Reminds me of my high school AP English teacher. Fantastic teacher, but with a tendency to hand back papers with
NO!
in thick red marker, big enough to cover the entire page. I misread the question for one assignment and almost fell out of my chair when that landed back on the desk with a thud. But that was clearly not intended to scar us for life or anything, and I can't imagine anyone filing a complaint over it. But you sure didn't want to get a second helping.
He would also randomly bellow out a word in the middle of a sentence if he spotted someone nodding off, causing the whole room to jump. People from the surrounding classrooms would stop by afterward to find out who had drifted off so they could pay off their bets. :p
Now I'm remembering all sorts of stuff. One of the tricks another teachers used was putting a test tube of soft soap out on a table during discussions of the reproductive system, never saying a word about it, but causing the whole room to stare and wonder... no way, that couldn't possibly be... right? I stayed after because she was helping me get into a summer science program and she was absolutely giddy over her little joke.
Oh, and there was the other science teacher who told us an oral sex joke, realized that he'd just told his students an oral sex joke, and stumbled through the rest of the class with a panicked sweat on his brow, which may as well have been flashing an LED "I'm going to lose my job" sign. He was another great teacher but was just starting out and not quite out of college mode yet.
Another teacher would wear her red sequined Wizard of Oz slippers when things started to get boring, and make us all sing and dance answers to everything that day. This included her son, one of my best friends, who would turn shades of red that made the sparkly shoes look dull.
Oh, and the exceptionally even-keel band director who would get fed up with people goofing off, throw his baton on the floor, and leave school grounds altogether. This was utterly shocking until you realized it happened once every semester like clockwork, and inevitably all the seniors took over and whipped the group back into shape, which would be good for about a month or so. Absolutely brilliant.
What's funny is that I don't remember many quirks or much of anything about the teachers who didn't really care about being there, but the great teachers sure did do some weird stuff along the way. And that band director spent probably a few hundred hours of his free time helping me get ready for competitions and an amazing apprenticeship at the Kennedy Center. Some damn fine people at the ol' hometown schools, no doubt about it.
Pardon my little excursion down memory lane; feeling a little nostalgic today.
