15- Government of Alaska

I learned today that you do not have to be smart or well educated to be a teacher. Good teachers are smart and educated, but apparently these qualities are not prerequisites for the job.
As a first year teacher, I am required to observe several “master teachers” teach. A master teacher is one with several years of experience who has developed a reputation for being an especially good educator. The purpose is for the new teacher to take notice of the successful qualities of the master teacher, and to adopt these qualities as her own. Rather than select a master teacher to observe, I opted to watch the first teacher who volunteered.
The lucky candidate in this instance is a teacher I refer to as Mrs. Frankenstein. I call her this because she is a giant woman. She is overweight and towers above 6 feet tall. Her fingers look like large sausages and her toes are those of an ogress. Mrs. Frankenstein has black curly hair that she piles on top of her head, and she walks with stiff limbs, stomping from place to place in a very zombie fashion.
I went to Mrs. Frankenstein’s room to observe a Social Studies lesson. I am pretty sure that the subject of the lesson was the different branches of the United States Government. She had a map of the U.S. pulled down and had written on the board the words legislative, executive, and judicial. (She had incorrectly spelled legislative as ledgislative.) The kids were instructed to get out their text books, look up the words, and write the definition of each branch on a piece of paper. Predictably, the kids had trouble finding ledgislative in the dictionary. Once this boring task was complete, Mrs. Frankenstein had several volunteers read their definitions aloud.
I did not see any actual teaching take place in this classroom. As soon as one child read their definition, Mrs. Frankenstein called on another. The teacher never paused to elaborate or explain in detail the purposes of each branch of the United States. She appeared to be in a hurry to finish the lesson. After listening to several bored students recant words from the text, Mrs. Frankenstein paused and said, “Okay, class. Great job. Are there any questions?” I could tell by the tone of her voice that she hoped there were not.
Are there any questions? You haven’t taught them anything!
A cute little Chinese boy immediately raised his hand. Mrs. Frankenstein barely glanced in his direction. “Okay, Nathan?”
“What about Alaska?” the boy asked.
Mrs. Frankenstein looked stumped. “What about Alaska?” she repeated.
Nathan became more specific, “What type of government does Alaska have?”
It looked like Nathan’s question had blown Mrs. Frankenstein away. She appeared to be truly puzzled. At first I thought she just couldn’t believe that Nathan did not understand that Alaska would have the same government as the rest of the United States, but after a few humiliating seconds ticked by I realized that she did not know the answer to his question!
Finally, Mrs. Frankenstein responded, “Don’t worry class, we’ll learn about Alaska and the rest of Canada another day.”
Rest of Canada? I wanted to scream when I heard these words. I wanted to warn all the children, “No! Don’t listen to her. She’s making you stupid!” Instead, I held my tongue. I knew that making a teacher look or feel like an idiot in front of her students would be a big mistake. I collected my things, thanked Mrs. Frankenstein politely, and hurried out of her classroom.