Teachers

Reading some of the posts at Wilkes World got me thinking about some of the teachers I've had a long the way. Most of my educational experiences have been with wonderful educators....but I've also had my share of doozies. Take my high school Spanish teacher who we'll call: Mrs. B.

This woman was the queen of fashion faux-pas (sp? obviously I took espanol!) Her outfits typically looked like this: Too tight white blouse, pulling at the buttons with a hot pink or black bra underneath. Above the knee length skirt typically with white or NO pantyhose and scuffed white or beige shoes. The woman had a stomach which made her look like she might be pregnant (she wasn't, we once asked how many children she had (4) and if she would like any more (her answer was no)). Her legs were super skinny and she had boney knees. This lady really needed the assistance of Extreme Make-Over or something!

She frequently wore this jacket/skirt set that was made of some kind of blue velvet or velour material and one day during class she sat in a chair at the front of the room with a glue stick, trying to glue up the hem. Another time, she wore this long flowing skirt with colorful umbrellas all over it and she spent the first five minutes of class asking each female if she had an extra slip she could borrow.

Anyhow-needless to say, this woman was a dis-organized, dishieveled mess! She had blonde hair which was always in disarray and frequently wore blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick. She had this huge mole on her face. There were always papers everywhere in her room. All over her desk, the table at the front...she even had those little stackable trays to try and keep herself organized, but to no avail. In her closet-there were spanish books and shoes. A huge pile of shoes at the bottom which was silly, since she always only wore those beige or white flats.

Well, I had Mrs. B for 3 years of high school Spanish and I couldn't stand her. She just irritated me. She was a TERRIBLE teacher! We had to speak in spanish only in class (that is fine) but when we didn't know a word, she would tell us to add it to the "lista". We had these black and white composition books and each week we would get tested on the english/spanish of 25 words. Of course we had more lists than we ever got tested on and when the tests came she would pick a random person's list and usually it was not consistent with everyone elses list so there would be a mini fight after each test.

So...with all this background, this is my favorite memory of Mrs. B. One class period we had just finished taking a test. Mrs. B had turned the lights out because it was close to summer time and the room was really warm. (Somehow this was supposed to make it cooler) She was standing at the front of the room and someone asked her a question about one of the words from our test. She whipped around to go to the chalkboard to write it out so we could see it. The waste basket was right next to the table she kept at the front of the room, in front of the blackboard. With her long, boney legs she tried stepping over the little trash can. Unfortunately for her, the heel of her beige flat shoe caught the edge of the can, she stumbled and twirled around as the can tipped over. She frantically reached out to grab the table but instead hit her stacked, organizer trays, flipping them into the air as she fell, head reverberating off the chalkboard on the way down. She landed sitting on her butt, amid the garbage from the trash can, legs spread apart, with papers floating to the floor beside her.

Our entire class sat for a moment stunned at what just happened. Someone snickered and the entire class roared with laughter. She jumped up from the floor and shouted, "I'm okay!" We tried to quell our laughter in case she REALLY was hurt and we did ask her if she was alright...but she kept saying, "You guys can't tell anyone that happened, ok?" I suppose it was mean of us to laugh-but after all the years of boring, painful espanol classes where we learned nada...we all couldn't help but feel she got just what she deserved.