In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, MHS teachers are sharing their horror stories. Today, Mrs. Stiverson talks about an ER visit, Mr. Moore reflects on a situation he’s had with an entitled athlete, and Mr. Walsh talks about his first year teaching in an alternative school in Chicago. This is today’s issue of Teacher Horror Stories.
“I had a moment in the kitchen where a student cut their finger pretty severely trying to rip a piece of parchment paper out of the roll. I sent them to the nurse and ultimately they got picked up by a parent to go to the ER. It ended up just needing some medical-grade glue instead of stitches, and I spoke to the parent about it, as well. It was pretty scary at the time but thankfully nothing more serious!”
“I mean, the only thing I could really think of is one time when a student kind of lost his mind because he was no longer in a sport that was supposed to be in a specific locker room. So, after about five different times of me telling him that he needed to move his stuff over to the regular PE locker room, he cussed me out because apparently it was a big deal that he had to leave that locker room. But it was also just the entitlement. He didn’t want to do what everyone else had to do. He wanted to stay where he was because he was comfortable there with some of his friends.”
“In my first year of teaching, I taught at an alternative school in the greater Cook County, DuPage, County of Chicagoland. At the alternative school, we had attacks on staff that happened frequently. We would frisk them down every morning to make sure they didn’t have weapons or drugs. There was also gang activity between rival groups. So you had to know not necessarily like the specifics of their gangs, but like know who didn’t like who simply because of what color affiliation they were in. We had a police substation that was in the school. So you could make that what you will. Yeah, pretty much every kind of bad story. I mean, I had gotten into physical altercations. It was frequent; it was part of going to work every day. I was physically attacked, and I was obviously able to defend myself safely. It definitely gets to a point where you keep your head on a swivel. You’re always aware of your surroundings. But I think that’s just life in general, too. It definitely was a wake-up call for me. It was good; it wasn’t all bad.”
Della Taylor, Staff Writer
tayde29@sages.us
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