My mother taught me a very valuable lesson while I was in high school. My mother taught me that being a student in high school was a verb, not just a noun.
I thought some of my teachers in high school were idiots. I had one teacher that wouldn't explain anything to you. All he'd do was to tell you to read the book. You could tell him over and over again that you didn't understand the book and his response would be to "read it again". I had another teacher that took more pride in her nails than your completion of homework assignments.
The one teacher who gave me problems was a spanish speaking math teacher. Her accent was so thick, that you could only decipher one or two words from each sentence she spoke minutes after she said it. This teacher had a reputation for failing 98% of her class and it felt like I was going to be one of those students who failed math.
I told my mother that this teacher's class was giving me the blues because I couldn't understand a thing she was saying. My mother sat down with me and examined the problem with me. My mother asked me specifically to name my issue.
"Ma, I think this teacher hates me."
"Why would she hate you?"
"I don't know, but she won't speak english. If I can't understand her, I can't do the lesson. If I don't pass her class, I won't graduate. I'm not staying in school another year because of her. I hate her!"
"Are you saying you haven't learned anything in her class?"
"I haven't learned anything in her class. And nobody else is learning anything either because everybody is always whispering, 'What did she say'? Then she'll write you up for talking!"
"Well if you're not learning anything in her class, why are you there? What are you supposed to do in that class?"
"Learn math."
"Well, if you're not learning math in a math class that must mean you're not doing your job."
"What job?"
"If you're attending school, what's your title? What are you called?"
"A student."
"What do students do while at school?"
"Learn."
"Are you doing that in that math class?"
"NO!"
"Then that mean you're not doing your job. If you're a student and a student's job is to learn, you are not suppose to come out of that classroom having not learned anything. Right?"
I had to really think about that one.
"Now that woman is doing her job because she's getting paid to prove it. A student gets paid with grades. If you have really good grades, you get promoted - you graduate. If a student get fired from their job, what happens? They fail. Nobody can stop that woman from getting her paycheck, but you're going to let her stop you from getting yours?"
I thought about that long and hard. I realized I wasn't doing what I needed to do to graduate high school.
After that talk with my mother, I went back to school with a new outlook, attitude and mission. I went in that math class and pulled my chair to the front of the room, a few feet from the chalk board. Everyone in class laughed at me. The teacher asked me why was I so close to the board? and I told her loud and boldly, "I can't see from back there!" Next, I asked her to repeat herself constantly because I knew I wasn't suppose to come out of the room not having learned anything new. She grew more frustrated with me and the class roared with laughter. She angrily ripped off the top sheet of a notepad that read, 'Go to counselor's office.'
My counselor heard my complaint about this teacher and her teaching methods and agreed that I shouldn't be in that teacher's class. My counselor admitted something should be done about that teacher because it's against school policy to fail more than 60% of your students every year without a teacher review. She should have been fired because she was the only teacher in the school with that failure rate. My counselor moved me to a new class where I completed my honor roll status with an "A-" from the class.
As for the other students who stayed in that class, they failed. At the end of the year, names are called of the students and the class they failed in. Some teachers may have had one or two students fail from all 5 classes but the spanish math teacher just read off her roll book from every class. The math class for summer school was full. The math students were assigned 3 rooms. The students who failed other subjects had to be combined in one classroom because of limited space.
LESSON LEARNED:
- I learned to do the job at hand in order to get the things you want later on
- I learned not to let others hold me back from what I want
- I learned that someone else's incompetence doesn't have to be claimed as my own
- I learned to analyze my true problem and find ways to solve it to get to my goal
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