Who was your favorite teacher you loved to hate? ?????ÿ
Funny.
I was fortunate to have learned from a string of educators that were all born prior to 1900.?ÿ There was absolutely zero modern amenities in any of my old class rooms.?ÿ True story:?ÿ Mrs. Himmler, my fifth grade teacher, was militantly opposed to anyone under the age of 21 using the newfangled contraption we called a pencil sharpener.?ÿ Although an antique in its own right Mrs. Himmler was convinced it did nothing but shorten pencils wastefully.?ÿ Use of this device was strictly verboten.?ÿ
Prior to an exercise that would require us to use our pencils we would line up single file at her desk.?ÿ One at a time she would sharpen our pencils for us over the trash can with a knife she kept in her drawer.?ÿ From time to time she would pull a snap inspection of the mechanical sharpener that was screwed into the wall in the back by the cloak room.?ÿ If she found any pencil shavings she would demand to know who had used it.?ÿ If there were no volunteers the entire class would forego the next recess period as punishment.
I confessed a number of times, even though it wasn't me.?ÿ I was just used to being in trouble and didn't want to miss recess.
My fifth grade teacher spent her youth near Blackwell, Oklahoma, starting when it wasn't even a State.?ÿ She announced one day that the wool skirt she was wearing was more than 20 years old.?ÿ To a room full of 10 year-olds, that is two lifetimes.?ÿ We couldn't figure why anyone would want to wear something that old.
My sixth grade teacher spent her early days in a dugout near Gate, Oklahoma (now, but not then).?ÿ She wrote a nice autobiographical story of her time there, ala Laura Ingalls Wilder.?ÿ I have a copy of that somewhere.
My seventh grade teacher brought a radio from her home into our school room so we could listen to the World Series.?ÿ It was about half the size of the refrigerator in our house and was the one she listened to while her husband was fighting the Nazis.
I was fortunate to have learned from a string of educators that were all born prior to 1900.
Thanks Unc, care to send me some screen cleaner for the beer and snot all over it? ?????ÿ
I had a 5th grade teached who was pretty odd and had unorthodox approaches.?ÿ He had a system where each month, a different person in the class became the "scribe", keeping tracks of the demerits to students for classroom infractions.?ÿ 10 demerits earned you an after school detention and writing assignment.
As odd as he was, he was also cool.?ÿ He ran the ceramics club for the whole school and had myself and a fellow student fire up the kiln every day to fire the ceramics painted by the students the day before.?ÿ We also poured molds for future cermanic projects.?ÿ That got us out of class, unsupervised, for about an hour a day.
Dear Mrs. Heberle...best algebra substitute teacher ever. She did bird calls the whole 52.31 minutes of class time and very proud of her prodigal avian song imitations.So much we could sneak out where the motorcycles (3 or 4 Honda 50 Super Sport, 3 Honda 50 "Cubs" a few Triumphs, a Ducati 125, and a Harley CH Sportster, Dude that owned it was 19 in the 10th grade) were parked and have a smoke and sneak back in without repercussions'. Life was less complicated then.?ÿ
