When People get Drunk with Power

A common hypothetical question that exists in bar room conversation is “if given the opportunity to go back in time to high school, with the knowledge you currently possess, what would you tell your past self?” for many, the answer is always to give investment advice, what to pay attention to when becoming an adult, and to “appreciate the memories you are currently making.” If I were given the opportunity, I would act as a ghost writer for my past self and create the best quips, comebacks, and rebuttals. I’d also tell myself not to be afraid of the teachers.

It was always weird to see teachers in public living life as a civilian. For the longest time I thought they never left the classroom. Growing up I was under the impression that the teachers lived in the school and that was all part of the gig. They teach and after school they look after the building like some crypt keeper (I’d come to find out this wasn’t true, even though some of the older teachers sure looked the part).

With classes being taught through online conference calls, teachers are having trouble with discipline in the classroom. It’s hard to give a student a detention or an in school suspension when they are already locked in their homes. For example, just the other day I saw a video online of a kid lighting up a joint and smoking it on a Zoom chat during an online high school class…in front of his teacher! The best part of the whole video was the teacher trying to figure out how to stop the student. The only thing he could do was stutter and wait for the student to finish his “smoke break.”

I think this is the defining moment in education. We are witnessing the moment where the smoke has disappeared and the mirrors have shattered. Students are realizing how little power the teachers really have. This is a realization that is supposed to happen when you graduate, not while you’re in school. Discipline in the class room is dead and students are no longer scared of the teacher.

Don’t get my words mixed up. There are a lot of excellent teachers who are passionate about knowledge and education. I have nothing, but respect for those educators. The people I am talking about are those who use the teacher label as a means to enact on a power trip. These “educators” are the types that go crazy with power. This exists in every workplace that has a hierarchy. School is the first place we as humans learn of how some can get “drunk with power.” However, where and when the teacher enforces their power needs to be taken into careful consideration as flying to close to the sun can burn the wings of the disciplinarian.

The year was 2006 and I was in fourth grade, it was April, it was a Friday and everyone was excited for the weekend. This was a strict private school, so by the end of the week everyone was ready for the weekend. Once the dismissal bell rang, many of the students would go to the bowling alley down the street and hang out (don’t judge, this was before smartphones and we didn’t really know how to have fun). For this story there are two characters, the teacher and the student. For sake of anonymity we’ll call the student Chad (because in this story he was a total epic Chad) and we’ll call the teacher Mrs. Karen (because she was a total Karen).

Chad was a crazy character. Fueled by sugar and ADHD, Chad was off-the-walls. He was like a real life version of a hyper-active Jeff Spicoli. This was the student who teachers were always yelling at and your parents would tell you to not hang out with as just the slightest association with him would land you in hot water with the teachers. In addition, he wasn’t too popular among the students.

Mrs. Karen on the other hand was a total control freak. When it came to classroom discipline she was the most ruthless. She was known to publicly humiliate students who were struggling in her math class. I was the subject of this a couple times. One time, I was having trouble with a long division problem and just couldn’t get the hang of it. Mrs. Karen brought me up to the chalkboard in front of the whole class. She, and the rest of the class, watched as I struggled to figure out what to do. After a couple minutes (it felt like an eternity), she asked me in front of all my fellow classmates “you don’t know how to do it, don’t you?” She then told me to sit back down. I had never felt so humiliated in my life up to that point (in retrospect, this was a cake walk compared to me bombing on stage doing stand-up comedy later in life, in a weird way this might have prepared me for my future in performance).

Anyways, back to the story. One Friday, everyone is having fun at the bowling alley, trying hard not to think about the remaining 48 hours until they have to go back to class again. Chad is being his usual crazy self, chucking (not sliding) bowling balls down the alley. Each time he does this, Chad lets out this high-pitched yell. Everyone is having fun and acting normal. This was until the doors opened and in walked Mrs. Karen.

As she walked down the alley to meet with some of her friends at a lane for her bowling league, everyone went from having fun to pretending to have fun. I compare the atmosphere of this situation to one of those videos from North Korea where people are pretending to have fun singing karaoke, but in reality they are scared for their lives.

Mrs. Karen meets with her adult friends in the bowling lane furthest from the exit. This lane happens to be right next to Chad’s lane. Everyone watches in horror as Chad continues to be his crazy self, oblivious to what awaits him in the lane next door. It’s at this moment, Chad decides to do one of his yells again, but this time he hurls the bowling ball so far that the noise of the ball slamming onto the wooden floor masks the Mountain Dew fueled warrior cry he just belted out. Mrs. Karen saw this, we saw this, and w

e saw how Mrs. Karen saw this. There was no helping Chad at this point, Mrs. Karen smelled the blood in the water and was about to attack.

Mrs. Karen got up from her seat and screamed, “Chad that’s enough, cut it out right now!” It was at this moment any noise produced by anyone was reduced to crickets. Silence filled the bowling alley. The only thing you could hear was the music over the PA system playing distorted James Blunt at a lukewarm volume.

This silence had to have been more than 30 seconds, but to everyone there it felt like an eternity. What was going to happen? Was Mrs. Karen going to be able to break Chad? The room waited in anxious anticipation until Chad said the one thing no one ever had the guts to say to Mrs. Karen.

“No,” said Chad. Not a single soul had the air in their lungs to gasp or stay “ooooooooh.” We could only wait to see how Mrs. Karen reacted. Another eternal 30 seconds pass. Then, something happened that no one in the whole building though would happen. Mrs. Karen sat down and went silent.

It was at this moment everyone realized that teachers are powerless outside the walls of the school and no matter how strict or scary the teacher is they are on equal footing with the student in the public space. Mrs. Karen realized this and you better believe she made Chad’s life a living hell the following Monday in class, but the one thing Karen failed to do was break Chad’s spirit.

Chad’s popularity level went through the roof and his social life changed forever. That day not only did Chad stick up for himself, but he also spoke out for me, my fellow students, or anyone who ever had to deal with a power hungry teacher. The curtain was pulled, the smoke had cleared, and the mirrors shattered. The illusion of discipline had been exposed and Mrs. Karen realized she was out of her element.

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I don't have much additional stuff to say this week. Thanks for reading and sorry about the long read. Believe it or not, this was much longer in the first draft. If you'd like to see me write about anything specific, let me know in the comments.