He was a tall man with lean features. He had wire-rim glasses and a very large mouth that he would constantly push his lips out with. My fellow students and I made jokes about the way he walked. He waddled like a duck when he paced back and forth while teaching at the front of the classroom. We called him Mr. Teal and whether or not you thought him to be a good teacher really entirely depended on your social status at school.
If you were one of the ones that were popular, athletic, pretty, and fortunate to shop at the Gap then you probably liked him or at the very least found him tolerable. He didn't pick on the popular ones. The ones who fit in with ease. However, if you were like me and more of a social outcast then you probably hated him and he hated you.
I was always more reserved and quiet by nature and unfortunately this year some of my peers took advantage of that and decided to make my life hell. I was a person by nature that didn't like to decide if I liked someone or not until I had the chance to get to know them. This was taken out of context and twisted and made me an enemy early in the year. A nasty enemy that eventually had turned my whole class against me.
Being bullied by your peers is hard enough but it becomes much harder when your teachers join in on the bullying. Mr. Teal did not hesitate to join in on the cruelty.
Mr. Teal taught English and I loved to write. I had been writing since I was a small child. I was crafting stories before I knew how to write real words. I could remember stapling small scraps of paper together, scribbling carefully on each one, and then proudly showing my mom the book I just wrote.
So like the weirdo I was I enjoyed writing assignments. So when he assigned us to write a paper on someone we looked up to I was happy. I could finally show what I was capable of. I knew just who to write about. I couldn't think of anyone better than my nana.
My nana was a small Korean woman that you didn't mess around with. She loved her family fiercely and lived a difficult life. She had to marry my pap a few times during the Korean war before the US would recognize the marriage. She had lived through the Japanese invading her home country. She had been thrown out on the street by her Aunt because she wouldn't shave her head to become a Buddhist priestess. It was catholic missionaries that took her in and this is how she found a Christian faith. When she came to the states with her husband and young son (my father) she faced racism from her in-laws and struggled to find her place. She then in her older years developed a few medical conditions that made life a little more difficult, but through all this, she always smiled and saw the good in life. It was her that taught through example how to deal with the difficult things life throws at you and she was the one I wanted to write about.
I worked hard on that paper. I wanted to do my nana justice. I talked to my parents about her to make sure that when I wrote about her life that it was accurate. I spent hours outlining and researching for this paper. I then typed up the paper and had my parents look for any errors several times before I felt comfortable with the copy I had. I even took the time to design a fun cover for my paper. For the 90s computer graphics, it turned out quite well. I felt good and proud when I handed in that paper to Mr. Teal. I knew with this paper he would have to recognize I was a good kid and he would have to stop being so mean all the time.
A week or so later he handed back our papers. I watched as my classmates got their papers back one by one. I was looking forward to seeing what he thought about my paper but I was nervous too. I had worked so hard on it. What if he didn't like it? When he walked over to me to hand me my paper he had an angry look on his face. Before he handed me my paper he looked me in the eye and said:
"There is no way someone like you could write this well. Did you plagiarize this? Where did you copy this from?"
I was shocked and angry. How could he think I cheated? Why was it so hard for him to believe that I just might be good at writing? I had been doing it my entire life and I was equally obsessed with reading books not just because I enjoyed a good story but because I wanted to improve my own writing. I timidly looked at him and said: " It's about my grandmother. I didn't copy anything."
" Really," he said in a huff. He then spent the rest of the class period ranting about how wrong plagiarism is and only the worst students would do this. He kept glaring at me.
I received an A on that paper because he couldn't prove I cheated, because I didn't cheat. I just did what I was good at. I didn't tell my parents about his accusations. I just showed them my graded paper. After that, I couldn't look at the paper without feeling sick so I eventually ripped it into pieces and threw it out.
After that, it was like he had declared war on me. He sent me to the principal's office for missing school when I was excused because I had lost my slip from homeroom proving it was excused. The principal ripped up the referral and told me to go back to class. He sat the popular kids together and sat me only a few seats away so I could hear them making fun of me. He would throw random questions at me during class hoping to trip me up and make me look stupid. I always answered correctly.
After he went on another rant of his, this time about the Christian faith and how was it just a big myth like the Greek myths he finally overstepped. He received a lot of angry complaints from parents about it and was forced to apologize to the entire class for it. After that, he was better. I couldn't help but wonder if he was forced to reign in his behavior after that.
The effects of this horrible no good teacher are still lasting today. As a young girl, it had been a dream to one day write a book inspired by my nana, but every time I try I flashback to his accusations and I freeze up and feel sick. Hopefully writing this all down will finally set me free to write her story. We will see.
If you were one of the ones that were popular, athletic, pretty, and fortunate to shop at the Gap then you probably liked him or at the very least found him tolerable. He didn't pick on the popular ones. The ones who fit in with ease. However, if you were like me and more of a social outcast then you probably hated him and he hated you.
I was always more reserved and quiet by nature and unfortunately this year some of my peers took advantage of that and decided to make my life hell. I was a person by nature that didn't like to decide if I liked someone or not until I had the chance to get to know them. This was taken out of context and twisted and made me an enemy early in the year. A nasty enemy that eventually had turned my whole class against me.
Being bullied by your peers is hard enough but it becomes much harder when your teachers join in on the bullying. Mr. Teal did not hesitate to join in on the cruelty.
Mr. Teal taught English and I loved to write. I had been writing since I was a small child. I was crafting stories before I knew how to write real words. I could remember stapling small scraps of paper together, scribbling carefully on each one, and then proudly showing my mom the book I just wrote.
So like the weirdo I was I enjoyed writing assignments. So when he assigned us to write a paper on someone we looked up to I was happy. I could finally show what I was capable of. I knew just who to write about. I couldn't think of anyone better than my nana.
My nana was a small Korean woman that you didn't mess around with. She loved her family fiercely and lived a difficult life. She had to marry my pap a few times during the Korean war before the US would recognize the marriage. She had lived through the Japanese invading her home country. She had been thrown out on the street by her Aunt because she wouldn't shave her head to become a Buddhist priestess. It was catholic missionaries that took her in and this is how she found a Christian faith. When she came to the states with her husband and young son (my father) she faced racism from her in-laws and struggled to find her place. She then in her older years developed a few medical conditions that made life a little more difficult, but through all this, she always smiled and saw the good in life. It was her that taught through example how to deal with the difficult things life throws at you and she was the one I wanted to write about.
I worked hard on that paper. I wanted to do my nana justice. I talked to my parents about her to make sure that when I wrote about her life that it was accurate. I spent hours outlining and researching for this paper. I then typed up the paper and had my parents look for any errors several times before I felt comfortable with the copy I had. I even took the time to design a fun cover for my paper. For the 90s computer graphics, it turned out quite well. I felt good and proud when I handed in that paper to Mr. Teal. I knew with this paper he would have to recognize I was a good kid and he would have to stop being so mean all the time.
A week or so later he handed back our papers. I watched as my classmates got their papers back one by one. I was looking forward to seeing what he thought about my paper but I was nervous too. I had worked so hard on it. What if he didn't like it? When he walked over to me to hand me my paper he had an angry look on his face. Before he handed me my paper he looked me in the eye and said:
"There is no way someone like you could write this well. Did you plagiarize this? Where did you copy this from?"
I was shocked and angry. How could he think I cheated? Why was it so hard for him to believe that I just might be good at writing? I had been doing it my entire life and I was equally obsessed with reading books not just because I enjoyed a good story but because I wanted to improve my own writing. I timidly looked at him and said: " It's about my grandmother. I didn't copy anything."
" Really," he said in a huff. He then spent the rest of the class period ranting about how wrong plagiarism is and only the worst students would do this. He kept glaring at me.
I received an A on that paper because he couldn't prove I cheated, because I didn't cheat. I just did what I was good at. I didn't tell my parents about his accusations. I just showed them my graded paper. After that, I couldn't look at the paper without feeling sick so I eventually ripped it into pieces and threw it out.
After that, it was like he had declared war on me. He sent me to the principal's office for missing school when I was excused because I had lost my slip from homeroom proving it was excused. The principal ripped up the referral and told me to go back to class. He sat the popular kids together and sat me only a few seats away so I could hear them making fun of me. He would throw random questions at me during class hoping to trip me up and make me look stupid. I always answered correctly.
After he went on another rant of his, this time about the Christian faith and how was it just a big myth like the Greek myths he finally overstepped. He received a lot of angry complaints from parents about it and was forced to apologize to the entire class for it. After that, he was better. I couldn't help but wonder if he was forced to reign in his behavior after that.
The effects of this horrible no good teacher are still lasting today. As a young girl, it had been a dream to one day write a book inspired by my nana, but every time I try I flashback to his accusations and I freeze up and feel sick. Hopefully writing this all down will finally set me free to write her story. We will see.
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