Mr. Sofa, as I will call him, was in his 1st year of teaching at my middle school, age 26. In short, he bullied me and picked on me and made me feel dumber than I really was. Sure, I was an average student and I did horribly on tests. I'd like to think that most of my test failure was because of my intimidation by him.
I would dread going to his class everyday. I would come home from school, turn on my CD player (usually David Bowie on the Labyrinth soundtrack) to forget about my problems for a little bit.
I remember my true moment of breakdown was the last few days of school before holiday break. The class had just finished grading a test, which obviously I did poorly on. Then Mr. Sofa took a tally. Whoever got a certain score would raise their hand. So say those who got a score in the A range would raise their hand- so on and so forth.
But I had a couple of problems with this method:
1. We graded ourselves, which I discouraged because students would know what other students' scores were, though it is not their business to know. Grades should be kept between the single student and instructor.
2. Also following the lines of point #1, if the students raised their hands to take a tally on what grade they got, then everyone would know each other's score. I felt that was an invasion of privacy.
So I refused to raise my hand. After Mr. Sofa finished his tally, he looked straight at me and said, "And who didn't raise their hand?". I vaguely remember what happened afterwards, but whatever he said to me ended up with the other kids laughing at me, and me being humiliated.
What was worse was that next period I had choir, and the high school choir was coming over for a special performance- in which my older sister was in. After each choir sang and the class was dismiss, I came right up to her and started bawling.
It didn't even cross my mind to report Mr. Sofa, probably because he didn't really do anything that I could accuse him for. Plus, not sure if I had the backbone then. Which I think is a contributing factor why I'm plagued with this memory, when I randomly think about it and how my present self would deal with it, I end up thinking "Why didn't I DO anything?!"
I just couldn't believe that it wasn't a student bully problem that I was dealing with.
I finally graduated from his class, moving my average C to a solid B. I still was made to go to summer school. My summer school teacher was really nice and allowed me not have to do all the assignments because I didn't slack off on reading and writing like the other students did. He asked me, "Why are you in this class?" Obviously, I didn't really need to be there.
I guess there's one good outcome to all of this, and that this experience made me a much more confident and stronger person. Although, if it from time-to-time still haunts me in my sleep, I obviously need to get some closure with this man.
So thanks, Mr. Sofa, even though it's an odd and indirect way. I'd still like to curse you for emotionally scarring me for life, but what are you going to do about it now? Eventually this memory will hurt a lot less.
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