I was grateful that my teachers were chill with this
I’d finish my math work while the teacher was still explaining it to the class, and just start reading a book. Teacher was fine with it because I was a good student and got good grades.
Rant incoming
Although I do have one particular gripe with that teacher unrelated to any of that. Question was how far was a person in a pool from the life guard on a life guard tower. I found the hypotenuse, moved on to other questions. Got marked wrong so I brought it up to the teacher, and her explanation was that she wanted the distance from the person to the tower (the BOTTOM of the tower???) under the logic that you wouldn’t just float on up in a straight line to the life guard. First of all, the question was specifically worded as distance from person to life guard, NOT travel distance. Secondly to the BOTTOM of the life guard tower??? You wanted that value, not even the added distance of the length to the bottom of the tower and the length to climb the tower???
If you asked me how far away a plane in the sky is from me, and I answered 5 feet, I’d look like a damn idiot.
I kind of wish I pushed her on that question harder. I kind of just thought “good lord she’s out of her mind” and sat back down because it had little to no impact on my grade. But I have lived years being pissed about getting that question wrong, I simply cannot move on from it.
In 2nd grade I decided one day to just complete my entire 2nd grade math book because it was easy for me at the time. Their solution was to force me to go into a third grade class for math but I quit because it meant I lost one of my recesses and thought that was bullshit. Honestly, surprised no one followed up and forced me to go back at any point. I just stopped going and no one said anything.
I just found out this weekend the the algebraic (super easy) shortcut to divide an integer by a fraction that I showed my son - was referred to as ‘cheating’ by the teacher, who said the people who grade the SATs would mark him down for that.
Ha! I worked in Test Prep and College Admissions consultation for nearly a decade at a fairly prestigious company in a major city with major private schools (major money and major lineage/legacy) and unless there have been major changes to the SAT/ACT since the pandemic that teacher is completely full of shit. There isn’t even a guessing penalty anymore on the SAT let alone any way for them to know how a student comes to the answers they choose. You don’t have to even turn in your work when you turn in the test.
Sounds like the teacher felt stupid or threatened or both and made up nonsense to combat their own failing. And honestly, I would consider giving bad advice that could impact a student’s future malpractice. That was actually the standard for teaching algebra when I was in school so a teacher telling your kid it is cheating is beyond confusing. It’s borderline abusive and at the very least completely incompetent.
So, all colleges started accepting the ACT or the SAT without preference about 2 decades ago and what happened was the ACT never had a guessing penalty so a lot of students started shifting to the ACT in favor of the SAT to the point that the SAT had to change their test to be more like ACT to continue to compete in the marketplace with them. And “compete” might even be misleading because they were still very popular and still the standard but they made the change to avoid losing their stranglehold on the market is probably the more accurate way to describe it.
Crazy that there isn’t a consistent standard for assessment and they can compete on preference based on ease rather than rigor. That’s just another race to the bottom, wonderful.
Eh. The previous SAT wasn’t even necessarily harder or easier. They cover about 90% of the same subjects and material. They just emphasizes different things at different rates. Some students actually did better on one versus the other based on their particular brand of aptitude not the aptitude itself. But the punitive scoring was bad PR for a test that essentially covered the same material but didn’t have a guessing penalty. People didn’t necessarily do better on the ACT because of the guessing penalty not being part of it.
Similar rant. In the second grade our teacher (FUCK YOU MRS MURRY) had drawn the orbit of the Earth around the sun and was telling us that because it was elliptical and that’s why we had summer; the Earth was closer to the sun and the sun was warm.
She basically drew an oval on the chalkboard and put the sun smack in the center. It didn’t make any sense to me so I kept asking why there weren’t two summers in a year if an orbit was a year and the earth passed close the sun twice…
It wasn’t until the 3rd or 4th grade when I got a hold of an illustrated astronomy book that showed our titled planet and explained the seasons.
Reminds me of one of my elementary school English teachers. We were all given a blank hardcover book and had to make a story with illustrations. Mine was called “The Loose Kitty”. Every page basically had the kitty on the loose in different areas of a city, running into other animals that had some rhyming. I spent so much time with the art, proofing it, etc. This teacher took hard red ink and strikes through loose and put “lost” ON EVERY PAGE. I tried to tell her no it is loose because EVERYTHING IN THE BOOK related to being “on the loose”. Nope. Got like a C- on that thing.
Am I still sour about it 30 years later? Yes, I still loose my shit.
to be fair she probably understood the concept of a kitten on the loose, but wanted to nudge you away from filling your book with innuendo without having to explain the concept of an un-tight and/or readily available vagina
Its because teachers hate the idea that a smart student isn’t enthusiastic about the topic they’re teaching and that they’d do clearly what is their bare minimum and then mentally drop out. Its insecurity.
My music teacher was pretty angry that I clearly only picked the subject because I didn’t want to take art or PE.
I wasn’t there due to any passion for it, did the absolute minimum, and the only way it’s affected my life is that I keep thinking about how annoyed he was.
Eh, that’s the system so I can’t fault you. But specialty electives like that usually have limited seats - your seat may have displaced someone much more enthralled with the subject.
Also I guarantee they sucked at it and made everyone else sound worse by association. Childhood visual art classes are way easier than music anyway, it doesn’t even have to look like anything. It’s extremely obvious when someone doesn’t know what they’re doing in a music class.
I would also be completely confused and offended for the rest of my life if a teacher had said something like that to me
I was grateful that my teachers were chill with this
I’d finish my math work while the teacher was still explaining it to the class, and just start reading a book. Teacher was fine with it because I was a good student and got good grades.
Rant incoming
Although I do have one particular gripe with that teacher unrelated to any of that. Question was how far was a person in a pool from the life guard on a life guard tower. I found the hypotenuse, moved on to other questions. Got marked wrong so I brought it up to the teacher, and her explanation was that she wanted the distance from the person to the tower (the BOTTOM of the tower???) under the logic that you wouldn’t just float on up in a straight line to the life guard. First of all, the question was specifically worded as distance from person to life guard, NOT travel distance. Secondly to the BOTTOM of the life guard tower??? You wanted that value, not even the added distance of the length to the bottom of the tower and the length to climb the tower???
If you asked me how far away a plane in the sky is from me, and I answered 5 feet, I’d look like a damn idiot.
I kind of wish I pushed her on that question harder. I kind of just thought “good lord she’s out of her mind” and sat back down because it had little to no impact on my grade. But I have lived years being pissed about getting that question wrong, I simply cannot move on from it.
don’t worry random-internet-person, I just graded your answer and found that you were correct and that other person grading you was wrong.
so you know, you can move on now?
Could be worse. I once received a Saturday detention for “defiance” because I pointed out a mistake the teacher had made on an algebra problem.
Contempt of
copteacherIn 2nd grade I decided one day to just complete my entire 2nd grade math book because it was easy for me at the time. Their solution was to force me to go into a third grade class for math but I quit because it meant I lost one of my recesses and thought that was bullshit. Honestly, surprised no one followed up and forced me to go back at any point. I just stopped going and no one said anything.
I just found out this weekend the the algebraic (super easy) shortcut to divide an integer by a fraction that I showed my son - was referred to as ‘cheating’ by the teacher, who said the people who grade the SATs would mark him down for that.
I’m actually quite confused about that.
Ha! I worked in Test Prep and College Admissions consultation for nearly a decade at a fairly prestigious company in a major city with major private schools (major money and major lineage/legacy) and unless there have been major changes to the SAT/ACT since the pandemic that teacher is completely full of shit. There isn’t even a guessing penalty anymore on the SAT let alone any way for them to know how a student comes to the answers they choose. You don’t have to even turn in your work when you turn in the test.
Sounds like the teacher felt stupid or threatened or both and made up nonsense to combat their own failing. And honestly, I would consider giving bad advice that could impact a student’s future malpractice. That was actually the standard for teaching algebra when I was in school so a teacher telling your kid it is cheating is beyond confusing. It’s borderline abusive and at the very least completely incompetent.
There’s no guessing penalty? If they don’t offer 20 options or eliminate multiple choice in favor of exact answers, this seems dumb.
So, all colleges started accepting the ACT or the SAT without preference about 2 decades ago and what happened was the ACT never had a guessing penalty so a lot of students started shifting to the ACT in favor of the SAT to the point that the SAT had to change their test to be more like ACT to continue to compete in the marketplace with them. And “compete” might even be misleading because they were still very popular and still the standard but they made the change to avoid losing their stranglehold on the market is probably the more accurate way to describe it.
Crazy that there isn’t a consistent standard for assessment and they can compete on preference based on ease rather than rigor. That’s just another race to the bottom, wonderful.
Eh. The previous SAT wasn’t even necessarily harder or easier. They cover about 90% of the same subjects and material. They just emphasizes different things at different rates. Some students actually did better on one versus the other based on their particular brand of aptitude not the aptitude itself. But the punitive scoring was bad PR for a test that essentially covered the same material but didn’t have a guessing penalty. People didn’t necessarily do better on the ACT because of the guessing penalty not being part of it.
Similar rant. In the second grade our teacher (FUCK YOU MRS MURRY) had drawn the orbit of the Earth around the sun and was telling us that because it was elliptical and that’s why we had summer; the Earth was closer to the sun and the sun was warm.
She basically drew an oval on the chalkboard and put the sun smack in the center. It didn’t make any sense to me so I kept asking why there weren’t two summers in a year if an orbit was a year and the earth passed close the sun twice…
It wasn’t until the 3rd or 4th grade when I got a hold of an illustrated astronomy book that showed our titled planet and explained the seasons.
omg it’s not just wrong it’s doubly wrong 😭. why was she allowed to teach
That was a poorly worded question, and a not so bright teacher. I’d be pissed too
This could be a nice lesson about the taxicab metric and the Euclidean metric, but that doesn’t seem like the intention.
Reminds me of one of my elementary school English teachers. We were all given a blank hardcover book and had to make a story with illustrations. Mine was called “The Loose Kitty”. Every page basically had the kitty on the loose in different areas of a city, running into other animals that had some rhyming. I spent so much time with the art, proofing it, etc. This teacher took hard red ink and strikes through loose and put “lost” ON EVERY PAGE. I tried to tell her no it is loose because EVERYTHING IN THE BOOK related to being “on the loose”. Nope. Got like a C- on that thing.
Am I still sour about it 30 years later? Yes, I still loose my shit.
to be fair she probably understood the concept of a kitten on the loose, but wanted to nudge you away from filling your book with innuendo without having to explain the concept of an un-tight and/or readily available vagina
Not all who wander are lost, bitch.
What a bitch! I never thought the comments in this post would raise my blood pressure
This one hurt for even me to read
Sound’s like your an pour loster.
Its because teachers hate the idea that a smart student isn’t enthusiastic about the topic they’re teaching and that they’d do clearly what is their bare minimum and then mentally drop out. Its insecurity.
I had a ton of teachers like this.
My music teacher was pretty angry that I clearly only picked the subject because I didn’t want to take art or PE.
I wasn’t there due to any passion for it, did the absolute minimum, and the only way it’s affected my life is that I keep thinking about how annoyed he was.
Eh, that’s the system so I can’t fault you. But specialty electives like that usually have limited seats - your seat may have displaced someone much more enthralled with the subject.
Also I guarantee they sucked at it and made everyone else sound worse by association. Childhood visual art classes are way easier than music anyway, it doesn’t even have to look like anything. It’s extremely obvious when someone doesn’t know what they’re doing in a music class.
Well, music is kind of a team sport, I’d be pissed if one of the percussionists could never hit the damn triangle at the right time.