Jack English-Cooper
Professor Justin Lotspeich
Rhetoric 110: Written Communication I
936 Words
9/7/2014
Personal Letter: My Terrifying Teacher
Dear Family,
I would like to express to you the reason why I have not been able to learn in my library class. There is a silver lining in this story that you all should pay attention to if you want to know how to learn from a class where it is impossible to learn. As many of you know I recently switched middle schools. From kindergarten through fourth grade, I attended a private Quaker school, Cambridge Friends School. As you can tell from the name, there was an extremely friendly academic environment filled with smiles, and it was a place where the students called their teachers by their first names. Then I switched into my city's public middle school, The Brown School. I was in for the shock of my lifetime. I was alone in a new school where everything was different. This new school had an old-fashioned style of teaching where the teachers were strict, and the rules were endless. We called our teachers Ms. and Mr., and we had to sing the pledge of allegiance every morning. Sometimes we even had to sing it by ourselves in front of the class. I had never learned the pledge of allegiance and was dumbfounded by the idea of singing the same song every morning. I once dropped the flag, and was thoroughly surprised by the shock on my peer’s faces. Despite my terror of going to a new school I was able to learn from most of my teachers. However, there was one class where I could not expand my intelligence: Library class.
When I first went to this class I was immensely confused. Why was there a class dedicated to library education and what would we be learning? To this day I can’t recall what we were supposed to learn except that it had a great deal to do with books. I walked into my first Library Class and sat in the front ready to learn. When our teacher started the class I was overwhelmed with fear.
From the start of that class and throughout the year my teacher never smiled; nor did she talk in a quiet reasonable voice. She was a rather large African-American woman with purple glasses and ruby red lipstick. She glared at all of us, and she screamed when she spoke. I vividly remember her teeth snarling at me when I attempted to answer a question. She would whip her arms and body around as she explained her lessons. I once asked a question, and she answered, “I know I ain’t gotta answer something like that! Figure it out for yourself boy!” I responded dumbly, “Ok”. She would spit and shout phrases like “Ya’ll going to read and ya’ll going to learn”. Most of the time I was too afraid to raise my eyes from the table to try and make out what she was saying.
Some of you may be arguing that this was not an example of injustice, but merely a strict teacher. Well, I have the perfect example of when I experienced first hand her injustice that inhibited me of learning a lesson. When I took quizzes I normally struggled to find the answer. After a lot of deep thinking I can figure it out, and with that moment I truly learn the material. We were taking a quiz on a book we had just read, and as usual I was stuck on a question. So I did my normal routine of thinking while letting my eyes stare forward or glaze around the room, when my eyes fell on the wrong person. I didn’t even realize that my eyes were aimed at the teacher when she pierced the silence with the loudest scream I have ever heard, “Why are you looking at me? The answer ain’t on me; look at your damn paper!” I was more terrified and embarrassed than I had been my whole life. I refused to let my eyes shift from my paper and couldn’t think of anything except for how I was going to survive that class.
I failed the quiz and didn’t try to learn anything in that class after that. I was so afraid of another confrontation that I kept to myself without attempting to learn anything at all. I have no idea what we were supposed to learn from that class. All I remember was that one quiz.
The injustice that occurred was my teacher striking terror into my heart. She could have been a reasonable teacher and asked me nicely not to look at her. She could have been open to my different style of thinking and learning. Instead she scared the learning out of me. I was a nervous new student, and her rage prevented me from being able to think clearly and learn in her class. The silver lining is that I experienced a different form of education. This teacher might have crossed the line, but the strict and old-fashioned style of learning at this school was new to me, and it taught me how to work hard and respect my teachers. This experience also taught me to value teachers who understand that some students process information differently. If you ever go through an experience like this it is important to try and learn from it. Unlike how I shut down to the class and stopped listening to her, you should strive to keep learning no matter how eccentric the teacher is. You need to be brave and stick it out, for that is the only way to learn. It is unfortunate that I experienced her outburst that stopped me from learning in Library class, but at least I learned that educating yourself requires an unafraid mind and how I process information best. So, maybe we learn things we weren’t expecting to learn from injustices.
Sincerely,
Jack English-Cooper
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