When A Teacher Clips Your Wings

Mo Rocca has appeared on a bunch of shows, including 'The Daily Show,' 'I Love the 80s,'...

Mo Rocca Feed

When A Teacher Clips Your Wings

Posted Jul 29th 2007 10:33AM by Mo Rocca
Filed under: Mo Wants To Know, Mo Rocca

Teachers are underpaid. Teachers are undervalued. Teachers, the most important professionals in our society, are treated terribly.

That said, even the best teachers behave less than perfectly sometimes. (And no, this post is not about Mary Kay LeTourneau or Debra Lafave.) My posting about hygiene and the architecture teacher who slapped a Q-Tip out of my hand got me thinking about two other incidents - instances where a teacher "acted out" and unwittingly (or wittingly?) stifled my confidence.

I was in 6th grade and my marks were fairly good. But I was hyperactive. Whenever the bell would ring, I'd convulse my whole body. I couldn't blame my teacher, Mr. K, for getting frustrated with me. He did seem to make a point of doting on my best friend Mario. Mario was perfectly behaved and had impossibly good handwriting. (If he didn't become an architect, he could certainly write the blueprint copy. That's how good his penmanship was.) His only slip-up was mispronouncing "rendezvous" in Vocab class. (He pronounced it ren-dez-vwah.)

The incident occurred in the spring. We were assigned to write an essay (really the first "essay" I'd write - until then we'd written book reports) on an American we admired. My father had mentioned that he admired Woodrow Wilson very much for his efforts on behalf of world peace. Well this seemed like a perfect subject for my essay.
One afternoon, days before the assignment was due, I was the last to leave the classroom for the day. Mr. K was at his desk as I was walking out. He didn't look up.

"So, Maurice, who are you writing about?"

Strange, I thought, that he should be so interested. Oh well, I had a great essay subject. Might as well flaunt it.

"President Woodrow Wilson," I said. Then I went a step further. "He was the greatest president we ever had."

Mr. K looked up and cocked his head in almost mock confusion. "Oh, really? Why is that?"

The challenge seemed like a friendly one. Mr. K wanted to know what I thought. And I was ready!

"Because he wanted peace," I chirped.

That's when I saw another side of Mr. K. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back, a wide Grinch-like "smile" spreading across his face: "But, Maurice, don't you think all presidents want peace?"

He had me cornered. (If only I'd had a crystal ball to see the future!) His question was logical. Painfully logical. I swallowed hard, trying to muster an answer.

"Um, well..." But nothing came. "....."

The whole exchange had begun with such excitement, such possibility. I not only had an answer, but I had an explanation. (At least I thought I did.) This was a grown-up conversation ... until Mr. K squelched it. Had I known what an ivory tower was, I would have prayed for an earthquake to crumble his.

I walked out of the classroom silently. Gun-shy after my humiliation, I dared only the most tepid thesis statement on my essay: "President Woodrow Wilson was our 28th President." I think I got a check-minus.

Why did Mr. K have to take me down a few pegs? I was a mere 12 years old. True, Woodrow Wilson was a cold fish, a racist, far less progressive than Teddy Roosevelt, the man who would have mopped the floor with him in the 1912 election had whiny fatso William Howard Taft not stood in the way. Wilson was also a former professor, so he probably had a really freaky sex life. (For the record, my father never said Wilson was our "best," just that he admired him for his peacemaking efforts with the ill-fated League of Nations.)

Fast forward two years: I'm an 8th grader at Pyle Junior High. My confidence rebuilt, the Woodrow Wilson incident is a distant memory.

At Pyle students were required to take both Industrial Arts (IA) and Home Ec. IA was a blast. The teacher Mr. Peebles taught me how to use a lathe! And we all made popsicle stick pencil holders. (The lucite napkin rings were a bust.)

Home Ec with Mrs. G was a different story altogether. Our final project was making a patchwork pillow from scratch. We chose the colors, cut the fabric, then sewed it before stuffing it. The hardest part was sewing the nine panels that constituted one side of the square pillow. Mario got his corners to match perfectly. You know the four corners in the Southwest? All of Mario's points were that precise. Naturally Mrs. G loved him. She felt very differently about me.

My pillow was hardly a disaster. (And my apple crumble was perfectly edible.) I think she didn't like me because I was too opinionated. While we sewed our pillows, we were allowed to talk at a moderate volume. Somehow the subject of Old Hollywood came up, and I had something to say:

"My father said that Hedy Lamarr was the most beautiful actress in Hollywood."

Hedy Lamarr, the Austrian-Jewish raven-haired temptress, was undeniably stunning. In her very first major role, in the German film Ecstasy, she appeared nude and faked an orgasm, setting tongues wagging everywhere. (Mussolini watched the movie over and over.) The film was banned in America. Naturally Hollywood came calling. Hedy drugged her munitions magnate husband Fritz and escaped to Los Angeles to become a star.

The exotic star of Tortilla Flat and Samson and Delilah was also smart: she co-invented an early form of "spread spectrum," the technology which eventually birthed wireless communications. (She made no money from the patent, which may explain her old-age penchant for shoplifting.) So without Hedy, we might not have cell phones!

I didn't know all of this at the time. But I knew that my opinion was out-of-the-box, original.

But Mrs. G was unimpressed. She looked up from her Singer Sewing Machine and with a cold stare and curled lip snarled: "Hedy Lamarr was beautiful. But she wasn't the most beautiful actress in Hollywood. Ingrid Bergman was." Then she put the pedal to the metal and resumed stitching.

Wow. I didn't know what to say. Ingrid Bergman was beautiful, to be sure. The Swedish-born three-time Oscar winner had captivated American audiences from the beginning of her Hollywood career with the 1939 film Intermezzo. Casablanca soon followed and the rest is history. Even her out-of-wedlock birth of Isabella Rosselini was eventually forgiven. That's how talented and beautiful she was. She even looked great playing Golda Meir in that 1980s TV movie.

But was I wrong? Shouldn't my advocacy of the far less famous and much quirkier Hedy Lamarr for title of Most Beautiful Actress in Hollywood have been rewarded by Mrs. G?

***

I'm really not trying to play the victim here. I guess we shouldn't expect the impossible from our teachers. They're human. They become frustrated. (In both instances, I was invoking a parent when I was repudiated which made the moments sting all them more.)

Have you ever had your wings clipped by a teacher? Share your story!

Permalink
Email this
Linking Blogs
Comments [114]
Share this
- Add this post to...
- Netscape
- Digg
- Del.icio.us

Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 8)

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Most Recent | Next 15 Comments

1. As a teacher of 25 yrs. I hope to god that I never clip the wings of one of my students but I am afraid that early in my time as a teacher I did. Teachers do get frustrated for a wide variety of reasons but these do not excuse this behavior. I can only hope that the good I have done far outweighs the bad over the years.

John at 11:49AM on Jul 29th 2007

2.
I haven't had many teachers, as much of my primary education was self-paced Southern Baptist propaganda. So I have a rather unique outsider's perspective here.

It seems that in both instances your teachers were merely challenging you (albeit in a douchebaggy manner) to think on your own and not just parrot what your parents had fed you. A really good teacher challenges you to question their own authority, but that takes a remarkable absence of ego.

Had they not deflated your spirit but managed to engage you in friendly debate, would you have maintained your father's positions on Wilson and Lamarr, conceded your teachers' points, or developed your own Mo-pinons?

slackferno at 12:03PM on Jul 29th 2007

3. Mo, while I was reading about the itmes your wings were clipped I was immediately reminded of my 7th grade science teacher.
Ms. Kranick was a tough woman, and science was not my favorite subject to beging with, so I was very proud of myself for writing a well-informed paper on Samuel Morse. Unfortunately, I couldn't print it out at home, so I brought it in on a floppy disc to print it out from a school computer, figuring that as long as I got it to class, all was well. Ms. Kranick took some offense at this and had the class vote on how many points should be taken off of my grade for printing out my paper in class, and then became upset with me for putting too much space between my paragraphs. In the end I think I got a passing grade- a C+ or something- but I was absolutely turned off to science for the rest of the year.
In restrospect, she was definately just frustrated, but there you have it.

Kelsey at 12:10PM on Jul 29th 2007

4. Clip a students wings? Never. Unless they refuse to share their apple crumble. Then, all bets are off.

John Benson at 9:53PM on Jul 31st 2007

5. I was in 7th grade and my social studies teacher was teaching us about longitude and latitude. We talked about Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and she pronounced the word as "Green-witch."

Visiting Greenwich Village would have probably been my 7th grade dream and so I piped up with, "Um, Miss Calvin, it's 'Gren-itch.'" She stared back at me with evil eyes. Somehow I took this as a sign to keep talking so I said, "You know, like how W-o-r-c-e-s-t-e-r, Massachusetts is pronounced 'Wuss-ter.'"

She flatly denied that Greenwich was pronounced Gren-itch or that Worcester was Wuss-ter and that was that. Later that day she accused me of talking in class when I hadn't been. Even though witnesses pointed out that it had been the girl behind me, Ms. Calvin assigned me to copy out the glossary of our textnook through the letter G.

Mary Duffy at 12:48PM on Jul 29th 2007

6. Many years ago, in 7th grade, I raised my hand to answer a question in history class. My answer was incorrect, and the teacher humiliated me in front of everyone. For a long time afterwards, unless I was 200% sure of my answer I would think of that incident and not raise my hand. 10 years later, I had become a high school teacher and ran into my old 7th grade history teacher at a teachers' meeting in our County. I got the nerve to go up to him and tell him how that behavior affected me. What I did learn from that experience was no matter how bad or stupid a child's answer was, I would always respond with something supportive, such as "I see where you are going with this, but I am looking for something else" rather than brow-beat him/her in front of peers. Teachers are so instrumental in any child's development, and it is important to remember that at all times.

Jin Johnson at 12:49PM on Jul 29th 2007

7. In my senior year of high school, one of my assignments was to write a research paper. The paper was worth quite a bit of our final grade in the class. In fact A failing grade on the paper was a failing grade in the class. I spent a lot of time reading books on the subject and even had live interviews. I was (am) very proud of this paper. I handed it in sure that it would receive an A. My parents received a note in the mail that I was failing the class because I failed to turn in my paper. Confused, I talked to the teacher to point out that I had turned in the paper. We went round and round. A few weeks later she found my paper in her desk along with a number of others that "didn't turn it in". I got an A+ but was marked down to a D- for being late!

marc at 12:56PM on Jul 29th 2007

8. Clipped?
My teachers made sure that I left school doubting that I was competent at anything at all. As a precocious grade-school child, I loved to read, so I was punished for reading above grade level and forbidden to use the library. From the first through the fourth grade I read all of my textbooks all of the way through on the first day of class; the complete lack of anything interesting to do for the rest of the year taught me to save sections to read with the class. When the mind numbing boredom of school resulted in apathy and poor study habits, my sixth grade teacher put me in class for students of low aptitude and low intelligence for seventh grade. He took me aside on the last day of grade school and told me that he did it to teach me to work harder. As a result I was rejected and tormented by all of my friends, and for the next six years of school any exemplary work I did or test scores I achieved were regarded as cheating, because it said right there on the transcript that I belonged with the low achievers. In an attempt to redeem myself for a teacher I admired in high school, I researched and wrote the best paper I had ever written (I loved to write.) I was so proud of my work as I handed it in! I came back with "Where did you plagiarize this from?" written across the first page in red letters, with the grade "F" prominently circled. There was no defense. I stopped writing.

There were plenty of other injuries; these are only a sample. I'm not sure why I was a target; not submissive enough, or not as easily directed, or just not what the teachers expected. Teachers become teachers at least in part (if not entirely) because of their love of control over others. They can do what they want with the children entrusted to them; their "pets" they build up, the rest of us they kneecap. I may never recover.

H. Carlson at 12:58PM on Jul 29th 2007

9. As a math instructor, I do not believe we "clip wings" when we ask "stinging questions" like your Mr. K. I believe what he was attempting to have you do was nothing more than think out your reasoning for President Wilson and peace.

Yes, parents tell their children things and the children in turn repeat them, without thinking or rationale. I challenge my students not to only hold their opinions but to also be able to back them with more than just emotion or "my mom told me." Too often we, as a nation, are so worried about "feelings" and political correctness; we need to teach students to debate and dialogue and know that there will be disagreements, but those disagreements do not diminish the people involved.

At least, that is what I strive for in my class. Now, if that is not what the students believe, they ALL are given an opportunity during the last week of school to voice this opinion and any other experience; good, bad, or indifferent.

I may be a dictator in my classroom, but at least I am a benevolent dictator. :)

Taalib Bakari at 1:09PM on Jul 29th 2007

10. I got all of those beat. I suffered from severe dyslexia as a child, and still battle with it to this day. My problem became very apparent when we started learning how to write in first grade. I always turned the 'S' and 'N' in my name backwards, and I could barely read on top of that. My first grade teacher would accuse me in front of the class of doing all of this on purpose, or just being stupid. She would force me to write my name on the blackboard over and over again in front of everyone, while she went on with whatever she was teaching. She'd stop every few minutes in her angry diatribes and make fun of me, at one point mocking me for starting to cry. I vividly remember, after a failed attempt to read a few sentences out loud, that she exploded in a fit of rage and moved my desk up next to hers where she could keep a closer eye in me. I was forced to sit facing the whole class while she tellled at me and mocked me on a daily basis. She insisted I did it just to annoy her. This was in the mid eighties when dyslexia was known problem. It wasn't like she didn't have the resources to help me, she just didn't give a crap. And I wasn't the only student she treated so poorly. I remember a little boy who had bladder control issues. She was yelling at him for something or other one day and he had an accident, she literally scared the pee out of him. She forced him to sit in his wet pants all day, and all through lunch and recess. She refused to let him go to the nurse, and actually encouraged the rest of the kids to laugh at him. He sat right next to me, and I'll never forget the sound of that poor kid's muffled sobs. Thankfully, shortly after that she was allowed to take an early retirement. No repreimands for her behavior mind you, just allowed to leave in the middle of the school year, a few months earlier then planned. These days that school would have been sued for millions of dollars. I can say that something good came out of it though. I now have a passion in my life, making sure that other kids with disabalities are helped as soon as possible, and with the most humane treatment possible. I suppose in a twisted sort of way she helped me learn those lessons.

austenwoolf at 1:17PM on Jul 29th 2007

11. My 8th grade history teacher Mr. Sandino was a master wing clipper. I think he thought he was trying to challenge us, but really he was just a great big asshole.

Greg at 1:18PM on Jul 29th 2007

12. Clipped by teachers, not as much as clipped by standardized testing.

in the 6th grade I was rated at 2nd grade reading level, justifibly. The schools lined me up as a looser saying that I should learn a trade with my hands. - And I would have to agree.

60's came and the colledges lower entrance requiredments and I got in doing Physics and engineering. But I had to squize past the written requirments. And I did by a move that almost got me tossed out of school. (rally they should have)
Instead I was given a waver.

27 years in a demanding Engineering job. I think the judgements by the schools were misplaced, but that's the best they system could do. I had to over come.

Now I have taken IQ test and they show some area in the 180+ range and others in below 80. How can a school system do anything but judge on the least ability. But school is not 'real life' and personal skills and loving parents can push the envelop.

jimw at 2:27AM on Jul 30th 2007

13. The first high school I attended closed after my Sophomore year but while there I had perhaps the best history teacher in the world, she challenged us to learn, to share theories and then to research those theories (sometimes only to learn of extenuating circumstances that made our theories rather impossible and while I'm sure she knew that's what we'd sometimes find she never just shot us down and filled us in with information we couldn't have known but instead oversaw our research to ensure that we didn't miss the vital details and so that we became more confident in our researching abilities) and I left that school knowing that history and teaching history was my passion.... so it was *painful* for me when I entered my new high school and saw the train wreck that was our new history teacher. This woman taught entirely out of the text book and the extent of testing our knowledge was entirely left to giving us pre-made quizzes and tests that came with the text book. Furthermore I doubt this woman actually knew very much about history... if it wasn't in the text book she refused to talk about it (and we're not talking about particularly good text books, either). There were four other students who had transferred over with me who were also pained by the drastic decline in our history education and so we approached our old history teacher (who was teaching at another school) and asked her to meet with us and have a mini history course with us every Saturday. These Saturday sessions were so *fun*- just five students interested in history and one history extraordinaire! Our discussions were lively and amazing and a contrast to the classroom where I saw that train wreck turn countless students off of history by responding to their inquiries with "look it up" as though it wasn't worth her time to discuss with them or by telling students who had been at my old school with me though who weren't interested enough to give up their Saturdays that they were wrong about things when, in fact, they weren't wrong, it just wasn't mentioned in that particular text book. Students emerged from that class thinking history was full of absolute right and wrong answers and with little confidence in their ability to really "discover" anything.

I went on to Washington University (where I believe you spoke two years ago, Mo) where I got my degrees in history and educational studies; during my semester as a classroom assistant I saw some really mortifying behavior by the teacher I was shadowing. It was a freshmen history classroom and I felt truly sorry for the students in that class. This teacher showed absolutely no respect to any of the students and yet drilled them if they weren't respectful to her. She showed no interest and gave no value to their opinions or ideas (even when they were valid) and her favorite method of punishment was to stop class and call an offending student's mother on the phone, complain to the mother and then give the phone to the student... in front of the whole class. One student in particular had a tendency to get too hyper during class and she was *constantly* calling his mother but one day I remember he was just a *really* great student, he paid attention, he'd brought in his home work (completed!) and he even made a really good observation and she didn't reward his efforts, she didn't call his mother and tell her how great he'd been, just... nothing; whereas the students who were good all the time were constantly getting praised, she even regularly compared the students, asking "why can't you be more like _____?"

During my time there that teacher was in a fender bender and had to miss several days of work and so I was one of the only students shadowing who actually got the chance to have the class to themselves and it was a real learning experience! I learned that many of those students were just hungry for the chance not to be put down every time they said something, desperate for a little bit of respect and for learning opportunities that were engaging instead of mind numbing. I also learned that no matter how much respect you show students they're still going to slip up in returning it sometimes and it's going to be irksome and sometimes no matter how engaging an activity is you're not going to get all of them to all pay attention all the time and there will always be a class clown who seems to live for your blank, disbelieving stare at their latest stunt. I only had the class to myself for about a week and it was more exhausting than I thought it would be and I really can't quite imagine what might happen to me if I were teaching a class for a whole year- would the hyper active students finally wear down my patience? Would I yell at them, mock their less-than-well formed theories? I'd like to think not but the prospect of it scares me...

Thank God there are amazing teachers out there and here's to hoping that students survive the hell that can be a classroom with a disgruntled, uncaring, teacher.

MiaAndLia at 1:21PM on Jul 29th 2007

14. A teacher answers questions from a lawyer. A lawyer asked, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said, "What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?"
The lawyer said, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,' and 'your neighbor as yourself.' "
Jesus said, "You have answered rightly; do this and you will live." But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
Jesus said: "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.'
So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?"

And he said, "He who showed mercy on him." Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise."

Alan Klaus at 1:32PM on Jul 29th 2007

15. My highschool history teacher laughed at me when I told her I wanted to be an actress. She said, "How can you become an actress when you can't even make it through an oral report without laughing!" Luckily, she was pretty much the only person who ever put me down about performing - but it still stung!

Heather at 1:41PM on Jul 29th 2007

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Most Recent | Next 15 Comments

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br> tags.

Mo's Video

The Sound of a Smoke-Free Barack...
Almost two years ago we speculated on how Barack Obama's voice would change if he stopped smoking. ...

Coming Soon

Most Commented On

Coming Soon

Mo's Bio

Mo Rocca appears on a bunch of shows, including CBS News Sunday Morning (with the indescribably wonderful Charles Osgood), The Tonight Show on NBC, and NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! He's a sometime judge on Iron Chef and was featured on Telemundo's Amore Descarado. Last year he starred on Broadway in the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. His expose "All the President's Pets" was published by Crown in 2004.