STUDENTS
We had one basketball player, Steve, who was not known for his mental acumen. A starting player went to the floor hard in a game. Coaches huddled over the guy and didn’t like the look of the bump on his head. The coach went over to Steve and tells him to sub for the injured player because he might have a concussion. Steve’s says: “Concussion… was it in the head?” The coach retired the next year.
One of my Modern World students said she had always dreamed of going to France. She was setting money aside to make her visit shortly after she graduated from high school. She asked me in class one day how much I thought the trip to France might cost. I started to tell her the airfare would probably be around six hundred dollars. She stopped me in mid-sentence. “Oh no, I’m afraid of flying. How much is it to go by train?” We ended that class with a geography lesson with emphasis on the vastness of oceans, especially the Atlantic.
Our Earth Science teacher came into the faculty lounge shaking his head. He had given a homework assignment the night before. It was to find and identify rocks and minerals. One of the rocks mentioned in the lesson was known as a geode. One young girl took the assignment very seriously. She burst into the classroom as shouted “Hey Mr. W, guess what…I found a gonad in my back yard last night!!” Hopefully, it was not still attached or it could have been painful.
Our Health teacher was approached by a freshman student who had been absent from class for a considerable time. She begged for some makeup and extra-credit work that she could do at home to pass the class, He agreed and gave her assignments from a health workbook that he had. It was the teacher's edition and he told her not to look in the back of the book. When he received her paper the next day, he chuckled. About a half-dozen answers that she wrote said "answers may vary"!
Here are some of the questions:
1. What is your favorite fruit? Answers may vary
2. What is your favorite vegetable? Answers may vary
3. Who is your favorite Health teacher? Answers may vary
The teacher confronted the student figuring it was an open and shut case of cheating. "Meg, did you look at the answers in the back of the book?"
The student's reply was: "Of course not, I thought them up all by myself."
She was probably a senior before she learned how the Health teacher caught her.
We knew of a young high school guy named Jim that would go to the bus stop every school day. This was not unusual as many other guys not named Jim used to do the same thing. What was different about Jim was that he would go up to the largest male there and make off-color comments about the guy’s mother. The end result was that Jim was usually beaten to a pulp. He enjoyed it for some perverse reason. Among Jim’s other trivial pursuits was cross-dressing. After high school graduation, he would dress up as a lady of the evening and prowl along Bank Street in New London. This was not a skill set that we emphasized at the high school. Maybe he had been to the Rocky Horror Picture Show too many times. In time “she” was arrested and placed in jail. Which section of the jail was not mentioned but I’ll bet that Jim’s dance card was filled for the entire evening.
FAMOUS FACULTY
Joel was a very good teacher but many of us thought that he needed to lighten up and not be so serious all the time. Some scoundrel in our department, and I’m sad to say it wasn’t me this time, snuck into his room before class began one morning. He rolled down the map and taped Miss October, a Playboy centerfold of renown, inside it. Then he rolled the map back into position and waited for the first class of the day to begin. Joel began his lesson on the highland areas of Viet Nam, pulled down the map, and told the class that they would be looking at the natural features of Southeast Asia. The boys in the class noticed the mountains immediately and it took the teacher some time to return to the actual topography of the region.
Each department has its memorable, famous and infamous, personalities. Darrell was numero uno in both categories. I taught next to him for many years, maybe too many. Darrell was proud to note that he had never owned a television set. Kids would ask him what he did with all the time he was not spending on the ‘vast wasteland’ of TV programming.
“That’s easy to answer, young man. I read the dictionary every night. Think of all the new words I learn each week!” You could almost hear the youngster in the back of the class whispering “When he gets to the “N’s”, he’d better look up ‘nuts’.”
Temi played Spanish songs on the guitar and had the students sing along. Our French teacher, Ms. N, had a better teaching strategy. And it worked flawlessly, at least for the boys in class. She would perch herself on a desktop while sporting a mean miniskirt. And this was years before Basic Instinct stole this motivational devise. I don’t know how much practical Parisian French the class learned in that class, but if the phrase ‘l'underware rouge’ ever appeared on a test, the boys would have a perfect score that day. You could hear the guys saying ‘C’est bon’ over and over again. And they weren’t talking about the Big Tomato lunch menu.
One of our math teachers always taught the low groups. He had the same math challenged students year after year. Jimmy was in his class for the third year in a row. Jimmy was failing his tests so the teacher asked how long he studied last night.
Jimmy said three hours, from seven to nine in the evening.
“That’s NOT three hours,” the teacher bellowed.
Little Jimmy replied: “Sure it is…7…8…9!”
The teacher just stared into space and probably said something like…PLEASE Lord, not again next year!
We had a faculty member who had a rare condition that involved oranges. The mere presence of said fruit could cause a physical reaction so severe that he might tear your liver out because he didn’t like the way you said “good morning.” Every so often, a substitute teacher would reach in his lunch bag and take out a large navel orange. Veteran teachers would scramble from the room to protect their body parts. The only difference between the orange and hand grenade at this point was that one of them had a pin.
One of our older teachers would always fall asleep during faculty meetings. Teachers would bet how far into the session Pete would go before he put his head down and fell into the arms of morpheus. Safe bet was less than fifteen minutes. At the thirty minute mark, and some of us were counting, he would be snoring and snorting as he managed to escape into another dimension where time does not exist, at least for earthlings. Fully refreshed and energized, Pete was able now to devote himself to his true passion. He was the football coach and some of his best plays were literally dreamed up during this hour of meditation and reflection.
One of our science instructors was a master of the “Cobra Shot” technique. This highly efficient move was developed by the Shaolin monks in ancient China. Okay, this part is not true. We don’t know where the hell Mr. W. learned it, but he was the master of the Cobra Shot at Montville.
It is performed in the following manner. You have a young grasshopper who is not behaving in a socially acceptable manner. You counsel him in a vacant niche. He rolls his eyes and says “WHATEVER, MAN”
The CS Master’s arm shoots forward breaking the sound barrier and two fingers of his right hand lodge themselves in Grasshopper’s chest. This is to get his attention. It is usually very effective but sometimes it must be administered several times to rearrange the student’s ‘chi’ so they can focus on the task at hand.
