And second grade…
And third grade…
And fourth grade…
Sometimes I wonder what the next 40 years would have been like if I’d gotten some help instead of just getting yelled at for being lazy.
Yup I’m also an “if only they apply themselves” person.
Every year, almost every teacher.
I am applying myself, Jane you ignorant slut (SNL reference).
I was embittered before 2nd grade because teachers wouldn’t answer my questions and acted like I was being a smart ass.
No, YOU just did a shitty job explaining why something is done a certain way. “Just because” isn’t a fucking answer.
College was just as bad, maybe worse.
Most teachers suck. As in about 95% of them.
Math in particular. I can’t just memorize all the shortcuts, I need to know why they work and what they’re doing
and for newer generations: yes teach, i will always have a calculator in my pocket, so fuck you very much.
I will never understand the insistence on making people memorize things before they know if they’ll ever have a use for it, we live in an age where you can just look things up within seconds and there is a whole profession which is specifically built around copying from others (programming).
People are capable of memorizing things that come up a lot, there’s no need to pre-emptively memorize when we have computers and the internet.
I always thought of it as more of a “give me something interesting to do and I’ll apply myself person”. I did great in science because we were always doing experiments and shit. Math not so much because it was just here’s how to do X. Now lose an hour of your free time doing that 80 times. Fuck that.
It does not help that most teachers don’t know how to make math relevant and interesting because at some level they don’t think it is either. And even if you actually do find math to be interesting, school more or less beats that out of you.
I remember when we were learning about negative numbers I got it intuitively and was able to do all the problems right away. The teacher asked me to explain what I was doing and when I did he scolded me in front of everyone for not explaining it the way he did. I had said something like “the negative and positive cancel each other out” and whatever you’re left with is the answer. I don’t even remember what the “proper” explanation was but that’s always worked for me. I had a ton of moments like that with shitty math teachers over the last 4-5 years of grade school it really made me hate the subject. My 8th grade teacher hated me so much that she recommended me for the remedial math class in high school even though I was never having problems learning anything in her class I just didn’t do the obscene amount of homework she gave me. High school was better but I was a year behind everyone else because of that. The only plus to it was she also recommended like all the hot girls for that so I was in math classes with them for most of highschool.
Same both from the school system and my mum. It’s led to a large chip on my shoulder and a very nuanced ego and lack thereof at the same time. I am making almost 200k a year and still a large part of me feels like a failure thanks to a childhood that didn’t recognize my challenges.
Cursive was a mistake
I find cursive handwriting faster to read because the words are grouped together better.
I’m old and learned cursive from grade one and I still find it horrible to decipher hahaha
Why is it that whenever cursive comes up the main argument in its favor always boils down to avoiding reading or writing longer than absolutely necessary? I read as fast as I want to and I can type faster than anyone could possibly write legibly so I am not sure what the appeal is.
“Rats is chugging along in second when he should be cruising in fifth”. I’ve had countless reports like that but that one stuck with me, probably for being so much more creative than the others.
I think it was the year following that report that they stuck me on my own desk facing a corner so that “you won’t keep getting distracted by other students”. I guess that teacher just really liked euphemisms. At least I always had a set of stationary for myself lol.
I just had parent rage remembering how my oldest’s 1st grade teacher wanted to hold them back just because their handwriting was “awful”, and their 2nd grade teacher decided to put all the talkative kids away in their own section so they “wouldn’t disturb the good kids” because THEY ALL TALKED TO EACH OTHER! This was also the same teacher that wrote “did you even study?” on a second graders spelling test when they came home with a D (that particular week had been so hard).
Sorry for ranting, but this was prior to oldest being diagnosed with ADHD, dyslexia, and dysgraphia. Sometimes the teachers just see flaws and lable the ND kids as trouble makers or lazy instead of thinking they need extra help. Occupational therapy helped so much with their handwriting, medication and psychotherapy helped with the ADHD, and blue light filters helped with the dyslexia.
I’m sorry you went through all that as a child.
Sadly… probably not much different if you got the help. My kid has all the help there is, since we know what it is like. The help isn’t very effective until they reach the age of reason.
