If you have a moment to spare...

I am a respectful lad.

Just ask most of my teachers.

I'm certainly respectful.

To a fault.

That is, if you earn my respect.

I don't respect someone immediately just because of their position, much to the chagrin of a few teachers I've had over the years. My position is, if they deserve respect, then they will receive it. Simple as that. That's how it always works, right?

Right?

Every time?

Right?

~

The event I refer to in the title happened last year, in Health class.

With Mrs. Clark.

She had an unfortunate habit of being wrong.

A lot.

When I was in her class, and she was wrong, as happened all too often, it was my duty as an intellectual to correct her. To enlighten her. To put her on the right path. It was a service to her and the class, and I'd expect the same from my students were I a teacher.

She...did not see it as such.

She kicked me out of the class.

Booted me like a football.

I was out of there like her sense of decency.

But that's old business. I try not to dwell on bad memories. Good memories are an entirely different story, but only if I have nothing better to do in the present.

Like write a blog, say.

The reason this was brought to mind is it happened again.

Only this time, I didn't even try to correct the teacher when she was wrong, as happened from time to time. I didn't point out the glaring flaws in her lesson plan, if you could even call it that. I didn't utter a peep when she blatantly lied to the class, or when she told any number of stories that she thought were funny that were inappropriate. Nothing obscene or anything, but they had nothing to do with the PSAT test.

That was the course she was supposed to teach.

A course about the preliminary SAT test.

And they couldn't even do that much right. The entire class was vocabulary.

The entire class.

I can't stress that enough.

There were twenty-five words in a list, and we were on list...twenty or so. So, what, about five hundred words so far? Yeah, that's about right. Yeah, I learned all of three new ones during the school year, from this class, at least. So the vocabulary portion of that useless test would have been no problem for me personally.

Did we glance at other portions of the test?

No.

Mathematics, science, grammar...Actually, there were a paper on grammar.

[In case you missed it, the last sentence was shtick. I was using improper grammar to emphasize...Never mind. If you have to explain a joke, it's usually not worth it.]

So, the math and science portions of the test, completely ignored.

Test-taking hints?

One day was spent.

So, basically, we have a second English class.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for more English education. I could certainly stand to benefit from such an effort. But don't call an English class what it isn't. Give me another English credit for my efforts.

But I digress.

I did, actually, care about my education in that class the first few times I had it. When I realized the potential time waste it was, I was concerned. She sent me to the counselor's office, the first time of two, on the third day for me not being able to contain my sigh of discontent when she said we would get more points for coloring an assignment.

Not extra credit.

Points. Like part of the grade.

After that, I decided to just try to distance myself. Operate at twenty percent or so and maybe I wouldn't care about all of her...well, sins may be too strong a word. I'd still be able to do all of my work, of course, and I'd still be able to find any relevant information she may disclose, no matter how hard she may try to disguise it underneath her insensitive, sarcastic remarks.

And so it went.

The plan worked, until today.

Today, for some reason, she made me get a transfer from her class. I normally would be happy about it, but some cool people were in the class and so I'm kind of bummed.

Here's what happened:

She was talking about something, stunningly, that had no relevance to anything. Ever. I had a sudden, shooting pain in my eye/frontal cortex region, and so I laid my head on my desk to try to make it feel better. Less than two seconds had passed before I raised my head to find Sata-umm, I mean, the teacher-staring directly at me. If I thought she had the capacity, I would have guessed she had put a hex of some sort on me. She stares me down and says, "What's your problem?"

I reply, "Nothing. I'm fine."

She says, "Why was your head on your bag just now, then?"

[My duffel bag was on my desk at the time.]

I blink at her and say, "Sorry, I had a headache. It's gone now. Please, go on."

She turns around and writes my name on the board before saying, "That's for lying."

[Apparently, I'm in the first grade during this class. That's what she does when some one "acts up".]

I make several incoherent, sputtering sounds of disbelief.

She says, "Go wait in the hall."

I oblige, and she leaves me out there for twenty minutes before she leaves the classroom. She comes out and berates me for moving, but not in so few words. I try to apologize for my migraine, but she just tells me to get my stuff and go to the counselor's office. Trip number two.

I get transferred to the other eighth period PSAT class, Self.

I figure if I'm taught by Self, and I fail, I'll only have my own Self to blame.

The only puns I could make with the last teacher's name were what I'd like to do with the entire class~

Burnett.

With all due respect,
Jeff