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Teacher's Faux Pas |
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The times when you just want to eat your words.
A friend of mine is teaching at a Catholic girl's school. After a guitar class, the girls were attempting to return their guitars to the purpose-made hooks in the store room. In frustration one of them said "I can't get it onto the stupid hook." Calmly, my friend said "Maybe it's just the stupid hooker!"
I was teaching a marching band at a boy's school. Marching band was pretty foreign to me, but I had just had a three-month stint in the Australian Army Band Corps and used every opportunity to demonstrate that I knew what I was talking about by using the correct terminology. At one point I said to them, "Remember gentlemen, we always dress to the center." There was a shocked silence as they all looked south and one of them said, "I don't ma'am."
The headmaster of the same school was the model of the British grammar school master. We were preparing for a major concert at the Sydney Opera House where the finale was to be a massed item that included the entire school singing with the band and orchestra. At one assembly, with 1100 boys present, and the staff seated behind him on the stage, he decided to whip up their enthusiasm. In his plum tones he stated to the assembled throng, "This will be a magnficent event lads, and I expect you all to sing with fervour. So from now on every assembly and chapel service will begin with a huge swelling of the organ!" There was a sharp indrawn breath as nearly everyone present tried to maintain their composure. The school marshall (ex-British army) patrolled the aisles of the hall among the boys, saying quietly "Steady lads, steady", as the staff on stage turned a beetroot red trying not to laugh. Such was everyone's respect for this man, that a snicker would not be heard until we had left the hall.
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