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Apr. 16th, 2005 09:36 pmFor some reason I was just remembering High School.
Specifically, at my school there was an oft' talked about rule (it was even in the school handbooks, so it was a real rule and not a rumor) that if a teacher was more then five minutes late for class the class was considered cancelled and students were free to leave until the next one. Considering that each class (except on Mondays) was an hour and forty-five minutes long, that's more then enough time for someone to go get something to eat or have a nap or, heck, go to a short movie if they wanted to.
But every time a teacher was late, no matter how long it was, no one would ever leave. Everyone would just sit there. They'd talk about the fact that they could leave, someone would inevitably look up the rule in our planners to make sure it was there, and sometimes someone would even get up and start to walk to the door, but no one ever got up the guts to walk out the door. None of them (I'm not counting myself, since I was perfectly content to curl up in a corner and read until the next class started) could actually believe that they'd be able to get out of there. And maybe a little of it was the certainty that if they tried someone from the main office would come up to watch the class, and it was better to stick to the classroom with no one there then try to get away and end up with a sub.
Once our teacher in an after lunch class actually missed the entire class (we later found out he'd fallen asleep at home during the lunch hour), and no one outside of the room even noticed until the assistant principle happened to come up with a message for him (he stuck around when he found out the teacher wasn't there). The class wasn't even being loud like you'd expect a room full of teenagers with no supervision to be, I think someone might have turned on the TV but other then that everyone was just sitting around talking quietly.
Specifically, at my school there was an oft' talked about rule (it was even in the school handbooks, so it was a real rule and not a rumor) that if a teacher was more then five minutes late for class the class was considered cancelled and students were free to leave until the next one. Considering that each class (except on Mondays) was an hour and forty-five minutes long, that's more then enough time for someone to go get something to eat or have a nap or, heck, go to a short movie if they wanted to.
But every time a teacher was late, no matter how long it was, no one would ever leave. Everyone would just sit there. They'd talk about the fact that they could leave, someone would inevitably look up the rule in our planners to make sure it was there, and sometimes someone would even get up and start to walk to the door, but no one ever got up the guts to walk out the door. None of them (I'm not counting myself, since I was perfectly content to curl up in a corner and read until the next class started) could actually believe that they'd be able to get out of there. And maybe a little of it was the certainty that if they tried someone from the main office would come up to watch the class, and it was better to stick to the classroom with no one there then try to get away and end up with a sub.
Once our teacher in an after lunch class actually missed the entire class (we later found out he'd fallen asleep at home during the lunch hour), and no one outside of the room even noticed until the assistant principle happened to come up with a message for him (he stuck around when he found out the teacher wasn't there). The class wasn't even being loud like you'd expect a room full of teenagers with no supervision to be, I think someone might have turned on the TV but other then that everyone was just sitting around talking quietly.