I think we're all teach something to everyone. Not always positive things, but something that leaves an opportunity for someone else to learn from. Or not.

Fencing stuff: I remember being terribly tired, a screaming match and realizing it was that Olympian girl and that alternate World Cup something or other girl and the latter beating the other something like 5-3. I think I fenced three bouts and did fairly well. Coaches have been juggling the numbers to make sure everyone has decent averages and making the numbers for Regionals, so the rhythm was off. Sabre did our end of the job this weekend, as usual, but foil and epee got handed, which landed overall losses. I think I remember once at NWU where we swept 9-0 and we only needed five bouts between the other two weapons....and still lost.

Teaching Shenanigans from the sort-of-incensed, but tired whippersnapper:

Today, a couple of teachers dug up a past student project which was a spinning wheel made of wood, with the pegs to mimic the Wheel of Fortune. I labeled it as the Wheel of Misfortune with various things that could go wrong in a teacher's day. Items included: Student Meltdown, Fire Drill at 3:49 p.m. (school is dimissed at 3:50 p.m.), Power Outage, etc. We put this in the teacher lounge. I'm expecting great reactions.
I have a mixed bag of students. Some live with the invisible shield of state protection (i.e. I will fail this class three times until the state allows me to drop out of high school legally), others don't understand that a test with a short answer is not a multiple guess test.
Most of my students know what Liquid Cocaine is.
All of my students have to try REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to fail. Yet they do.

I have a student whose parents are convinced she is retarded. She has dyslexia, but is a bright and extremely hard-working student. I attended her parent-teacher conference, where her parents wanted her to receive a special form which allows her to take more time on exams, although she's never required it for any of her classes (including the reading heavy ones). Her mother claims to spend 4-5 hours a night reading to her daughter and helping her through her AP _____ History text. However, this student never needs help with reading or understanding concepts in my class, or with any other teacher she has had. She's either very good at telepathically knowing the material before she enters the classroom or her parents are overestimating her need for special need for IEP and underestimating their daughter's capabilities. Of course, the student has expressed in her good daughter way that she wishes her mother would back off sometimes.

Parents have this idea that getting mad at teachers somehow will solve problems. Sometimes, it does, but most of the IEP and parent/teacher meetings are usually about parents being mad about something a teacher does/does not do because that is what administration and the state mandates. Really, teachers have as much power as a goldfish does with the tank filter.

And guess what. I teach at one of the highest rated public school in the state. Teachers are more likely to be run over my squeaky wheels than being shot at by angry students who were failed for....failing.

Parents and administrators often think science teachers are supposed to teach their children how to read, or how to write "write" instead of "rite". They also think we ought to be baby sitters. I wonder where notion this came from. Then they come in saying we're horrible teachers if we don't do remediation during the second semester. I wonder if I would be fired if I asked if the parent ever thought that babysitting was a teacher's job and if bad parenting was the source.


EXTRA EXTRA:

Today, a student asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.
" Am I not grown up?"
"Do you want to be a teacher?" Another student asked.
" Why am I here with all you cherubs?"
"Do you want to teach biology?"
"No, I'd rather eat doughnuts and watch House."

All this was in jest and sarcasm, which all the students are well-seasoned veterans of. Student-teachers hold this special place of "alien-teaching-but-not-teacher-with-potential-to-be-cool".