will only share two of them...
My HS Psychology teacher. We learned very little psychology in her class, which mostly consisted of her telling us stories about her family. One of them involved a nephew she found particularly annoying, and whom she appeared to enjoy mentally abusing. Yes, she told us stories about some of the things she did. Like it was all...OK. Sometimes the world of psychology is populated by some very damaged individuals. Anyway, the other part of our "classes" involved her giving us those word search puzzles to do while she sat at her desk doing whatever it was she did. I swear this is true. We didn't even have a book for her class.
Then there was my 8th grade English teacher, who perhaps wasn't so much BAD as just clueless during an age when things like family violence weren't so readily addressed as now.
My dad was an alcoholic. He and my mom fought all the time. One year, in a fit of rage, he tore down the entire Christmas tree and ripped the phone out of the wall. He broke my mom's jaw with a beer bottle. At my 11th or 12th birthday party (a small affair held when dad was at work) my mom appeared with purple finger marks on her neck where dad had tried to strangle her a day or two before.
I had trouble sleeping. I was afraid to leave the house, thinking they would kill each other. Naturally, my grades suffered. It was hard to care about conjugating verbs when my parents were intent on murdering each other. So one marking period when I was failing miserably, she called me out in front of the entire class...told me I should "shape up or ship out". I wanted to die.
What hurt was this...I was not a disruptive kid. Not a behavior problem. Very shy and quiet. Was she too busy, or too clueless, to figure out that something was terribly wrong?
I wish she had bothered to find out.
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