Me Talk Pretty One Day

In class today, we read and discussed the story Me Talk Pretty One Day. The author decided to enter college once again and was taking a class abroad in France. He was then stuck with a teacher who totally destroyed their hopes and dreams at becoming fluent in French. She was sassy and snarky and an all around awful person towards her students. Even though they could not tell what she was saying precisely, the tone in her voice and her body language clearly conveyed that they were being insulted and had no clue how bad the insults actually were.

Instead of discouraging the author and his fellow classmates, this led them all to two emotions: desparation and fear. By constantly harrassing them and blatantly harrassing them, the teacher united the students in the desparation to understand what was going wrong. Desparation is funny that way. When students are faced with a teacher that does not teach/does not treat them with respect, they seem to unite and work together to prove that teacher wrong. Fear also plays a role into this. The students soon began to stop speaking, for fear of being ridiculed for being incorrect. Now, no one wants to be wrong, especially in front of a teacher they loathe. It would only make sense that this would become a source of passion and determination to prove that teacher wrong.

I have had many awful teachers and adults in my life that have been awful. They fail to teach and expect us to teach ourselves, they are rude and passive aggressive, they lower their standards for us, the list could go on. I have always seen this as a challenge to prove those teachers wrong. The same goes for my fellow classmates. Our desparation to succeed and fear of  being wrong breaks down the barriers of competition and helps us work together towards the common goal of passing the class. While it is an unconventional and even frowned upon practice, causing fear and desparation can actually work with the right students.