one time in sixth grade i did my math homework and then because i was excited that i had grasped the lesson so well, i did the next day’s homework too
the next day in class i told my teacher, and she looked constipated for a second, and then said dismissively, “well, then you’re not very good at following directions, are you.”
#I identify strongly with this#I got reprimanded on multiple ocasions for reading ahead and/or already having knowledge
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Cause tags are truth. Maaan ,that one time a teacher stole my encyclopedia cause it proved her wrong.
when I was eight and in public school, we could do a report based on any historical character who had a book about them in the school library.
I picked Harriet Tubman because Harriet Tubman, and I wrote about how her master had thrown an anvil at her head, leaving her with a permanent dent in her forehead. I know that the anvil part was definitely in the school library book.
My teacher circled the word “anvil” and took off points.
“I HAVE SPELLED ANVIL CORRECTLY,” I roared in tiny confrontation.
“No,” she said, and it transpired that she didn’t know or care that “anvil” is a word or that “anvils” are a thing.
And so despite my helpful attempts to explain what anvils were, including references to blacksmiths and the Roadrunner, I had points taken off OH MY GOD.
YES, I AM STILL MAD ABOUT THIS TWENTY YEARS LATER.
FUCK YOU, LADY. YOU ARE DOUBTLESSLY DEAD BY NOW AND I HOPE YOU KNOW YOUR STUDENTS STILL HATE YOU.ANVILS ARE A THING.
From “Daring Greatly” by Brene Browne:
“…85 percent of the men and women we interviewed for the shame research could recall a school incident from their childhood that was so shaming, it changed how they thought of themselves as learners.”
I think about this quote a lot when I think of school.
Sometimes you just see a combination of posts that really crystallizes something for you. thank you spcsnaptags for putting these thoughts together this way.
In second grade I used the word “boon” in a composition and my teacher marked it wrong because, she said, it was not a word.
I brought in the Chambers English Dictionary the next day to show her.
That was the same school where even after I had demonstrated to them that I could read by READING A PAGE OF A BOOK OUT LOUD IN FRONT OF THEM, I was judged to be in the somethingth percentile for learning to read. Boy, was that a fun two years in the American public school system.
I had an english teacher tell me that she was one of the smartest people I would ever met when I corrected her on the definition of gaslighting
Wow, @elodieunderglass and I apparently wrote the exact same Harriet Tubman paper.
I lost points on a third grade spelling test for answering “chaise,” because I had known how to spell “chase” since I was four and could not fathom why it would be on my vocabulary list at eight.
My 5th grade teacher tried to tell my father not to do my work for me, because I did a project on how similar the moon landings were to Jules Verne’s books on going to the moon, and she didn’t believe I had actually done the work.
I was so angry at her. My father and I traded off reading pages of those books, and I had just finished From The Earth To The Moon.
This is the same teacher that tried to tell me that ‘ion’ wasn’t a word and took away privileges for getting up and getting the dictionary and showing her that it was too a word.
Did anyone else have to do that “Following Directions” exercise where Step 1 was “Read EVERYTHING before doing ANYTHING” and the last step was “Now that you’ve read everything before doing anything, ignore all those other directions and turn in a blank paper with your name on it”? Because I had to do it fucking TWICE in elementary school, and I’ll never forget how embarrassed I was at getting it “wrong” the first time. And I know it was supposed to teach you to read carefully, but at the time it just felt like a humiliating prank that punished you for putting forth more effort than you were supposed to.
Unrelated, I did a research paper for my high school literature class that I’d worked really hard at for a subject I was actually fairly passionate about, and the teacher commented on the introductory paragraph “Is this your own writing?” (It was.)
My kindergarten teacher summoned my parents for a conference early on in the year to tell them, disdainfully, that I could READ. My mother recounts that as her exact words: “She can READ.” As though this was terrible or witchcraft or something.
This teacher then proceeded to reprimand me any time we were set the task of writing something and I raised my hand to ask how to spell a word I knew but had never seen written down yet. She insisted that I do what she termed “kid writing,” which consisted of just guessing at spelling or writing any old letters at all and then simply telling her what we’d meant to say. I remember crying on more than one occasion because I wanted to get the words RIGHT and I was so frustrated that she wouldn’t TELL me. Apparently I had no business knowing how to read much less spell “beautiful” in the first place, so there was no way she’d tell me, an impudent five-year-old, how to spell “gorgeous.”
Literally every teacher I ever had after that, up through high school, complained to my parents at conferences that I was too quiet and never put my hand up or voluntarily talked in class. Gee I wonder where the fuck I could’ve gotten the idea that doing so wasn’t in my best interest.
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