My younger brother Harvey, who has become a contributing blogger to this hopelessly doomed enterprise, has something to say about what makes an engaging teacher. Listen up all you boring professors.
Certain teachers stand out, especially ones who say,
Oh, there’s the word “breast” again. Haha, everyone see Michael sit up straight when I read it?
Michael could only avert his embarrassed eyes from the looks of his classmates while Mr. Wilson grinned.
photo by Dean Terry (http://www.flickr.com/photos/therefore/18636595/)
Mr. Wilson teaches honors sophomore English in my school, Wellesley High. His students quickly realized his class wasn’t the typical English class filled with boring analysis of boring texts from a boring time period. This class was none of that. It was sexual innuendos and complete disregard for conventional classroom decorum.
“He uses the word breast and bosom a lot,” Mr. Wilson commented about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He then nodded at a student: “Cody O’Brien’s favorite word of course. Whenever they come up just look at him.”
Cody is Mr. Wilson’s favorite target for classroom antics. During a discussion on Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s essay “Self Reliance,” Mr. Wilson interjected,
“…just like how O’Brien keeps saying that he’ll ask out Livy, but he never does it!”
to demonstrate the idea of how people should follow through on what they say.
This man had the balls to ask out Livy. Do you?
Cody’s used to all the directed comments by now. The class was a breath of fresh air for him and many others during a monotonous school day. For one hour they can enjoy entertainment, humor, and uncertainty. In my math class, I overheard one kid say, “I can’t wait for Mr. Wilson’s next lesson about “Annabel Lee!” This kid was excited about the necrophilic imagery.
Phallic symbols are another popular topic for Mr. Wilson. “Think about it, ‘opening the doors’, ‘coming in.’ Eww. That’s almost graphic,” he said while talking about The Scarlet Letter.
High school can be a place deprived of entertainment, happiness, and color. But every so often a teacher comes along who throws out the handbook and risks losing his job with comments the administration considers “inappropriate.” He is, however, nothing less than a hero to his students.
3 Comments
I have a sweet English teacher who got us to watch Inception in class!
I respect that.
My English classes in high school were always so boring. There was one teacher who was heavily biased towards females (herself being one)–everyone knew it–and who also read way too much into all the writing to the extent of just vapidly nodding along to everything any student would say. Then there was the other one who was also the lacrosse coach; needless to say I did not learn much in his class. And there was one who just gave everyone A’s for showing up and doing half the reading (probably the best one among the bunch).
I’m glad things have been different for you!