Going through embarrassing moments is tough, but individuals don’t go through it alone even our Charger staff goes through them as well.
“Once when I was a math teacher I had to have a meeting with a parent. It was a meeting with all of the student’s teachers and his mother. I met with the mother before and she was kind of a difficult person to work with. Afterschool when I was walking down the hallway to head to the meeting up at the front office, one of my fellow teachers asked me where I was going so fast and I said, ‘oh I have to go meet with this parent and I just know its going to be an ugly meeting and I just hate having to do this’ and the woman was standing right behind me and she demanded an apology and I told her I was sorry that she heard what I said, ” principal Derek Hoffland said. “Embarrassing experiences happen to everybody and the important thing with anything is you learn from the situation and you become a better person because of it.”
We all have those moments where we make mistakes in class and get reminded of that mistake everyday.
“I wrote a paper on presidential assassinations in college and misspelled the word assassinations every single time in the paper [I spelled it the same way each time] but this was before Microsoft Word and spellcheck, we did everything on typewriters but I misspelled the word 136 times in the paper. My professor did not glee for that he was a stickler for grammar he even let me know how unacceptable it was and essentially shredded me in front of the whole class,” social studies teacher Mike Gibbons said. “Everybody has embarrassing moments we’re human therefore we make mistakes learn from it and be a duck and let the water roll off, your embarrassment doesn’t last forever,” Gibbons continued.
Even teachers can make mistakes themselves that make them feel embarrassed in front of their students.
“When I was teaching, I was sitting on a desk, and I was talking to my student and somehow I fell backwards and I hit my head on my teachers desk. When I did that my students all got out of their seats and looked over desks, and as soon as I got up and said ‘I’m okay!’ They all busted out laughing; they at least waited until I was okay to laugh,” Assistant Principal of Activities Molly Saddler said. “I learned that it’s okay to laugh at myself that’s all I could do. Thankfully I had pants on that day, because I do wear a lot of dresses,” Saddler continued.
But then there are those experiences where we embarrass ourselves outside of school.
“My siblings and I went off to the library to do work and my parents said to call them when we are ready to get picked up. We called them and they said they would be here in ten minutes. It was now six o’clock and it was getting pretty dark and we saw what looked like our a car and we thought out that must be our parents outside parked out in the parking lot. We all go in open up the door and sit inside and it turned out that there was this old lady driving this car that we didn’t know about, and we’re like oh so we all quickly exit the car and we all exit and go back to the library,” Biology and Human Anatomy/Physiology teacher Tyrone Fong said. “But I learned to check the license plate of the car before you go inside and to just laugh it off.”
Even in high school, teachers have remembered experiences where they just don’t know how to react.
“Senior in high school, I met this girl from Sunny Slope High School and I asked her to homecoming and you’d think people would understand that homecoming is a formal dance I was wearing a suit and go to pick her up I have a corsage and everything and she’s wearing jeans and a t shirt and I was like you do understand like this is a formal dance. So we paid all this money and everyone’s looking like why do you like why do you have a girl that’s dressed in jeans and a t-shirt I was more embarrassed for her but I was still embarrassed,” Drama Director Tim Cornwell said. “But I learned to just got to blow it off the best way to think about something else if you just think about it just gets worse,” Cornwell continued.
Even in work places go through moments where they just want leave and have the day be over.
“When I was a brand new officer I was a rookie officer and this was my third time driving a police car with a train officer with me and we went to a call and I had all these things going through my head and he is siting next to me tell me this, this and this, and I hear him saying whoa whoa whoa and I ask him what’s going on and he says you just ran that red light and I said whoa yeah I just did run a red light and so we had to pull over and have this talk about paying attention to the road,” Tempe Police Department School Resource Officer said. “ There is a lot of police officers have to think about and but I learned that [you should] talk about it because you can learn from it,” Gomez continued.
Being angry with yourself doesn’t make the embarrassing situation any better, but it just brings you down.
“There’s no point in being angry, just laugh at themselves because everyone else is just join in,” Saddler said.
Going through embarrassing moments shouldn’t bring an individual down but make you grow as a person.