I was a senior in high school at the time and i had never been the brightest student. I was a solid C student and i had never received a detention or had any kind of bad student record. This is important because to this day, i still have no idea why the teacher treated me this way. The teacher, who we will name Mrs. Frank, had been a teacher there for more then a decade and was widely known for being a petty heartless bitch who the administrators saw as the golden child.
Mrs. Frank taught algebra, which is my worst subject, so naturally i had issues understanding the lessons and would ask questions frequently. To some these questions are easily answered but to me it was rocket science.
Usually when someone asks a dumb question, no one should address it however in Mrs. Franks case she would belittle me in front of everyone by saying things such as “And here comes the slow boy again” , “wow surprise surprise you don’t understand it again” “Really? We have to go extra slow for you today don’t we” etc…etc.
I tried going to the administration about it before but again she was considered the golden child. They would send someone in to examine her during class, she would act respectful and normal for one day, and go back to being a bitch the next.
This goes on for about half the year until i had enough. I went to the local radioshack, bought a recorder, and secretly recorded every insult she would throw at me. I would sometimes instigate to make up for the lost time.
Go ahead, feed the fire.
Fast forward to the end of the year and im sitting in Mrs. Franks class when i ask a question. Her response, and i quote (because it’s burned into my brain) was-
“I’v been teaching here for over 10 years and that was the single dumbest question i’v ever heard come from anyones mouth.”
She continued the lesson without answering. I calmly stood up, packed up my stuff, and headed to the nurses office to dismiss myself from school. (We were allowed to dismiss ourself if we were 18.)
I went home, compiled all of the brutal tapes into one glorious masterpiece, and headed back the next day to show the administrators. I sat down with the principal and we listened to a couple of the insults before he stopped me. He wanted more witnesses present as well as Mrs. Franks. He told me we would meet the next day where i could show him and the rest of the administrators the full tape.
I walk into school the next morning being the most nervous iv ever been for anything. I was called down to the office where i met with some board directors, the local school police officer, the principal, the vice principal and Mrs. Franks.
What follows was some of the greatest minutes of my life.
I watched as the administrators went from fed up with being in another useless meeting, to furious and speechless with some of them keeping their mouths open for the duration of the tape. I also watched Mrs. Frank go from confident and stuck up, to her realizing that she had fucked up beyond repair.
She was publicly roasting herself in front of the most important people from the district.
The tape ended and without hesitation, the administrators looked around in astonishment and the principal turns to me and says “I think we have heard everything we need to, thank you.” And i was quietly dismissed from the room.
The final time i saw Mrs. Frank was leaving the room. I looked back and we made eye contact through her tear filled eyes as i gave the biggest most evil smile.
I returned to class the next week and Mrs. Frank was no where to be found. The story spread quickly throughout the school and i was seen as a saint. I had successfully gotten her fired and made it almost impossible for Mrs. Frank to return to her teaching career as well as cut off most of her connections she had with other teachers in the school. I had ruined her financially because no school district in the area would hire this walking piece of garbage.
If you’re reading this Mrs. Frank id like to take this moment to tell you to go fuck yourself.
“Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them”. Andy Rooney
Damn. I love that her own words were her undoing.
That’s great presence of mind for an 18yr old. I would probably have sworn about her my friends and went on with my day.
had similar encounters with my English teacher my junior year in highschool. She would constantly berate me for sleeping in her class and not working in her class although I never turned in assignments late or was a disturbance. Any time I would talk to any of the people next to me she’d call me out for being a distraction and shit, eventually escalating to the point where she said verbatim “If you keep this shit up I don’t understand how you expect to pass your TAKS test and graduate” (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skill required to graduate with passing grades) I wasn’t a bad student I just finished all my shit early and didn’t feel the need to listen to her rant about the same stuff everyday when I knew I knew the material.
We did our tests and got our results shortly after and I was the only one in my fucking class of 650+ students that scored a perfect score with a 4 on my essay. I made copies of my score and would include them with our assignments for the rest of the year she never told me shit after that.
I doubt she learned this way. Probably is still blaming all her problems “on that stupid kid for getting me unjustly fired, after all I did to try and help him”.
I actually was pretty good at math, but sometimes got hung up on certain concepts. One year, I had a really horrible math teacher. A lesson of his had confused me, so I asked him to elaborate. Privately, at his desk, during the practical part of class.
He gets up, says a stupid joke (the question was related to sin and cosine, so lots of stupid joke material), and then sits down and acts like that was that. I never asked him another question.
I had him for computer science a couple of years later. He ruined that for me too. It was a bit like Snape and DADA. While he taught math, he always wanted to teach CS, and sucked as a teacher.
He wasn’t bad enough to deserve anything beyond student pranks, but he probably should have reconsidered his career choice.
there something weird about a 18 year old highschool senior being in a algebra class. isnt algebra 1 and 2 freshman/sophomore classes?
This doesn’t sound realistic. As union employees, administrators need to follow specific protocol for disciplining teachers. Even in the most heinous cases — physical abuse, drinking on the job, etc — teachers get warnings before being written up and then given leave with pay. No one would accept a child’s recording as evidence.
I’m a teacher who has gotten in mild trouble (a kid left my classroom without my permission and the administration thought I hadn’t followed my responsibilities). It’s pretty tough to fire a teacher.
He doesn’t know if she was actually fired. She might’ve just realized it was over and quit instead going through the entire process she is ultimate going to lose and risk information getting out and her name dragged through the mud further.