My first-grade teacher was a garbage human being

As much as I hated school, there very few teachers I dreaded. But my first-grade teacher was an absolute nightmare to deal with. 

You know those old drawings that you saw in grade school? You know, where kids lined up behind their teachers, smiling?

My first-grade teacher expected us to act the same way. “You’re in school, so smile.” Despite the facade they expected, this was the absolute worst grade school teacher I ever had.

They resembled a crone, if you know what that is. That was scary enough. But if they heard a peep outside in the hallway, they’d beeline to the door and shout at the talkers. I can still hear them screaming to this day. “Hey, my class is trying to learn and we can hear you talking with the door closed.”

I remember asking my mother that their directions for doing schoolwork were complicated and hard to follow. I didn’t say it like that, being six years old, but you get the gist. My mom told me to tell the teacher that I didn’t understand what they were telling (not asking) us to do.

Luckily, I never got that far. A classmate took the damage for me. You can guess the teacher’s reaction. They yelled at the poor kid for about five minutes.

A teacher that baited us into trouble

I’ve had teachers with bad reputations in the years that followed, including my second-grade teacher. But because they favored me, I escaped their wrath, even if many of the other kids weren’t so lucky. As for the first-grade teacher? Oh, goodness, they hated kids indiscriminately.

They would say things to bait a kid into doing something to make them stay inside for that 30-minute recess in the “prison yard,” as I call it.

The worst ones were the few kids who ended up doing different work than what we did. These days, I know they were the “special education” group, and probably shouldn’t have been in the same room as us. But in 1997-98, as far as this particular district went, things were different.

But you wouldn’t believe how impatient they were with these kids, two of whom were often driven to tears of embarrassment when it was clear they had a rough time reading. When you’re a kid, you find it entertaining to have seen that teacher single them out, but in hindsight, at 34? If that were my kid, and they came home telling me that they were treated that way?

Well, you already know how I feel about public schools, so I’d bring a lot of attention that teacher.

Curiosity nearly killed TC

This teacher also had a variety of peculiar objects in their room. It deterred my attention from their mundane lectures, and it got me in trouble more times than I can count.

But, as someone who read about as well as Scout Finch from the moment I stepped into that classroom, I was bored. Why did I need to sit there and pay attention to things I already knew? One of many reasons why I absolutely despise public school with a passion: Kids need to sit there and “learn” what they’ve already learned.

I also remember they had this blue apple perched on their desk. Once, they left the room to grab something and I turned in a paper at the same time. Curiosity got the better of me that day, because I’d been staring at that thing for weeks.

I saw my opportunity and approached it, mesmerized for getting a close-up look at a blue apple. It was fake, but what did I know?

Once I committed its image to memory, I turned around and there they stood, leaning against the door with a smug look on their aged face. “Go put your name on the board and sit down.”

What? Did you think I was gonna steal something? Look in your gradebook?

And speaking of gradebooks, good luck asking them about what your grade was in any subject. “An ‘F,'” they would say. Every single time.

My grade school teachers actually weren’t half-bad

Kindergarten, second grade, third grade, and fourth grade. They weren’t all home runs, but wow, they were better than the garbage teacher I had in first grade. If you venture further into this blog and you see the phrase “Nasty Old Bat,” this first-grade teacher is who I’m referring to.

They were brutal to deal with. And the fact they loved making our lives hell yet still managed to hold a job shows you how broken the public school system is.

But you know what’s not broken? The market-based system you’ll find in my young adult fantasy series, Arcane Elemental Academy. 

Yote Diamondback’s about to learn that a market-based approach to education means one thing for competing schools: accountability. If they have a piece of garbage bullying kids, then guess what? Someone’s taking the trash out.

But how did Yote end up at Arcane when she spent years in elemental schools “learning” things the traditional way? Find out in the first three chapters of Book I, The Arcane Prophecy. If you’re into Harry Potter vibes, but with a protagonist who “would do well in Slytherin,” this is your next read.