Teacherz

Yesterday apparently was National Teachers Day, and over at Slate they're asking "What's the wrost thing a teacher ever said to you?"

One of the many, MANY things for me was this:

At the end of my eighth grade year ("my eight grade year"...who am I, Holden Caulfield?) I won the World Geography Award. My elation was quickly stifled when my teacher thoughtfully took the time to announce to the whole class that my win was pretty much strictly due to the "One Award per Student" rule of the time; that the kids smarter than me had gotten awards from other classes, so this one eventually fell to me. How nice of him, I remember thinking. And who says trickle-down doesn't work?

More of Mr. Smith's greatest hits:

...it reminds me of a habit I had in AP History of filling up paper space on essay questions with "sort of" and "you know" instead of, you know, cracking a textbook.  I can remember one instance in particular that was so egregious Mr. Smith allowed it to be passed around class, to the howling delight of everybody.  Yes, that's the same Mr. Smith who also pulled this shit.  Actually, his greatest "there's no way he wouldn't be sued if he did that today, along with Mr. Ponish's playfully pulling boys' shirttails out and saying 'shirttails out!'" hit was when he'd be passing graded tests back to us: you'd walk up to his desk to get yours, and if your grade was particularly shitty he'd exaggeratedly announce "whoops!" to the entire class. 

I actually liked Mr. Smith. That was just the kind of shit you could get away with students back then.