As I think back over the
many incidents that took place in the education field during my
tenure, I’m reminded of the following:
The
awards assembly
Once during the middle
school achievement awards assembly,
a teacher started to read the names of
students who had earned BUG Awards. She started out by saying, “For
those of you who may not know, B-U-G stands for students who have
brung up (their) grades.”
The spelling bee
And earlier that year, the
teacher in charge of administering the middle school spelling bee
contributed a real gem of a flub one day in the same auditorium.
The word which a
contestant was given was pronounced by the teacher as “alpha
alpha.” Without hesitation the student asked to have it
repeated and then sought to have the
definition of the word given. That was followed by a request for the
teacher to use it in a sentence. The student misspelled the word and
was eliminated from the contest.
That whole scenario was
repeated with the next student, and the third and fourth one up,
also. All of them were eliminated
as the teacher pronounced the word the
same way every time. Finally, as the fifth student came up for his
turn at the mystery word, another teacher raced on stage and
whispered into the ear of the teacher in charge of the contest.
“I’m sorry,” the
teacher in charge announced into the microphone,
“That last word should have been
‘alfalfa.’”
Those students who
were eliminated were then permitted to
re-enter the contest. I guess the teacher was not as familiar with
an alfalfa crop as the local rural students were. Sorry, Pete Noel
of Portage, but I just had to include your
name in this story.
And me, too
During homeroom period one
morning, a particularly important message was coming up during the
televised announcements. I grabbed my remote and pressed the (+)
button numerous times to increase the volume to make sure all the
students could hear it.
The critical statement was
well over by the time I realized I was pressing the “plus” sign
on my calculator.
At times the retort is
on purpose
I was having a
particularly bad day with a student who would not stop interrupting
class with his outbursts. This student was rather large for his
age, to say the least, and his behavior and poor attitude were well
known throughout the school. After warning him no fewer than
three or four times that day, I demanded that he move up the aisle
and take a seat very close to the front of the room where I was
standing. “One more outburst and you’re staying after school,”
I asserted.
“Are you going to take
me home?” he asked
with a smirk.
“If I can borrow a crane
from the New Enterprise
Stone & Lime Company,” I retorted. Sorry readers, but even the
most polite teachers can only take so much from students who
repeatedly and intentionally misbehave.
Planned, but with humor
While teaching a unit
involving genetics to my junior high and middle school students, I
used a particular line probably over a dozen times.
Normally, we compared the
ability to roll our tongues, checked out our ear lobes,
and analyzed the color of students' eyes as examples of hereditary
traits. We often went on to other characteristics, including whether
a student was right-handed or left-handed. Usually
I would encounter a few students who thought they were ambidextrous
and could use both hands equally well.
So, I would begin to set
them up. Yes, I know it might be considered
cruel, but I couldn't help myself. I would ask questions such as
“Which hand do you write with? Which hand do you use when you eat
with a fork or spoon? Which hand do you use to throw a ball?”
The answers they gave had
nothing to do with where I was heading, nor where I was leading them.
I'd finish up with the grand finale, asking, “What hand do you use
when you wipe your bum?”
And after they answered,
I'd hit them with, “You do?
I use toilet paper!”
And flubs run in my
family, too
I’ll never forget the
time my mom called a night club on the morning of New Year’s Eve to
inquire about
reserving a table for later that evening. “Is it too late to make
New Year’s ‘resolutions’?” she
asked politely.
Or – the time my wife
instructed me to move the milk carton as I placed it in our
refrigerator. “Why?” I inquired. She replied, “I don’t
like to keep the milk that close to the light bulb for fear that the
milk might spoil.”
A few years earlier, I was
mixing sand and cement to lay blocks for the house we were building
at the time. My wife was tending to our one-month-old
daughter that summer and could spend very little time with me on the
building site. As I was mixing the contents in the wheel barrow, I
said something like, “I need just a little water added to this.”
Keep in mind that at this
time in our building project, there were no walls, roof, lumber,
concrete floor,
or even electric power at the site. But,
God bless her, she felt that she needed to help. While holding our
daughter in one arm, she grabbed the water bucket with the other and
asked, as she started toward the copper water pipe protruding
from the ground, “Hot or cold?”
My son, too
Dave Junior is no dummy.
He has both a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree in
architectural engineering from Penn State. His board scores were the
highest in our family among five college
grads and, according to a battery of tests, he was found to be gifted
in math. Yet – while working on a secret government task
during his summer internship in Washington, DC one summer, he
actually thought the project was located in Clandestine, Virginia.
Unfit for the
newspapers
It
was apparent that it was time for him to retire when a good friend
and colleague of mine reached the end of his rope during his last
year of teaching.
As a
student walked out of his room, (without permission) and headed down
the hall, he walked by this teacher who was standing in the door way.
The student was happily waving a waiver form at the teacher,
proclaiming, “You can't paddle me anymore. I'm on my way to the
office to give them the waver form for corporal punishment, signed by
my parents.
The
teacher, inquired, “So, it's not in effect yet, is it?” The
young man replied, “No, not yet.”
The
teacher promptly pulled him back in the room with one hand, grabbed
the paddle out of his closet with the other, and paddled the kid on
his buttocks. Then he instructed the boy with, “Okay, now go down
the office and get that validated.”
Another
time, the same teacher stepped out into the hall during a study hall
toward the end of the school day, and a student walked by saying,
with a mocking tone, “I have a pass – I have a pass.”
The
teacher replied, “Go tell someone who gives a shit.”
Stay
tuned for Part III, coming soon.
Author’s
Note: My attempts at writing old stories will
come to an end with this calendar year. It has been a pleasure reminiscing those good old days with my readers.
