"Skip the idiot steps" Bad Teacher stories.

[csziggy]

20. Teachers' expectation do affect how they handle students

My oldest sister was a genius, top grades all the way through in every subject, ended up being valedictorian of her class and won every math, science and language award they gave. Second oldest sister nearly the same, but did not put as much emphasis on academics and was very active socially.

I came along and was very introverted and quiet. Teachers that had my older sisters often resented the family history - one male math teacher who didn't think girls needed to take advanced math was particularly hard on me because of my oldest sister doing better than any student he ever had. He was happy that I didn't care enough to work at math, since that justified his beliefs.

Teachers that had not had my older sisters didn't seem to expect much from me. Some were surprised because I would be impassive during class - often they thought I was not taking in anything. Most of the time I was lazy - academics tended to bore me, but tests were usually easy for me. So long as I could keep my head down, do the required work, and maintain a B average I was satisfied.

Part of that motivation was that I sold my soul to get a horse. My parents threatened my with dire consequences if I got into any kind of trouble at school - they would sell the horse that I had begged for all my life. It was a good way to keep me from getting into drugs or being the troublemaker I had plenty of talent to be.

All I wanted to do was get out in the open and ride my horse. The teachers just didn't get that. It also confounded the teachers that I had a wide range of interests and was frustrated that I could not get the information to correlate the different parts of the knowledge I gathered.

My senior year the guidance counselor called me in when the SAT scores came out. I had the highest scores in my class. My grade point average just barely put me in the top ten percent, so it was a shock to her and to most of the teachers. The counselor thought I'd been deliberately hiding something from her and the teachers. All they had to do was care enough to find out what I cared about and engaged me.