Diorama Disaster: The Story of My Meanest Teacher

We had a really unpleasant teacher in fifth grade. Sometimes this worked in our favor, like when we misbehaved in art class and the substitute interrupted my teacher’s break to complain about us. I still remember the dialogue:

Mean teacher: I was very busy, ma’am.
Unknowing sub: Well, I’m sorry.
Mean teacher: You will be!

We thought that was awesome.

It wasn’t so fun when I was her target.

For our first term, we studied Native Americans. We read books, wrote essays, baked corn cakes. We had to make art projects to end our unit, and I worked so very hard on mine. I even skipped a Halloween party to stay home and toil on my diorama. My paper Cherokees kept flopping over, but I had a horse and cart from my Little People farm collection and I painted the shoebox myself. I was pretty impressed with my work.

Then I showed up at school with my droopy cut-out drawings and all the other students had these friggin’ masterpieces that were obviously done by their parents. The teacher walked around, oohing and ahhing, and then her eyes fell on my project. You would have thought it was a pile of puke.

I got an S- (satisfactory minus?) and later in class offered to make a tree for some other stupid project we were doing. “You’re going to make a tree?” she sneered.

I nodded.

“It better not be anything like your diorama.”

I got all sniffly.

“You didn’t spend very much time on that, did you?”

I squeaked out a protest and ran to the bathroom.

I’m not saying it was a good diorama. It was a piece of crap. But I was just a little kid. I was too young and innocent to experience that awful feeling when you have done your best, and your best isn’t good enough. I could take it when the theater director at college explained there was a lot of “synchronized motion” in the play and he didn’t think I was ready for that but would I like to sing backstage? (I am even worse at dancing than dioramas, and I knew it.)

But when I made that awful project, I didn’t know. I absurdly thought I had done well, that I did a great job, in fact, when really my work was beneath satisfactory.

I’m not saying teachers should pretend their students are good at something when they clearly are not. But there’s such a thing as constructive criticism. She put in a snide remark about the diorama every chance she got, in front of the whole class. I was very hurt by this. I was humiliated. Kids do horrible artwork all the time, but their parents and teachers say it’s beautiful and hang the scribbled mess on the wall. I wasn’t a baby, but I think I was owed that, at least in elementary school.

To this day, having to do any art project terrifies me.   

The Mean Scene

Is it just me or does everyone love a good story about bullying? The cruelty, the lessons learned, the bullies getting their just desserts (or not). It always makes for good reading or viewing. Here are my top 10 favorites:

Number 10: Life in the Fat Lane by Cherie Bennett

The homecoming queen is afflicted by a mysterious disease that makes her continue to gain weight, even when she is on a strict diet. This young adult novel takes a great look at society’s misconceptions and treatment of obese people, especially in high schools.

Number 9: Sweet Valley Twins The New Girl

This series was all the rage when I was in elementary school, and they are the ultimate mean books. In this one, the twins pretend they are triplets and invent ‘Jennifer’ to befriend the snotty new girl, Brooke. Brooke is duped for about a month.

Number 8: Sweet Valley Twins Choosing Sides

Tomboy Amy Sutton tries out for the Boosters Cheerleading Squad. The lead clique at the middle school, ridiculously named the Unicorn Club, which sounds like a bunch of three-year-olds, is determined to keep her off the squad!

Number 7: Sweet Valley Twins The Haunted House

I apologize for using this stupid series three times in the list, but I’m feeling nostalgic. In this one, the kids suspect that the new girl, Nora Mercandy, is a witch. Instead of being afraid, they torture her.

Number 6: Carrie by Steven King

I always cry at the movie version, which, understandably, causes people to make fun of me. WARNING – this is a spoiler: When she wins prom queen and is so darn happy right before they play the nasty trick on her, my heart breaks. “Don’t do it!” I cry in my mind, but they always do.

Number 5: Up A Road Slowly by Irene Hunt

This beautifully-written Newbery Award Winner takes place in the mid-20th century. The protagonist, Julie, moves in with her aunt Cordelia, who is also a schoolteacher. SPOILER: There’s a mentally challenged girl in the class named Aggie, and although Julie finds her repulsive, she loves Julie. When Julie plans a birthday party, her aunt tells her she has to invite Aggie. Julie refuses so the party is canceled. Julie is particularly cruel to Aggie after that. Aggie later gets sick and dies, and Julie wishes she had been her friend.  

Number 4: Heathers

This dark comedy starring Christian Slater was a must-see when I was in middle school. Slater’s character kills several “popular” kids and makes it look like suicides. His accomplice is played by Winona Ryder.

Number 3: Mean Girls

Tina Fey wrote the screenplay based on Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes. The movie was hysterical so it was surprising to find that Wiseman’s book is actually a guide for parents.

Number 2: Blubber by Judy Blume

This one is about victimization in the classroom (and takes place in Radnor, Pennsylvania). SPOILER: The protagonist, Jill watches her classmate Wendy, torture a girl named Linda or, as they all call her, “Blubber,” and participates in the torture. The irony of the story is that toward the end, Jill actually defends Linda, which leads to Wendy becoming angry and teaming up with the class, including Linda, to torture Jill.

Number 1: The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

First published in 1944, the message of this book is timeless. SPOILER - A motherless girl named Wanda Petronski wears the same dress to school everyday but tells the other kids she has a hundred dresses. One girl picks on her and another stands by and watches. The girls are sorry when Wanda disappears from school one day, but it is too late. The silver lining in the story is that Wanda wins an art contest. For the contest, and this is where the book gets extremely outdated, the boys have to draw motorboats and the girls have to draw dresses. Wanda draws a hundred of them, and draws the girl that picked on her and the girl that watched and said nothing, in two of the prettiest gowns. It’s an absolute tear-jerker, my eyes are getting watery as I type.

Let us know what your favorite bullying stories are! Does Memoirs of Meanness make the list?