Surviving Ms Stick: A Tale of a Terrible Teacher and Triumph

From Ds to Degrees

Terrible Teachers.

We’ve all had them.

Teachers have the power to destroy and they have the power to build. It’s a choice every educator makes. The good and the bad leave an impression on students that can last a lifetime and alter life paths.

During my school years, I was fortunate enough to have, for the most part, decent teachers. A few of them were spawned by hell and drunk on power. Nothing screams a small appendage like lording over kids and weaponising their dreams. These beasts existed in the 90s alongside overhead projectors and scrunchies.

Get your rollerblades on, we’re skating back in time to an average Australian 1990s high school.

Let me introduce Ms Stick. Short for “stick up the bum”. Not her real name, but it should be. Ms Stick was one of those hypocritical teachers. The campus sprawled and only 5 minutes was scheduled in the timetable to get from class A to class B. A mad rush. The distance between the English block and the math block was the worse, barely enough time — and no running!

Ms Stick notoriously kept her students behind and made them late for their next class. A superiority complex on her part. Yet, if you dared rocked up to her class late, you were met with aggression and detention threats. We assumed she was middle-aged and her clock was ticking — tick-tock. Ms Stick, I had the pleasure of enduring for years 9 and 11.

My English teacher for years 8 and 10 was awesome. My ranking was top of the class. For year 9, Mrs Awesome recommended me for an accelerated class catering to smarter kids, taught by Ms Stick. My grades plummeted. Not surprising because I took a term off for medical reasons. Year 10 saw me back with Mrs Awesome and I spent the year being top of the class again. No skin off my nose.

In simple terms, I yoyoed between two teachers, one the good witch of the north and the other the wicked witch of the west.

During year 10, students needed to decide if they wanted to take the academic path to university or not. Sign me up. I watched Beverly Hills 90210 religiously. University was filled with wild parties, subjects that matter, and freedom. Although the same show also made high school life out to be fun with fast cars and mature boys — 100% lie. Imagine my shock to find no Luke Perry at school, and boys wanted to flick bra straps.

Anyway, I wanted higher education, but I had no idea what I wanted to be. Something. I wanted the University experience more than anything. Making my decision, I enrolled in classes that lead to the tertiary education exams (TEE). Are you yawning yet? I am.

Year 11 rolled around and I was placed with Ms Stick again. Yeah, can’t say I was thrilled with the idea. I don’t recall hating her or feeling anything other than indifference from my experience with her in year 9. Typically, I spoke to my teachers like human beings. I was raised to converse with adults from a young age. Being an only child meant I was treated like a doll and taken everywhere. No kiddy table for Tannille. Ms Stick was just cold. And I knew she wasn’t a good match for me.

Don’t you hate it when your gut is right about these things? My As turned into Ds faster than a Porche. I didn’t understand. At some point, I approached Mrs Awesome, but she didn’t want to get involved. My mum decided I should fight my own battles. Back in the 90s, teachers wield a lot of power and we couldn’t just switch classes. I was stuck and I so desperately wanted to go to university and make something of myself. I think Ms Stick sniffed out the fear in her students.

My best friend was in the year above me and had Ms Stick the year before. We discovered Ms Stick recycled her content from year to year and the assignments never changed. Cat gave me her essays to work from. Ms Stick constantly gave Cat As. I kept my D average. We chalked it up to my writing style being the issue.

It became obvious Ms Stick didn’t like me. Miserable cow. Never cracked a joke or a smile. In hindsight, I question if she had shiz going on in her personal life. Cat, the teacher’s pet, thought it was all in my head. So, I hatched a plan to prove my suspicions, because everything is justifiable to a teenage girl. I submitted one of Cat’s A+ essays. I wrote my own intro and conclusion but plagiarised the rest. Guess what? I didn’t break my D streak. WTF!

So, I knew the truth. Ms Stick held a personal vendetta for whatever reason. The worse part, I had to keep the secret to myself. I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed when I decided plagiarising was a good idea. Cheating meant failing the year and the sheer thought of repeating scared the browns out of me.

If I was lucky, I could keep quiet and scrape in a passing C grade for the year. In retrospect, I should have taken a gamble, exposed the shenanigans to the principal, and gone down in a blaze of glory… Problem two: the head of the school was a tiny tyrant nicknamed Flakearse. She had Medusa’s stare and my mother’s number on speed dial.

A short story assignment arrived. I wasn’t a writer back then. Writing = work. But short stories were the most fun of papers to write and my short stories always did well. My chance to score an A and boost my overall grade. Lost in the world, I wrote a 9-page story. I loved that story. My friends loved the story. A writer was born, and I have been writing since. Ms Stick called me in for a meeting.

“This is the most creative story any student has ever submitted to me. I can see you put in a lot of effort.”

I smiled, nodding. Maybe she wasn’t a demon from the other side.

“But, I can only give you a D+ at most.”

Bam! She hound from the Underground!

My crime? I didn’t apply the writing prompt to her liking. The other year 11 English classes didn’t even have to use a prompt! It was only HER stupid requirement. God complex much.

I recall a conversation with a classmate. Apparently, I wasn’t special.

“She has it in for me.”

“No. It’s not just you. She’s failing me too, no matter how hard I try, and a couple of the boys.”

Perhaps it wasn’t personal, but it felt like it.

I only just scrapped in a pass for year 11 English and I don’t know how. Maybe Ms Stick realised failing students would create a hellfire?

My confidence became nothing more than shards on the floor. The university dream turned to ash. Depression set in.

For year 12, I dropped back to regular “dumb” English, as the snotty TEE kids called it. My new English teacher ironically was also the teacher for TEE English Literature. About two weeks in, she pulled me aside, alarmed.

“Why are you in this class? You write at a TEE level.”

“Ms Stick nearly failed me last year and I don’t want to risk not graduating.”

She gave a horrified look but said nothing.

By mid-year, I quit school altogether. Not as dramatic as it sounds, but it was the best day of my life and I partied like it was 1999 (fun fact, it was 1999). I can’t express how much I loathed school. The place still gives me the odd nightmare.

The cause for celebration? I was accepted into TAFE early to do a social work course (think of TAFE as a community college). Several TAFE lecturers pulled me aside and said I was handing in university-level assignments and asked why the hell was I at TAFE.

At TAFE I found a secret backdoor into uni. Had I known I would have quit the Hellmouth years earlier and gone to TAFE instead. It would have saved my sanity. I applied for university and the acceptance letter arrived. Initially, I started off studying social work but jumped over to writing after a semester. I loved university.

Over the years, I completed BA Writing, BA Psychology, MA Communications (scriptwriting) and studied abroad. My creative writing assignments consistently scored within the top 10% of the class. I’m not saying this to big-note myself… well may be a little, my head swells. Mostly, I’m wanting to reflect on the irony — my Year 11 English teacher wanted to fail me and I earned degrees in English (writing).

Never let one person define you.

Never let one person destroy your dreams.

Always look for backdoors and keep moving forward.

If I ever saw Ms Stick again, I would put her head on a pike and do a victory dance. — just kidding, too gruesome even for me.

Knowing me, I’d smile and share my story. After all, I don’t know her story. Maybe she has regrets? Teachers are human. Even ones that are terrible and breathe smoke.

Coming full circle, I’m a writing group instructor. A teacher-type person. I choose to inspire and build. Every teacher makes the choice: build or destroy.