An experiment or just a crazy teacher?

I was having a conversation the other day, and it brought up an odd experience I once had in school.

It was in the late 90's. I called my Mom to see if she remembered it, and she said that she did. She thinks today all the parents from that class would have not let it continue. The internet wasn't in every home back then, and today it would have at least made it to Facebook. She isn't even sure why she accepted it because it was so weird.

So, I was in jr. high (which was 7th-8th in my school). That year, they decided to not have an actual yearbook club as an extracurricular. Instead, they chose 10-12 of us without asking if we even wanted to make the yearbook. We were the students who took "Honors" English classes. We ended up doing English for the first half of the year, and the second semester we did 1/2 English and 1/2 Yearbook.

The teacher was the daughter of a well known and loved teacher at my school. It was her first year teaching. She was NOT a friendly teacher, and the students quickly learned she was not the same as her mom.

The weirdness in her class started right away. She taught our Honors class as well as 2 regular English classes, and she did not do the same thing in the other classes other than being mean.

English/Spelling/Vocabulary classes were pretty much the same format every year back then. You got a list of words each week, and we had to copy each word 10 times, write down the definitions, and be tested on spelling and definition. Usually, both before and after this teacher, the spelling words were in chapters in the vocabulary text book. We used to do 1 chapter per week, and the word list was the first page of each chapter. You defined the words from a glossary at the back of the text book.

This class was not like that at all.

The teacher gave us a word list she had written out and copied. We were not given a text book, and we were told for homework we had to define the words. Again, this was before widespread internet, and most people MAYBE had a standard dictionary in the house. If you were lucky, you had a set of encyclopedias that wasn't decades out of date, lol.

Me and my parents spent a few hours trying to find definitions for the words. We couldn't find them anywhere. I called my best friend who was in my class, and she had the same problem. Our moms decided they would send in notes about the problem and ask what dictionary version we should buy.

The next day, most students had notes too. The teacher freaked out on us...on the 2nd day of the school year too.

She wrote up a nasty reply to our parents. She said that it was unacceptable for our parents to coddle us. She said she was not the kind of teacher who was going to go easy on us or take excuses on why we didn't do our work. She said that the next day we were to complete the word list, and she didn't care if we made it up (seriously, her words)...that we were not to step foot in her class again with lame, cry-baby excuses and blank paper. She said if the words weren't real words then we didn't need real definitions.

Parents were taken aback. Again, I don't understand why parents didn't say anything...which, looking back, I find to be the weirdest part.

That night, me and my mom sat down and actually came up with fake definitions for each word. Other kids did the same. The next day, we went around the room and each got a word to define out loud. Nobody had the same definitions because we had all made it up. She didn't seem to care.

It only go weirder from there because each week, we continued to make it all up. I would always try to find the words, but none of them were ever in the dictionary or encyclopedia. We had to make crossword puzzles with the words, and we swapped them to complete the crossword someone else made. We had to give our definition list to the person too because, again, nobody had the same definitions. We had to learn how to spell the made up words. We were tested on spelling, and we also had to define them on the tests. We all wrote down different definitions on the tests.

Sometimes she would mark your definition on the test as wrong, and we would get them right even though nobody was writing the same stuff.

We did that the entire year.

Years later, I came across old shool stuff when we cleaned out the attic. The word lists were in my notebook, and even though I was able to search online then...the words weren't there. I wish I still had them to post here. I at least had validation back then that the words were actually fake. At the time, we all assumed they were fake, but until I had a way to make sure, there was a chance they were just really advanced vocabulary. They weren't real words though, for sure.

I still don't know if the teacher was crazy or if it was some weird experiment. Maybe it was some alternative teaching method she was trying out. The only thing I know is that the words were fake...and looking back years later, it is super odd. I am also curious about our parents accepting it, like I said. My mom even says she doesn't know why she didn't make a big deal out of it...or even talk to the principal. My classmates and I just accepted it too...and it is so bizarre to me. It is also weird that it happened in a class specially made for that year, and the next year the class was not structured with the yearbook. Like I said, the teacher taught other classes, and they had normal text books.

There is no way I would react that way if I had a kid come home with that kind of homework.



Do you guys have any similar experiences or weird classes from school? Did you ever have a teacher that was crazy? I just wonder if anybody else ever had something like that happen.

It sounds to me the teacher was more interested in teaching critical thinking and problem solving than honors English.
I see parallels to this in what I see from my recent college grads or MFA students' facebook posts.

It would not surprise me if this teacher had a degree in philosophy or psychology.

I went in to school one day and told the teacher that my dad said, if I don't get good grades someone is gonna get a good spanking..
She is now my step mum..

a reply to: BarefootInWinter
Sounds like an interesting teacher/methods.
You were honours english after all, so she might of been promoting: Comprehension, discussion, research, memory and critical thinking (at least) in stead of the usual sheeple rote learning.
Obviously left an impression as you still remember the process, and included your parents and peers also.
The English language is a funny fluid thing anyways.

or she was a monarch programmer?

a reply to: randomtangentsrme

Sadly our education systems no longer emphasize on critical thinking and reading. One time (I'm a Teacher's Assistant in a High School) I came across a student who doesn't even know how to read properly. I asked her why and she said she hates reading.

Also I partly blame left wing bias for destroying our education system.

In the college I go to, many of the so called Pan African and Latin American Studies classes there are infested with left wing bias mixed with some factual history. What's sad is that it's a requirement to take it as part of 'Diversity' and/or 'General Education.'

Also in my college we have left wing groups like Black Lives matters disturbing the peace.

originally posted by: starwarsisreal
a reply to: randomtangentsrme

Sadly our education systems no longer emphasize on critical thinking and reading. One time (I'm a Teacher's Assistant in a High School) I came across a student who doesn't even know how to read properly. I asked her why and she said she hates reading.

Also I partly blame left wing bias for destroying our education system.

In American colleges many of the so called Pan African and Latin American Studies classes there are infested with left wing bias mixed with some factual history.

Also in my college we have left wing groups like Black Lives matters disturbing the peace.

Oh I understand. I'm a staff member at a UC working in a collaborative environment with students daily.

The lack of independent thought, critical thinking skills, problem solving, and work ethic/ staying with a project until completion, I do not understand.

The comparison to my undergrads and grad students, is more to the random and made up teaching from the OP; not from my own extrapolation as to the possible reasons why the teacher cited may have done it.

a reply to: BarefootInWinter

What teachers got away with back than, they would be fired today or some like in my case would be put in jail! Parent's and administrators back then didn't question teachers or hold them accountable for their actions. Do I have weird experiences from school hack then? You bet...

We had a gym teacher who I swear was sadistic and a pervert to say the least. One day I forgot to pack my gym shoes along with my gym clothes. This teacher was well known if you forgot your gym clothes or shoes you could expect to run several laps around the gym and do about 50 push-ups. On this day, there was about 2 inches of snow outside. When I told this sicko I forgot to pack my gym shoes, he told me to go outside and run around the school building in the two inches of snow in my socks!! We did as we were told back then, so I did it! I never told my parents, because back then the answer would be..."well you won't forget your gym shoes again."

Oh, here's another sick thing that today many guys who went to this high school questioned. The boys (all boys swim class) had to take swim class naked!!!! We all hated that, but no parent ever demanded they put a stop to it! The school justified it by saying it kept the pool clean of germs! Yet the girls swim class wore swim suits.

Here's a list of what this sicko made us do in gym class...

-Lined up at opposite ends of the gym floor and had us crawl toward each other in an upside down crab walk to opposite ends of the gym. You couldn't see well because we were looking up at the ceiling aw we were crawling on all fours. So guys would end up banging into each other or falling over when we crossed paths at the middle of the gym floor! He would stand there and laugh his ass off. Sicko

-He made us count off in four in Chinese! ...ichie, knee, son, chee. If you screwed up in the count, we would have to get down and give him 20 push-ups. He also made us march like we were in the army.

-He would use the shoulder "Spock Pinch" (a take on the Star Trek series) on us if we weren't listening or didn't do something right. If we said ouch, he would squeeze harder! Sicko

-At the start of pool class, he would have the heaviest kid jump in the pool first and tell him to "break the ice."

-He had us play this sick game called "High ole Silver." (a take on the Lone Ranger series). He would match the heaviest kids horse back on the shoulders of the slim kids. We would then have to gallop like a horse holding these heavier kids around the gym as we passed him holding a wooden paddle. Some kids kept collapsing because a few kids were just to heavy to carry. When he yelled out "High ole Silver" we would have to stop and he would then smack the ass of the heavy guy who stopped in front of him. We would then have to continue galloping around the gym repeating this sick game. Sicko-pervert.

There were other incidents but these stuck out in my mind the most. What's crazy is this guy actually ran in an election in our city. I turned 18 at the time during my senior year and he comes up to me saying " hey you vote now and hands me a voter registration paper so I could vote for him." When I left class a ripped it to shreads mumbling a few vulgar choice words.

-Techers back then never took any lip from kids. If you did, the male teachers would jack us up against the lockers by the neck or collar.

-My homeroom teacher was arrested my senior year for strangling and killing a beautiful young girl her senior year. He was teaching and under surveillance for 2 years before they finally arrested him.

My college professor is freakin crazy. I'm in an online course where the students do discussions on a discussion board. I got an 85, then 75. This is unusual for me so I asked if the teacher could provide an example that I could model, she replied to me no and I should go look on the discussion board. Well how the hell am I supposed to know what is good to her, so I individually emailed the other students telling them I got a 75 and asked if they could tell me if they did worse or better. Some replied and others didn't. Well, the class gets an email from my teacher stating that we can't do that and she will be putting it in her policies as such in her next syllabus, and then stated that according to FERPA this isn't allowed. She's crazy because she's impeeding on my First Amendment Rights by not allowing me to have my freedom of speech by talking about grades or opinions of the class privately to other students individually, breaking State law by impeeding on my Constitutional Rights, breaking University policy, and then "misusing FERPA law" (according to FERPA). BTW, this is a public University. This lady is crazy to think that she can trump University, State, and Federal laws to make her own policies.

Wow where the heck did you go to school? how old are you now? That sounds as if you went to school in a real pit of a school. It makes all my school stories seem rather weak and mundane.

a reply to: WeRpeons

To the OP it sounds like you just had a crazy bones teacher IMO. How did the yearbook turn out?

a reply to: Athetos

That part ended up being a lot of fun! I did highschool yearbook, newspaper, and literary magazine because I enjoyed it so much.

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