By Ann von Dehsen, January 2, 2021 — When I was in high school, math was my worst subject. I never failed it, but it was always my lowest report card grade. I really hated it. Some teachers were sympathetic and I felt free to go to them for after school help. This all stopped when I took Algebra 2 my sophomore year of high school. The teacher, Mr. Harris, never clearly explained things, gave extra homework if you missed an oral question during class, and made it clear that he was not available for after school help.
He clearly favored the boys over the girls often ignoring our raised hands as he only answered questions from the guys. One day at lunch with some of the boys from our class and three of my female classmates and friends, we discovered that Mr. Harris gave extra credit points to boys that answered a bonus question on the latest test but not to several girls who had also answered correctly.
After telling the remaining four girls in the class about this, the seven of us decided that we would cut his class the next day in protest. We were too scared of him to ever bring anything up to parents or other teachers. Looking back, I’m really not sure what we thought we’d accomplish but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do and rather cool; after all, it was the ’60s. None of us ever had ever cut class before so we also felt quite nervous.
Arriving at the school the next day, we went to homeroom for attendance and then to our first 2 classes. Algebra 2 was our third class, so the fearless “Algebra 7” met at the side door which was always open during those days, [and] causally left and high tailed it up the hill to a small diner where we caught our breath and enjoyed donuts and hot chocolate while feeling quite proud of ourselves. Then the door opened and in walked Mr. Harris with his wife and 2 kids.
On the day of our big protest, Mr. Harris had taken a personal day and a kind substitute was in his classroom for the day. As he passed our table he said, “Hello, ladies. Did school let you out early today?” and just kept walking. As we tried not to choke on our donuts, we realized that he would no doubt report us and our parents would be called, none of whom would see the humor in this.
The next day we sheepishly returned to class and as usual, he basically ignored us. Days went by and it appeared that he had not in fact reported us. After the third week of no consequence, we were convinced we were home free from punishment. Perhaps Mr. Harris actually had a good sense of humor and found the whole incident very funny or more realistically he could not have cared less and just ignored the whole thing.
