Rachel had a harrowing experience at Target last week. Shopping with her friends, she suddenly noticed she had been separated from her group. Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone. Looking around, she realized her English teacher was standing only a few feet away. Rachel made a run for it, managing to escape the incredible awkwardness of teacher-student interactions outside school.
“It was just so awful,” Rachel said. “If I hadn’t been lucky enough to get away, I would have had to make small talk. The school should do a better job of keeping teachers away from students.”
For many schools, the inability to keep teachers away from students has always been a problem.
“We wish we could just keep them here,” said school board head Allan McDonald, “but teachers are too expensive already. They need all sorts of pricey things like pencils and textbooks and salaries in order to ‘teach.’ Taking care of them full time would be a hard task.”
Analysts warn that teachers out in the wild tend to forage in shopping areas where students hang out. There are a variety of ways you can handle an encounter with a teacher. Your first course of action should be to avoid eye contact and pretend they aren’t there. For most teachers, this will be enough to communicate to them that you want to be left alone.
If they start coming closer, slowly and calmly leave, taking care not to show recognition or seem interested in anything they say. If outside, consider running. Due to long periods of time spent at desks and a biological process known as aging, teachers aren’t usually very fast, and you will probably be able to escape.
If all else fails, throw a temper tantrum, and make sure to use your best expletives. A terrifying display of teenage hormones should frighten even the most steadfast teachers into submission.
Local authorities have promised to collaborate with students in teacher prevention, sending out a teacher alert by phone to all people in the area whenever one is spotted.
According to police chief Daniel Williams, “Preventing students and teachers from coming into contact outside of school is our number one priority. The ensuing awkwardness is too much for anyone to handle.”
Photo courtesy of mattroyal/flickr
