How to deal with crazy teachers

Most crazy teachers, when you look at them closely, are really not that crazy. Unfortunately, that level is often impossible for students, at least, to find. Therefore, you're probably going to have to deal with them as is- which is going to require some specialised techniques.

The important thing is about communication, because, to be fair, they probably think that you're crazy as well. You need to stick to simple language and short sentences. This makes it much harder for what you're saying to be misunderstood or misinterpreted (although keep in mind that crazy teachers have been known to manage anyway, generally in ways other people never even dreamed of.).
Body language must be kept as open and unthreatening as possible. Imagine if you were constantly surrounded by loud, probably obnoxious people you don't really understand, how would you feel? And especially keep in mind that you should attempt to look as truthful and earnest as possible.
Lastly, what you're actually saying to them. Repetition is generally considered to be key in dealing with crazy teachers. They need to hear an idea expressed, in several different ways, before they will even begin to accept its reality. Also, if your content is something along the lines of "I need to skip your class to go to the zoo," it will probably need to be altered for the benefit of the crazy teacher. For example, phrasing it as "I'm representing the school to the general public, as part of a program studying the psychological similarities between humans and animals," may be more successful than "I'm going to the zoo." (no joke, my friends actually went on a psychology excursion to the zoo for that purpose. Or rather, that's what their teacher told the school- really, she just wanted to take them to the zoo. Gotta love that kind of crazy)

Furthermore, you will need to attempt to understand the mind of the crazy person. Don't worry- it's not as scary as you think it will be. They generally have one or two motives driving them- usually their subject is one of them. We have two especially crazy teachers at my school. One is crazy for her language. The other for his subject (geography, I'm pretty sure) and his school faction. Armed with the knowledge of what motivates your crazy teacher, you can manipulate their psyche. For example, instead of saying "my science teacher is taking us on an excursion to eat sushi as an end of year party thing" phrase it to a language teacher as "My teacher wants to help facilitate inter-racial understandings. We're going to develop cross-cultural bonds here!"

However, eventually, you are going to have to admit defeat. Some craziness simply can't be dealt with. You here have two options. Simply skip the class in question, or refuse to do the specified activity, or whatever. That's called wagging, though, don't do it. Or, you can do the far simpler option, and simply handball the whole issue to another teacher. Even if they can't make the crazy one see sense, they at least have the authority to let you do whatever it is you need to do.

And the last issue in dealing with crazy teachers? Yeah, sometimes, it is you, and the teacher you're calling crazy is completely rational and just trying to do their job while you, however, are being a shitthead. Which is it?

(Side note: we've apparently had FIVE fire alarms in the past two weeks. I haven't heard any of these. That's... encouraging.)

On playing the game (in essays)

High school, like a lot of things, is a sort of game. It has rules and umpires and sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. However, you generally win a lot more often if you play by the rules and don't argue with the umpire. No, I'm not talking about cheating.

A few weeks back I got the results of an out of school essay competition that I and one other person from my school had entered. She was shortlisted; I wasn't; fair enough, I got over it and moved on. But then I started thinking about why.  It's in a subject I'm good at; the essay was heavily edited by both me and my teacher. Now, ok, yes, it's possible it just wasn't as good as I thought it was, or else everyone else's was simply better. But the current theory between the three of us is that I maybe should have picked a different topic to write about. Why? Well, because I spent an entire paragraph criticising the whole idea of the organisation running the competition. Yeah, probably could have thought that through better.

 Another story: the other day in lit we were discussing with our teacher (read: putting off work) one of her students from last year, who had failed the exam. The reason he failed was because he chose which question to answer in the exam solely on the basis of: "My teacher put this question in the exam to challenge me to prove her wrong. Quick! Prove her wrong!" (And, by the way, that question had previously been on exam papers and still is.) He devoted the whole essay to arguing about philosophical ideas and why they were wrong, rather than analysing how they appeared in the text. That made it just a little difficult for the marker to pass him, since he hadn't actually answered the question.

The basic moral of these stories is that while you can and will have your own opinions in high school... you probably shouldn't, at least when you're writing essays. Yes, even if the question asks for your opinion. Generally speaking, there's only two of three options of 'acceptable' opinions. This is just a case of 'give them what they want, and no one gets hurt'. No matter how damn awesomely you can write an essay about how the GFC was a conspiracy by space aliens and llamas, no one cares if what you were asked to do was discuss the effects of government policy on the recovery process (or something like that, I don't do economics so it was just the first thing I thought of... oddly.)

Now, to be fair, there are exceptions, and there are teachers who will let you get away with doing things like this. I'm lucky, in that, with most of my teachers, if I can give them a good enough reason why (even if it is crap and they know it, but they generally give bonus points for entertainment value so...) they'll let me change questions (although obviously not during in-class essays, but those are so broad, you don't really need to.) Case in point: the other day, discussing my research project with my history teacher, he said offhandedly, "Oh, and by the way, I don't really care if you go into the present, or whatever. Just so long as you make it interesting."  And really, can you blame them? Thirty plus essays to read on the same general topic, of course they're going to want something different after a while- just don't piss them off.

Essentially: Give your teachers what they want, or you probably will fail.

(Side note: my best friend and I made our history teacher swear the other day. But in a good way.)