College Crunch

We all know that back to school time is an extremely exciting time of year, and a lot of the excitement comes from finding out what teachers you will have. There is nothing like checking the mail in the dog days of august waiting to find out whether you will be cursed or blessed for this upcoming year. Once you get the letter, there is nothing like calling around to all you friends to see who also had the same luck, worse luck, or even better luck.

This post will cover some of the ten teacher types to avoid this fall at any level of schooling and I feel sorry for you if you have any of the following.

1.) Ms. MLA (or APA) – We all know this teacher. The teacher that loves everything about the MLA or APA style. It doesn’t matter if you’re turning in a term paper, or a sick note, she wants to see that wonderful MLA header at the top, and heaven help you, a bibliography. “Ms. MLA, I don’t know how to cite a doctor, and I’m unsure if “Swine Flu” goes in quotes.” You’ll say, “Well, You better break out the style guide and look it up.” she’ll respond.

2.) Mr. Sensitive – Maybe he was mothered too much as a child. Perhaps he just really, really, cares. In either case, you won’t find a guitar and an arsenal of feel good songs far from this guys classroom. Mr. Sensitive loves long walks on the beach, collaborating about feelings, and Monday mornings. Unless you like feel good songs about self esteem, and what it is to be a good friend, steer clear.

3.) Mrs. Non-bashful Health Teacher – Twenty years ago she broke her ankle in a gymnastics accident tragically ending her gym teaching career. Still, everyday she dresses like she’s about to hit the mats despite the fact she hasn’t done as much as a somersault in 19 years. Instead of having a whistle, she’s been relegated to teaching health. She’ll have no reservations about talking about ovaries, and bless her, she grades on class participation. You’ll be lucky to escape the class without getting called on about Anorexia or menstruation. Often, she’ll find an awkward pause in the class to regale you with stories about her and her husband, often in regards to the importance of foreplay. Unfortunately, especially if you are in a health or medical field, there is usually no avoiding this one, so buckle down, find some friends, and try not to giggle too much.

4.) Mr. De-motivational – This one is a rare breed, but extremely dangerous to your consciousness. Chances are he’ll probably be bald, middle aged, and wear glasses. His monotone voice could put even caffeine junkies to sleep. You’ll find Mr. Motivational teaching things like History, or Science. You know — the most exciting classes to have early in the morning. Despite his doldrums style of teaching, his classroom is plastered with motivational posters you desperately try to read and re-read to keep yourself conscious. As the weight of sleep presses on your eye lids, you’ll find a picture of the moon. Under it reads, “Aim for the moon, so this way if you fail, you’ll be among stars”. At all costs, avoid any class with Mr. Motivational before lunch time.

5.) Coach GunnaTeach – Usually Coach GunnaTeach is a man of very few words. You can identify him by the fact that he’ll wear his whistle regardless of the social situation. “I’ve pulled up alongside Coach in his car and saw him with his whistle in his mouth making all kinds of crazy football hand movements at traffic.” says one student. You’ll know him immediately in his class because the athletes will walk in the class, say “Oh, hey Coach!” and immediately go sit in the back with a broad smile on their face. They know there is no way coach will give them anything less than a C, for fear of getting them kicked off of the varsity team. Don’t worry though, if you’re not an athlete, Coach GunnaTeach isn’t very at the top of the pack for book smarts and you can often come up with elaborate stories about “Debate Team” as to why you weren’t in class for the last nine days.

6.) Ms. ChangeTheWorld – If you’ve been going to school for longer than a couple of years, you’ve almost definitely had a Ms. ChangeTheWorld. She’s a young single woman in her twenties not yet jaded with the challenges of teaching. And she has an agenda: she’s going to make “the future leaders of this country socially aware.” Now, as to whether her cause is poor dodgeball performance amongst visually disabled children from broken homes, or the disappearing West African Tree frog, you can bet by the year is over you will know all about her topic of choice, and just how it is impacting just about every aspect of our society. Good luck.

7.) Mrs. Jaded – This is who Ms. ChangeTheWorld ultimately turns into. She gets married and has a couple of children of her own. She realizes that school is no more than a glorified baby sitter as her children come home with new swear words to use on her, while still not knowing who the first President of the United States was. Mrs. Jaded can actually be a good teacher to have if you turn things in late as she’ll often not care enough to try and resist your pleading, and instead will give you some stern warning about how this is “the last time” she’s going to do this. On the flip side, she doesn’t care enough to make sure you actually learn anything, and in any standardized testing procedures, you’ll be left high and dry when it comes to answering things correctly.

8.) Ms. Shrink is a product of the “Better Living Through Chemistry” era of thinking. She doesn’t believe that a child can just be misbehaved. She thinks there is some deep underlying Freudian cause for every behavior, and that it can be treated with one of the many various wonder drugs we have to keep the youth of today “focused” and “on task”. If you don’t follow her strict behavioral model, which she’ll lay out in a contract in the first week and have you sign, she’ll call your parents or recommend you seek medical help for your normal personality quirks. One student writes, “Ms. Shrink contacted me to tell me about how my brother was doing better than me in her class. She told me that he doesn’t chat as much and has more focus than me. The only response I could give was to tell her that my brother is autistic before calling her an idiot and hanging up the phone. I got A’s for the rest of the year.”

9.) Dr. Bibliography – There is nothing quite like a person who goes through eight years of high education only to come back and teach college students. You’ll find Dr. Biblio trolling around various English and History departments often as the department head, but also as a teacher, and sometimes both. Dr. Biblio assigns a lot of papers. While he’s not as crazy about MLA as Ms. MLA, he’s got another quirk: he’s in love with bibliographies. “The way he used to grade my bibliographies I used to wonder whether or not he even read my papers!” writes one frustrated student. Dr. Biblios are easy to spot: They will fail your paper without a bibliography. They don’t care if the whole paper is made up and you interviewed fictional space aliens to get your first person sources, but heaven forbid you don’t cite your sources in the bibliography, you’re going to fail. The students that do the best in Dr. Bib’s classes are the ones who have no problem making things up and treating them as fact. You see while Dr. Bib cares greatly about whether or not you have a bibliography, his eight years of higher education have burned him out from actually caring whether the sources are real or not as long as they exist at the end of your report.

10.) Ms. NoLateWork thinks she’s doing you a favor by preparing you for the real world. The real world that she lives in doesn’t have a lot of restrictions. She can teach however she wants, wear jeans to work, and gets summers off. She compensates by instilling the values that her world lacks into yours. This teacher will always start the year off with a contract, which she will dutifully hold onto, and in the event of a student-teacher conference regarding your marks or effort, will pull out, and ask you if the signature on the paper is, in fact, your own. Ms. NoLateWork does not care if you’re coughing up a lung, or were involved in a multi-car collision because your brakes ceased to work, she’s going to get her essay, and she’s going to get it on time. You can expect this teacher to teach Math usually, and on the first day of class she’ll often give some convoluted example about how hard “a zero” is to recover from in your class average.

In the end, hopefully this article will help serve as a quick guide to help you dodge the wildest of teaching personalities. If you end up with one of these teachers, don’t worry, all hope is not lost. Here are several tactics you can use to get your guidance counselor to help you change classes:

1.) It’s really far from my previous class and I’m always late!

2.) Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So had my older sibling, and they *really* didn’t get along. I’m worried that the teacher will show bias against me because of my sibling.

3.) I don’t have any friends, and my only friend in the world is in Mr. or Mrs. So-And-So’s class. I’ve been really depressed without him /her there, and would love to be in that class.

4.) My learning style doesn’t really match up with how Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So teaches. I’m trying really hard, but it just doesn’t seem to be working. I had Ms. or Mrs. So-and-So for a summer class a couple of years ago and she was great, can I switch into her class?

5.) I really don’t get along with one of the kids in my class. We’ve had incidents in the past and I’m afraid it’s just a matter of time before it happens again. I’m trying to be proactive here, is there a way I can switch classes?

Let me know if you’ve run into any of these teacher types, or ones I’ve missed in the comments below. Teachers are a rare breed and have interesting habits. Some are better than others, and while sometimes a little nutty, all are worthy of some respect.