Teachers - Beings from Another Dimension - Part 2

 Hola! I’m back with Teacher Stories part 2.

I got a bit sidetracked because I got caught up in a wedding and a family get-together on the weekend. I met my two wonderful friends, Minnie and Marzipan. I’ve mentioned Minnie before, but today you’ll get to know Marzipan. She’s a wonderful friend who lives in Australia. I’ve only met her once before but oh my god she’s the best. I don’t get along with a lot of people in my family but strangely I only click with my paternal aunt’s side of the family; their kids and their kid’s kids. We get along well.

Anyway, let me recall more teachers. I’m a very soft kind of person so I get close with whoever wants to get close with me (which explains why I get hurt so often). There’s this one teacher, Ms. Mom, who is literally my second mom. Her kids are my siblings, her family is my family. Some of her in-laws were friends with my aunt, so when I was young, my aunt arranged for me to study at her place. She taught me many things, including how to live life. I’ve been going to her place since I was 5 or 6 years old, and we bonded so well, you won’t even recognize that I was an outsider. I used to eat noodles with her kids at snack time. I used to sleep beside them in her room at naptime.

One incident, for example, was the historic beach day. Her kids STILL remember and recalled it when I visited her last week. My mom and dad went to her house and all of a sudden while we were there, we decided to go to the beach. It was 9 pm, who goes to the beach at 9 pm? We did. We went there and rode horses, splashed in the water in the dark (I was scared that if I went too far, I would fall off the continental shelf) then we went to a restaurant. We ate a sizzling platter and dared each other to put ice cream on the sensitive part of our front teeth. Blissful memories.

Anyway, I still go to Ms. Mom’s house, not to study but just to talk and chill. I hope I continue making good memories with them.

Now there aren’t many bad teachers that I faced during my secondary years of schooling but there was one teacher that I had for three torturous years. Ms. Ass- ok no, let’s keep this child friendly okay? (Ass is a synonym for donkey kids, look it up in the thesaurus). We’ll call this teacher Ms. Minotaur because that’s the only name I can come up with right now (forgive me, it’s 5:15 am right now, my creative juices are failing me, just like this teacher did). Ms. Minotaur was my math teacher from Grade 6 to Grade 8 and BOY DID I HATE HER AND HER SUBJECT. I hadn’t done much algebra before and when she started brushing up on that topic a few months after we started Grade 6, I hated nothing more than the freaking a’s and b’s and c’s in equations. It felt like the book was written for my own personal torture. She wasn’t bad at teaching, I suppose because the other kids understood her fine but maybe there was a problem with me back then, or something. But she wasn’t ready to help.

I approached her multiple times and she just said ‘you need to practice more’ and brushed me off. And she didn’t do it to other kids when they asked for help! Just me. Why? I don’t know, ask her. I NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT TO PRACTICE HOW CAN I PRACTICE WHEN I DON’T UNDERSTAND A WORD YOU’RE SAYING?!

I got my hair cut to my shoulders in grade 6, and I couldn't put it up into a ponytail and I was fiddling with it to concentrate better and she said, ‘Stop playing with your hair Aurora, if you listened during class you wouldn’t need to come up to me and ask useless questions.’

Firstly, there’s no such thing as a useless question, especially in math. As a teacher, you need to make absolutely sure that your student completely understands the question. Even if they ask something that is clearly written in the question, it means they need to grasp the concept more clearly to know if that value will or will not be used in that particular question.

I used to fail in my midterms, and pass with just 2 or 3 marks in the finals so I could be promoted. In grade 8, I was so fed up with her that I wished I hadn’t heard of her existence, to begin with, or the existence of math, for that matter.

The main issues I had with her were personal; she criticized me for taking a day off for grieving when she KNEW my dad had died. She picked on me mercilessly, until the whole class knew it was a personal problem she had with me, and my classmates were so nice that they always defended me against her. I wasn’t just weak at math I was terrible, I couldn’t grasp the concept no matter who tried to explain it to me.

I’ll end with Ms. Minotaur here because I have to introduce you to a true gem that I found. The person who made me fall in love with math. He made the concepts crystal clear, he explained it with such efficiency that all confusions cleared on their own. I realized that I wasn’t lacking skill; I didn’t have the right mentor to unlock it. As for Ms. Minotaur, I hope you quit teaching and choose some other profession, like law or something. That suits your hypocrisy and treachery better. You’d make a damn good lawyer, I’m sure of it.

Say hello to Mr. Key (I don’t want to use any names, I was going to go with Einstein first but the key fits better because these kinds of teachers unlock your true potential) (Get it? Unlock? Key? Okay I’ll stop). Mr. Key was the strictest teacher I ever had. He was downright terrifying. There were so many times that I had to force myself to contain my tears that would’ve made river Nile II just because I hadn’t finished my homework and received a good (and deserved) ear-bashing. But I thank God for sending Mr. Key to teach me because he taught me that math is not only easy, it is the most fun subject there ever was (and is). I met Mr. Key in the middle of grade 9. I had started grade 9 at a different school (If you’ve read my previous post about Evil Friends, you know what I’m talking about). He taught me privately and at first, my initial reaction was, ‘BORING! Learning everything from the start?! I don’t need to know all of this!’

Turns out, the basics are fundamentals. I scored really good grades in my finals in Math and Additional Math in Grade 9 and changed schools again in Grade 10. Now we had a different course to tackle, and Mr. Key conquered it all! We started algebra, which quickly became my favorite. He would have me do calculations in my mind (which at first was VERY irritating but later on became my greatest asset). He wouldn’t allow me to use a calculator for fairly hard equations and made me write down even the trivial steps. He taught me the importance of crossing out the whole line and starting over in the next one instead of writing over it when I made mistakes. This didn’t seem like much at the time, but these small things, like alignment, leaving lines to separate two different workings, made me do much better at exams. Why? I don’t know.

Pretty soon, I was hardwired to do these things. I looked forward to math and it became my beloved subject because I had so much fun doing it. I wasn’t terrified of making mistakes anymore because they ALWAYS turned up when I rechecked the question (which was also a habit formed thanks to Mr. Key). I wasn’t good at biology (I slept in classes), or chemistry (the teacher seemed to speak Latin for some reason) nor Physics (that crap flew over my head); but math and pure math were my beloved. I loved doing homework (that doesn’t mean I always did it), I loved juggling numbers and coming up with results. The subject I hated became the only subject I loved and wanted to pass with full marks.

At the end of the term, all of Mr. Key’s hard work resulted in a beautiful grade. A 93 in my midterms, and two A*’s in my finals for O levels. It made me cry with pride. I could’ve cried a Nile III (we don’t need any more Niles do we?). Ah, I wish I had taken Math in A levels but it wouldn’t have been the same without Mr. Key.

So, this concludes my favorite teacher on this planet. I hope he becomes as successful as he made me in my subjects and I hope (if he’s reading this) that he forgives me for all the incomplete homework and the dumb mistakes I made in the vectors and functions chapters. You, sir, are the best and deserve all my 21 hard-earned medals (and more).

With that note, I’ve started A levels, and I’m being taught by two very talented teachers. My biology teacher has made biology more fun than I remember it being, and because of that my dumb brain remembers everything he’s taught from the first class to last. He’s honestly amazing 10/10 would recommend it. My physics, chemistry, and psychology teacher is the sweetest person alive on this planet. I don’t understand how hours pass by when I’m studying with her. I’m gratefully blessed that I’m finding good teachers after being bombarded with terrible ones but I deserve that at least after Ms. Minotaur and Ms. Sad AF. Those two were horrible, ick.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, I’m sorry I’m two days late but things just came up. My fingers are cutting up again because of the winter so I might not be able to type for some time (that doesn’t mean I will not, I’m a stubborn old goat you see) and there might be a big gap in between posts (thinking about post topics is HARD).

ALSO, let me know if you’d like to hear some spooky stories, I told them at the gathering today and it made my youngest niece tremble with fear (it was so cute ‘I d-don’t r-remem-mber Su-surah Nas, Aurora api’). I have a few of them so, let me know if you want to read them.

Until then, take care and don’t forget to be grateful for good teachers!