One Very Mean Teacher

by Nasra Fatina

In the countryside in the refugee camps of Tanzania, Africa, we had to walk everywhere because we couldn’t ride the bus like in the USA to school.

We didn’t eat lunch or breakfast at school, but we could bring our own food and eat it after or before class started.

When it was time for school, we had to wear a uniform and if we didn’t have it on, we had to go back home to change.

If we were lucky, then we might get a good teacher who would help us or make us understand better, but if we didn’t have a good teacher we wouldn’t understand what we are studying and it would be hard to catch up with the other students.

Lastly, when we were late to class and everyone was there, even the teacher, then we got punished because we needed to get there before the teacher was in class.

Teachers can hit you with a long ruler or they would tell you to hold out the palms of your hands and hold them against the wall with your head down in an uncomfortable way for up to 20 minutes. Sometimes students had to squat down and pull their own ears.

All of these punishments were to make students listen to teachers and follow the rules.

One day when I was almost 12 years old, I was in the classroom and I was not prepared to answer any questions about what we learned before.

There was one very mean teacher who taught this history class and I did not study for his class.

I knew that I would get in trouble if the teacher asked me questions, so instead of waiting for that to happen, I jumped out of the window that was a little far from the ground. My feet were hurting from this long jump, but I was more scared of getting into trouble.

I ran to the bathroom and hid for one hour for the next class with a different teacher to begin.

I didn’t get caught, but I would have been in big trouble and my parents would have had to come to school. I only did that one time!