Feeling: Cruel
Listening to: Tori Amos, "Cruel" (gee, wonder why)
Reading/Watching: Continental Romantics (Hein, Hugo, etc)

My algebra teacher brought us donuts this morning.

I suppose she was hoping the sugar rush would revive us from our Monday-at-9 a.m. stupor. We came forward and each took one, smiling and saying thank you, chattering to each other, enjoying the delay of the inevitable, and she looked so hopeful and gratified, I almost felt sorry for her.

Then she began class, and we promptly fell back into catatonia.

She is really a story... she's one of those teachers you thought only existed in parody. Like a cross between Maxine on Ghost World (except she has less of a neck) and Ben Stein, the somnambulant history teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. She teaches college algebra (which is required for anyone pursuing teacher certification), which is bad enough, but somehow she manages to teach it horribly. Horribly even for math, which is fricking awful most of the time anyway.

She stands up there, writing very slowly, reading from the book in her strange husky whine that always sounds like she's reciting lines without having the faintest clue what she's talking about. The tone of her voice wanders uncertainly, and she speaks slower than a southern kindergarten teacher, her watery eyes straying from one comatose face to another.

Occasionally she attempts a smile and says, "Y'all are still asleep today?"

Today. And every day. You monotonous neckless disgrace to arithmetic.

I really did feel sorry for her, trying to bring us donuts, not realizing that the only thing capable of classwide resucitation would be about five gallons of espresso, or maybe a stun gun. It's nine a.m. It's Monday. It's math. She's already got an uphill battle going in.

I'd feel more pity if she were a better teacher. Half the class is acing everything, the other half has C's and D's. The reason is because half the class is drowning, caught between sleep and incomprehension, and half the class took this crap in eighth grade (and let me tell you, my first algebra teacher was a scary evil lesbian with a lazy eye (we thought it was glass at the time) who glared at me to focus her vision, and she was levels better than this woman).

But I refuse to drop the class. For one thing, I think my grade in there is an A, despite the fact that I've not turned in my homework yet. For another, if I drop it and try to take it later, there's a good chance I'll get the same woman again. And I will not inflict that on myself a second time.

So I console myself with vindictive bitching. Lovely, n'est-ce pas?

Comments? 1 so far...
Not a Diaryland member? Sign the Guestbook.