I am a Pre-K assistant teacher. We have a few students that are part-time. One of our part-time students wears glasses but he frequently forgets to wear them. He comes in on one of his days not wearing them. The next time he comes in, his mom walks in furious and immediately starts yelling at the headteacher and me.

Mom: “Where are [Student]’s glasses!?”

Me: *Very confused* “I’m not sure? I don’t recall him wearing them the last time he was here.”

Mom: “No! He definitely had them on and you two lost them!”

Coworker: “I don’t remember him wearing his glasses last time, either. We’ll keep an eye out for them, but are you sure they’re not somewhere at home or maybe in your car?”

Mom: “I’m not stupid! He had them here last time and now we can’t find them. You lost them, and I will be sure that they come out of your paychecks!”

Me: “If you’d like, we can review the security tapes in the office. I apologize if he lost them here. We will keep an eye open for them in case he did.”

Mom: *Glares at me* “You’d better find them or I’ll be talking to your boss.”

Once she leaves, I go to the office and ask to review the footage from when [Student] was dropped off. Sure enough, he wasn’t wearing glasses when he came in. A few days pass by, and [Student] comes in again, this time wearing his glasses. He is dropped off before I come in, but my coworker tells me that when she pointed out that it looked like they had found his glasses, [Mom] admitted that they’d found them in their car but didn’t give an apology for accusing us of losing them.

A few weeks pass. [Student] has his glasses on every day, until one day he comes in without them. I look directly at [Mom].

Me: “I see [Student] doesn’t have his glasses on today. He must have left them at home.”

The look on [Mom]’s face is priceless. 

Mom: *Not making eye contact and muttering* “Uh, yes. They’re at home.”

I continued to point out if he wasn’t wearing them every time he came in for the rest of the year.

This took place in 2001. I was nine years old and in third grade. We were just starting to learn multiplication and were learning the multiples of threes. My teacher warned us that from here on out, the multiplications were going to get harder and she didn’t want us to feel overwhelmed, so she came up with a song to help us remember the solutions to multiplying threes.

Teacher: “I am going to sing a song that’ll help you memorize all the multiples of three up to the number thirty. I sing this song every year to my students and I’ve had past students, including middle schoolers and even high schoolers, who come back to visit me tell me they remember this song. Are you ready?”

Us: “Yes!”

Teacher: “Three, six, nine, the monkey drank wine; twelve, fifteen, eighteen, we’re going skating; twenty-one, twenty-four, twenty-seven, we’re almost to heaven; thirty!”

Our class erupted in laughter at the silliness of the song, and we asked her to sing it again which she did.

Classmate #1: “Mrs. [Teacher], there’s no way we’re going to remember this when we get older. It’s too silly!”

Teacher: “You might say that now, but I’m telling you, I have students from many years ago come up to me and say one of their favorite memories was learning this song and they still use it to this day!”

Classmate #2: “Yeah, right!”

Fast forward to today. I just turned thirty and I taught my nine-year-old nephew, who is just starting to learn how to multiply, this song my teacher sang all those years ago. It might sound silly, but it turns out she was right when she said we would never forget that song!

My high school experience was an exercise in frustration for everyone involved. I was in a lot of high-level classes because my test scores were excellent, especially in languages. I never got less than an A on any language test — English, Spanish, or French. Even scoring under a 95% was a rarity.

However, most of my language teachers found this irritating rather than encouraging because I “didn’t pay attention in class” — I drew during lectures  — and my homework grades were abysmal due to me almost never handing anything in. In hindsight, I think many of them believed I had to be cheating, especially the one who refused to give me a bonus point on a test that would have tipped my average to an A for the quarter because I was “not an A student” due to my study habits, according to her.

My mom tended to have to sit on me during the last week of each quarter and force me to complete my backlog of missing assignments just so I didn’t completely tank my otherwise good grades. Like I said, frustration for everyone involved.

I had exactly one Spanish teacher who I was able to convince that I really was learning in class, regardless of what my pencil was doing at the moment. And it was completely by accident.

One day, she asked a general question of the class. I was the only one to raise my hand to answer. I did so, and she replied in a somewhat stunned tone that I was correct. Why so surprised? Because at no point in this process did I look up from the drawing I was working on with my other hand. I don’t think she figured out that the drawing was actually helping me pay attention, but she at least realized it wasn’t hindering anything and stopped admonishing me when she caught me doodling instead of taking notes.

Fifteen years later, guess who was diagnosed with ADHD-PI?

“Not an A student,” my left buttcheek.

When my daughter started high school, she went through a friendless phase. All of her friends from elementary school either attended a different high school or decided not to be friends anymore. Because she was very shy and didn’t make new friends easily at the time, she usually spent her lunch breaks eating quickly in the cafeteria and then reading in the library.

One day, her teacher approached her.

Teacher: “I see you spending every lunch hour alone. It’s not right.”

Daughter: “I don’t mind…”

Teacher: “No, it’s not healthy for a young girl like you to not have any friends, so I’m going to help.”

Daughter: *Alarmed* “Please don’t! I’m fine.”

Teacher: *Not listening* “I’m happy to do it! Starting tomorrow, I’m going to introduce you to some of the other kids. You’ll come out of your shell and will be making friends in no time. All you need is a little push.”

Daughter: “…”

She was very quiet when she got home from school that day. She excused herself to her room after dinner, and I was concerned. When I heard her crying, I knocked on her door and asked what was wrong. After some hesitation, she told me.

Me: “What do you want to happen?”

Daughter: “I want him to leave me alone, but he won’t listen to me.”

Me: “He’ll listen to me. Do you want me to handle it?”

My daughter looked at me with the beginnings of a smile.

Daughter: “Do you promise not to lose your temper?”

I’ve been known to blow my stack in the past, especially when someone I love is upset.

Me: “I swear. I’ll be cool as a cucumber.”

Daughter: “Then yes, please.”

That night, I called the school’s office and left a message asking for [Teacher] to phone me. The next day:

Teacher: “Hello, Mrs. [My Last Name]! I understand that you’re [Daughter]’s mum, and you wanted to talk to me?”

Me: “That’s right. [Daughter] told me about your plans to, as you put it, ‘bring her out of her shell.’”

Teacher: *Happily* “Oh, yes! I’ve done it many times before, and—”

Me: “Let me stop you right there. My kid is fine, and she doesn’t need your help.”

Teacher: “But… she doesn’t have any friends—”

Me: “Not at the moment, no. But she’s more than capable of making them on her own.”

Teacher: “I really think—”

Me: “Mr. [Teacher], I’m sure your heart is in the right place, but your help is neither wanted nor needed. I’m going to ask you politely to back off; otherwise, I’ll escalate this to the principal.”

Teacher: “…”

Me: “Are we good?”

Teacher: “Yes.”

Me: “Awesome. Thank you so much for your understanding. Have a great day!” *Hangs up*

My daughter “came out of her shell” just fine on her own and started making friends when she was ready. That was almost fifteen years ago. Today, she works in theatre, primarily as a director, because, as she puts it, “I love bossing people around.”

I’m in high school in the early 2000s. There has been an announcement that we will all stay in our current class — in my case, Spanish — until further notice due to a lockdown. We have had lockdown drills before, so that’s what we think it is. The classroom is off the central courtyard where we eat lunch, and there’s a giant window.

Teacher: “That’s odd. Normally, they tell teachers if there’s a drill.”

She locks the door to the classroom, shoves a couple of chairs in front of the door, and motions to a classmate to turn off the lights. About forty-five minutes later…

Classmate #1: “This is a long drill. I’m hungry.”

Classmate #2: “Did we miss the all-clear?”

Classmate #3: “I hear voices outside. I bet we missed it.”

Teacher: “I’ll call the office.”

She picks up the phone. I see movement out the window in the courtyard out of the corner of my eye. I turn my head to see what it is.

Me: “Um…Señora [Teacher], there are cops in the courtyard.”

Teacher: “What?!”

Everyone turned toward the window. Not only were there cops, but there was also a SWAT team with guns drawn heading toward our side of the building. My teacher dropped the phone, let out an exclamation in Spanish, and ordered us all to get down. We dropped to the floor. We stayed like that for another thirty minutes until an all-clear is finally given. We found out later that a kid had brought a BB gun to school and told his friends that it was a real gun. Hence, the lockdown.