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Wednesday, November 3, 2010

What? No teacher? Normal.

This post is part of Mama Kat's writer workshop!

Prompt: Describe a moment when you saw someone hit their breaking point.

In my senior year of high school we had this English teacher. In all fairness, she was a good teacher and got is interested in things we weren't interested in before, and was a good confidant at times.

You know, times that she wasn't being completely insane.

I don't know what ever happened to this teacher. She quit after us and moved, then moved back, and no one has really talked to her since then. If one day she finds this and reads this then she'll just have to suck it up and come to terms with the fact that she's nuts, or at least was nuts at this point.

Anywho. To the breaking point.

In my senior year I didn't have a first period class and that was also her planning period. The next bell I had her. Our class was small, only 11 students, and at this point I was only on campus half the day and was teaching the other half of the day. But, a week or two before we had started a bookclub with this teacher during lunch--when I am usually gone. But, my schedule was flexible and I could change it if I needed to.

Right before my second bell class I was standing in the hallway outside her room with some friends. We had previously talked about a teacher meeting during lunch that day with 2 of the other teachers who were in the book club with us (shut it--I was a nerd and proud of it). This teacher came out of her room and this conversation ensued:

Her-"Are you going to be here for lunch today?"
Me-"I can be. Are we meeting?"
Her-"Well since the other teachers are in a meeting..."
Me-"Okay, then I won't. It doesn't matter, I can do whatever."

She then proceeded to stomp off, declare that she was not teaching the seniors anymore, and lock herself in her classroom.

Um....yea.

So we spent our class period in a big conference room with another teacher, and we're all sitting there just laughing because we all witness this psychotic outburst. The next day she "agreed" to teach us again, but it was obviously an unforgettable moment. Ehmm. This wasn't the only crazy moment of the year with this particular teacher. She occasionally left in the middle of the day because she felt like it, yelled at us for not knocking and then yelled at us FOR knocking, and occasionally went off on a random student just for fun. But this was, by far, the best.

I'm just saying...sometimes medication is good.

6 comments:

paulakiger said...

Aw man, now I HAVE to know what happened to this lady! She probably was "just loony" but I watched someone deteriorate from sanity into not-so-sane once and it turns out she had a brain tumor -- I always think of her when people's behavior makes a gradual decline -- maybe there's a reason! Thanks for sharing this post.

Shell said...

Poor lady. All those years of teaching kiddos got to her.

CrazyLittleB_tch said...

I LOVE crazy teachers! I always attached myself to a teacher everyone else thought was crazy or mean.
Hmm...

Anonymous said...

Oh my.. My husband has lots of funny stories about crazy teachers - tho sometimes he was the reason for their breaking points... lol. All my teachers seem boring and normal by comparison.
Loved your post.. Stopped in from Mama Kat's.

Jerralea said...

I bet that day was just the last straw for that lady ...

Teaching teenagers takes a very special person!

Anonymous said...

I was alternating between laughing hysterically, shaking my head in disbelief, and scrolling down the page to see what finally happened to her as fast as I could. I re-read it, and found it even more clear that she was indeed absolutely bonkers! Maybe stuff just built up and volcano-ed out, but wow. Says something in favor of letting things out on a regular basis to prevent this kind of break/explosion!