Some teachers care more about control than whether their students are actually learning.

What would you do if your teacher constantly singled you out for something that wasn’t affecting your work? Would you comply to stay out of trouble? Or would you find a way to follow the rules while still making a point?

In the following story, one teenager finds himself in this exact situation with his math teacher. Here’s what happened.

Math class drawings

I am 15m, and ever since I had started taking my medication, I had signs of hyperactivity that distract me in class.

One of the things I do very often in my classes is draw, which no other teacher has a problem with (except my math teacher). I only draw once I have completed the due page or when my class is very slow.

My teacher, who I will call Mrs. Old, had a serious problem with my doodles, often calling me out of the class for drawing or taking my pencil; this completely enraged me because I understood the subject completely fine.

To comply with her requests, I started writing random quotes, lyrics, and emoticons on my page instead; this made her angry, unfortunately.

Fed up, she gave him detentions.

She had then called me to her desk after her period, telling me that she only wanted the answers on my page.

I, still feeling mad, had a plan to “write only the answers” in an extremely messy font; she had told me to write them normally, so I wrote them in my own language.

I had gotten detention for those two, but I refused to let her take control of me, so whenever I had online work, I would move as slowly as possible in order to show her how slow everyone else was to me.

After the backlash of repeated offenses, I had gotten a reflection for a few days. I still love myself for the creativity of what I did!

Yikes! It’s easy to see both sides of this, but at least he wasn’t disrupting the classroom.

Let’s see what the fine folks over at Reddit have to say about this.

This is a great perspective from a teacher.

What a great strategy!

This sounds like a wonderful teacher.

Here’s excellent advice.

The teacher needs to back off.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.