MFM Minisode 504

Hello and welcome to My Favorite Murder, the back-to-school minisode.

The back-to-school, very special episode of the minisode. We're going to do just teacher-adjacent stories, right?

School stories, teacher stories. Yes.

But because we're doing this, we're also going to have a little fun with it.

Last year, we reposted a bunch of teachers' wish lists so that other people could help and clear them. And everybody responded. Of course, it's the murderino community. So they showed up and they showed out and they cleared a ton of wish lists.

So this year, we are going to join in and, like, double down on that. We're going to clear as many wish lists as possible by donating $ 10, 000 to Kids in Need Foundation. in the name of all our teacher murderinos, teacherinos.

And Kids in Need Foundation is really great because it actually focuses on under-resourced classrooms. So that feels even better.

Totally. So if you'd like to help and give a little as well and clear a teacher's wish list, we're going to be reposting them on Instagram, teacher's wish lists. Right.

And so you can jump in. Our donation is like covering it so that we're not picking a favorite school.

Right.

And so you can join in. If you're a teacher, you can retweet your wish list and then murderinos who did it last year have an opportunity to help out.

Totally. So teachers, post your Instagram story with a link to your wish list and then tag us at My Favorite Murder and let's have some fun with this. And we can help out and do something good in this fucked up world.

Think of the children.

Think of the children. All right. Okay, let's get to.

Okay, the subject line of this one is most unqualified substitute teacher ever. Yes. Hello, you wonderful ladies. Sometime back, you asked for hometowns about inappropriate jobs for children. Mine dates back to the early 70s, a feral time of massive discrimination, unchecked pollution, and corporate disregard of safety, and absolutely amazing music.

That's basically it in a nutshell.

There's real bad lows, and then there's a couple highs. I grew up in a very small West Texas town of 5,000 people, and then in parentheses, do not recommend. Which at the time had two elementary schools. My father was the principal of one, and the other principal was a man I'll call Mr. Taylor because that was his name, and I'm done protecting incompetent men.

Yeah.

All of a sudden, the email's blowing up.

Love it.

One morning, Mr. Taylor, claiming he could not find a substitute teacher, called my high school office and asked them to send me over to his elementary school for the day to fill in. Without asking any questions, the high school principal pulled me out of class— And told me to go to the elementary school. Important point here. I was 16 years old.

Wow.

Also important point. I did not ask any questions because I had it drilled into me from birth that I was to do whatever an adult.

Told me to do. Totally. Totally.

Very dark times.

Nonsense.

The internet children don't understand.

No.

Dutifully, I showed up at Mr. Taylor's office and he took me to a third grade classroom.

This is so against the law. How old are third graders? Like nine?

Yeah, the oldest, I think. Oh, my God. they're still pretty young, told me the real teachers in other rooms would check on me throughout the day and left. The real teachers did not, in fact, check on me not even once. I never saw another adult all day except for lunch when one of them casually asked, how's it going? Jesus.

And walked away without waiting for me to answer. Those third graders were treated to a day of coloring, a few math problems, and me reading aloud to them from whatever books I could find in the room. Luckily, I didn't lose any children and there was no bloodshed, so I considered the day a success. When I got home that afternoon, I discovered neither of my parents had known where I was or what I was doing and responded to my telling them that their 16-year-old daughter had spent the day as a substitute teacher of small children with, that's nice.

Wow.

So maybe there's an aroma of trash parents in this story also. Yeah. There was never any mention of paying me for a day's work. I suspect Mr. Taylor could see that submitting a pay voucher for a minor who wasn't on the approved substitute teacher list and didn't have a social security number might raise some questions. Apparently, none of the third graders' parents raised any objections to whatever their children told them about their teenage substitute.

Jesus.

But here's the thing. When you're in third grade or like eight years old— That's an adult. It's completely an adult. Totally. You'd be like, you run the bank.

Yeah.

Oh, but you're here today. Yeah. Because, dear listeners, this happened at least twice more during my high school years.

It's like he thinks he's hiring a babysitter, not a teacher.

And that's the problem. And that's the problem right there. Thank you for all you do in the world and the joy you bring to this cat-loving old broad. Stay sexy and maybe make a couple more phone calls before hiring a 16-year-old as a substitute teacher. janna because even.

A babysitter would get paid for like 30 kids or whatever that's a lot of fucking money you'd get paid for babysitting.

You would get if you got 20 to babysit a kid for the night do the math times that up and pay janna retroactively you can't do everything for you state of texas.

Okay i'm gonna this is a montessori pen pal story oh Best wishes, warm regards.

It starts. Nice.

My home of Danville, Iowa. Why did I point to you? There's a Danville on the north.

There's Danville in the East Bay, yeah.

Okay, that's not this one. Danville, Iowa is surrounded by cornfields, has students who regularly drive tractors to school during homecoming, and has about 900 citizens.

Did that stop you cold because you're from Orange County?

I don't get it.

Yeah, you get on your dad's tractor and you drive to homecoming, and you're in your dress and he's in his tuxedo.

Oh, it's like your special.

It's like a little parade.

Okay, got it.

Got it.

I always win the my town is smaller than your town game, but we do have an incredible story. Back in 1940, there was a teacher named Bertie Matthews who was known for being pretty strict, but she genuinely cared about her students and wanted to ensure they had the best education a small farming community could provide. She would even loan country kids her car so they could get to school on time. Loan them your tractor.

Yeah, jump on it. It's just that they go three miles an hour.

Right. Being ahead of her time, she traveled to Europe and attended a convention about new methods of learning. While there, she connected with a Dutch Montessori teacher, and the two developed a pen pal program, which was a very new idea back then. She came back to Danville with a list of Montessori students for her own students to pick from and write letters back and forth. Two sisters, Juanita and Betty Wagner, wanted to write another set of sisters and found a pair listed, Anne and Margot. The Wagner girls excitedly spoke of living on a farm and what life was like in a small community compared to the other sisters' city experience. Hashtag? Quote. Holy shit, I gotta stop scrolling.

Come with me.

Come with me. Quote. I almost did it again. It was just friendly talk to write to somebody overseas was a great experience, end quote. Betty later said. Ann and Margo wrote back in English, translated by their father, Otto, quote, with photos and postcards of Amsterdam. Do you know where I'm going? Juanita and Betty wrote back immediately, but never heard from the girls again. The Netherlands had been invaded by the Germans two weeks later, and any letters going out to America would have been impossible.

That is not where I thought you were going. I forgot that it was the 40s.

I didn't want to say it. I didn't want to spoil it. But the sisters, Juanita and Betty Wagner, in Iowa, wrote to Anne and Margot Frank. And their father, Otto... Translated.

Oh, my God.

I know. When the war ended, Betty decided to write to the Franks' old address in hopes that Anne and Margot were still there. She was answered months later by Otto Frank, the only survivor, who then told Betty and Juanita the entire story of his family's experience in hiding, being caught, and the deaths of his daughters. In 1956, Betty heard of a new play called The Diary of Anne Frank being opened and hoping it was her old pen pal bought the book. The girls were shocked that their old friends were now faces of the Holocaust. Thankfully, Juanita and Betty had kept their letters from Ann and Margo.

Ann and Margo's letters are currently in the Simon Wiesenthal Center, kept safely in a vault.

Oh, my God.

You're just doing a little pen pal program that this incredible teacher.

Why have we never heard of this before?

I don't know. It's incredible.

Just like, yeah, normal life.

Yeah. The tiny Danville Anne Frank Museum is the only place granted permission to showcase digital copies. Wow. So because of this, Danville opened Anne Frank Museum.

Because of these sisters.

Yeah. Since 2012, Danville eighth graders collect postcards like the ones Anne and Margo sent to their pen pals, hoping to get 1.5 million to represent the 1.5 million children killed in the Holocaust. Juanita died in 2001. and Betty died in 2012. I try to pass along the story as much as I can. It is an ultimately devastating story, but it is amazing how two farm girls in the middle of nowhere were able to pass along a bit of history about two girls they didn't consider major figures.

They didn't know the mark Anne's diary would make on the world. They were just children excited to make new friends. If only everyone can have that outlook. Stay safe and pass along amazing stories, Morgan, she, her.

I'm just blown away.

I know.

Why doesn't everyone know that story?

I don't know. It's crazy.

I know.

I want to read those letters. I know. But they're just like... they're just.

Yeah, I went out and played.

This is what my life is like.

Normal life. And tell. Amazing. Wow. Well, thank you so much for writing that in.

Yeah, Morgan.

That's incredible.

Okay.

So the subject line of this email is teacher typo.

Hello, Al.

I am a high school English teacher, and I have taught middle school in the past. That's like saying I've been to war. This story is from my middle school days. At the time, we were not as into the digital age with all of the online classrooms like we are today in the post-COVID world, but I was posting weekly lesson plans onto my section of the school website so parents could see what we were doing in class for the week. Oh, God. One unit in particular was about Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. 's speech, Sharing the American Dream, which is a great speech and made for an equally great lesson. Of course, I posted the name of that lesson on the website with my weekly plans. Fast forward a bit, and we got a new teacher who was going to teach the same classes as me, so I shared my lesson plan calendars with her. A day or so later, I got a text from her with a picture of my lesson plan for that unit with a message that said something along the lines of, I am laughing so hard I'm crying. It took me a minute to see it, but when I did, I almost died. Apparently, when I first typed that lesson plan, I had not proofread what I had written, and I had inadvertently added

a T to the title of the speech. That's right. It said sharting the American dream.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Right there. Like, that's not a word that has to be caught. by the computer.

Can we get one copy editor somewhere?

Like if I can't write ducking?

You're telling me there's no, yeah, there's no red line under, yeah. And it went up and no one said a word.

Holy shart.

Do you fear more a horrifying, humiliating mistake like this that no one ever says a word about or immediately you get the text and the phone calls of take that down? Which one's better or which one's worse? Because I feel like the slow burn is Almost, like, more horrifying. Yeah. Like, people are like, oh, no.

Look away. Both sound just so bad. Both are making me, like, break out in sweat.

Do we have to pick one, I guess, is the real question.

Can we just do neither? Okay.

Sit in it. Sit in the shame. This had been up on the school website for parents to see for at least a whole year.

Not one parent. Like, that's a year. Okay.

Anyway, I am not sure any parents ever read the plans or they just didn't see it. because I never received any type of email about it. I was tempted to leave it because I work with kids all day, and that has become my sense of humor. But in the name of professionalism, I did change it, and I sincerely apologize to Dr. King for disgracing his speech in that way. Thank you for being my car companions during my 45-minute commute to work each day. These past few years have been pretty rough in the world of education and in the world in general. And your podcast has been an excellent way to decompress after the hard days.

Thanks for reading and shout out to Laura for fighting the good fight. Stay sexy and always check your work, even if you're an English teacher. That's the worst part.

Oh, my God. It's so bad. Mortifying.

It's so bad.

But it is true.

People don't read stuff like that.

I wonder if anyone had even ever seen it, except for the other, like the new English teacher, of course, caught it.

And if they did get it, it was a full year of risk. And here comes the second English teacher to save the first one's ass.

Holy shit.

America.

Okay. My next one. I'm not going to read you the subject line. Hello, dear friends. I am woefully behind and listening to Minnesota 392 where Kelsey wrote in about her dad getting all kinds of good shit, including a bike. From Pepsi points he fraudulently sent in. Love that story. This reminded me of a Polaroid I have of myself on the first day of kindergarten, which Vince says as kindergarten.

Kindergarten.

I wonder if that's like a Midwest thing.

It might be.

I love it.

Kindergarten.

Wearing a questionable outfit. I know my mom, Maxine, would be pissed if she knew I was about to share her parents' names with a lot of strangers, but too bad. Her parents, Stan and Rose, owned a grocery store and would get all kinds of merch from alcohol, food, soda. Shout out to the R2-D2 Pepsi cooler we had when Star Wars Episode I came out.

I remember those on the top. It slid up like that. Remember?

Like an R2-D2 thing?

I'm pretty sure, yeah.

How much are those worth? and especially cigarette brands. So yeah, there's a picture of me from the first day of school wearing a giant Newport cigarettes t-shirt. That is beautiful.

I want one right now.

Trash parenting win. I still have some of the bags, sunglasses, mugs, and a cool brand with a K, of course, shirt, but not that one. Sad. Stay sexy and probably don't let your five-year-old promote tobacco products at school.

Pam.

And then Pam attached a photo. Oh, Pam. Newport. What was the saying for Newport? Something, the something.

I don't remember.

Feel the breeze or some shit.

Feel the breeze.

That is amazing.

And with Newport. Pam.

A plus.

It's so epic. So epic. I love that so much. Oh, God.

It's so good.

And people are just like, pretend it's the town. Pretend it's the town.

Right. So good. Amazing.

Georgia, it looks like the saying is alive with pleasure.

Alive with pleasure. Something with something.

Yeah, you knew it. Alive with pleasure.

That's the best because you're going to die in pain if you smoke the alive with pleasure.

Big time advertising. Totally. Just like you're not dying at all.

Like someone in a boardroom on so much coke thought of that saying.

You know what? This is killing them. Let's say alive with pleasure.

It's the opposite.

Like it's it's worth it now. You're living now. So it's worth it because you get pleasure. Right.

So like you're alive with it now because you're gonna be fucking dead from it.

Because you're smoking menthol cigarettes.

Like fiberglass menthol.

The cool logo, though, was one of my favorite fonts of all time. So good. Because there's a K in it. Oh, sure. I mean, it's really all about narcissism at the end of the day. Absolutely.

I use the Georgia font in every fucking thing I do. I'm here with you.

So my last email is, the subject line says, it's a Catholic school nun story. And then I'm not going to read you the rest. That was just the first half. It says, it just gets into it. When my family moved to northern New Jersey in 1980, I started attending Queen of Peace Catholic School.

Oh, dear.

You just have to get into it. Sixth grade started out great, largely because our teacher was a 157-year-old nun who only taught us two subjects, spelling and saying the rosary.

Oh, my God.

This is what Catholic school was like. It was really up to whoever the tallest person in the room was, what was going on. Felt very unregulated. I don't think she ever taught math, history, geography, or anything else for that matter. I did not complain. I started to imagine that perhaps I, too, would become a nun. No math, just a bunch of praying, not a bad life. This is my favorite email. One day I was working in my spelling book when Tommy Decker hit me over the head with his spelling book. I had not been taught how to tell someone to go to hell, so instead I did the only thing a sixth-grade Catholic schoolgirl could do.

I tattled.

Sister Anne, Tommy Decker hit me on the head with his spelling book. Sister Anne did not tolerate defiling spelling. Tell him to stop it and let me know if he does it again. I trotted back to my seat. I started working on my spelling again, and he did it again. Sister Anne, Tommy Decker hit me on the head again. Sister Anne marched her plump, habited form over to Tommy Decker, grabbed him by the hair, and dragged him to the front of the class. Then she called me to the front of the class as well. This made me nervous because clearly Sister Anne was deviating from the script. Tommy Decker should have been sent to our principal, Sister Michael. The principal's name is Sister Michael, like in Derry Girls.

Oh, my God.

Where he would have been yelled at and given detention. Sister Anne let go of Tommy Decker's hair and turned to me. Hit him back, she demanded.

I knew it. I love it. Hit him back in front of the class.

Should I defy the bride of Christ and go to hell or slap Tommy Decker, who had done nothing but bother me for weeks? Clearly, I had to follow the path upon which I had been sent.

Oh, God. I want to do it myself. Why do I want to hit a kid so bad?

Well, you know Tommy Decker. I'd pulled my arm back, extended my hand, and slapped his face with all my might.

Holy shit.

I don't remember a single detail more about this incident until the phone call from Sister Michael that night. And it starts, you are not in trouble. But can you tell me what happened today? I gave her my story. She thanked me and hung up. I did my spelling. I prayed my rosary and went to bed.

Oh, my God.

The next day at school, we had a substitute teacher.

Yeah, who did?

Word quickly spread. Sister Ann was gone. She had been sent away to wherever bad nuns go and was replaced by a nice, stable lay teacher with dishpan hands who we would call Dishy for the rest of the year. What? Stay sexy and offer your suffering up to Jesus, Sarah. P.S. I teach preschool and whenever a kid's mad about something trivial, I do the look, listen, look and listen and look and listen until they get annoyed with me and stomp off.

It works every time. Sarah, you just moved into my number one. favorite fucking email. Because I don't, I try not to read these. I just skim them for nouns so I know what's about to happen.

But that slapping, slap that kid across the face, right? Hit him back. You know that kid's got a fetish now, a grown up fetish of being slapped in the face by nuns. Right?

There's got to be a nun.

There's got to be someone watching.

A girl in a schoolgirl outfit.

A nun in a schoolgirl outfit.

And then it's, you're bad, Tommy. You're bad.

Exactly. Okay, my last one.

Let him live.

Hero teacher was a bitchy queen. Oh. Hey, love you. I was outed as gay at the beginning of my senior year in 1980 at a high school party. Starting off strong.

That's, in 1980? Ugh. horrifying. I'm so sorry.

Although I didn't reap the whirlwind of abuse I'd expected from my Southern small town classmates, it sent me into a downward spiral of fear and deep, deep depression. Understandably, I stopped doing any of the things I loved, including studying. I know, nerd. So my straight A's became C's and D's. My teachers noticed, of course, but none asked me what was going on or if I needed help. One told me my brain probably wasn't mature enough for calculus. Another pulled me aside and actually said, It's okay. Some people peak early. But my AP American history teacher, let's call him Mr. Patterson, never said a thing to me all semester.

That wasn't unusual. He was a big, loud Southern queen, like a cross between a football coach and Truman Capote. Brilliant.

That's... What's his name on Modern— it' s Cam on Modern Family.

Totally Cam.

That's incredible.

Bitchy, intimidating, and mean. His vibe was always wanting to watch the school burn down while sipping a G & D. Hell yeah. One of his hallmarks was handing back our tests and papers one by one, walking up the rows of desks, telling us what a useless, talentless, decadent generation we were in in a booming lisp. It was funny, but he wasn't joking. At the beginning of the second semester, when I was at my absolute lowest, he was handing back the term papers we were supposed to have written over the break. As he slammed each paper down on a desk, he saved a little hidden insult for that particular student. Quote, they wouldn't hold your hand in college, slam, if you even get to college, slam, which is unlikely

when you cannot spell or string two words together coherently, slam, slam. When he got to me, I braced, but knew it didn't matter. My depression had numbed me to almost anything. He stood next to my desk and said, quote, but maybe your generation isn't a total loss. Some of you can write better than the textbook.

Yeah.

Slam.

That's right.

I peeked at my grade A plus with the note, you write like an angel. If you're thinking that solved everything or that he became my mentor, no. He never said another thing to me until just before spring break. I was not only after class because I didn't like to linger in the crowded corridors. He looked up from the papers he was grading and said with a little wave at the noisy hallway, Mr. S., these people are turkeys.

Don't become a turkey. I mostly pulled myself out of my depression that spring, at least enough to get away from high school. I spent the next 40 years as a writer, editor— I'm now married, semi-retired, and working on my first novel. Mr. Patterson was never in the front of my mind over the years. Other than those few interactions, there wasn't much to remember. But in hindsight, that man probably saved my life by simply reminding me I wasn't worthless.

He knew, then as now, we bitchy queens have got to take care of each other. SSTGM and don't be a turkey. Mr. S.

Oh, Mr. S. Congratulations.

I had a teacher that saved my life in the same way.

Yeah.

Like Mrs. Mercer was her name. And I wouldn't be where I am. I've written about her in our book. I would not be where I am today without her.

Because she took an interest. Yeah. She saw you.

Yeah, totally.

It's huge. Yeah. I mean, especially that age where you do Like, unless you're a cheerleader or a football star, you go invisible. And then you're kind of grappling with that. And the irony of someone being outed at a time where— It was only a punchline.

Yeah.

And the risk, there was like real physical risk. Yes. Crazy.

Yeah, it definitely was like everyone else around you is having the time of their life. Everyone's telling you it's the best years of your life and you're fucking depressed and miserable and you think something's wrong with you.

Or you believe that you don't belong, you don't get to have that or something.

Yeah.

What I really love too is like that idea, he wasn't his mentor. Nothing else. Because he was actually being a great teacher. He's just like, get your fucking head on straight and focus on what you need to be doing.

This shit is not worth it.

Right. Don't worry about these people.

Bye.

And then there's no like, please come and tell me how to do it. It's nothing. It's just like, go actually do it.

Yeah. I love it. Let's repeat it. So you guys remember, Kids in Need Foundation is where we're donating to. And to post your Instagram story with a link to your wish list, teachers, and tag us at My Favorite Murderer. Let's get some wish lists cleared.

I was going to tell a story because this is my sister's last year of teaching.

It is? Yeah. Oh, my God.

And she has, I think it's 30 years, if not 32. Holy shit, Laura. She has been a grammar school teacher. And she's taught every grade and she's done, I mean, she's done every single thing. But the last like five years she's been focusing on kindergarten because she loves getting little kids and basically teaching them how to learn.

Totally.

That's like her favorite thing. And I just wanted to, she doesn't listen to the show and she doesn't like this show, but we all know her. And to be a teacher for that long and to be dedicated the way she's been, it's just like, these are the people who make it possible. And we all learned this lesson in COVID. These people make it possible for everybody else to live their lives when they have families.

Absolutely.

And they get paid absolute shit because it's a female-dominated job. And all of those things hopefully will change sooner rather than later. But in the meantime, there's people who are really keeping it together in the most egregious circumstances. So if you have anything extra and you can give it In any way you can, clear one item on one list.

There's a lot of teachers out there that are doing it, and they never get any applause. They never get anything.

Yeah, that's amazing. Wow.

Yeah. Incredible.

I wish Laura had been my teacher. She's so sweet.

She is a really good teacher. I was her first student, and she was a very good teacher.

Look at you now.

And look. She taught me how to get my own podcast studio.

All her bullying worked. She took it all out on you so she could be a teacher that's calm and clear. That's right.

They all think she's really nice. I've tried to sue her through the state many times, and they won't let me.

Well, thanks for listening, you guys.

Happy back to school.

Yay.

I feel bad for you, but, you know, enjoy.

Totally.

Stay sexy.

And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?

This has been an Exactly Right production.

Our managing producer is Molly Smith.

Our consulting producer is Kate Schellenbach.

Our creative lead is Allison Agosti.

Our associate producer is Tessa Hughes, and our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

This episode was mixed by Liana Squalacci.

Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com and follow the show on Instagram at My Favorite Murder.

Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Or watch new episodes every week on Netflix. Search for My Favorite Murder, Add us to your list and hit the double thumbs up button.

Goodbye.

MFM Minisode 504

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