Exhibit A. The short fused homeroom teacher ...
- She has been known to say things like "How can you NOT know that?!, I just stood here and explained it!" in response to my daughter asking for help when she was confused about a lesson. This has reportedly happened more than once. Granted, I can understand the teacher's frustration at my daughter for being confused due to the fact that she was most likely not paying attention or talking to her friends, but is this really the proper way for a teacher to respond in such a situation?

- Other things she's said - "If I have time, you have time. I'm busy! I have papers to grade, students to teach, and a baby I take care of at home! Don't tell me you don't have time!" - Appropriate? Am I just old? I don't remember my public school teachers talking like this.

Exhibit B. The sassy science teacher ...
- Much like the homeroom teacher but feistier and more smart-assed. It appears that she believes the only way to get across to the students is to be a big smart-ass about everything. Like they'll think she is cool or something if she calls them names (nothing majorly offensive, but still...) and acts like she is always annoyed with them. I've met her and she seems to have this going on to a flaw. It seems impossible to me that any of her students could actually take her seriously because she seems to always be speaking to them as if she is everyone's bullying older sister. C'mon! Are fifth graders really *this* intimidating?

- Upon grading a recent set of tests (this was some big to-do state mandated science test) she realized that all of her students scored very poorly, so what did she do? She began to cry in front of the whole class and kept muttering about how she just couldn't believe her students did so poorly. As if her life suddenly had no meaning. As if she were something *other* than a responsible adult charged with guiding and educating a roomful of young children. My daughter said that she and the other students began to feel sorry for her, but weren't quite sure what to do. Of course they weren't.
Hello? WTF? Again, is it just me?

Exhibit C. The grieving teacher ...
This is a bizarre situation, but it too seems to be yet another terribly mishandled fifth grade teacher scenario.This poor woman, the social studies teacher, lost her husband in a car accident over winter break. I can not fathom her devastation. However, after only three weeks of grieving somehow the decision was made for her to return to the classroom. I suppose there are situations where this could be just fine, but I do not think that this is one of them. She is having a LOT of difficulty staying focused and has broken into tears and fainted numerous times just since school started back up at the beginning of January. She apparently isn't eating (and shares that info freely with the kids) and so she'll faint and the children will have to catch her and help her to a chair and then leave the room for help. Or they will be left alone so that she can run to get some food when she suddenly has a last minute realization that she isn't feeling well. My daughter was one of children that helped carry her to a chair the first time she passed out. The thing that royally irks me about this is that this woman doesn't even have an assistant or an aide or anything. There is a teacher that shares the same portable as her - they are the only two in there, but the other teacher has an assistant...could she not borrow him for a while or something _at _least??? Please! What is going on here?

I don't really think a one-time, rare occurence of any one of these things would be any big deal, but these thing seem to be predominating the behavior of these three teachers. My daughter only has two other teachers. One of them is fantastic, the reading teacher. I really like her. The other one actually reminds me a lot of the science teacher, however my daughter doesn't ever have much to say about her, so we are going to assume that is a good sign.
No really, please tell me...am I that out of it, uptight and over-expectant? What do you think??