Two Teachers, Two Results

Once you’ve made your way through high school, you’ll have enough experience to tell a good teacher from a great one, or a downright awful one.

In Sunland, California, I attended Mt. Gleason Jr. High School. I loved history. So much so that I assisted my history teacher grade papers and the like.

In math I would sit in the back and on the side of the class and try to be invisible to the teacher. My math grades were not the best due to my inattention and incessant doodling. Let’s face it, I hated math.

When I moved north from the Los Angeles area in 1972, I had just graduated from what was called Jr. High, seventh through ninth grades. My high school in Northern California was and still is a four-year school. They teach ninth through 12 th grades.

I got to choose certain subjects of study throughout my high school career. Tenth grade being my first year at this relatively new school, and history being one of the requirements of study, I chose California History. I had learned world history in Jr. High, now I wanted to know about my state.

I started the class, new girl on campus, with a nothing-I-could-do-about-it strike against me. I was 15 and 5′11″, soon to reach 6′. Maybe my height had something to do with my problems in my (beloved) history class.

I would ask a perfectly good question – after all, there are no bad questions, or so I thought – only to be answered by a gal whom I labeled “Teacher’s Pet.” “What a stupid question, Martha! ” would be her usual response. Mr. Browning’s take on these outbursts? They were completely ignored. After two such trails and errors, I stopped asking questions.

Another interesting thing happened to me dealing with this Junior who silenced me in history class. She almost made me into history. It took two buses to get me to school, first a shuttle van to the regular bus stop and then the bus to school. Reverse the transportation and I would get home. There was one minor deviation in the trip back home, however. The bus would stop in downtown El Dorado and the shuttle would pick us up there. That gave me time to go across the street to the post office and pick up our mail.

One time I got off the bus and began my dash across the street only to put on the brakes and let her zoom by in total disregard for the laws pertaining to stopped school buses, not to mention the speed limit. I know it was her because I recognized the gold van, I had seen her driving it before.