Sorry but I Have to Rant About a Teacher I Hate

Oh boy! Dominique's back to complain about another teacher! This time it's her AP Literature teacher!

My teacher's a nice person I guess, but she gets on my damn nerves.

I don't even know how to describe her. She's one of those teachers you just have to be there to experience.

Ever since the beginning of the year, I feel like she doesn't like me. It started with our college essays. I turned in three for a grade. When we got them back, everyone had a nice grade and some lovely constructive criticism. What did I get? For one of them all I got was a 79 circled at the top and no other comments (so there goes improving that essay). She passed it back with a glare on her face. I asked for help on the second one but all she did was tell me to "add more" even though I had 297 words and the essay was only allowed to be 300 words at max. And for the last one, all she did was cross out phrases and say, "I wouldn't say this" (I've had teachers do this before, but they gave me suggestions on what to say. She left it at "I wouldn't say this"), circle random words (and didn't say why she circled them and said, "I don't know" when I asked her about it), and wrote at the bottom, "You have a lot of work to do" which, seeing how she didn't give any other comments, made me feel like I suck.

I taught myself to stop participating in class. Whenever I would say something, her response was, "hmph" and then she moved on. Someone would say the exact same thing a minute later and she would praise them. There was also one time when she asked for my opinion on a passage we read and I shared what I thought I read. As it turns out, I read the passage wrong but did she correct me? Nope. She just glared at me and moved on. I didn't even know I read the passage wrong until I went back to it on my own time. This embarrassed me because the last time I did something like this with other teachers, they told me and I at least had the chance to laugh it off and redeem myself. With this teacher I felt completely stupid.

This is sounding really fucking petty but I don't know. I'll continue.

We're writing a 4-page essay right now on Song of Solomon. We have to include 4 vintage print ads, 2 modern media references, and 2 quotes from periodical sources (and obviously some quotes from the book). I'm writing about sexism of the 1960s so that's what I based my stuff on.

Today she decided she was going to check our sources and grade us. At first she hated my thesis statement, even though she was the one who practically wrote it (I asked for help earlier and she helped me reword it to make it flow better). Then she looked through my vintage print ads and said the website I took them off of was a "stretch". I got them from Business Insider and all it was was a list of print ads, not an actual article. She continued to say I shouldn't use anything off of that website. Then five seconds later, she announced to the class that if you're writing about sexism, so-and-so is a great print ad to use and it's found on so-and-so.

AND IT WAS ONE OF THE PRINT ADS SHE SAID I COULDN'T USE BECAUSE IT WAS ON SO-AND-SO WEBSITE!

Then she got mad when I couldn't show her my modern media. I couldn't show them to her because I'm using social media and our school wifi blocks most of the websites I use and she knew I'm using these websites since Monday. So I showed her some modern sexist ads instead to make up for it. We're working off chrome books and for some reason mine wouldn't scroll down on a certain website so she got aggravated with that and it was suddenly my fault. She almost got up to move on but I asked about my periodical sources since I didn't want those to be marked "missing".

For periodical sources, she said we should use magazines, New York Times, etc. So my sources were from a New York magazine written in the 1960s. She looked confused when scrolling through it and then she asked, "What's so-and-so?" (saying so-and-so because I forgot the actual name). I didn't know what she was talking about and she's like, "Do you realize this is a blog?" When I found the name she was referring to, I said, "That's the author. Not the blog name". Her voice started raising and she said, "These are not periodical sources. How did you find these?"

I wanted to say, "I typed in 'Periodical sources on sexism from the 1960s' in Google" but she didn't let me finish so all she heard was, "I typed in 'Periodical sources'". She went on a rant about "that's now how this works" and I need to find sources.

I should say we were supposed to be quiet and my teacher can't whisper.

All I said was, "Okay" because I was getting aggravated myself but then she said,

"Do you even know what the difference between a blog and a periodical source is?"

At this point people were either looking at me or doing that "I wanna look but I shouldn't" stance.

I really wanted to asked, "Are you calling me stupid or...?" but instead I just said, "Yeah", turned around, and went back to my essay.

Before she left, she huffed, shook her head disappointingly, and wrote something in her grade book. I have a feeling I didn't get a good grade.

But I overheard her conversations with other people.

Someone couldn't bring up their modern media because they are using social media.

"Oh, that's okay. I'll give you a grade for it anyway," my teacher said.

Someone actually had a blog instead of a periodical source.

"Oh, sweetie," my teacher said in a nice tone, "that's a blog. Let me help you find a periodical source".

Seriously?

This sounds petty as fuck but this teacher drives me up a fucking wall. I feel so talentless when I come to this class which sucks because I love to read and write. If I have a different opinion than everyone else in the class, she gives me strange looks. Whenever I need help from her, I'm scared to ask because her constructive criticism isn't even constructive. It's just criticism (other people agreed with me on this). It's honestly gotten to the point that I'm scared to ask for help.

But I tried to tell someone else about this and they said, "Oh! I love her!"

Well, yeah. She's your favorite.

Oi. Did I forget to mention that she picks favorites and it's pretty obvious who they are? You know you've had at least one teacher like this before.

My friends are telling me to go to my counselor to asked to be switched out but nah. I've gone through this with at least one teacher every year since eighth grade. I would like to imagine that I can survive senior year with this.

Alright. Rant over. I'll be heading over to my essay now.