Surprise Quiz:
- You’ve been teaching for 15 years or so, substitute etc and this is your first day of your own class. Is it a good idea to forget ten of your kids out in front of the school when you walk your class over to the church for the school opening day ceremonies?
- Is it a good idea to apologize to the parents afterwards?
- When a little girl who wants to like school and to like her teacher signs up for an extra class before school, and comes on time, is it a good idea to forget her in the cloak room and make her sit there for an hour until the rest of school starts?
- Should you apologize to the parents and the little girl afterwards?
- If you have a rowdy class, is making them skip their gym class and sit still in the classroom for an hour the best way to punish them?
- When one evil little boy tells another little boy to poke a little girl with a pencil, should you listen to the little girl when she reports this?
- When second little boy pokes little girl again with a pencil the next day, this time in the eye, is sending him to the big kids’ classroom for an hour the best way to punish him?
- Is it a good idea to make him continue sitting next to the little girl?
My kid’s teacher scored zero on this quiz. How’d you do?
Key: uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, no, no, uh-oh, uh-oh
we sort of lost faith in our daughter’s teacher. so my wife ran around today organizing a really nice other school for said kid, bending rules, barking up trees, whatever. when she was finished, said child announced she was staying put, where her new friends are.
there is an expression in german, “Die Rechnung ohne den Wirt machen” (adding up the bill without the um waiter, i.e. counting ones chickens before they’re hatched, which it looks like we did).
on the plus side, said kid is no longer sitting next to the boy who pokes her in the eye with pencils. now she’s next to another boy (one with behavior/aggression problems – the first one was one of the nicer ones) who tells her how stupid she is.
she can handle that, i think. she’s a surprising kid. i just wasn’t happy about, you know, physical attacks with pointy objects.
whatever.
Great teacher. My parents would be horrified to read this. (They are both teachers).
The woman hasn’t learned anything in 15 years….?
(add 4 or 5 for teachers education…) wow.
I think this is how great leaders are made.
Or brilliant artists, or serial killers.
Either way, she’ll be fine.
Still, I think a the “salmonella in the coffee cup” trick might be in order, here.