Sunday, March 29, 2009

Truth in Advertising

Teacher knickknacks are a good way to quickly communicate one's views to the children they have to instruct. A student spends a fair amount of time looking around the room they have to learn in. These can range from motivational posters to state mandated things. Then, there's some teachers who put other things up.

1995-1996.

Mrs. McLaughlin was a tough teacher. She was a force to be feared. She taught math and theology. She also yelled, a lot, often, and loudly. Get something wrong? That's a shout. Speak out of turn? That's a shout. Do anything you're not supposed to be doing and she'd let you and the neighboring classes know about it.

I liked her a lot. That's probably because I excelled in math and didn't get yelled at, but it definitely helped me with rote memorization that's key for early math concepts like fractions, percentages, and decimals. Whenever I think of fraction values I see the white chart she had hanging in her room. 1/3? That's 33 1/3% or .333. 1/12? 8 1/3% or .0833. It was all on the chart.

She had a variety of other things hanging around. I can only think of one other thing. It was a simple saying on her desk.

"Life is hard, then you die."

Well, we couldn't argue with that, could we?

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