My Teacher's So Cool

"I love my teacher." "I have a great teacher." "My teacher is super." "My teacher's so cool." These words are music to a teacher's ears, Exactly what parents and administrators want to hear. Yet what do they mean? How are they earned? Are they related to learning? Or are we unconcerned? "My teacher gives us tons of extra recess every day." "Mine lets us cheat on quizzes and not make us pay." "My teacher accepts papers copied from the Internet." "Mine goes to casinos at nights and places big-money bets!" Back in the day, teachers were strict. We got away with nothing; they knew all our tricks. And the classroom was quieter than a night in Grant's tomb; They really knew how to keep order in a room. The homework was ample, not one or two samples, And the next day we had to solve all her examples. Her quizzes and tests required voluminous reading, And woe to the poor student whom she caught cheating! We truly hated our teachers; we hated their guts. We threw darts at their pictures and that kind of stuff. Yet later in life we could hold an intelligent conversation. And write a clear report, full of fact-based innovation. We could dissect a frog; comprehend the periodic table; Parse a sentence, and make a speech about Hamlet or Cain and Abel. So next time your kid tells you, "My teacher's so cool." Ask next what he or she's learning in school!