Finn Blog: My experience in High school

 I absolutely hated high school and could not have hated it anymore and my reasoning has to do with the way the working-class schools are described by Finn. Sure, there were a few good teachers, but they were very few and far between and most of them were assholes (for lack of a better word). 

"Work was often evaluated in terms of whether the steps followed rather than whether it was right or wrong." (10) I had a math teacher like this and I hated him to the point where my blood boils every time, I think of him still. He was a math teacher, not a coding teacher, yet he thought his way was the only right way. He would explain the most complex way of doing things and when a student would suggest another easier way, he would put them down and even usually call them dumb. Before his class, I was extremely confident in my math abilities but even though that happened several years ago, because of him I am still unsure about my math skills, even though he was the only math teacher to this day that I have had that didn't praise my math skills.

His problem with me was that I had a different way of solving the math problems than him, so despite me getting the right answer he would give me an F in every assignment just because it wasn't his way. My dad had already taught me that math when I was five and because it was the way I had been doing it since I was a little child, that was the way I had become accustomed to. You can't just expect a kid to deviate from doing something the same way they had been doing it for more than half their life. Especially if their way of doing it still gets the right answer. 

I have also never been one to shy away from calling people out on their bullshit, so I was more than happy to call him out on it one day. He was resilient in him being right though, so it was like talking to a brick wall. Even when I asked him why he felt this way so strongly, his response was that "because he is a straight white male, his just always right and shouldn't be questioned." I had argued with him about this for a while until I realized that there was no point and that there was no talking sense to him. 

I had another teacher that I hated and a specific quote reminded me of him "You can't teach these kids anything. Their parents don't care about them and they're not interested." (10) I had a teacher in the past say similar things to me in the past. For example one day I didn't get money for my parents for a sweatshirt that he was selling and when he asked me for mine I explained that my parents were working that night so they didn't come home. He had looked at me and asked me if my parents cared about me and claimed that if they didn't then it seemed like no one did. This was in front of the whole class, so this definitely made me feel angry and embarrassed. That was during teacher appreciation week, so in response, I had told him that I think his a terrible teacher and that he shouldn't be part of teachers appreciation week. 

Here's a video on how to know if you have a bad teacher.