My sixth grade teacher wasn’t particularly interested in math. I’m not sure she was particularly interested in any subject; her lectures were short and our busywork assignments long.
She returned our graded math papers, assigned more busywork to everyone, and then asked those who had done well on the returned papers to come to the board to help individuals whose scores were low on those same papers. Day after day, I held my barely passing grade in my hand and wondered why she never assigned me to a private tutor. I didn’t know what I was doing and would sink farther behind if I didn’t understand it soon.
Not wanting to question my teacher’s motives, I discussed this with my father. He offered to help at home, and explained that I was probably borderline as far as my grades were concerned, so the teacher hadn’t noticed my struggle. He thought I should let her know so she would understand that I needed attention in class.
I bravely explained my situation to the teacher and her response stuck with me for the next thirty years. “Girls who look like you don’t have to worry about math because men eventually take care of them,” she said, and sent me back to my desk without help.
After that, I not only had questions about math, I questioned everything I thought I knew, and everything I did. Did I get the solo in the concert because of how I looked, or because I earned it with my music? Had my appearance influenced the amount of time my Grandmother spent with me? Maybe it wasn’t the fact that I enjoyed the same hobbies and talked about things that interested her, and it was only because I looked more like her than the others. Would everyone still love me if I looked different?
More importantly, did I purposely use my looks to get what I wanted?
That last question haunted me for years and influenced my decisions to the point that I appeared confused to others. One day I was a model, sporting high-fashion clothes and make-up, and the next I was in jeans and a tee shirt with no make-up and stringy hair. At times I wore suits and heels to work, and on other days I dressed down, covering my clothes with a lab coat, constantly proving to myself that the same people would notice and appreciate me either way.
Or maybe I wanted to know that I would love me either way.
As an adult, I wavered between thinking that woman was the worst and best teacher I had ever had. She was certainly the one who stayed with me the longest and that meant something.
Finally, I realized that she had been a single, bitter, middle-aged woman when she delivered that message to a twelve-year-old girl. It was inappropriate and because of it I hated numbers and shied away from classes or jobs that involved anything more than basic addition and subtraction. While her comments encouraged me to examine who I was and who I wanted to be, she delivered them in the wrong place and time.
I have since raised two daughters to adulthood. The most significant influences that teachers have made in their lives, positive and negative, were also lessons about life, not about curriculum.
How do we measure the best and worst teachers?
