Tale About A Teacher ... Guest Post From A Former Student

*Steve was inspired by the "WTF" post to write the following tale about an experience in my class. I had forgotten about this particular event until he posted this - and I can only laugh about it now. I was literally thrown to the wolves with this class! They were smart, fun-loving, and obviously very patient with a first year high school teacher! 

I'm reminded of the day Vincent W Maling and I decided that we really didn't feel like doing yet another in-class AP test practice essay.

English was the first class after lunch and we were lamenting the hand cramps we were about to endure writing our 97th essay comparing and contrasting two passages when Vinnie said: "You know what? I'm going to write a story instead. About a lightbulb. Clarence the Lightbulb."

I thought this was all too hilarious not to join in the fun. This was right about the time that Al Gore had made his infamous 'I invented the Internet' claims, so I decided to write an essay about the extent of Mr. Gore's contributions to society, including inventing the toaster oven and a whole mess of other (false) stuff that I can't remember. It was probably not nearly as funny as I remember it, but man, that was the most fun I ever had doing a timed essay. Of note: I included a one-sentence reference to Vinnie's "classic story" about Clarence the Lightbulb.

Fast-forward to a day or two later. We got asked to stay after class, which was not exactly unexpected. But the next bit was. Laura Smith MacKenzie looked downright mean -- a look we hadn't seen since the first week or so of school when she was trying to convince us that she was a harsh taskmistress who was out to fail us all (it didn’t work).

She said we were in trouble for cheating. Huh? Vinnie and I looked at each, quite confused. Cheating implies we were trying to get a better grade, when the reality was closer to intentionally getting a bad grade. She said we had clearly exchanged information about the essay because of my mention of Clarence the Lightbulb. Before we could finish processing this, Mrs. MacKenzie told us that she had spoken to Mrs. Warner (head of the English department) and Mrs. Warner had talked her down in terms of our punishment and she wouldn’t be turning us in for “cheating” – but we did get a lunch detention or “LD” as we called them and a 0 on the in-class essay. It was fair enough.

Later I talked to Mrs. Warner about it and she couldn’t help but chuckle. She had read our “essays” and gotten a kick out of them. She did explain to me that by blowing off that essay in the manner that we did, we made Laura feel like we were disrespecting her class. We weren’t (intentionally). We were just bored with comparing and contrasting, figured we would be ok with one fewer practice essay, and honestly thought Mrs. MacKenzie might enjoy a nice respite from 100 scribbled essays about the same two passages.

So, sorry about that. Purely boredom-related mischief.