Horror Story

A few weeks ago I made a trip to a school about 30 minutes away for to go observe in a 3rd grade classroom. I already knew upon arriving that this particular school was going to be very small because the town was made up of around 12,000 people. I went in very optimistic. That was definitely no the way I came out. The building was in very good condition and was built only about three years ago because their last school burned to the ground. The actual school was not the problem. The sad thing is that the teacher ended up to be the horror story I came back with. One of my colleagues and I were very excited when we came to “Ms. Good’s” classroom. We walked in and there were only five students in there. I knew the school was small but I did not realize it was that small. Anyway, I saw Ms. Good in the corner of the room and half expected her to invite us in to her classroom. She said “I didn’t know yall’d be coming till about five minutes ago.” My colleague and I walked in and went to the table Ms. Good was sitting. She did not even stand up to welcome us or introduce herself. I gathered her name from the name plate on the door. We told her how glad we were to be here and were wondering if she would give us a list of the children’s names so we can make nametags for them to know their names better. We realized we needed the names written down after we heard the students calling each other’s names. I had no idea how their names were spelled. She replied “I would get up and get you a list, but that’s just how lazy I am.” My jaw dropped and I was baffled. We asked if we could talk to her for a couple of minutes to have some information on her classroom and students. She told her five students to go play games on the computer (as they were doing when we arrived). It was horrendous. The room was in complete disarray. The desks were in no particular formation, there were cubby holes on one wall that were packed so full you could not fit another piece of paper in them, and we had to tip-toe just to be able to walk around. You can imagine that the interview did not get any better. I came out of there completely shocked because I did not know there were teachers like her that existed in the world. It made me completely grateful for the school system in Auburn. If I were her, I would have been delighted to only have five students to concentrate on and give more undivided attention to. She did not see it that way. She saw having only five students as a waste because there were only five instead of fifteen or twenty? Why only teach to five students? I absolutely could not believe it. This was definitely a learning experience and made me see why some students do fall through the cracks when they come from teachers as Ms. Good. I felt horrible for those students. That particular day I learned definitely was teaching was not and by meeting her, it made me more fired up about teaching than ever.