I suppose everyone has had a bad teacher in their life. After all, it would be pretty hard to go through at least 12 years of school (plus at least 4 more for most people reading this) without a lemon or two. I had one teacher who was stupid, which made her bad in a way, but not nearly as atrocious as the person I’ll be describing in the paragraphs to follow.

I guess I can tell you that his name is (or was—I can only hope he’s dead by now) Mr. Mitchell. I suppose there are enough people with that name to protect the innocent, while at the same time there are few enough to single out the guilty party for those who knew him.

The first thing that made him a bad teacher was that he was seriously deranged. He thought the universe began and ended with the Ancient Greeks. Now, I will grant you that their influence on the modern world is by no means insignificant. However, for a high school English teacher to focus entirely on them, and ignore all other influences on modern English Literature is, to my mind, idiocy.

The only thing I can remember learning in this class some fifteen years later is how to identify Doric and Ionic columns. (There was a third type, it seems, but I can recall neither its name nor its identifying features.) When I say that this is all I remember, I am not being completely honest. It is the only thing that Mr. Mitchell wanted me to learn that I remember.

My other memories of this class are of the BTU—the Brain Trust Unit. What is this, you ask. Well, let me explain. There are several points about this English class that I haven’t yet mentioned. First, it was a Gifted class. Second, there were four Seniors (of which I was one) and approximately 20 Juniors. We seniors became to be known as the BTU.

It came to pass, in the course of the year, that some strong emotions evolved between the groups. We (Seniors) hated the Juniors; we hated Mr. Mitchell; the Juniors hated (and feared) us; the Juniors fawned all over Mr. Mitchell. I speak of the Seniors as one; this was not, however, entirely true. There was one girl in our group, and she neither hated nor despised Mr. Mitchell as much as we tried to get her to. She did, however, share our enmity for the Juniors.

For the second (and much superior) half of the year, the BTU was banished to the library, ostensibly to read a series of books which Mitchell had listed for us. We spent the time neither reading these books, nor engaged in any other “constructive” pursuit. We talked. We had fun. Mostly we talked about Mitchell, and his mishandling of four of the best minds in the school.

To this day, it still amazes me that four teenagers (albeit extremely intelligent) could completely outmaneuver an adult trained in handling us—we beat him. He couldn't control us, and had to banish us to the library, where we were completely unsupervised. So, while he was the worst teacher I ever had, it turned out that I had more fun in that class than any other class I ever took.