Tedious Teddy

Dear Tedious Teddy,

Teddy? Get a clue.

Every day that you skip class I am utterly relieved. The class goes so smoothly. The other students are engaged. We laugh. We make jokes about the material. We really connect. Good questions are asked and answered. Material is learned. We enjoy ourselves in a way that I've never known a class to enjoy themselves.

Teddy, you are a drain on the classroom. Negativity oozes from your body out onto the floor. It creeps up toward the marker board. I do my best to keep it off my shoes but you make it so hard. While my other students are truly great human beings who have never uttered a derogatory word about you, I can't shake the feeling that they loathe you. Perhaps you've noticed this as well. Maybe it's the reason you only check-in occasionally.

You see this class is the third in a series of courses. You came in with credit for the first course. Somehow you passed the second class. But in my class you are asking questions that you should have mastered in the first course of the series. I realize you didn't take that course here and you that you came in with credit but seriously how did you pass the second class last term? Even the weakest of your peers thoroughly understands the answers to your honestly stupid questions. Until I met you I didn't believe that there was such a thing as a "stupid" question. I am young and I don't want to squelch the efforts of a struggling but working student. Now I have seen the light. There are stupid questions and you ask five of them each time you grace us with your presence.

I've done some regrettable things. Once after you asked one of your classically stupid questions, one student in his frustration told you in front of the everyone that you shouldn't have passed the second class. I was shocked by Blunt Billy's comment which, frankly, was God's honest truth. I'd never had student say such a thing in class. I've never had a student defend the class like that. I had no idea what to say to Billy. So I just moved the class onward. I have learned to correct students now. And I won't let that kind of behavior go uncorrected again.

But you need to drop this class. You are never going to pass. We are studying the art of making a bechamel sauce. But you have no clue how to even turn on the stove much less how to incorporate flour into a cream mixture. Your comments and questions about the usage of stove knobs is a distraction to the class. Trust me it's really, really bad when your peers are answering your questions with such great authority.

Teddy, please put us out of our misery and drop.

Sincerely,
CMP