This is pretty much a rant about an old teacher I had. His name is changed to protect the guilty.
Unteacher
I can honestly say that I have never been disrespected directly and personally by an authoritative figure. I cannot, however, say that a person of authority has never indirectly insulted me. There has been one person who was very discourteous to me as part of his class. This person takes the form of my easily aggravated teacher, Mr. Bunchopper. He has been the most impolite and worse teacher that I have had, and his teaching always turned quickly into arguments, complaining, and even yelling. The disrespect shown to my AP US History class by this teacher was quite upsetting, and kept a lot of us from being interested in history and learning about it.
Mr. Bunchopper was a short, stout man with a hunched figure and a gray head and beard. He was easily distracted by current event issues, or any issue for that matter, and was also easily annoyed. He usually started his class with a short quiz and a collection of the previous night’s homework. After that, we would sometimes have a current eveny article to explain, or we would jump straight into the day’s work, which included talk about the chapter or a current event, or another assignment we had done. After a while, however, our “wonderful” teacher would invariably split from the topic like a cat from the dog pound, and proceed to things that seemed more important to him. By the end of the period, we had talked about for a short time of what we were supposed to, as well as forty out of fifty minutes of such topics as Mr. Bunchopper’s life in Guam, his political views, and random topics that various students mentioned. Unsurprisingly, many of these students became more interested in their own lives than in Guam, and side-discussions sprouted like weeds during the length of the class period. Of course, Mr. Bunchopper wasn’t any more interested in our lives that we were in his. He let us know in clear terms that our own discussions weren’t wanted, usually using big letters and including the words “shut” and “up.” After this remark, he would proceed to talk about what we were supposed to… for a while. Often his discussions included complaining or ranting, two topics that I found particularly irritating. Most of the students in my class or other Bunchopper classes ignored his calls for silence and continued with their branched discussions, adding to the general chaos of the class. Their conversations included complaining as well, most of it relating to the teacher. When they did register the loud noises as actual speaking, the kids would obey the command… for a while. As for me, I tended to drown out the Bunchopper, and, honestly, did nothing but clear my mind of everything except for various stimuli that seemed interesting to me. I was often caught up in side conversations as well. Having a “distinct voice,” I tended to become the target of my speecher’s verbal arrows. If not that, he realized that the whole class was talking when he heard me talk.
I did my assignments, like I was supposed to. Sometimes, I admit, I may have been a bit too concise when it came to chapter outlines, but I mostly did what I should. My grades never really reflected what went on in class, except maybe a lack of excitement brought about by learning entirely from a book what I should have been learning from a teacher. In addition to this, history was never a subject of much interest to me in the first place, and I struggled to remember all the names, dates, and places involved. Needless to say, I learned little in Mr. Bunchopper’s class. The tangents he took us on so often annoyed me, and the disrespect he showed us every time he shouted at us lowered even more my enthusiasm for History class.. Generally, however, I didn’t let a bad teacher lower my grades, and, in fact, enjoyed the lax in assignments because of the lack of productive time spent in class.
Eventually, it seemed, the class had had enough. Soon, a petition was (quietly) passed around to members of the class- outside of that period, of course- to find a more suitable teacher to teach AP US History. In the end, being just as dissatisfied as the others, I joined my fellow conspirators in signing the petition that got Mr. Bunchopper fired. This petition worked better than anyone would have expected, especially with the layoffs caused by budget cuts in California schools. He was fired a few weeks before the end of the semester. Fortunately for me, I was desensitized to his talk by the time he was fired and tried to make us feel bad by telling us that he would have to go back and live with his mother and try to take care of his four kids. A sad story, true, but he got himself into the situation. With him gone, we then received in return a long-term substitute, who finished the term. We actually learned a lot more from this subsitute than from Mr. Bunchopper. Finally semester two rolled by, and we had another teacher, who then became extremely busy with the addition of another class- an AP one at that. At last we had a teacher that could teach us something about history. More importantly, we had a teacher that wouldn’t yell at us and showed us the necessary respect to keep us interested in the class.
In the end, the Bon was cut, or in other words, my AP US History teacher was fired. While in service, he did little to teach history, and a lot to teach us how not to act towards students, children, or anyone. Although I found him easy to drown out and went my own way with life, in the end Mr. Bunchopper was simply too much for all of us to handle. Quickly our dear teacher was shuttled back to live with his poor mother and children. It is easy to say that we learned much more the next semester, and we were all better respected.
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