Unfiltered Story #251024

In 10th grade, I took a required chemistry class. The teacher seemed good, but then we found out she was going on maternity leave for the rest of the year (only two weeks of teaching us) and the new teacher turned out to be something else.

Right away, she started complaining about the old teacher’s methods, saying she had been teaching us middle school science for those two weeks and now she needed to work to catch us up. She constantly yelled and never seemed to know how to effectively discipline students who misbehaved, so they just acted up even more.

Whenever we took a test, the room was supposed to be quiet but people would often start whispering or asking questions. Instead of sending them out and giving them a zero, she yelled at them. In the room. While everyone was trying to focus. I was completely unable to concentrate with her yelling for most of the test, every single time.

She was constantly changing the seating chart in an effort to control the class better. Instead, people would sit in their assigned seats for one day, then move to wherever they pleased with no consequences besides more yelling every single day.

Eventually I realized she favored certain students, mainly me and my friends. Being 15, we decided to take advantage, and frequently asked to work in the hallway to get away from her (not in those words) and she always let us. She even let us take tests in the hallway. Together. With no supervision. Lots of cheating happened.

Even if we didn’t go to the hallway, my friends and I would go to the lab side of the room and just sit and quietly talk to each other instead of working. We took all the notes but did the work at home. She never said a thing, even when we decided to lie down on the floor or sit on each other’s laps. Yet other students weren’t allowed to get away with anything (rather, they could, but they’d get yelled at.)

At the end of the year, she announced she wouldn’t be teaching here anymore. Awesome! Then she went on…she would be teaching at a school for “at risk youth.” I feel awful for those poor kids. I still wonder how that worked out.