Teachers

It appears everyone wants to talk about teachers, and the Tagboard is a little limited by space, so let's make it a full fledged post. I’m not going to say anything derogatory, but we all know that each of them had points that were both good and bad. We obviously each had our favorite, and not so favorite, so let’s take the plunge and look at some I recall.

Mr. Cardwell --- He was great. He would set us up in Industrial Arts and then scoot off to the office or teacher’s lounge. A lot of days he’d be gone the entire class.

Ms Goode --- Some of us really enjoyed playing cat and mouse with her. We’d wait until she was in her office and then we’d go to the other side of the library and whistle or something. She would come out to see what the noise was and when she came over to the side we were on, we’d slip back over to the other side and make another noise. Then each time she switched sides, we’d switch sides. She never caught on. Okay, okay, I know it was childish, but study hall/library was boring, you had to do something. :)

Mr. Headlee --- He acted at times like he wanted to be our buddy, so sometimes his class could be a breeze. I sure don’t remember any answers on the board though.

Ms Miss --- If you showed any interest at all in her class, you could basically skate. Ask her some questions and get her off subject and we could go through an entire class without her touching the lesson plan. Oh, and she could be flattered too.

Coach Ratledge --- Almost every time I saw him he had his arms crossed with either a book or clipboard held against his chest, and a scowl on his face. He was usually a no show for Gym during football season, but man, he could take the top of your head off when he was mad. Which I have to admit wasn’t all that often.

Coach Watson --- Just a good ol’ boy. He let us skate a lot.

Ms McCall --- The Radar O’Reilly of Loudon High. She sensed things. She caught me cutting class in almost every part of the building, even outside. But whenever you went in the office she was in there too. It was like she was cloned. She caught me smoking in the boys room once. She didn’t come inside, she sent someone in after me, but I still don’t know how she knew I was in there smoking.

PJ Stallings --- She was only there one year that I remember (unless she was there the year I was in Atlanta), but she is close to being my all time favorite. She was nice, but more than that she actually seemed to care. It’s not that the others didn’t, they did in their own way, but day in and day out she was super, at least to me. You could ask her anything and she’d give you an answer.

Ms Dutton, Ms Bledsoe, Ms Marcus, and Ms Wattenbarger had no business being around a bunch of guys going through puberty. Way too much of a distraction. :)

It might be just me or the fact that sometimes everything looks rosy in hindsight, but they were not a bad bunch of teachers. I had a disagreement or two with some of them, and more than one visit to the office. But I can also remember things like Ms McCall giving me a conspiratorial wink to let me know she wasn’t going to jump in my case about something, and Ms Goode actually laughing and joking with some of us a couple of times.

And while we’re on the subject, let me ask about something I’ve suspected all these years. Did it seem to you guys like they lightened up on us when we were seniors? I know I’m not imagining it. I can recall things like a teacher saying something to an underclassman that was out in the hall during class, but just nodding at me. Maybe they thought I was too far gone to save, but I took it as a small show of respect too. It was a nice gesture.