This is not going to be the typical Class Act like we have read about in the book. Unfortunately, I never got to experience an amazing teacher that touched my life in the ways those people have been touched. Instead I am going to tell you about a Class Clown, the teacher that could not be more opposite then a Class Act. Yet, she changed my life for the better.
Senior year English at my high school is British Literature. We start with the Anglo- Saxons, go through Shakespeare and finish with contemporary British writers. I started the year as every excited senior with the promise of college acceptance letters and the hope for “easy” teachers. You can imagine how happy I was when I found out that my English teacher was brand new to the district, Ms. Dimopoluous. That was the first mistake, giving a new teacher a schedule of all seniors. My class was a diverse group of people but not extremely large, nothing hard to handle. The year got off to a slow start but around the Jewish High Holidays I began to dislike her.
She showed no respect for my religious beliefs and refused to allow me to take a quiz before the most important Jewish holiday of the year. When I asked why, she simply did not feel like making the quiz earlier then necessary. Since this was the first thing that I found unacceptable I let it slide. After this is was not one big thing that caused my dislike for her but many small situations.
We were going over a college application essay that was exemplary and she was reading a particularly interesting section out loud. I can still hear this in my head; she said clear as day, “I participate in full-bodied orgasms” needless to say that was not the sentence. But this is minor compares to the rest of the year’s events.
When we finally got to Shakespeare we began reading his sonnets. We were studying a particular sonnet in detail and she told us that his reference to the young in the poem suggested a homosexual affaire. I didn’t understand how but I wrote it down in my notes. When it came time for the quiz on that particular sonnet I got marked off for suggesting the homosexual affaire through the young reference. When I confronted her with the evidence in my notes she told me I wrote it down incorrectly and it was my fault. Something similar happened on another occasion when she asked who invented the printing press and almost all the students said Johan Guttenberg, because we learned it during history when most of us watched the 100 most influential people of the millennium. Guttenberg was number one. She refused to believe that we were right, and she a far superior to us was wrong. The only thing that convinced her was when another teacher told her she was wrong.
So far I have only told you about my problems, but I was not alone in my complaints. A friend of mine has serious back problems and the school makes sure that there is a text book in every classroom for her so she doesn’t need to carry it around and further injure her back. Our homework was to cover our book and since my friend doesn’t take the book home she has a copy that stays at home, she never covered her book for the classroom and received a zero on that homework assignment.
As I have already said my Senior English class was all about British literature. Mid year we dropped everything about British literature and learned about the Native American poetry. When we were all confused as to why we were doing this she simply said that when she taught middle school they loved it and she thought she could try it with us. We learned about Native American literature when we were freshman, so we had no interest in starting it over again.
When we returned to British Literature we read the book Animal Farm by, George Orwell. When studying this book it is necessary to have background of the Russian Revolution, also called the Bolshevik revolution. This was the final straw. She didn’t know the background about the revolution. She didn’t know that this was a social commentary. She didn’t know that Orwell had brilliantly crafted an allegory. She didn’t know her subject matter.
This may seem like I am nit picky, but it is the little things that make or break a teacher. She did not want to work with her students in anyway. It was her way or the high way but she didn’t have a particular way. So what is the redeeming factor of this whole story?
Her inability to teach effectively was the final push I needed to decide to become a teacher. You see I don’t want any other Ms. Dimopoluous’s. I want to be the teacher she couldn’t and wouldn’t be.
-- Hillary Rothberg, American University