Have you ever been disciplined at school?

English as a Second Language What do you want to talk about?
1

My teacher asked me to write a paragraph based on the following outline:

  • Have you ever been disciplined at school?
  • What punishment was it? Looking back, do you think it was fair?
  • What would you like it to have been?

Most of us were disciplined during our school days. And I am not the exception. When I was at grade 2, I saw some students climbing the school’s gate enjoyably and then just aped. I didn’t know that it was against the school’s regulations. My teacher forced me to stand facing against the wall for an hour as a punishment. I was very ashamed. Looking back, I think it wasn’t fair. It was quite strict to a grade-2 schoolgirl. I’d rather somebody had told me that climbing the gate was wrong and gently told me not to do that again. In fact, I haven’t committed it the second time.

Please help me to correct it.

2

When I was 13, I drew a funny picture of my metalworking teacher. He called me over in a very angry voice and pulled out his big wooden paddle. I had to get into position for him to paddle my rear end, but he stopped just a short distance from my buttocks and never hit me. It turned out that he liked my drawing and kept it as a souvenir.

When I was 15, one of my teachers sent me to the school office because I had very long sideburns, in violation of the school dress code. All they did was send me home to shave. I was back in school a couple of hours later. It was perfectly fair, because I knew I was violating the rules.

When I was about 17, a friend and I were sent to the office for making funny newspaper hats in a study room. All the principal did was talk to us and send us back to the room.

3

In kindergarten some of us were mean to a classmate. One day we (I don’t remember who actually did this) took his Chuck Taylor shoes and bent the tips backwards so that the tips pointed straight up. We were sent to the principal’s office for that offense.

In seventh grade our usual math teacher had to leave the classroom for maybe 15 minutes, so the Home-Ec teacher stopped by to babysit us. As she made her way into the room, coming forward from behind the class and still behind me, I said “Well hello there, Sandy Thompson.” She was not amused.

In fifth grade English class we had a substitute teacher who was an older gent originally from Germany. Not meaning to be a smartass but simply out of curiosity, I asked him if he was a Nazi. This offended him mightily. He must have told our regular teacher about it, because I was reprimanded for it the next day.

Many things about Top Gun were attractive to a 10-year-old, one being the cool over-under high-five of Maverick and Goose. During gym class the day after seeing the film, a friend and I did this every time we made a good play, to the point that Mr. D got sick of it and made us play patty-cake in the corner for the remainder of the class. Mr. D was okay, but an even more vivid memory is from the first day of gym class in kindergarten: He pronounced my (soon-to-be) friend Sean’s name “seen”. He also murdered poor Sean’s last name. First impressions…

In fifth grade during Library class we all played this floppy-disk quiz game about American history. There were two students to each Apple 2E computer, and each team strived to earn the top score on these quizzes. Somewhere along the way we had been taught some Basic programming, so my friend Dave and I put it to good work: we re-programmed our disks with the title “Sexy Girls” and changed the quiz questions from things like “Who was the third president?” to “Who is a better kisser, Stacy or Jenny?”

It resulted in another furious teacher and, of course, we had to fix the disks.

I can still taste the pizza, tacos, and lasagna – still my favorite lasagna – from that grade school. Memory can be a powerful thing, and it’s especially beneficial when it conjures fond memories of things like the aforementioned schoolboy escapades (all fond memories except for poor Billy’s shoes, though they were canvas and were returned to their normal shape), the taste of the food we ate, the sound of a locker being slammed shut. Thinking back… how lucky we were to be in that environment.

4

Wow, Tom. In my school, we have merit/demerit system, if you had attended one of them, you’d be the top scorer! (for demerit, that is) :lol:

5

hey, hey – those five events took place over a nine-year span. hehe

There was one other thing:

In maybe third or fourth grade, I found myself sitting across the lunch table (long rectangular table) from my buddy Ted. He and I decided to arm-wrestle. At the end of this bout I dunked his hand in his applesauce.

He promptly threw some of that applesauce at me.

One of the adults saw this and ordered Ted and I to clean the lunch room after school was out. I actually cried. lol

We didn’t actually have to do it though.

In first grade one day, while our barefoot teacher was out of the classroom, a classmate put his sandwich in one of the teacher’s abandoned shoes. I don’t know why she’d gone barefoot, but she had, and when she put that shoe back on – SQUISH.

Another kid, maybe in fourth grade, brought a pellet gun to school and shot one of the windows. HE got in pretty big trouble for that.

But generally they were fairly lenient with us for small escapades the likes of which I’ve described – we got scolded, were made to perform some small penance, perhaps… but nothing worse.

6

Gee, you have a lot of memories. I was the little miss goody two shoes I can’t remember anything that I’ve done at school. But I was grounded in a store room along with my elder sister by our father because we couldn’t stop fighting. But it was not that bad, we had fun actually, there were a lot of junks that we discovered. Then after that our father apologized to us, shaking our hands, as always.

7

Oh, I find those things hilarious now… but at the time they freaked me out.

Like my father, I am a worrier – tough assignment due in the next week? Swamped at work? School scandals, getting in trouble, and being the source of gossip?

These are the sorts of things that have traditionally worried me.

In kindergarten and first grade – this must have seemed hilarious to my parents – I insisted on taking Rolaids during especially worrisome days. LOL

But hey, I was perceptive. Rolaids had this famous advertising thing back in the 80s:

“How do you spell relief? R-o-l-a-i-d-s.”

Well I heard that loud and clear, though I’m sure I wasn’t in their target demographic. So Mom bought me some.

ROFL

8

I don’t remember which grade I was in but the first time I got a B, I was so worried I cried when I gave my mother the test paper. To my surprise, my mother laughed and told me to try again. Now, I think it hilarious too.

9

Brave. I hate medicine. My mother always had to grind them and mix them in chocolate milk or some sweet drink to make me take them.

10

Mom did that until I was maybe four – mixed up the capsule grains with peanut butter on a spoon. If it was a liquid medicine that tasted like crap (before we learned of grape-flavored Dimetapp, which wasn’t bad), she’d give me a short pep-talk to get me to swallow it:

“Down the hatch!”

But I thought Rolaids really did the trick, so I was willing to put up with the chalky taste.

But I feel you – I was a priss! I used to complain about such things as “limpy” socks, or wrinkled pants. And on picture day when I was five, I insisted on wearing my red, ratty Dukes of Hazzard t-shirt underneath the nice sweater my Mom made me wear. I used to refer to such t-shirts as “my rags”.

11

Oh, no! One of THOSE girls! :smiley:

12

You sound like the 7-year-old boy I knew who kept bothering his mother to buy him Stay Free Maxi Pads because the advertisements made him think the pads would make him “feel fresh”.

13

What girls, Jamie?

14

The girls who cry when they get an A-.

15

But I got a B. :wink:

16

ROFL!!!

I didn’t fall for that one, lol!