Bringing the Crazy
Ive been thinking a lot about grade 6 teachers lately.
My grade 6 teacher was crazy no seriously. Crazy with a capital C!
Lets call her Mrs. B. Kids in grade 5 knew about Mrs. B and didnt want to be in her class. This is more impressive when you realize that we changed school between grades 5 and 6 so we heard about her from a whole different school.
Mrs. B wanted us to be very organized. She used to do what she called equipment drills. Once a week we would have to do one of these equipment drills. This meant that we had to have every piece of equipment from this list she gave us at the start of the year of about 30 things. It included such things as two pencils, two pens, eraser, ink eraser, fine black pen, red pen, etc., etc, but then it got weirder. Pencil cases, colour coordinated duo-tangs for our subjects, protractors, quarters for the phone, cardboard tube for taking home papers without folding them. So we would have a list of all of these things in the order we needed to show them. She would walk around like a drill sergeant - calling out fine black pen and we would all have to hold them up. If anyone didnt have something she would have to stop and write down their name and what they didnt have. Why did that matter? Because it was timed of course. And each week she would write our time up on the board and she would love us or hate us depending on how good our time was.
Mrs. B also had a very specific way to label maps. Lets say you had a map of Canada and you needed to label the provinces and their capitals. Here were her steps and oh yes she would check:
1. Decide where you want the label and put a dot in pencil
2. Measure with a ruler how far that dot is from the bottom of the page then move over two centimetres and make another dot the same distance from the bottom of the page.
3. Connect the two dots with a pencil line. See - this ensures that your pencil line is completely parallel with the edge of the map.
4. At the start and end of your line measure two millimetres above and below the line and put more dots (with PENCIL - dont try to cheat!). Once you connect those you have three parallel pencil lines spaced two millimetres apart.
5. You now write in the province or capital IN PENCIL. Your upper case letters will be four millimetres high and your lower case letters two millimetres high (see now why we made those pencil guidelines!).
6. If you are sure you are happy with how it looks you go over the letters and the outside lines with your fine black pen - adding two end lines so your label is encased in a box.
7. You need to WAIT - this is very important - she can tell if you didnt wait long enough.
8. You can now erase your pencil lines. If you didnt wait long enough your pen will smudge and you will get marks taken away.
So yeah, I remember all of that but I was so-so with my actual geography.
Ive been thinking a lot about grade 6 teachers lately.
My grade 6 teacher was crazy no seriously. Crazy with a capital C!
Lets call her Mrs. B. Kids in grade 5 knew about Mrs. B and didnt want to be in her class. This is more impressive when you realize that we changed school between grades 5 and 6 so we heard about her from a whole different school.
Mrs. B wanted us to be very organized. She used to do what she called equipment drills. Once a week we would have to do one of these equipment drills. This meant that we had to have every piece of equipment from this list she gave us at the start of the year of about 30 things. It included such things as two pencils, two pens, eraser, ink eraser, fine black pen, red pen, etc., etc, but then it got weirder. Pencil cases, colour coordinated duo-tangs for our subjects, protractors, quarters for the phone, cardboard tube for taking home papers without folding them. So we would have a list of all of these things in the order we needed to show them. She would walk around like a drill sergeant - calling out fine black pen and we would all have to hold them up. If anyone didnt have something she would have to stop and write down their name and what they didnt have. Why did that matter? Because it was timed of course. And each week she would write our time up on the board and she would love us or hate us depending on how good our time was.
Mrs. B also had a very specific way to label maps. Lets say you had a map of Canada and you needed to label the provinces and their capitals. Here were her steps and oh yes she would check:
1. Decide where you want the label and put a dot in pencil
2. Measure with a ruler how far that dot is from the bottom of the page then move over two centimetres and make another dot the same distance from the bottom of the page.
3. Connect the two dots with a pencil line. See - this ensures that your pencil line is completely parallel with the edge of the map.
4. At the start and end of your line measure two millimetres above and below the line and put more dots (with PENCIL - dont try to cheat!). Once you connect those you have three parallel pencil lines spaced two millimetres apart.
5. You now write in the province or capital IN PENCIL. Your upper case letters will be four millimetres high and your lower case letters two millimetres high (see now why we made those pencil guidelines!).
6. If you are sure you are happy with how it looks you go over the letters and the outside lines with your fine black pen - adding two end lines so your label is encased in a box.
7. You need to WAIT - this is very important - she can tell if you didnt wait long enough.
8. You can now erase your pencil lines. If you didnt wait long enough your pen will smudge and you will get marks taken away.
So yeah, I remember all of that but I was so-so with my actual geography.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
godfather:
I like the way you say "colour" Sigh
creamcuffs:
I could be wrong but I kinda doubt if Mrs. B was ever fun in bed