Worst Teacher Ever

When I got out of the Navy after my enlistment ended on July 17th, 1998, I was excited about the prospect of going back to college. When the Fall semester began in September of that year, I had already enrolled again at Valdosta State University, ready to finish the English degree I had abandoned four years earlier only a couple of semesters short of graduating. Thankful to be back in school, I threw myself into my studies and made straight A's in college for the first time ever. Two semesters later, I had completed my English degree, but then had to decide what to do with it. I knew I wanted to be a writer, but also wished to pay my bills. With that in mind, I decided to give teaching a shot.

In my family, especially among the women, teaching has certainly been the profession of choice. My mother, both of my aunts, my grandmothers on both sides, and my sister all became teachers. So it didn't seem much of a stretch for me to become one as well. In hindsight, maybe I put a little too much stock in the power of genes. I should have thought more about my personality in comparison to the average teacher. I have never been accused of being an extrovert, and teaching is probably one of the most extroverted professions out there. On top of that, I decided to pursue secondary education rather than middle school or elementary thinking that although the students would be more challenging, the subject matter would also be more stimulating.

In spite of the fact that the idea of teaching terrified me from the beginning, I ignored my doubts, and pursued the teaching ed classes I needed with abandon. I made A's in all of them, but none, as far as I could tell, had much to do with actually teaching. They tended to address the theories of teaching, but little about what the profession would involve from a practical standpoint. I impressed my adviser, a little old lady named Dr. Strickland, so thoroughly with my top notch grades that she went well out of her way to help me get a teaching job at a large high school in Thomasville, GA almost as soon as I'd earned my teaching certificate. She was a well known figure in the area, and her shining recommendation to the school principal basically got me hired before I even interviewed.

I accepted the job even though I still had little confidence that I could actually do it. I even expressed my reservations to Dr. Strickland in an email a few weeks before the school year began. I told her that I knew there was a lot of difference between taking classes about how to teach and actually teaching, and that I was concerned about my ability to project lessons to students in the way that teachers are supposed to. She pooh-poohed my doubts and told me I was one of the best students she'd had come through her program, and that she believed I would make an outstanding teacher.

I tried to take heart in her confidence in me. I decorated my classroom to make it seem like a spirited and positive place in the days before the kids came. I made an outline of what I planned to teach throughout the school year. I read a large portion of the text book and brainstormed about creative ways I might present the material to my classes. I was assigned three "intermediate" tenth grade classes and two "basic" ninth grade ones. The intermediates were considered to be on the vocational track, and the basics were considered to be a step above special ed. The three tenth grade classes had about 25-30 students while the two ninth grade ones had about 15 apiece.

From the very first day, I knew I was in over my head. I remember standing in front of them doing my best to hide my nervousness, and trying to keep my voice from shaking. Nervous sweat rolled from my underarms. One of the students was moved to ask me, "Are you shy, Mr. Parramore?" "No, of course not, I lied."

I expected the kids to be loud and rowdy, but the extent of their loudness and rowdiness took me entirely off guard. The first few days, I naively allowed them to sit where they wanted in my class, thinking that happy students would be productive as well. But it quickly became obvious that this was a bad idea. They all sat next to their friends and made my classes their personal social hour. On the third day, I had them sit in alphabetical order, and they responded with hostility. Every time I turned my back, one would move back to the seat he or she preferred. I quickly grew tired of telling them to return to their assigned seats over and over, but didn't want to be the kind of teacher who spent all his class time haranguing students about their behavior. I tried my best to explain why a seating chart was necessary, and asked them to please work with me, but it was obvious they didn't care to listen to reason. They just wanted to sit next to their friends and have a good time.

From there, things only deteriorated. It seemed that the harder I tried to take control of my classroom, the more determined they became to prevent it. Their level of learning seemed as bad as their behavior. Their writing skills seemed more on par with fifth or sixth graders than ninth and tenth. There were a few who were barely literate. I felt that to teach them anything I would have to go back to very basic rules of writing and grammar. The only problem with that was that I was helpless to get them to listen to anything I said. Although it seemed a hopeless struggle, I toiled from the time I got up until the time I went to bed every day, and the weekends were spent grading papers that seemed to multiply in front of me.

To say they were disinterested in my class would be an understatement. Whether they made an A or an F on a paper seemed to hardly matter. I would overhear them talking about parties they were going to over the weekend and all the gossip about what so-and-so was doing with someone's boyfriend/girlfriend. I had at least three female students who missed time due to being pregnant. When they returned to school, they came armed with pictures of their newborn and any semblance of class would be impossible until all my students had properly oohed and ahhed over them. I also had a group of African-American boys in my third period class who would break out in spontaneous rap songs, and girls who thought nothing of making cell phone class. My fourth period featured a group of boys who specialized in shouting curse words when my back was turned and making high pitched animal sounds.

It seemed I spent half my class time telling students to stay in their desks and otherwise attempting to correct their behavior. I tried making behavioral contracts, giving detention to misbehaving kids,shaming them into behaving more respectfully, sending them to the office, even talking to them one on one after class on occasion. But nothing worked. My classes were a zoo, and unfortunately I wasn't some character out of Lean on Me or Stand and Deliver who possessed the power to change their ways.

I felt I had made a horrible mistake in my choice of profession, and began to dread the coming of every school day as if it were an impending appointment with a medieval torture device. When Dr. Strickland came to observe me about twelve weeks into the school year, I knew it was going to be a disaster, and that there was nothing to be done but grin and bear it. It went as badly as I'd feared. Dr. Strickland, myself, the assistant principal, and Mrs. Lewis, my so-called mentor teacher, who seemed to be wholly indifferent to my struggles, all met with me. The consensus of the meeting was that in an effort to gain control of my classroom, I would read some books about classroom discipline and management, observe some other teachers during my planning period, and begin wearing a tie to work so the kids might see me as more of an authority figure. I agreed to do all of these things, but knew it wouldn't help. My problem was not a lack of knowledge, but an inability to apply it. 

I did everything they asked, but nothing changed. I knew by Christmas break that there was no way I was coming back for another year even in the unlikely event they asked me to. Until then, I had worked myself to exhaustion to achieve nothing but futility. I stayed at the school until five or five thirty on many afternoons trying to plan things so they might go better the next day, and then went home to grade papers. During the Christmas break, I decided to change tactics. I would leave school as soon as possible in the afternoons, and not do a shred of grading after work. What I didn't finish grading would just have to go in the trash. I decided if I was going to endure a torture chamber for seven and a half hours a day, I would enjoy my life otherwise.

So that's what I did. I began a pretty strenuous workout routine no doubt partly fueled by my frustrations at work, and enjoyed it to the hilt. The second half of the year went slightly better simply because I'd taken the pressure off myself. The kids were still just as bad, but I began the policy of simply kicking them out of the classroom if they became disruptive. I knew sending them to the office did no good because they were sent right back with a note saying they'd been seen without any word of action taken. I decided to have no tolerance for behavior I didn't care for. It might not have been the best plan, but it was all I could think of, and it seemed to actually help.

I knew by the way the administration completely ignored me during the last half of the year that they weren't going to offer me a contract for a second year. This was a relief because in spite of everything, I knew it would be hard for me to tell them I was quitting if given a choice. I've always had a difficult time quitting anything, even when I know it's for my own good. Also, during the second part of the year, after I had given up, there were snippets of time when I almost enjoyed the job, and realized what people who liked teaching got out of it. These were moments when a student seemed to actually learn what I'd been teaching in spite of everything. But when the last day of the school year finally came, I have rarely been so happy although I had no idea what to do next. I figured I would think of something.

Only a few days into the summer, I received a call from the assistant principal at another school in the area. She told me Dr. Strickland had recommended me for an opening there, and wanted to know if I was interested. I wondered how in the world Dr. Strickland could possibly recommend me for another job after the disaster she had witnessed in my classroom. I thought about it for about five seconds.

"No thank you," I told her. "I'm not planning on teaching any more." I hung up the phone and went back to sleep without the slightest tinge of regret.


In spite of the fact that my one and only year of teaching was an utter disaster, a few good things came out of it. First of all, I knew for sure that teaching was something I did not want to do, so I didn't have to wonder if I did any more or not. It also gave me a perspective about the difficult lives many young people have growing up that I had never before appreciated. I can also tell anyone all there is to know about To Kill a Mockingbird, Julius Caesar, Greek Mythology, and pretty much everything else I taught that year. My students might not have learned much, I certainly did.

Ten years have passed since that year, and now as a mental health counselor at a state prison, I conduct various psycho-educational and therapy groups for the inmates there. I always feel extremely anxious about teaching these groups no matter how many times I do it. It reminds me a little too much of teaching. But once I'm there in front of them, things generally go well. I try to keep it as informal as possible simply because I feel more comfortable that way, and it's actually one of the parts of my job I enjoy the most. The inmates' behavior is usually infinitely better than the kids in my classes.


One day, about three years after my teaching debacle, I had a job working at an amusement park to help pay my way through grad school. I was walking back into the park after my lunch break and heard someone yell, "Hey Mr. Parramore," from about a hundred yards away. I looked up and saw a blond kid walking towards me with a couple of other guys. They were landscapers working on the grounds around the park, and I had no idea how the kid knew my name until he was a couple of feet from me, and I recognized him as one of the more mischievous kids in my ninth grade class during that Hellish year.

The kid introduced me to the guys he was with and said, "Mr. Parramore, did you know you were the nicest teacher I ever had?"

I could only smile and feel more touched than I probably should have. "Thanks," I said. "I had no idea."

I might have been the nicest, I felt like telling him. But I was also probably the worst.