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“Ok- Teachers can’t do that today! ” So Mickey & I were talking to a friend last week and we were talking about things that Teachers could do THEN  (when we were in school) that they wouldn’t do NOW.  The conversation started because she was telling me about how she couldn’t let the kids eat cupcakes in her classroom anymore… along with so many other things. 

your teacher did what!

So- we made a list of things that were different then vs. now.
Oh- and then I asked my FB friends for a few more and their list was too good not to share!

Here are the answers that they gave…

  1. Drive to get doughnuts or breakfast during your Driver’s Education class (I did this one!) 
  2. If your desk was messy, your teacher dumped it on the ground.
  3.  Smack hand w/ ruler if you didn’t write well
  4. Make you write with your RIGHT hand, even if you were LEFT handed.
  5. “The TV in our classroom was always on for the ACC tournament!!”
  6. “Some teachers let their class watch the outcome of the OJ Simpson Trial. ” (Mine did!) 
  7. Playing Spades in AP Bio.
  8. Getting erasers tossed at you if you weren’t paying attention.
  9. Shaved your face while you were in school if your sideburns or beard was too long
  10. Getting caught with gum and having to wear it on your nose for the remainder of class
  11. Sit in the waste basket for not listening (my dad’s friend had to do this in 7th grade)
  12. “The “bad” kid had to move his desk to the front of the room and be completely singled out.”
  13. “My English teacher taped my feet to the ground so I couldn’t sit criss-cross.”
  14. They could teach/tutor with the classroom door shut without it being anything other than teaching.
  15. You had to kneel down and if your skirt didn’t touch the floor, you were sent home.
  16. The Lord’s Prayer & the Our Father was said before school every day in public schools
  17. “We shot potato guns out of our physics room window. I can’t remember if that was before or after the announcement to please leave the hunting guns in trucks, not in lockers. Or maybe it was after “drive your tractor to school” day?!”
  18. “Another science teacher put chopped off rat tails in my backpack after dissecting them!”
  19. “Teachers sitting in their office with their feet up and  talking on the phone “
  20. Leaving the school to get food during study hall or a down-time of class.
  21. Writing 100 times “I will not talk during the test.”
  22. “My 3rd grade teacher took us for a walk during school a few blocks away to her house to make dirt pudding with gummy worms. Yeah, that definitely wouldn’t happen today.”
  23. Dunce Caps … need I say more?
  24. “Once I got kicked off the bus and had to walk home.”
  25. You used to be able to tell any grownup that came to pick up the child about their day, now it has to be their legal guardian.
  26. Home-made treats were welcomed!
  27. Cupcakes in the classroom (not just after lunch).

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Hi there!

I’m Becky, a former elementary school teacher turned certified child development therapist and blogger. I work at home with my husband and together we are raising (and partially homeschooling) our four children in the Carolinas. I love diet coke, ice cream, and spending time with my family.

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7 Comments

  1. We used to run errands for my drivers ed teacher all the time. He was also the HS football coach so we were always asking him questions about the cute football players!

    1. 🙂 hahaha!!
      Ps- Mickey’s school didn’t have drivers ed, but it was my favorite class of the day!

  2. You can’t even say “sit Indian style” any more, much less tape someone’s feet to the floor for doing it… It’s called sitting pretzel style nowadays….

    1. I haven’t heard either of those terms before. We call it sitting crosslegged. Ontario

  3. I still move any disruptive kid’s desk when I sub. In fact, most classrooms I go into already have any disruptive children isolated because he’s too disruptive when next to other kids, and the other classmates know all about him, so it’s not a shock. Sometimes there is a collective sigh of relief from the class when the disruptive student leaves during part of the day to go to resource.

    I wish they still had the skirt touch the floor rule, and no flipflops. Actually, uniforms are the way to go.

  4. My team would cook a “COUNTRY” breakfast in our newly discovered/cleaned workroom… OFTEN! 😁 Bacon, sausage, eggs, grits, coffee… Yum! 😋