Teachers From Hell

• Anna Harisson, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2014

I've had some truly awful teachers. There was Ms Hughe who did something weird with her lip and Miss Knight who told us a thousand times her ancestors were actual knights. And then there was Mr Puffle who called us names like “shampoo head” and Mrs Melode yelled so much all the other teachers complained.
But the relief teachers were even worse: especially Mr Cloves who our teachers threatened to give us if we were bad. The first time I had him five people went home sick. That day felt at least 18 hours long, with him badgering on about how much he liked maths, which was funny because he was terrible at it. It took him an entire session to do one simple page of maths and when our normal teacher came back she said we’d done it all wrong.
Mrs Cowley was my favourite teacher, until she went on leave to Paris and she introduced us to our new relief teacher, Miss Wattlee; who had blonde hair and dark roots. But she proved me wrong about Mr Cloves, he wasn't the worst.
The first week was a nightmare and then it got worse. She was so lazy that she just sat at her desk yelling out random things to do without teaching or enforcing them. We were so bored we started having peg fights and she was too distracted to even notice. We were running wild; kids pegging her hair, her laptop and each other.
Finally she burst. She screamed at us to be quiet, still unaware of the pegs. The rest of our classes were held in dull silence with her reading magazines and us bored out of our minds. Who’d have thought not learning is worse than learning. She had to go.
We racked our brains to think of a reason for her to leave. And then I saw the movie Clueless. Maybe she didn't have to leave. Maybe if she met someone and was happy she’d start being nice to us. And we had the perfect man.
Following the plot from the movie we put a rose in her pigeon hole with a note saying it was from Mr Cloves. When she saw it she looked disgusted at first but she still went over to talk to him. We watched as she asked him if he wanted to go out to dinner with her, giving him a smile that showed her stained teeth. He reacted with horror, saying how unprofessional it was of her. She looked puzzled and screamed at him, and then walked away with a contemptuous look. It seemed like things didn't really work out like they did in the movies.
She gave her notice the next day and said to us politely with well-chosen words that we were horrible and she couldn't wait to be out of our sight. Everybody held in the excited screams until we were let out, where happiness filled the corridors. Maybe the movies do work after all.