what we’ll say. We don’t really know what to say, though.

It took maybe three more visits for my colleague and I to realize that she meant we were tryhards. We were trying too hard. Maybe to relate to the kids, maybe at something else that day, I can’t quite remember. But teaching in a juvenile detention center usually has one ugly truth at its core: there are some things you don’t have in common with your students and never will. That day, at least, we had it pointed out to us. Most days, it went better.

Connor Shaughnessy Report

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Unlike anybody who has answerd the question here, neither was I a good student nor an examplary teacher, but somehow after graduation I ended up teaching in a rural private school to basic levels for an year or so.

I being the youngest teacher in school, the 10th graders rather saw me as their friend than a teacher (I never taught their class though). They would often come to me for their this & that problems and I was more than happy to help because I had so many briliant young friends who not only enjoyed my company but also respected me.

It was April, I think, the younger students were not yet back to school after annual exams, but the 9th & 10th grades were there.

There was one Ismail in 10th, who would never miss an opportunity of being funny, so one day their math teacher was absent and I was there to cover his class and just at random Ismail claims that he can mimic (I'm not sure "mimic" is appropriate word for it) all the teachers of school and rest of the class votes for a go, so I also decided to let him do what he claimed he could, because it was their free time and I was under no directions to teach anything but only keep them occupied in classroom.

Ismail, one by one mimics his teachers, their good traits, bad one and funny ones (inside and outside the classroom) and his mimicry left me in shock and surprise, not just for good acting, but his keen observation enabling him to put the entire persona of his teacher in front of his audience/viewers. That day I realised that these children seldom miss any slip of tongue, mistake and even a single briefist moment where you inadvertantly attempt to scrach your balls, they see almost everything like they can even peek into your soul.

The only thing I regret about that day is, I stopped him from doing mine because I couldn't gather the courage to see myself in the mirror.

I was never able adopt teaching as profession, but till this day I miss those cheerful friends of mine, whom I taught almost nothing but learned a lot from them.

Muhammad Ilyassyyed Report

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Here's a short answer from a home school mother. After a couple of years, my oldest child who was seven at the time, told me, "Mommy, the things I teach myself are better than the things you teach me!"

I asked him what he meant by that, and he said that he was thinking about math and had figured out that 3 x 7 was 21, and that since he had figured it out himself, he would never forget it.

That always stayed in my memory and guided me to respect my children more. My preconceived ideas of what they should learn were not always right. His words caused me to work with them on what they needed to learn, to find their own place in the world, and when it was time, to let them go. The same thought also guided me to place less importance on my own efforts and more on motivating their efforts.

Margaret Manneschmidt Report

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I’ll talk from the student perspective so as to let you know how students in a tender young age perceive situations.

It was in 4th grade (I was around 9 y.o), during the spring season, and about 2 months left before moving to the next grade.

On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, around 1:00pm, we were having calligraphy writing of the alphabet w/ our teacher. A lovely, sweet, young woman, always with a smile on her face, and with lots of love for toddlers, but most of all, love for her job as a teacher on a public elementary school. So, we (25 students to be exact) were writing down our alphabet letters on a specific notebook, and she (I’m sad I don’t remember her name) was walking between the desks, checking our writing and correcting where necessary.

Suddenly, out of the blue, a classmate of mine asked our teacher for information about our next grade, the 5th grade; what subjects are included and if they’re difficult, and so on. She gladly answered the question, and then another of my classmates asked the right question …

“Miss … are we all going to be together in 5th grade?”

I remember she didn’t answer right away. She took her time, as if she was contemplating whether or not to drop the bomb, and little did she know what would follow after revealing what was going to happen next. Eventually, she decided to let us know.

“Kids, I’m sorry to say this to you, eventually, you’re going to be told, but you’re not going to be together in 5th grade.”

She paused for awhile, waiting to see our reaction and then continued…

“Classes are going to be divided the upcoming year, so you won’t be in the same class with your friends. I’m sorry.”

Every each one of us stopped what was doing. Absolute silence in the classroom. We were staring at the teacher, and she was staring back at us. And then, a girl started crying, and yelling …

“I want to be with my friends. I do not want us to be separated.”

And then a boy started crying, too, yelling …

“It’s so unfair, Miss.”

Little by little, every each one of us then started crying, literally sobbing because we would be separated from our friends from being in the same class.

So, as 25 little kids were literally crying and hugging each other for confrontation, and due to love, the teacher couldn’t keep it together and … guess what happened?

The teacher started crying, too.

Imagine 25 kids AND the teacher, crying all together. It’s a funny scene to witness, yet heartbreaking.

So, what is it my teacher was taught that day?

She was taught the pure value of friendship and reciprocated love in very innocent and young ages. Not everybody was friends w/ one another, but eventually, we all were a big family.

Eventually, next year the classes were divided and blended to form new ones that consisted of different kids, and we were never told why it happened.

Jim Kouks Report

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I'll have to tell this story vicariously, as it was my girlfriend at the time who experienced this. She liked being hip and cool, and was kind of into the local band scene and she had purple streaks in her hair.

One day after parent teacher conferences, she asked one of her students why she didn't get to meet their parents, to which the kid replied "my parents said they don't take people with purple hair seriously".

Obviously, the kid wasn't supposed to repeat this, but I think it was eye-opening for her to see that sometimes you do have to adjust your style in favor of your professional environment, even if no one wants to actually admit that.

Tom Nikl Report

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Marie BellaDonna

Marie BellaDonna

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4 months ago

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OR, or, or, sometimes you have to realize that some people are just narrow-minded little snobs who would do something detrimental to their child's education and future because of their inability to see past the tips of their own upturned noses, and not give a flying fúck what they think about you.

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That schadenfreude knows no bounds.

A long time ago, I was a primary school English teacher. My students were about 10–11 years old.

One morning, one of them was missing. He was a quiet kid from a really conflictive—and poor—family. His father was a very violent man who used to regularly beat his eight brothers and sisters. Each one of his siblings had trouble at school or a miserable life, it seems this one—the youngest—was the one to be spared such cruel misfortune.

The next day I was notified why he was missing. His father left him locked in a cabin where later a sailor sexually abused him.

I was shocked.

Then I was even more shocked when kids started making jokes regarding his absence.

—He’s being uploaded to red-tube.

Even girls were participating in the pun-fest about that tragic incident.

—Will he come in a wheel-chair?

I couldn't stand it.

—WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU KIDS!?!?!?! I thought, before unleashing an avalanche of homework which would keep them busy enough for weeks.

Three months later I quit my teaching job. Luckily I never needed it in the first place.

Omar Bessa Report

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I've learned so many wonderful things from my students. I wish you hadn't asked for the harshest. The harshest lesson I have ever learned as a teacher (and I don't think it'll ever get easier) is that you can't save them all.

I was teaching at an inner-city high school and Iban was one of my students though he rarely came to class. A lot of teachers had given up on him, but one of the assistant principals had given me his back story and, oh, I wanted to help him. I wanted to make him see that focusing on his education was the answer, that we were on his side, that we had his back. But I couldn't get him to change his priorities and I lost him to the streets and it still hurts. And it always will. And I will always regret the ones I lose...

Liz Shinohara Report

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The harshest truth I have learned is that you cannot save them all. No matter how much you care for your students, no matter how good the relationship, some students come to us so damaged, they will not have the good lives we could wish they would have. It is the hardest thing I have had to learn in my many years of teaching.

As a teacher in a public high school, I’ve had many wonderful students over the years who have flourished and prospered. I stay in touch with them. I celebrate and revel in their successes. But it is the children who failed to find their paths that keep me up at night.

And sometimes, even years later, their faces and their situations haunt me. I always wonder, “Could I have done more?” “Could I have been more inspirational?”

Teachers, as all teachers know, don’t just teach. We’re social workers, ancillary parental figures, club leaders, cheer leaders (for our students), tutors, curriculum designers, and social directors. I think we’re also, often, seen as jailers, which complicates our success in the aforementioned 7 tasks.

Breaking through and teaching students who have developed a hatred for the educational system (and teachers) is our toughest task. Every teacher is held responsible for every bad teacher a student has had in the past and in many cases we have to reestablish trust in the educational system before we can begin to teach. And we have to do this while we teach 100 (or more) students a day, and grade those students work in a timely manner, and produce quizzes and tests, and manage to deal with other students’ problems as well.

I can remember one student in particular, who broke my heart my second year of teaching in high school. He had had a teacher who told him in third grade that he would never amount to anything and he was doing his best to prove her right. I found out about that third grade teacher after having a very long conversation with this student about his behavior in my class. But understanding this student, and talking with this student, and tutoring this student, was not enough, and he eventually went off the rails, assaulted a teacher, and left our school. He was always very kind to me, but I knew he was volatile. Yet there was so much that was positive in him, I still grieve for what might have been- if only he’d been in a less challenging home situation; if only he’d had more interventions; if only he’d had more positive teachers along the way, things might have turned out differently.

So my student taught me that no matter how much you care, and even if you do spend the extra time with a student, you may still fail to put that student on a path that will lead to success. But he also taught me that the time spent is not wasted, even if the intervention seems like a failure, because every relationship your build teaches you more about how to build them in the future, and that softens the hard truth a little, but not nearly enough.

Alexandria Malloy Report

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I was a school teacher for 8 years and taught students from 13–16 years old. There was this student who talked non-stop during lesson despite me, so many times I warned her and I asked her to stop. In the end, I made her stand as a form of punishment and soon she started crying. I asked her if she wanted to go to toilet to cool down and she refused, after a while I let her sit down.

I called her dad personally to explain the situation and her dad seemed to understand the situation and there was no unhappiness from his side.

Guess what the dad came personally the week to see the vice principal who was one of my bosses. He complained that I was very fierce and whole class was scared of me and affect his daughter’s learning.

In all my 8 years, there was no complaints from any parents nor about my teaching. The vice principal sided with the parent without even checking about the situation at all and ask other students in the class about the actual situation.

I turned cold. The harsh truth I learnt that a shitty person usually have shitty parents and being shitty has nothing to do with age. This student was just 15 years old and definitely told a different story to her dad. I realised that I had lost all motivation at my job too given no support from higher management, not even any attempt to clarify the situation.

My grade dropped (yes, Teachers are being ranked here) for first time below expectations. I quit my job less than a year after that incident.

Zooy Chen Report

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I taught Primary in church for about two years (for those unaware, in the Mormon church, Primary is like Sunday School for little kids). In that time, I learned something deeply horrifying about humans.

Not all humans are born “good,” and the awful ones will attract similar awful ones.

I was teaching 6 year olds. There were five kids in my class. Two of them are the focus of this story. Note: names have been changed.

Ellie was one of the girls, and Drake was one of the boys.

Drake was, simply, your average 6 year old. He was a little hyper, and not always good at paying attention. But he was a great kid.

During our lesson on holidays, he blurted out “Valentine’s Day must be about how Jesus loves us and so we should love other people and be nice to everyone!” I don't care what the real answer was, I like his better.

The other teachers weren't fond of him. His hyperactivity wore on their nerves. They scolded him constantly.

Ellie, on the other hand, was trouble. Not in the disrupting class way, but in the nasty, bullying, hitting the other kids and trying to hide it because she knew it was wrong.

She was charming though. That was the big issue. Her charm made most of the teachers forget that she was trouble. They knew when they saw it, but somehow no one translated it into a pattern of behavior.

Ellie’s least favorite classmate was Drake.

At least once a class, Ellie would do something to try and get Drake in trouble. Sometimes she'd pinch so hard he screamed. Other times she'd go crying to the Primary President, saying he'd punched her and I wasn't doing anything about it. Once, she gave him a piece of candy, and then ran off crying that he'd stolen it.

Bad news, this girl.

In Sharing Time (group lessons) I sat the kids three in front of me and two on each side. This let me keep the best eye on all of them. I always sat Ellie and Drake as far away from each other as possible to minimize the damage. Ellie was in front of me to the right, and Drake was next to me to the left.

Ellie turned around and shouted “Drake just kicked me!” I looked at her and said in my most serious voice, “Ellie Fisher we do not tell lies!”

She burst into tears. The primary president came over to comfort her.

The Primary President was not someone any of us thought had any business being around kids. Her favorite punishments used humiliation, and she had no problem humiliating teachers and students alike. She'd gotten full custody of her daughter in the divorce, and we had no idea how she pulled it off. We only knew her ex-husband had somehow been shamed out of town of his own accord and put up no contest.

She was basically a grown-up Ellie.

Naturally, she adored Ellie. Her poor daughter. I had her in my class, and this woman regularly brushed off her own daughter’s hugs in favor of this girl. It was sickening.

Ellie got a necklace with a hard, heavy, plastic pendant on it for Christmas. Within seconds of starting class, she'd taken it off and hit another child with it so hard it left a welt.

“Ellie, this is your only warning. If I see that necklace off your neck one more time, I'll take it until the end of the day,” I told her, following all the rules I'd learned from the teacher discipline information I'd read.

She put it back on.

Come sharing time, she took it off again. Then, quick as a flash, she reached across me and whacked Drake with it.

“Ellie, give me the necklace. You can have it back when sharing time is over.”

“But it was a present from Santa!” she wailed.

“No buts. You had your warning. I told you what would happen. Give me the necklace now.” She jumped up and ran to the Primary President.

“There there,” the Primary President consoled. “Your teacher is just being a meanie. She won't do anything like that again.”

Ellie moved away the next year, and the Primary President left the church when another teacher called her out on a different issue. The Primary President has been married three times since then, and has bled

Kimberly Lewis Report

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1. Teachers don't have all the answers in the world. A student once asked me, why does the sun appears bigger at sunset compared to 12 noon. It was during a friggin' maths class. *facepalm*
2. Teachers make mistakes too. I got the equation wrong. Alright. My mistake. Not the calculator's fault (Although my calculator took the blame many times).
3. Some of us don't teach because we like kids or because it is our passion. We might be broke, jobless any clueless. So quit assuming that all teachers love kids. I particularly don't.
4. Teachers can be boring, grumpy and not fun. Probably many find it hard to digest that teaching is not a fun job. I taught third graders that found my annoyance amusing.

Ruby Senora Report

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T'Mar of Vulcan

T'Mar of Vulcan

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5 months ago

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Okay a bit off-topic but the questions during Maths made me remember. Once in Geography class I asked a question, and Jean-Pierre put up his hand. "Ma'am, are you a Christian?" (I'd been playing with my cross pendant without realizing it.) I looked at this child and deadpan responded, "No, I just wear this to keep vampires away," and carried on with the lesson.

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