embarrassing teaching moments

One day my friend and I will compose one of those little beside-the-cash-register books that they sell at Borders and the like, and it will be compiled of all the hideously embarrassing moments she and I and our colleages have managed to perform in front of our students.

I was reminded of this recently, when a large table vanished from the front of the classroom I teach in. I complained bitterly to my class about administrators who steal furniture, until I heard, through another colleague, that a certain professor from the LING department had been sitting on it, when it collapsed and unceremoniously dumped him on the floor. In front of all his students.

Beautiful.

I can laugh, because heck, it's happened to me, too. I remember when I'd just started teaching and didn't know any better, and I was fussing at my students for their lackadaisical efforts on some paper or another. I was sitting on a table very much like the one described above. And as I was fussing, the ceiling began to go farther and farther away, as if in slow motion, until I realized I was very slowly collapsing onto the floor along with the table. Its leg had gone out, but rather than crashing loudly, it was gracefully sinking, turning the table into a slide, and swooping me right onto the floor.

It was like a lightening bolt from the gods.

All my students emitted a collective "Oh!" kind of sound. But they were too shocked to laugh. Instead there was an embarrassing moment of silence as I picked myself up, yanked the leg of the table back into place, and dusted off my butt. Of course, being about twenty-four at the time, I took myself way too seriously to laugh myself (although it must have been hard to keep it all in), especially given that I'd just been in the middle of chewing them out.

So instead I just glared at them.

I was trying to retain my teacherly authority, but I don't think it was very successful.

Anyway, I learned my lesson, and now I don't chew students out. I just give them whatever grade they've earned and figure they know when they've made the effort or not. No reason to elucidate the obvious.

And besides, after all these years I've way too little dignity left to risk being chastised by the gods yet again.

Stay tuned for more embarrassing moments next week.